Today was the funeral, and everyone was sitting around telling stories of the Boss. Many were about Boss and the Little Guys, whom he never overlooked. When I phoned one associate who had been his protegée in the 1980s, she picked up the phone and said matter-of-factly, “Oh, that is too bad. Is there a charity to which I could contribute?” Meanwhile her secretary who had put the call through burst into tears. No wonder: Boss had a cheat sheet of secretaries’ names (plus he had a good memory for people) and every visit, even if it was just once or twice a year, he would greet them by name, ask about their families.

I think the angriest he ever was with me was not over the nth blown deadline on a project, but when we were on the road in some random business hotel for two days and at checkout he asked me how much I had left for the housekeeper. For such a short stay, I hadn't left any tip at all. He was mad. “When you travel on my dime you tip and tip big.” (I wish I could say the same about our salaries.)

Boss was a believing Roman Catholic and the service was all about the Resurrection and the Life. If it’s true, I hope he won’t be upset that they only buried him with his sand wedge and not a full set of golf clubs. As I walked away from the grave, I followed Jewish custom and threw dirt in. It was caked rock hard and probably dented the very fancy casket—nothing a Jew would be buried in for sure—but after the cemetery workers are finished no one will know.

Boss walks into the office, two in the afternoon. He waves the office manager into the large office he and I share. He is coming from his oncologist and the results are plain on his face.

“So I went to the doctor today and the fucker gave me six months to live! Can you believe that? So we’ll have to wind the business down by the end of the year. What I am sorriest about is that I won’t be able to give you the two years’ salary I promised you for when I sold the business.”

I literally wave away the two years’ salary with the back of my hand. “That isn’t why we’re working here, Boss.” True enough. We’re working here for the fantasy: a has-been financial adviser who drinks too much (and, latterly, has cancer) and a never-was mathematician with a history of cyclic depression take on Wall Street and fight it to a draw. I knew he wasn’t going to beat the cancer, but I thought we had two or three years to keep up the effort.

“You know, I’ve had a good career,” he continues. “Didn’t make me rich”—although it did, he was Number Two in the research department of a famous now-defunct brokerage, until a sequence of personality conflicts inspired him to invest (squander?) all his savings in going out on his own—“but I’ve enjoyed it.” That part is true.

Boss has been keeping secrets. The hospital sent him the results of the CT scan in cold typescript a week before his appointment, I hope by mistake.

Scan shows progression of tumor into liver, lymph nodes, and lung. We’ll discuss.

Discuss what? The selection of hymns?

So Boss and his distraught wife go for a second opinion. The second opinion is: three months.

What does it mean to have ninety sunrises left? Do you mark them off on a calendar like a convict?

Safe journey home, Boss. And would you mind writing me a reference before you go?

Update, October 27, 2009: Not even one month. Boss passed this morning. Blessed be the True Judge.

August, 1992

Vancouver, British Columbia. Math conference. In fact, my last math conference, as I have taken my first programming job and for all intents and purposes, I’m kissing my intended career goodbye. Rather, the other way around. In attendance are émigré mathematicians from the fSU, as the former Soviet Union was referred to in the professional literature. Seen, perhaps correctly, as better-trained than Americans, they are filling what few academic vacancies open during the recession.

One of the younger emigrants is a Jew from the Ukraine. After leaving the Soviet Union, where, he tells us, anti-Semitism prevented his finishing his degree (plausible enough), he became a ba‘al tshuvah, or born-again Orthodox Jew. As it is Friday, he asks if I can drive him—I have rented a car—to a kosher butcher so he can buy food to eat on the Sabbath. I reply that I will pick him up after I have lunch with my friend Professor Plum. The Noodnik of Minsk doesn’t understand until I explain carefully that we are not moving our lunch to his butcher shop; indeed, he is not even invited and the food will not be to his liking.

The fried calamari appetizer from the Greek restaurant is the best I have ever eaten. After that plate is cleared away and the roast lamb appears, Plum says some rather nasty things about our new whiny acquaintance that could have been construed as anti-Semitic. I give Plum a rather curious glance.

“Oh, Edmond, you didn’t know I’m Jewish? My name used to be Plaskowitz. We all changed it as a family after escaping from Europe and getting American citizenship.”

After the last of the lamb we go back to the conference site to do our mitzvah for the day. It should have counted for the whole week.

“Can’t you drive faster? It’s already 2:00 and Shabbat starts soon.” In August that far north, Shabbat starts about 8:30.

I pull up outside the butcher, who is still open despite Shabbat starting in a mere six hours. The sole proprietor is an elderly man, yarmulke, Yiddish-accented English.

With the zeal of the convert, Noodnik starts by scrutinizing the hechsher, the rabbinic certification the shop is kosher. Then he asks the butcher, “You go to synagogue?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of synagogue? Is it an Orthodox synagogue?”

“It’s the Orthodox synagogue. You want to come tonight? I give you directions.”

Unfortunately, the synagogue is miles from the conference and the observant don’t ride on Shabbat.

“Now, this meat. What is it?”

“That? That’s beef.”

“No, I mean, is it kosher?”

“Of course it’s kosher. I’m a kosher butcher.”

After a few more minutes, the butcher breaks down under Perry Masonowitz’s cross-examination. He sighs. “I go to the Reform synagogue and that,”—he points to some salami—“that’s bacon!”

Despite the confession, Noodnik buys a salami. I quietly wish the man Good Shabbes as we go.

One of the branches of the University of California took pity, I guess, on this putz and awarded him a coveted post-doc. Research institutions don’t care much about congeniality when they hire the brilliant. Nothing at the conference, however, suggested that Noodnik was brilliant but persecuted. He seemed to be as mediocre as a typical American having trouble finishing his degree. At least UCX did better than Major East Coast University, which trumpeted the appointment to a tenured full professorship of world-famous Professor G. of Moscow. He was SOA, Senile on Arrival. MECU was SOL.

I was explaining to my parents that Wife continues to agonize over second-rate academic publications, taking time away from writing fiction (won undergraduate writing award) and poetry (won undergraduate poetry prize). She was candid enough to say that her father, the public intellectual whose books remain in print, hadn’t been impressed with the prizes. So she trudges on, alternately writing abstruse articles, or, in the main, avoiding them, waiting for the Attagirl! that will never come.

In one of her least acute moments, my mother asked, “Don’t you think it’s strange to ask the dead for something?”

Mom forgot her own guilt over the difficult end-of-life decisions she made for her own mother. I left the particulars unsaid, but I did say, “No, not at all. What I think is strange is waiting for an answer.”

Wife: So, what would you like to do for Father’s Day?

Me: Exactly what I’m doing now.

1971

Dad comes into the bedroom I share with my brother.

“I’d like you boys to be especially nice to your mom for the next few days. Your Aunt Emma is going into the hospital for some tests and it is making her a little upset.”

On the spot I knew Aunt Emma was dying. I remember Emma telling my mom, her younger sister, about how much chiropractics was helping her back pain. Less expensive that traditional medicine, too. But it turns out that chiropractics doesn't cure spinal cancer. By the time traditional medicine likewise failed about a year later—the prognosis was hopeless from the get-go—I found it anti-climactic. My mother was left as the last of three sisters while still in her forties: I’m named after the eldest, who died from penicillin shock in treatment for pneumonia. (Nowadays a nurse is supposed to stand by with antidote the first time a patient gets penicillin.) Bubby, having buried two of her three children, went downhill and followed Aunt Emma two years later.

Today

My dad’s allegedly minor operation is for a 3 cm cancerous mass on his kidney. The kidney can not be removed in its entirety, because then he would need dialysis for the rest of his life.

The bells in my head are ringing. I’m frightened. A friend once told me that you are not really an adult until (like him) you have lost both your parents. I’m not ready for that type of adulthood; I never will be, even if my parents live to 120.

Update, June 16, 2009

My parents say the operation was a complete success. They would probably dissemble if it weren’t, but the way my father explained the meeting with his doctor had a ring of truth. My dad changed internists recently. More precisely, he outlived his former internist. The new doctor told him he wanted to revisit a spot on the kidney that the previous internist believed was just some scarring. An MRI showed that it wasn’t; it was a tumor. The doctor offered four choices. The first two were removing the kidney (probably entailing lifetime dialysis) and removing the tumor surgically (likely to damage the kidney, possibly entailing dialysis). The third possibility was a fairly new procedure called cryoablation where hollow needles are inserted laparoscopically into the tumor and extremely cold gas is introduced into the needles, freezing and killing the tumor. “Or,” the doctor continued, “we could do nothing. This is a very slow growing type of tumor and you would have at least five or six years.”

“That’s not enough. Let’s do the freezing.&rdquo I think my father was displeased that his physician thought another five or six years (less than his father and very-much-alive siblings) would suffice. On the other hand, he was much amused by the realization that if his former internist had been more on the ball, the tumor would have been detected before his hospital had adopted cryoablation therapy and he would have lost use of a kidney. We are not people who believe everything happens for a reason; all the more so to enjoy such a weird stroke of luck.

Boss could use some of that luck. His cancer has returned and he is going back for more chemo. While he is in hospital I will be checking the help wanteds.

Last night Wife and I entered a raffle. (I won a keychain.) The entry form asked if you believed in love at first sight. Wife wrote ‘always’. I wrote ‘Not anymore’.

July 1989

I awake next to the future Countess.

For the first time.

“You realize,” she said, standing up and stretching—where has that lingerie gone, anyway—“this means no sleeping with anyone else.”

I was taken somewhat aback, not over the sentiment, but because she had by then a pretty fair account of my sexual history and it featured only monogamy and, frequently, nilogamy.

“That includes lesbians.”

That was not a random shot, rather a reference to a particular ex-lover of mine who would prefer to be described as avowedly bisexual for bedroom purposes but whose social circle ran mostly to butches.

I didn’t have any problem with that. All moral considerations aside, this woman’s enjoyment of male partners had not stopped her from adopting a stereotypically unattractive mannish appearance. I did, however, have my own issue.

“How about nuns?”, I asked.

This was not a random question, either. I had known Sister Angelica from when she was a math major. I had mistakenly taken her for Jewish, but really she was Italian. (Mediterranean peoples all look alike, you know.) Not only Catholic, but already a ‘pre-postulant,’ meaning she had not taken any vows but was visiting a convent and beginning a lengthy application process.

The Countess stood thoughtful for quite some time. “Sex with nuns is OK.”

I stayed friends with Angelica through postulant, novice, and professed sister until one day while pursing a Masters at Notre Dame she walked out of the convent and eloped with another graduate student, leaving no forwarding address.

I never had sex with Angelica; I never even kissed her, which saddens me since I have (I mostly regret) slept with women whom I liked much less. My social life in college and grad school was constricted by inability (disinclination? inhibition?) to go after other men’s girlfriends, and to try to steal one of God’s girlfriends, now, that’s scary.

Postscript: Years later I briefly got in touch with Angelica after a mutual friend (a priest/mathematician) sent me an email with both our addies visible. We traded pictures of our kids but at that time I didn’t want any of my friends to see where my soul was at.

One day I can write an entire book, or blog, about ‘Beth’, but in the meantime, here is a story she told me long ago.

Beth’s freshman (freshwoman?) dorm room was a seven-woman suite. University housing officials love to talk about the value of diversity, since they are not the ones suffering from social dissonance. Esther, another one of the seven women, was an observant Orthodox Jew, and there were serious lifestyle disagreements between her and her sexually active (in some cases, very active) roommates, which category, by the end of sophomore year, included all of the others. But beyond traditional morality, Esther carried herself in a way that put the frum in frump.

A few years after graduation, Esther and Beth ran into each other on the street in Manhattan. Except, only Esther recognized Beth, not the other way around. As I heard it later, Esther had makeup, styled hair, and her long-sleeved blouse and below-the-knee skirt were designer clothes.

“I have a boyfriend now. And would you believe he asked me to sleep with him?”

“So, did you?”

“No, of course not—but wasn’t it nice of him to ask?”

February 14, 1981

I am driving from [large city] to [my hometown] with my best friend ‘Beth’ trying to deal with the knowledge that my life as a virgin is about to end.

A few miles short of my apartment we stop for ice cream sundaes. I take the maraschino cherry from mine and put it on her plate. She doesn’t get it.

I still have the underwear I was wearing, special Valentine’s Day scanties covered with hearts reading “What more can I say?” After Beth took down my pants and saw that, she started guffawing. Then she said, “They say sex is the most fun you can have without laughing, but in your case, that isn’t true.’

Thanks, Beth. Je me souviens.

Wife signed me up to make latkes at upcoming family party. Only then does she say “Neither my mother nor my sister has a Cuisinart, but my dad [ז״ל; I never met him] used to say that the secret to a good latke was a little bit of finger grated in.”

My aunt (and my late uncle) knew my father-in-law all the way back to the late 1940s. She told me recently that after hearing he had died aged 69 completely demented, she'd decided some of his midlife ‘testiness’ was probably just early symptoms of the Alzheimer-type damage. I’m filing the finger-grating under ‘early sign of senility’ and not ‘valuable family tradition’. I told my sister-in-law to go get a Cuisinart.

Spring 1983[?]

Scene: My apartment.

Knock, Knock!

Count: Come in!

Young woman: Hi! I'm your new neighbor in the apartment next door, and my phone isn’t hooked up yet. Can I make a call from yours?

Count: Sure.

I return to what I was doing, analyzing one of my correspondence chess games.

Young woman: So, you play chess?

Count: Yeah, it’s my principal hobby.

Young woman: I do drugs!

Well, OK…

February, 2004

The same neighbor is in Newsweek’s photo essay on the first batch of egomaniac mayor Gavin Newsom’s gay marriages. I see her regularly; we have children in the same bar mitzvah class. The photo has her, her female partner, their two kids, and the gay sperm donor. What I find most amusing is now she’s a well-dressed somewhat dumpy Jewish hausfrau/schoolteacher. Way back then, she was a pot-smoking, coke-snorting, curvaceous Marxist with many overnight guests both men and women. The out mature lesbian shaves her underarms, and the polymorphously perverse party animal didn't.

Somehow I don’t think her marriage is the number one threat to my own; we hets seem to have screwed up the institution of marriage without much help. The No on Proposition 8 campaign ran ads so lame that they must have hired retreads from the Kerry debacle. Next time try a little artistic creativity and skip the who-cares endorsement parade, OK?

Fully two years ago my brother, who is connected to his local Democratic Party, told me in a phone call, “I’ve just met the next president of the United States.”

“Hunh? You slept with Hillary Clinton?”

“No, our committee met with Barack Obama.”

I knew of Obama because I have relatives who live in Chicago, but no matter how enthusiastic my brother was, the idea seemed preposterous. Sometimes we grow too cynical, and the thumping Obama gave McCain, Caribou Barbie, and the entire GOP is going to make my day for many days.

Into the Starbucks has just walked an elderly blind transvestite. Words fail me and the camera phone would be too rude.

Much of Israeli life revolves, by design, around the Sabbath. Stores are open (indeed, crowded) half-day on Friday mornings and K-12 school is in session. However, except for the schools, most people are off, as Friday and Saturday comprise the weekend. (Sunday is a regular workday.) The arrangement that the kids are in school allows the parents to prepare the home for Shabbat. And whatever else they want to do.

A Friday morning, February[?] 2000

The Count is taking a shower. In walks the Countess, naked. “I thought I’d join you.”

[Maybe an hour later.]

Count: That was fun. We should have sex midday more often.
Countess: Dream on.

[Two Fridays later.]

Countess: You know the Coptic class I’ve been sitting in on?

Sure I know it. My wife, the tenured professor, slumming, and two grad students who really needed to learn it.

Countess: I’ve been having some trouble keeping up, so I asked the students if we could have a weekly review session. The only time we all had free was Friday morning [since the University is closed…!], so we’ll be meeting here.

This was insurance, in case my dreams got too realistic. I was furious, and was not mollified when the review was moved a few hours later. The message was received, loud and clear. Unfortunately, I didn’t talk about it. I learned a new phrase last week for people like me: “Conflict Avoiders”.

For a long time I had a fantasy where my future lawyer was cross-examining the Countess. (Given that the Count lives in a no-fault divorce state, this was nearly impossible in real life.) My lawyer whips out the Gospel of Thomas, the only significant surviving work in Ancient Coptic, opens to a random page, and asks her to translate. There won’t be any need to bother. The Countess volunteered the other day she could not even remember the Coptic alphabet. I didn’t bother to mention those review sessions, that were so important.

1980–81

My years teaching math at Expensive Prep School were, by and large, not successful, but even a stopped clock can be an inspiration twice a day.

‘Ellen’ was not one of the students of whom EPS was proud. Admitted long before as a Lower Schooler, by the time I had her in eleventh grade, she’d grown into a trashy, brazen teenager whose disciplinary record included regular drug use and staying out all night on school nights. The rumor was she used her precocious good looks to hang out in dive bars with sailors on shore leave. I paid her little attention and she finished with some sort of C.

I had Ellen back for twelfth grade statistics class. She looked the same, over made up and under dressed, but she did her homework conscientiously, and turned out to be bright, when she wanted to be. [Cue Paris Hilton p3nage of John McCain.]

A few weeks into every term, EPS faculty have a mass meeting to go over every student, one by one. When Ellen came up, I tentatively offered that she seemed to be working harder with results. Her midterm grade in math was, if I recall correctly, an A-minus. The chair of the English Department, who disdained my opinions, just snorted, but the wise old history teacher said, “No, I might be seeing that too.”

Ellen did in fact ace math that year. I wrote on her report card that she was a pleasure to have in class. Somehow on the basis of last-minute heroics the Guidance Office made invisible her years of dreadful grades and suspensions and got her into a decent second-rank women’s college. Given how EPS prizes its placement record, I suspect bribery or blackmail, whichever works better.

Next month was graduation, and Ellen’s mother called and said that when they asked their daughter which teacher they should invite to a pre-ceremony dinner at their house, she picked me. I accepted, of course. I had never met Ellen's father, and the reason became obvious: he was older and had for many years been confined to a wheelchair. Make of that what you will. Her parents were effusive in thanking me for all I had done to help turn Ellen’s life around. I’m sure I did something, but I don’t know just what. If I did I would bottle it.

Also at the dinner was Ellen’s boyfriend, which was natural since the parents had allowed him to move in and share her bedroom instead of her running away all the time. (This totally stunned me. My father did not allow an unmarried couple to stay together in his home until me and my fiancée at our own engagement party many years later. We were in our 30s.) I believe he was neither in school nor employed, just a slacker loser. He said nothing. I am sure he realized he would soon be losing his cute squeeze to someone better.

I was pleased to have helped Ellen, even if I wasn’t sure how. Except for reading in the EPS Newsletter that she transferred from Second-Rate Women’s College to First-Rate Women’s College, I didn’t think of her again. Until.

December 1986

I have flown east to MC a party for my father’s sixtieth birthday and my parents’ thirtieth anniversary. It’s a huge success and afterwards my siblings and some of their friends say we should go out clubbing, something I had never done before, nor since. My sister has forgotten to bring ID, but I pass her off as my wife to get past the doorman. My brother, normally the most social member of the family, fades and has to be put in a taxi, while I’m the life of the party, running on reverse jet lag energy. After a few (more) drinks my sister pulls me towards the dance floor.

There is a loud squeal. “Mr. Dantes!”

A tall, ravishing redhead (that is, Ellen) breaks from her partner, comes over and gives me a hug and kiss. The guy she’s with looked football-player size and he was not smiling.

“Let me introduce you to my husband.”

He seemed mollified after learning I was just her favorite high school teacher.

“So,” Ellen explains, “I finished my Masters in Russian History at Famous University and I’ve been tentatively accepted into the Foreign Service—but there’s some delay in my getting my Security Clearance.”

I am having one of the best nights of my life, but for a moment all I am thinking is I am so happy for you, Ellen, but please don’t give my name to Uncle Sam as a reference because I am not a good enough liar to help on this.

Spring 1986

Because of variegated teaching experience, I was able to instruct students on early versions of Macintosh computers, back before computers were affordable to undergraduates. (The moment I first sat down at a Mac, I knew I was seeing the future of computing. I started saving up that day.) One of the Mac’s strong points that we take almost for granted now was multiple typefaces (“fonts,” although by previous usage this was a misnomer). Other computers had some limited non-WYSIWYG capabilities. Apple had pretty much anything.

No Internet then, but there were ftp sites and user clubs where you could obtain fonts for almost every language. I loved collecting different font alphabets, even ones I couldn’t really recognize. One semester I had a Korean student who explained to me about their alphabet, Hangul. The short version is that in the 15th Century the King of Korea decided they needed an alphabet commoners could read instead of using hard-to-master Chinese characters, and Hangul was created by a committee. Koreans still celebrate an annual alphabet day in its honor, although it didn’t displace use of Chinese ideograms until the last century. Live and learn. With a little work (pre-Google!) I found a source for a Korean Mac font.

The next semester I had three Korean students who sat in a row. On the first day I prepared a floppy disk (remember those?), walked over and asked, “Say, how would you fellows like a Hangul font?”

They were amazed. “You know about Hangul?!”

Sure, since about three months. But does the magician explain the trick?

I used to eat at a Korean junk food restaurant, one of dozens of small places catering to the student trade, partly because I liked it, and partly because the owner told me he had been a math teacher in Korea. One day when I was eating there, one of the Koreans in my class entered right after. His order was delivered with kim chee, the Korean national dish of pickled spicy cabbage. Mine was not. (Koreans accompany the main course with all sorts of pickles and relishes.) He turned to me.

“Mr. Dantes, do you like kim chee?”

“Yes I do.”

He turned to the waitress behind the counter and barked at her in Korean. It’s amazing how quickly one can learn a foreign language. Without identifying a single word, I recognized he was yelling, “Bring my Anglo friend his kim chee right now!!”

The girl bowed her head and went to the refrigerator, bringing me back a giant bowl of kim chee instead of the usual side dish portion. Luckily I was telling the truth about liking kim chee because I realized under the circumstances I had to finish every last bite.