Veronica’s arrival in early November was less eventful than I had expected, which was a considerable relief, to say the least. I had cleared everything with Cerise beforehand, and, when Veronica called me from Dulles Airport, announcing that she had arrived, I made a point of telling her to take a taxi to my place. No way was I driving out there to pick her up, not in the middle of a weekday, and certainly not with only eleven hours prior notice that she was departing LAX. She used to jerk me around pretty good when we were an item back in college, so I made damn sure she knew what the situation is now.
Veronica’s been staying in one of the guest bedrooms. I let her hang out here in Great Falls for thirty days, then sat her down for a little talk, in which I made some important points. Sure, we’re friends, former lovers, and all that, but she’s a Hollywood divorcee and I’m a DC policy consultant with a steady SO, and a month or so of freeloading is enough – therefore, either Veronica had to start kicking in on my mortgage payments or move out. We negotiated a monthly fee commensurate with the real estate values around here, and I made her put down a 30 day security deposit, too. So, since December first, I’ve had a room mate – not that I need one, but I have one anyway.
Tonight, when I got home from the office, Veronica was home, which has actually been a pretty rare occurrence since she moved in. Most of the time, she’s been parking that used BMW she bought into my driveway about nine or ten in the morning, then sleeping until around four or five in the afternoon, then going out on the town again for another night of God knows what (and ask me if I care). But this evening, she was bustling around the kitchen, setting the table for two.
“Tom! Join us for cocktails before dinner!” There she was, spatula in one hand and a highball glass in the other. “I’ve made them in your honor.”
Yes, she had – in her hand was a frosty Tom Collins, which she presented me with a wicked little smile. Then the doorbell rang.
Setting my namesake libation on a coaster, I strode to the front door and opened it. “Tom! Great to see you again,” said Shmuel Lipschitz, whom I haven’t seen in years, “haven’t seen you in years!”
Now, be well advised on this – never, in my wildest and most absurd imagination, could I have conceived of Veronica hooking up with Shmuel Lipschitz. Why? Where shall I begin? She’s a libertine gentile, he’s an ultra-conservative Jew. She’s had dozens of men (at the very least, I estimate, so as not to insult her); he’s a forty-something virgin. She’s five foot nine, he’s five foot six. He’s read every last book Isaac Beshiva Singer wrote; she watches the Celebrity Channel. He’s a rabid Zionist and she couldn’t find Israel on a map of the eastern Mediterranean. She’s a soon-to-be-divorced for the second time wife of a hot-shot Hollywood TV crime series producer, and he’s a staffer for Senator Joseph Lieberman. Should I have seen a toy Chihuahua humping a Saint Bernard in my front yard, I could have been no less astounded.
But who knows what the heart wants, as Woody Allen once asked, when pressed for an explanation of that burning and uncontrollable carnal lust he has for his step daughter. I shook Shmuel’s hand, smiled my best unexpected guest smile, and took his coat. In a trice, we were seated in the living room, clutching cocktails, Veronica and Shmuel seated together on the couch while I conversed from a plush chair at a comfortable distance. After a few seconds of surreal silence, I decided to open with a toast.
Choosing a toast to break the ice is no small task, I know that. My mind raced as I considered and discarded various subjects, until a recollection of current events – which is to say something quite relevant, which had, in addition happened this very day – leap into my mind. “To Senator Liberman’s endorsement,” I offered, holding my glass on high, “of Senator McCain’s…”
“Oy!” Shmuel ejaculated prematurely, “that meshuggeneh farblonjet putz! Feh!”
Veronica gazed at Shmuel curiously. “What?”
“Nothing! Forget it,” Shmuel muttered, blushing bright red.
“It’s Yiddish,” I explained, somewhat puzzled myself. “You mean,” I asked her, “you spent over a decade in Hollywood and you’ve never heard anybody speak Yiddish?”
“Oh? Is that what it’s called?”
“So you have heard it before?” My sense of reality was beginning to return.
“Sure,” she nodded, taking a sip of her cocktail, “my first husband made noises like that at me all the time. But he would never tell me what they were.” Taking another sip, she gazed out the window, thinking. After a moment’s reflection, she spoke. “What does ‘Pisk shikker chozzerai gefressene goyishe shiksa nafka’ mean?”
Shmuel’s blush went from red to deep crimson tinged with purple as I began to explain. “Ah, it’s something along the lines of…”
“Don’t say it!” Shmuel shouted, throwing me a menacing glare.
“Of… um, ‘Cutie pie snuggles honey bunches of kissy-wiggles,’ loosely translated, of course.”
“Aw…” Veronica looked at Shmuel and giggled. “You didn’t want him to say it because it’s so mooshy.”
“Yeah,” Shmuel replied, nodding nervously, “yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it – too mooshy.”
“But hey, Shmuel, old boy,” I inquired, in good faith, being no more than as honestly interested as anyone else would be, “what’s up with your assessment of McCain? Is it possible that you don’t think Joe’s endorsement is a win-win deal?”
“I was there,” Shmuel moaned softly, “when they met.” Fortifying himself with another swig, he continued. “It wasn’t good. Liberman’s aide hands McCain’s aide two yarmulkes. McCain thinks they’re knee pads, puts them on the floor and starts to [expletive] Lieberman…” Shmuel caught himself, realizing what he had just said in front of his date. “I’m sorry, Veronica,” he continued, “deeply sorry. Please, I meant no offense. That’s what the man tried to do, that’s all. It’s not like substituting a euphemism would change what I saw.”
Veronica smiled warmly, wrapping her left arm around Shmuel’s shoulders, giving him an affectionate peck on the cheek. “Not to worry, Shmoopsy, we’re all grown-ups here. Besides,” she informed us with another worldly wink of her huge and entrancing eyes, “that’s exactly how everybody closes deals in Hollywood. But tell me,” she asked, as Shmuel took the first serious swig of his cocktail, “is ’euphemism’ what you Washingtonians say instead of ‘condom?’”
Shmuel halted, quite awkwardly, mid-quaff, and started coughing like a deacon’s daughter contending with her first puff of sensimilla. Oddly, the sight of Shmuel, bent over in an extended paroxysm on the couch, seemed to arouse Veronica’s maternal – or at least nurturing – instincts. She earnestly pounded on his back as he put his head between his knees an blew bits of phlegm all over my fifteen thousand dollar hand woven organic Bhutan rug.
“Uh, uh, uh… oh, thank you,” Shmuel finally managed as he sat up on the couch, “something just… just went down the wrong way, I guess…”
I suppose I could have changed the subject, but really – yarmulke kneepads? Of course I wanted to know more. “So,” I prodded, “that was wrong, then?”
“No,” Shmuel clarified, his composure completely returned, bizarrely, as if nothing unusual had happened, “the… McCain was supposed to do that later, not at the reception.”
“Ah, oui, l’faux paux grande,” I concurred, “so then what?”
“We ate. I didn’t think it was such at hot idea, but
Hadassah insisted. ‘At little nosh, that’s what we need,’ she said. First course was matzoh ball soup. ‘Matzoh balls,’ McCain says, ‘we’re eating matzoh balls? What kind of animal is a matzoh?’ Then there was pastrami on rye with half sours and a glass tea. McCain takes one bite of the half sours, turns to Hadassah and says ‘I think these might be spoiled.’ Next, he sends back the tea and asks for coffee. Then, when the pastrami on rye shows up, he sends that back, too and asks for lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise on white toast.’” Shmuel looked up at me from his drink, his face a tapestry of despair. “Is that the best kind of political ally Israel can get these days, somebody who eats his pastrami on white bread with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise?”
“Surely,” I opined in a consoling tone, “such trifles don’t matter, as long as McCain is lined up with the major policy issues.”
Shmuel shook his head, dejected. “I’m not so sure he is, Tom.”
“Doubtless, McCain supports continued settlement of the West Bank?”
Shmuel pulled long, glum face. “No, as a matter of fact, we couldn’t pin him down on that.”
“How about the Separation Wall?”
“Security Fence!” Shmuel quickly corrected. “And no, again, we talked about that, but it’s not like he’s going to mention anything about it in his campaign speeches.”
“Maybe that’s just as well,” I observed.
“Yeah,” Shmuel agreed, “but we couldn’t get anything out of him for under the table after the election, either.”
“Oh,” I commiserated, “that is dire. So I suppose McCain wouldn’t commit to unlimited support for invasion of Palestinian territory in retaliation for terrorist rocket strikes, or anything like that, huh?”
Shmuel sank back into the couch as Veronica leaned against his shoulder, attempting to comfort him.
“No,” he sighed laconically, “the man simply lacks the necessary fire in the belly.”
Veronica hugged Shmuel again, leaning close to him. “Which fire is that?”
“Ah, you know,” Shmuel replied, leaning back into her halo of soft and fragrant hair, “that Zionist fire in the belly. Take back Greater Israel. Extend power from the Nile to the Euphrates. Exterminate the Arabs, terminate Islam. That kind of stuff. McCain just won’t sign off on it. He’s no Wolfowitz; he’s no Richard Pearle. It’s just not the same as it used to be! The American Jewish lobby can’t buy neo-con lackeys, toadies and shills for the Zionist cause these days – they’re just not selling their greased tushes at fire-sale prices anymore. We got to face it, the market’s changed. McCain’s never going to make the United States do what true Zionists want the United States to do – nuke the Moslems and turn the Middle East over to the Jews. It’s just not going to happen. We tried to make it happen with that idiot Bush, but he screwed the pooch. All we can get now is a lukewarm commitment from some second-string Republican like McCain not to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq the day after he’s elected, that’s all.” Shmuel doubled over into fetal position and began to sob, very softly and very wet. In the kitchen, I heard the distant ding of the microwave. Veronica tenderly kissed the side of Shmuel’s face, gave him a little hug, got up from the couch and crept quietly over to me.
“Tom, darling,” she whispered, “could you cheer poor Shmuel up while I go get the appetizers?”
“I’ll do my best,” I humbly told her. As soon as Veronica left, I strode over to Shmuel and took the highball glass from his hand. “What you need, my man, is a nice shot of XO brandy.” It worked like a charm – the very mention of free shots of very expensive liquor brought him out of his funk faster than an offer of belly lox at half price.
He leapt up from the couch, jubilant. “You bet, Tom!”
“Appetizers!” We turned. There stood Veronica, a platter of hot Dungeness crab claws rampant and steaming.
Shmuel gasped, which was not good, since the aroma of the crab claws had quickly and thickly permeated the air. Before Veronica or I knew it, he had puked all over my five thousand three hundred dollar cocobola wood inlaid coffee table.
“Jesus Christ,” Veronica exclaimed, staring at the mess in my living room, shuddering in disbelief, “hasn’t he ever seen Dungeness crabs before?”
Leaning close, I whispered carefully. “Why are you dating this guy, anyway?”
Just as quietly, watching Shmuel attempt to compose himself, she answered. “Next week he starts with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at seven hundred and eighty thousand a year.”
“Not bad,” I commented, “but let me give you some advice.”
“What’s that?”
“Skip dinner and take him upstairs – now.”
“Right.” Veronica nodded agreement and smiled, giving me a peck on the cheek, “Tom Collins, you always have the best ideas.”