“We’re working out some jurisdictional issues with the DEA.”
“Who’s-who is-” My voice shook a little. “‘We’?”
Another pause, during which my breathing stopped. Then: “The FBI.”
I woke with a stiff neck, a sore back, and no immediate sense of why I was on the living room sofa with the sun assaulting my face. Slowly I remembered my mother.
And the FBI.
It was so much worse than the DEA, I’d gone into a coughing fit when I’d heard the words. I have no history with the DEA. The FBI, on the other hand, has been pissing off my family since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. And not just my biological family. Ruta had been a Communist in the Nixon years, a lonely era for Reds. She’d populated my fairy tales with witches, goblins, and G-men. I hadn’t gone into this with Simon. I’d gotten off the phone as soon as I could, collapsing onto the sofa for a night of unrest and dreams populated with witches, goblins, and G-men.
The doorbell rang. My body cranked itself into a standing position. Still sore from Krav Maga-what had those people done to me?-I hobbled to the door.
Uncle Theo and P.B. stood in the hallway.
Suppressing alarm, I hugged my brother. P.B. wore a green striped shirt with khaki pants I’d given him for his last birthday, which was okay, except that he’d paired them with floral bedroom slippers he must’ve acquired at Rio Pescado. I was exasperated with Uncle Theo for having allowed this sartorial flub until I saw that Uncle Theo wore an orange fringed poncho suggestive of a pumpkin or a monk. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Summoned for brunch.” Uncle Theo hugged me and held out a sheaf of wheat secured with a twist tie. “We caught a ride with some of P.B.’s troops, on a holiday pass. We ran into that nice bookshop man on Santa Monica, who says to stop in soon.”
This was bad. P.B. was a social wild card under the best of circumstances, and brunch with the FBI was not the best of circumstances. His schizophrenia featured a preoccupation with surveillance by alien forces and government agencies. He was not currently delusional, but even asymptomatic he was intense. As for Uncle Theo, he’d actually known Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Numbly, I accepted the sheaf of wheat, a bag of kaiser rolls, and a box of sprouts, and went into the kitchen, where P.B. tuned my radio to a show about insects they’d been listening to in the car.
I looked at my watch. Simon, if he showed, wasn’t due for two hours. Plenty of time for me to run away from home.
Prana emerged from my bedroom, planted kisses on the cheeks of her brother-in-law and son, neither of whom she’d seen in five years, and announced she was off to the store. Uncle Theo went too. P.B. stayed behind. I straightened the apartment and myself, my sense of foreboding growing. An hour later, the shoppers returned to take over the kitchen. A half hour after that, Simon showed up.
Seeing him in my doorway with yellow roses in one hand and Dom Pérignon in the other nearly knocked the wind out of me. He was dressed in gray pants and a soft white shirt. I wondered about the effect he’d have on the seventeen gay men showing up for dinner down the hall later. I hadn’t found him good looking that night at the minimall, but he was getting progressively more handsome, a phenomenon I didn’t understand. This thought, however, was succeeded by a drone in my head: “FBI. FBI. FBI…”
There was that awkward-for me-hello moment where we had the option to kiss, hostess to guest, but of course I couldn’t kiss an FBI agent, so I took the flowers and champagne, which acted as a barrier. I avoided looking into his eyes, as one avoids staring at the sun during a solar eclipse, and closed the door. The living room shrank. Did he have extra-high ceilings in his own house? Did the FBI live in houses, like regular people? Was he wearing a gun, by the way? Tucked into his sock? Why, why, why was he here?
He picked up a framed picture, the first greeting card I’d ever sold. He smiled.
“Okay,” I said. “Who’s Richard Feynman?”
“Ah, Feynman,” Uncle Theo said, coming out of the bathroom. “Marvelous man.”
I stared at him. “You know Richard Feynman?”
“Well, not now. He’s been dead since… the late eighties, I believe. I heard him speak once. While he was alive. Quarks.”
“But who was he, Uncle Theo?”
“The greatest physicist of the last century. Arguably. Of course, he was at Los Alamos with Oppenheimer and the others, but he was awfully young then, so we’ll forgive him. Hello, I’m Theo. Are you Wollie’s young man?”
Cringing, I introduced my uncle to my FBI agent, then moved into the kitchen and introduced Simon to Prana, who turned on the charm, and to P.B., who mumbled at him and returned to the radio.
“Don’t mind my nephew,” Uncle Theo said. “We had to leave his girlfriend at the hospital. Lovely child, severe case of body dysmorphic disorder. We invited her, but she won’t eat in front of people.”
Simon nodded pleasantly. I considered explaining P.B.’s living situation and then decided I needn’t bother, as the FBI probably had files on all of us.
“Body dysmorphic disorder?” Prana said. “Spare me the nouvelles diseases.”
“To quote Richard Feynman,” Uncle Theo said, “‘Every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.’ ”
I was puzzling over the connection between beautiful women and physics when Uncle Theo said, “Care for some weed, Simon?”
“Uncle Theo,” I said, “I don’t think-”
“Your mother felt it would be festive.” He pulled a baggie out of his poncho pocket and sat at the kitchen table. “Went to some lengths to find it, but I have friends who still turn on, it turns out. Estelle and I used to do this every Thanksgiving-when did that stop, Estelle?”
“Nineteen sixty-eight.” My mother popped open the champagne. “We did a blotter of acid, seven of us, and tried to contact Bobby Kennedy-”
“The séance!” Uncle Theo cried. “The one that turned you vegan. The turkey coming to life, crying out from the stuffing-”
I spoke up. “Okay, could we not-”
“The noble bird,” my mother said, “exploited as we ‘honor’ it, just as we ‘honor’ the Native American. Where is the Native American at our table? Do we respect his heritage, join him in his sweat lodge, worship his gods, or just gamble at his casino? We may love peyote, we may engage in sex with-”
“Screw the government,” P.B. said, surprising us all. “Feynman said that too.”
“Um, everyone?” I said. “We may be giving our guest the impression- Simon, care to see the rest of the apartment?”
“No. I think we should help out here.” Simon took the champagne from Prana and filled glasses. He offered one to my brother, but P.B., having made his social contribution, retreated into gloom.
“None for him,” Uncle Theo said. “They interfere with his psychotropics. Drugs,” he added helpfully.
The next hour brought back memories of the first half of my life. In a kitchen the size of a phone booth, Simon watched my mother and uncle get high while P.B. sat like a lump, staring at the radio as if reading lips. My brother had spent years seeing government agents everywhere, and now, faced with an actual one, he was unresponsive.
My mother was not. She was coquettish, even wrangling pots and pans. She sipped champagne, smoked grass, and played hostess. “What is your life path, Simon?”
“What do I do for a living?” He turned his stunning blue eyes on me and smiled. I stopped breathing. “I work for peace,” he said. “Research, documentation, trips to bad neighborhoods-”
“Do you approve of this television program Wollie has sold herself to?”
“Prana, let’s leave that for now, shall we?” I relocated the men in order to set the table. “Simon’s very tall; he must be hungry. Do we have any hors d’oeuvres?”
Hors d’oeuvres. What a fantasy life I led. The entire meal consisted of sprouts, tofu-cranberry bake, undercooked yams, and Uncle Theo’s day-old kaiser rolls. I found some Wheat Thins to supplement things, but my mother forbade me to bring out cheese or even butter for the kaiser rolls, citing the exploitation of cows.