Patiently, Meyer Meyer turned back to his typing.
He was reasonably certain that Virginia Dodge would not walk over to his desk to examine his masterpiece of English composition. He was also reasonably certain that he could do what he had to do unobserved especially now that the Puerto Rican bombshell had exploded into the room. Virginia Dodge seemed completely absorbed with the girl's movements, with the girl's string of colorful epithets. He was sure, then, that he could carry out the first part of his plan without detection.
The thing he was not too sure of was his English composition.
He had never been a very good English student. Even in law school, his papers had never been what one would call brilliant.
Somehow, miraculously, he had received his degree and passed his bar examinations only to receive a Greetings from Uncle Sam, advising him that he was to serve in the United States Army. After four years of trudging through muck and mire (Hello, Muck! Hello, Meyer!), he'd been honorably discharged. By that time, he'd decided that he didn't want to spend the next ten years of his life building a practice. Cubbyhole offices and ambulance chasing were not for Meyer Meyer. He had joined the police force and married the girl he'd been dating ever since his college days, Sarah Lipkin. (He could still remember the fraternity house banter:
"Nobody's lips kin like Sarah's lips kin."
The banter had never disturbed him.
Patiently, he had smiled and listened to it.
Patiently, he had continued dating her.
Besides, the banter was true. Sarah Lipkin was the kissin'est fool he'd ever met.
Maybe that was why he married her when he got out of the Army.) His decision to leave the law profession startled Meyer. It startled him because he was usually a very patient man, and certainly it would have taken extreme patience to sit out the next ten years waiting for a client to step into the office. And yet, tossing patience aside for the first time in his life, he quit being a lawyer and joined the police force. In his own mind both professions were linked. As a cop, he would still be concerned with law. Patiently, doggedly, he did his job. He did not make Detective 3rd/Grade until he had been on the force for eight years. That took patience.
Patiently, he worked on his English composition now. His patience was an acquired skill, nurtured over the years until it had reached a finely honed edge of perfection. He had certainly not been born patient. He had, however, been born with the attributes which would later make a life of patience an absolute necessity if he were to survive.
Meyer's father, you see, was a very comical man. That is to say, he considered himself something of a wit. Half of this consideration was perhaps erroneous. In any case, he was a tailor who played practical jokes on friends every now and then, to his vast enjoyment and their vast annoyance. When his wife, Martha, had already seemed past the age when she could have any further children, when-in fact she was experiencing change of life, nature played its own practical joke on Meyer's father. Martha, of all things, was going to have another baby!
The news did not sit too well with Meyer's father. He thought dirty diapers and runny noses were all behind him and now, at this late stage of the game, another baby.
He accepted the news with faintly disguised distaste, suffered through the pregnancy, and meanwhile plotted his own practical joke in retaliation against the vagaries of nature and birth control.
The Meyers were Orthodox Jews. At the briss, the classic circumcision ceremony, Meyer's father made his announcement.
The announcement concerned the name of his new offspring. The boy was to be called Meyer Meyer. The old man thought this was exceedingiy humorous. The moile didn't think it was so humorous. When he heard the announcement, his hand almost slipped. In that moment, he almost deprived Meyer of something more than a normal name. Fortunately, Meyer Meyer emerged unscathed.
But being an Orthodox Jew in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood can be trying even if your name isn't Meyer Meyer. The repetitive handle provided the hate-mongers with a ready-made chant:
"Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire!" If the haters needed any further provocation for beating up the nearest Jew, Meyer's double-barreled name provided it. He learned to be patient.
Patient, in the beginning, with his enemies.
Later, when he realized how maliciously innocent had been his father's little joke, patient with his father. Patient, still later, with the young doctor who had originally diagnosed his mother's malignant cancer as a sebaceous cyst-a faulty diagnosis which had probably cost her life. And finally, patient with the world at large.
Patience is, perhaps, a rewarding virtue.
Patience leads to tolerance. A patient man is an easy~ going man.
But anger must erupt somewhere.
Somehow, the body must compensate for years and years of learning to sublimate.
Meyer Meyer, at the age of thirty-seven, was completely bald.
Now, patiently pecking at his typewriter, he composed his message.
"What's your name?" Byrnes asked the girl.
"What?" she said.
"Your name! Que es su nombre?"
"Angelica Gomez."
"She speaks English," Willis said.
"I don' speak English," the girl said.
"She's full of crap. The only thing she does in Spanish is curse. Come on, Angelica. You play ball with us, and we'll play ball with you."
"I don' know what means thees play ball."
"Oh, we've got a lallapaluza this time," Willis said.
"Look, you little slut, cut the Marine tiger bit, will you?
We know you didn't just get off the boat."
He turned to Byrnes.
"She's been in the city for almost a year, Pete.
Hooking mostly."
"I'm no hooker," the girl said.
"Yeah, she's no hooker," Willis said.
"Excuse me. I forgot. She worked in the garment district for a month."
"I'm a seamstress, that's what I am. No hooker."
"Okay, you're not a hooker, okay? You lay for money, okay? That's different. That makes it all right, okay? Now, why'd you slit that guy's throat?"
"What guy you speaking about'?"
"Was there more than one?" Byrnes asked.
"I don' sleet nobody's thro'."
"No? Then who did it?" Willis asked.
"Santa Claus? What'd you do with the razor blade?" Again, he turned to Byrnes.
"A
patrolman broke it up, Pete. Couldn't find the blade, though, thinks she dumped it down the sewer. Is that what you did with it?"
"I don' have no erazor blay." Angelica paused.
"I don' cut nobody."