Then the big shots came and the chapel cheered up. These were the officials from the condominium: the sales manager, Joe Colper; Shirley Fanon, the corporation’s lawyer; Sid Harris, the president himself. They had come together, three wide men in beautiful business suits and sharp shoes. They wore blocky paper yarmulkes which stood high on their heads and somehow gave them the appearance of cantors. They moved vigorous as a backfield in some subtle choreographed way that made it impossible to tell which was the leader. They came down the center aisle and took up positions at the coffin: Colper at the head, Fanon at the foot and Harris in the middle. They looked down on his father like fairies at cribside, and for a moment Marshall thought they would sing. No one approached them, though their celebrity had sparked something in the room, even among his father’s old friends. Even Preminger was excited. One of the neighbors told him who they were, but by then he knew; he’d heard his comforters’ murmurs, picked up their pleased, congratulatory whispers. “Wasn’t that nice?” one said, and his friend had answered, “Gentlemen.” It was a word others used too, the presence of the three bringing it out almost reflexively. Preminger wasn’t sold yet — he resented this queer gratitude, ubiquitous as pollen — but then they were upon him and he understood.
“Sid Harris,” Sid Harris said, and shoved a hard hand at him. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Preminger said, returning the pressure as best he could.
Harris frowned disapprovingly. “Not under these circumstances,” he said and dropped Preminger’s hand. “My associates,” he said, naming them.
“Sorry for your trouble,” Colper said.
“Condolences,” said Shirley Fanon and winked.
“Ditto, ditto. We’re all shook,” Harris said. “These things happen. What can I say? Terrible shock, et cetera, et cetera. Look, Marshall — it’s Marshall, right? — I’m not small-timing Pop’s death. He was a gentleman. Mike’s dead, I’m alive, you got me? Life goes on. You know what my rabbi says? ‘Fuck death. Live as if it don’t exist because it does.’”
“That’s some rabbi,” Preminger said.
“You’d love him. The Miracle Rabbi of the Chicago Condominiums. Sleeps in a little sukkah behind the swimming pool with the inner tubes, water toys and chlorine. Got himself a nice little setup in the filtration butke with the towels and the first-aid kit. What the fuck am I talking about? Fanon, you know?” Shirley Fanon shrugged. “Joe Colper?”
“What’s that, Boss?”
“What’s on my mind?”
“I just got here, Boss,” Colper said.
“Must be my grief. Hangs on like a summer cold.” He shook his head. “Got to pull myself together. Fanon, help me up off the floor. Colper, take one arm. Marshall, kid, grab another.” He sat down at the front of the chief mourners’ bench and patted it, inviting Preminger to join him. When he held back, the other two moved in, hustling him toward Harris.
“Hey,” he protested, “what is this? This is a memorial chapel. Will you have some respect?” Even to him it sounded as if he were offering them refreshment.
“Fellows, the game’s up,” Harris said. “He knows who we are.”
“The Jewish Mafia,” Shirley Fanon said.
“The Kosher Nostra,” said Joe Colper.
Preminger looked around desperately. They weren’t bothering to keep their voices down. His father’s old friends and the people from the condominium were taking it all in. Incredibly, they seemed to approve. He appealed to one man who earlier had claimed to have been very close to his father. The man shrugged. “The owners are clowns,” he said.
“Lehrman’s got our number,” Harris said. “Listen to Lehrman.”
“They’re tummlers.”
“A barrel of monkeys?” Harris asked.
“Sure,” Lehrman said, “you ought to be on the stage.”
“We’re better off,” Harris, Fanon and Colper all said together.
“Come on,” Preminger said, “what right have you got to behave like this? You don’t know me. You think this shit is charming? That nerve and craziness makes you lovable? What an incredible slant you three have on yourselves. I haven’t been in my father’s life for years, but that’s him dead up there. He grew long hair and bought new clothes and I didn’t know about it. We told each other old stuff on the long distance and sent each other shirts on our birthdays. He changed his furniture and went Swedish modern and I sat like a schmuck in a rooming house and lived like a recessive gene, but—”
“That’s right,” Harris said cheerfully, “let it all out. Cry.”
“Go to hell,” Preminger said.
“But?” Shirley Fanon reminded him.
“But it’s a death. I’m not going to stand by while you turn it into the cheap heroics of personality.” He stared at Harris. “Are you married?” he asked.
“Who ain’t married?”
Preminger closed his eyes. “Your wife is growing cancer,” he said. “She’s a cancer garden. I give her eight months.”
“Hey, that’s pretty outrageous,” one of the neighbors said.
“Name of the game,” Preminger said calmly. “That’s what this gangster is up to. It’s grandstanding from Rod Steiger pictures, it’s ethnic crap art.”
“Go, go,” Harris said.
“Go, go screw yourself.” He turned to the people from the condominium who had pressed forward to hear. “What, you think it’s hard? This kind of talk? You think it’s hard to do? It’s easy. It makes itself up as you go along. You think it’s conversation? It’s dialogue. Conversation is hard. I don’t do conversation. Like him”—he jerked his thumb toward Harris—“I don’t even feel much of this.”
“Please,” Harris said, rising, “please, neighbors, give us some room. The man’s right. Say your last goodbyes to Phil while I apologize to his son.” They drifted off, dissolving like extras in movies told to move on by a cop. He sat down wearily and turned to Preminger. “Will you take back what you said about my wife?” he asked softly.
“Oh, please,” Preminger said.
“Will you take back what you said about my wife? She ain’t in it.”
“All right,” Preminger told him, sitting down. “I take it back.”
“You hit the nail on the head,” Harris said. “Didn’t he hit the nail on the head, Joe? Shirley, don’t you think he…Gee, there I go again. But you know something? I’m sick and tired of showing off for these people. The bastards ain’t ever satisfied. I put in a shuffleboard, a pool, a solarium. I gave them a party room. They wanted a sauna and I got it for them. They walk around with my hot splinters in their ass. There’s a master antenna on the roof you can pull in Milwaukee it looks like a picture in National Geographic. Energy, energy — they worship it in other people. Momzers. And me, I’ve got no character. I give ’em what they want. I’m sorry I leaned on you.”
“We were both at fault.”
Harris sighed. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Forget it.”