Goldstein wants it both ways, but Stephan tells him each man, from the moment he can understand, has a choice between good and evil, and everything in his life reflects the extent to which he has taken either road
Somewhere in L.A., there is a bar inside which Saint Stephan sits, drinking beer. It is the long, darkened kind of place in the American landscape one goes to, to be alone.
The beer is cold and refreshing and good – an amber selection from somewhere in the Los Angeles County microbrewing culture. ‘Zhyve pyvo… “live” beer,’ Stephan recalls; that’s what they call beer like this back in Ukraine. He smiles at the memory.
But Stephan’s not in Kyiv anymore.
He’s in a place where Goldstein will find him. Out of all the bars in all the cities in the world, Goldstein will find him precisely here. Seeking solitude, Stephan knows he’s played a joke on himself by coming here.
But why find him? What does Goldstein want? He wanted Welsh Losser and now he wants Stephan? But there’d be no hankering after Losser if it hadn’t been for Stephan in the first place. Realizing this now, Goldstein wants Stephan. So why play it otherwise, Goldstein? What about this can’t you understand? What don’t you like about it, what doesn’t sit right with you? What about this can’t Goldstein accept? What’s with this game? You just have to play it, Goldstein, don’t you? There are people like you, Goldstein.
For Losser, now you’ll have to throw yourself on Stephan’s mercy; you’ll have to suffer for Losser, Goldstein, grovel and lick the buckle of Stephan’s shoe…
“Losser’s more important than you… Saint…”
“So… Goldstein…”
“Yeah… so… don’t mind if I do…”
Goldstein’s sarcastic rejoinder is in response to a polite proposal that he sit down, which Stephan had not made. Goldstein pulls out the stool next to Stephan and plops his unwieldy ass down with a heave – “Uughuh” – and a grunt…
“I’ll have what he’s having, and put it on my tab.”
“I don’t need your charity, Goldstein.”
“What charity? When I said put it on my tab, I meant I’m paying for myself.”
“Well, I don’t want your charity anyway.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“So…”
“Yeah… so…”
Goldstein’s over-pink tongue, which is covered in a pasty yellow film, scrapes his bottom lip. The lip is dry, and the tongue isn’t helping any because it’s dry too – from nervousness. He’s doing a good job of hiding it badly. Working in Hollywood for over 40 years has really paid off.
He’s playing the silent game; thinks he can fake Stephan out into saying something incriminating that will then give Goldstein reason to negotiate him down to a humiliating minimum, take his Kyiv Commix idea, credit it to Losser, who’s dead, and then push Stephan out of the picture altogether; sue Stephan for ownership of what is Stephan’s.
“So…”
A rotund avuncular figure with the porcine pink aura of an ice cream truck child molester bounds into the bar – “Nyuget nyug nya!!!”
The figure is supremely confident. He casts a haughty challenging look at Goldstein and Stephan and then chooses a barstool at the other end of the bar, near the door through which he’d just entered. With deference, the bartender immediately places a mug of beer between the hucksterish figure’s swollen graceless hands. As the figure rolls sideways on the stool to reach into his back pocket for his wallet, the bartender shakes a hand at him, waving the notion of payment away.
“Neekie nyak nyar,” croons the self-satisfied walleyed quack, who at best looks like he might be a low-level adman, or a two-bit PR op, a tinhorn flack.
Goldstein’s jaw drops, his eyes go all googly. “That’s not…” he swallows hard. “I mean, that’s not… Welsh Losser?!”
“No,” Stephan says, “that’s not Welsh Losser, nor is it his older brother, Welsh Losser.”
“But… but…”
“Say, Goldstein, shouldn’t you know Losser? I mean, intimately? I mean, I thought you said you flew up to Seattle, where you just happened to find him vacationing at his parents’ home.”
“No, no, I never, I mean, I…”
“That’s right, Goldstein, and you couldn’t have, because that home no longer exists. And Losser’s dead in New Jersey.”
“Baby Brain!” Goldstein blurts, spraying beer in Stephan’s face.
“You mean Child Mind, Goldstein?” Stephan wipes his face with a sleeve. “What are you trying to say? He doesn’t talk, not even a ‘nyug nya’, because he’s brain-damaged. Even if they let him out of that insane asylum in Portland, Oregon, he wouldn’t find his way down here in a million years, not even by accident. But if what you’re trying to say is that you flew up to see that Welsh Losser in Portland instead of the Welsh Losser of your sick and twisted dreams in Seattle, why would they let you into the insane asylum to see Child Mind? You’re not a relation. On what order of business? Aside from being mentioned once in The Commix, Child Mind’s got no part in it. Were you bringing him the kind of toys he likes, with simple moving parts, or a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle he’d put together in a day that would make him really happy – I don’t think so. You’d have had to come up with some truly fantastic story to convince them to –”
Another figure barrels into the place. With a few minor differences, he looks very similar to the one already sitting behind the bar. Except this one is visibly angry.
He immediately confronts his supremely confident doppelganger at the bar. He aggressively leans down into the confident one’s face; his tone is accusatory, nasty.
“Nyarra, nyarra, nyarra nyooorg…” he crudely intimates to the one at the bar, who gurgles with laughter and curtly dismisses the challenger – “Nyugets nirx!”
The other one turns in a huff and leaves. The one at the bar calmly and smugly drinks his beer.
“Nyug nyaaaoow…”
“Well, Goldstein, that’s what you get for trying to hedge your bets. That’s what you get, Goldstein, for trying to play this thing both ways. You wanted Losser, you got him. But it doesn’t stop there. This is just the beginning. You haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Wh – why? What’s happening?! What IS all this?! What does it mean?!”
“Here’s what it means, Goldstein: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
“What’d’ya… say… what is this?”
“I’m appealing to your 5,000 years of Jewish intellect.”
“Wha?!”
“That’s what your mother, Gilda, would say when you were a boy, as opposed to your father, Morris, who would tell you to fight the other boys in Little League if they made fun of you for being a Jew, and your mom –”
“Say, say!!! How do you know anything about my mother?! How do you know my parents’ names?!”
“She’d say, ‘Goldstein! Your father’s wrong! I don’t want you lifting a finger against those other boys,’ and, losing the sense of his powers, your father would hopelessly interject – ‘goyim, goyim’ – raising a fist and shaking it, after which your mother would continue; she’d say: ‘Goyim or no goyim, Goldstein, you are not to raise a hand against them. You’ll only make the problem worse. It’s like pulling gray hairs. You pluck one out, another 10 take its place. With anti-Semites, it’s the same. You kill one, more come to replace him. It’s not worth it, Goldstein – do you hear me?! Instead, I’m appealing to your 5,000 years of Jewish intellect. Use it, Goldstein, and that should be more than enough to handle any situation…’”
“Yes,” Goldstein says, teary-eyed with the memory. He smiles half-bitterly. “And then my father would go into the kitchen and rattle stacks of dishes, although he’d never break them. But he’d break into the liquor cabinet and have a drink. To this day I don’t know if he got so upset to have that drink, or if he had the drink because he got so upset. After that, my entire life, well, I guess I’ve mostly listened to my mother. I didn’t know how to fight, anyway. She’d say, she’d say to my father – ‘And don’t ever forget, Morris, he wouldn’t EVEN BE a Jew if he hadn’t come out of me!’ Maybe that was why he drank…”
The door opens with a sudden whoosh and a diminutive version of the Losser-like figure sitting at the bar rushes in, clearly panicked and looking for some kind of salvation.
“Nyuga nyuga nyuga nyuga,” the baby-bodied man emotes in rapid-fire patter, the voice a naturally higher register than that of the bar sitter much bigger than him.
The Losserite is quickly followed into the bar by a large black man, who crashes through the door. He’s carrying a perverse-looking manacle and chain set strapped across his shoulders. His feet are sandal-shod, exposing big purple toes, and it is an effort for Stephan to hold back his vomit when he sees them.
The little Losserite stands next to the big Losserite, who remains supremely confident seated on his barstool and holding his beer.
Standing just inside the door, the black man looks around the bar and appears suddenly drained of the energy, determination and forward motion that had brought him after the little baby-bodied man. Spiritually exasperated, he shakes his head.
“Li’l roun’ mo-fuh…”
The black man turns around and leaves.
The little baby-bodied man is now sitting next to the much larger version of himself at the bar, also drinking a complimentary beer on the barkeep’s house, chattering happily away with his companion in Losserspeak, as though nothing had happened.
“Why do you think he left,” Goldstein asks Stephan like a little kid.
“He didn’t have a note from his mother.”
“Oh.”
“It gets worse…”
Filed by Jack Step, May 22, 2016