From Yiddish for Pirates, a novel
1.
Moishe as a child. He told me stories.
Some were true.
At fourteen, he left the shtetl near Vilnius for the sea. How? First one leg out the window then the other. Like anyone else. Before first light. Before the wailing of his mother.
They are all anonymous. There’s the budding actress who takes the controls of the subway train for her first solo drive. Five years ago, after receiving her BFA in Theatre Studies, she never would have guessed she’d be dressing up in a transit uniform, or operating under a badge number, instead of preparing to play Celie Johnson in a musical revival of The Color Purple, or a female incarnation of “the Moor” in a gender-inverted adaptation of Othello, or, when she really caught her break, the irreverent lead in a sitcom that truly rewrites the formula and spurs spinoff after copy after homage after nudge-nudge-wink-wink reference in feature-length animated films pitched at parents and kids. She is meant to grace the ads on the sides of buses announcing the next prime-time hit, not operate the vehicles that spread the good word stop by stop by stop. She eases the train up to the subway platform for the first time, undershoots it by four feet.
I can’t read Lucille’s smile. I know her name and that’s all. We only met a moment ago. Around us, the room is a small ocean of girls, rough, beautiful. It’s long after midnight and Lucille and I stand side by side, a sliver of space between us. We watch the dance floor, drinking hard, while girls hooking and pushers work the sidelines. Women’s voices slap and swing their laughter up against the music on the record player tended by the bartender, Elegant Ivan, who knows most of the patrons by first name. In the center, they’re dancing so close. The johns and dealers just come and go.
I drink deep and gesture with my hands, words spill away from me and I scramble to catch them, raising my voice, to hold this woman’s attention through the clamor, cat-calls, and sweet murmurs in the room.
Kurt von Hagersfeld (b. 1963) was born and raised in a small suburb of Boston where he developed such a strong love for celebrations that he relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico to pursue studies in event planning and management. He remained there throughout the 1980s, then moved to San Francisco, relocated to Houston, spent time in Oklahoma City, and finally made his way down to New Orleans. He refuses to disclose the specifics of his current location since he believes that some details should be left to the imagination. Von Hagersfeld has said that the fact that he exists should be enough to satisfy anyone’s curiosity as to his whereabouts.
Gentry Fox was the shortest man Clover had ever seen, shorter than she was by far. As if someone had pressed down on the head of a normal man, but some time ago, so he’d had time to get used to it.
He had to look up, even at Bella, which he did with a sideways glint. “What—have—we—here?” he asked, his voice both gravelled and silky.
The girls stood in a line, not sure whether to proceed. He waved a hand, beckoning them to the stage, and they went stiffly down the raked aisle, not entirely sure of their footing in the thicker darkness of the auditorium. Mama patted Clover, who moved aside to let her through. She took two steps and stopped, perhaps afraid, Clover thought. But no. She had paused only to make a better entrance. Mr. Fox looked up, inquiring, when she did not speak—then, looking again, gave Mama a very warm, familiar smile. He laughed and bowed, and bowed again, coming forward as he bent and rose and bent.
Colleen’s eyes were a flat silver-green, and her gaze rested on Theo as if he were a tree stump or a fire hydrant. “My dad said he’d promised I’d sit for you.” She whirled and sat one step lower than Theo, her biceps brushing his knee.
“He was only supposed to ask if you were free — I just mentioned it to him at tennis. You could’ve said no if you had plans.”
She didn’t answer and without her looking at him, Theo couldn’t gauge if she was listening. “But thanks. It’s only dinner, a couple hours. Rae wanted to go. For dinner.”
“So go.”
The baby squirmed towards Colleen’s voice, flailing her now-limp cracker. Theo flipped the baby against his chest. “Rae’s not here yet.”
“Did she say when she’ll be?”
“How many times do I have to explain this to you? Alright, number one: I don’t even work inside the plant. Can you get that through your head and then listen to me for one second?”
Janet is tossing cutlery into a big black garbage bag in the kitchen. Forks and knives are poking out of the bag, but she doesn’t notice. She pretends not hear me over the noise outside. Mrs. Gibbons is mowing the grass. Ever since her husband left her two years ago, she’s been doing all the household chores and going to yoga twice a week.
“Number two: I don’t even go inside there to go the bathroom. They’ve got this Porta-Potty set up, so I don’t have to duck inside the building if you don’t want me to, you know? I can just stand...”
She was bending down, red robe held tight, reaching for the newspaper, when it happened. The paper, wrapped in a pinkish plastic bag slightly damp from the morning rain, tossed on her porch every day by Charlie who lives across the street and who couldn't throw straight to save his life, fell from the untied bag and landed in a puddle. And right before it happened she was thinking to herself, today is the day. She was thinking, today is the day and she was bending towards the paper and then her dog bolted out of the house and she bent just a bit further to try and reach for his collar and then it happened and she thought, today isn't the day. And she thought, damn it. She thought, why does everything always happen to me? She laughed a little, her barkish laugh. One quick, painful one. She tried to call out for her dog but he was long gone.
Some of this is what Maria tells Tom when he comes home from work.
“I was bending. Just bending down.”
It wasn’t until just after her fortieth year that she wanted to steal a baby. Marguerite had heard of this before. This kind of well-known lore, the kind of thing that floated in the air, no one questioning it or thinking twice. It was a well-known fact that women stole babies: it happened all the time. Middle-aged women or perhaps younger women who stole back the one they’d given up for adoption just before they’d changed their mind and now it was too late. But it was her own fault, people said, if she’d given it up. That’s too bad, she should have known better and she’d certainly no right to it now. Why should she think that it would want to receive any of the videotapes she kept trying to send to the new parents? Mothers who give away their babies should just stop bothering people and leave well enough alone. They should just suffer and not think they can get away with kidnapping their own child back.
Hello Randy,
Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. Sorry I missed you. My name is Ricky Galore and I have a lot of issues, I mean questions, for you. To start off, I’ve seen you live a few times at wrestling shows: at Maple Leaf Gardens versus Ricky Steamboat with my sister and dad when you were Intercontinental champ in the summer of 1986; then at Wrestlemania VI in 1990, then again at Maple Leaf Gardens two more times; once against Razor Ramon; once against Shawn Michaels in the early 1990s. I think around 1992.