The Nimrod Flipout: Stories (2 page)

At the base we would do guard duty twice a month, and once every two months we had to stay the weekend, which Nimrod always managed to arrange for days when Netta had infirmary duty so that even on guard duty they were together. A year and a half later, she left him. It was a strange kind of split, even she couldn’t really explain why it happened, and after that Nimrod didn’t care when his guard duty came out. One Saturday, Miron, Nimrod, and I were on duty together. Uzi had just managed to forge some kind of a medical pass for himself. We were all on the same patrol—Miron first, Nimrod second, and me third. And even before I had a chance to replace him, this officer rushed in and said that the guy on duty had put a bullet in his head.

Round Two

The second time Miron lost it, it was much more unpleasant. We didn’t say a word about it to his parents, and I just moved in with him till it passed. Most of the time he kept quiet, sitting in the corner and writing a kind of book to himself, which was supposed to eventually replace the Bible. Sometimes, when we’d run out of beer or cigarettes, he would swear at me a little, with conviction, and say that I was really a demon disguised as a friend, and I’d been sent to torment him. Other than that, he was almost bearable. Uzi, on the other hand, took his extended period of sanity very hard. He didn’t admit it, but it seemed like he’d really had it with that skyrocketing international company of his. Somehow, whenever he flipped, he had a lot more energy to write all these grim prospectuses and things and go to boring meetings. Now that he was a little more sane, the whole businessman thing was that much harder to handle. Even though it seemed as if his company was about to go public and he’d be sitting back, raking in a couple of million. Me, I’d been fired from another job, and Miron, in a lucid moment when he was off beer and cheap cigarettes, said that he was the one who’d gotten me fired with his unearthly spiritual powers. I don’t know, maybe all those jobs just aren’t for me, and all I should really do is sit it out till Uzi strikes it rich and tosses me a little.

The second time Uzi started going batshit proved once and for all that there was definitely a rotation thing going on, and I started to worry because I knew I was next. Miron, who’d chilled out by then, kept insisting it had something to do with Nimrod. “I don’t know what he wants exactly. Maybe he wants us to even the score or something. But one thing’s for sure, so long as we don’t do it—whatever it is—I don’t think it’s going to stop.” “Even what score?” I countered. “Nimrod killed himself.” “How do you know?” Miron wouldn’t let it go that easily. “Maybe he was murdered. Besides, maybe it isn’t exactly vengeance. Maybe it’s just something he wants us to do so he can rest in peace. Like in those horror films, you know, where they open a bar on an ancient burial ground, and as long as it stays there, the ghosts can’t rest in peace.” In the end, we decided that Miron and I would go to the Kiryat Shaul cemetery to make sure nobody had set up a Coke-and-mineral-water stand on Nimrod’s grave by mistake. The only reason I agreed to go there with him was that I was freaking out about it being my turn soon. The truth was that of the three of us, my crack-up was the worst.

Nimrod’s grave had stayed exactly the same. We hadn’t been there in six years. At first, on Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers, his mother still used to call us. But with all those military rabbis and those aunts who’d faint away again every year, we weren’t exactly eager to go. We kept telling ourselves that we’d go some other day, on our own special memorial day, except we always put it off. Last time we talked about it, Uzi said that actually every time we went to shoot pool together or took in a movie or a pub or whatever, it was a commemoration of Nimrod too, because when the three of us are together, then even if we’re not exactly thinking about him, he’s there.

It took Miron and me maybe an hour to find the grave, which actually seemed to be well tended and clean, with a couple of stones on top as proof that someone had been there not too long before. I looked at the dates on the grave and thought about how I was just about to turn thirty, and Nimrod wasn’t even nineteen yet. It was kind of weird, because somehow, whenever I thought about him he was sort of my age, when in fact I hardly had any hair left and he was not much more than a kid. On our way out, we returned the cardboard yarmulkes to the box by the gate, and Miron said he didn’t have any more ideas, but we could always have a séance. Outside the cemetery, on the other side of the fence, there was a fat, shaggy cat chewing a piece of meat. I looked at him, and as if he felt it, he looked up from the chunk of meat and smiled at me. It was a mean and ruthless smile, and he went back to chewing the meat without lowering his gaze. I felt the fear running through my body, from the hard part of my brain to the soft part of my bones. Miron didn’t notice there was something wrong with me, and kept on talking. “Relax, Ron,” I told myself. The fact that I remembered my name made me so happy tears came to my eyes. “Take a deep breath, don’t fall apart. Whatever it is, it’ll pass.” At that very moment, in the smelly office of some attorney in Petah Tikva, Uzi was chickening out of signing a deal that would transfer thirty-three percent of his company’s shares to an anonymous group of Polish investors for a million and a half bucks. Think about it, if only he’d stayed flipped out for another fifteen minutes, he could have taken us and the Turnip on a Caribbean cruise, and instead he was on his way home in a number-54 bus from Petah Tikva with an asshole driver who wouldn’t even turn on the AC.

Tri-Li-Li-Li-La

When Uzi announced he was going to marry the Turnip, we hardly even put up an argument. Somehow we’d known it would happen. Uzi lied and said it was his idea, and that it was mainly so he could take out a mortgage from the bank for an apartment that he’d planned to buy anyway someplace near Netanyah. “How can you marry her?” Miron tried to reason with him, without much conviction. “You don’t even love her.” “How can you say I don’t love her?” Uzi protested. “We’ve been together for three years.

D’you know I’ve never cheated on her?” “That’s not because you love her,” Miron said. “It’s just because you’re uncoordinated.” We were just shooting pool, and Uzi had clobbered both of us with the bull’s-eye shots of someone who’d made up his mind to squeeze every drop out of the little bit of luck he still had left, quickly, before it had a chance to run out. There was only the eight ball left, and it was Uzi’s turn. “Let’s make a bet,” I said, in an act of desperation. “If you pocket the eight ball, Miron and I will never call her Turnip again, ever. And if you miss, then you drop the whole wedding thing for a year.” “When it comes to feelings, I never make bets,” Uzi said, and pocketed the eight effortlessly. “Besides,” he said, smiling, “it’s too late. We’ve already printed up the invitations.” “What were you thinking, betting him like that?” Miron told me off later. “That shot was a sure thing.”

By the time the date rolled around, Uzi had managed to lose it two more times, and on both occasions he said he would call it all off, but changed his mind right away. As for me, I just crashed in Miron’s apartment while it was going on. Now that we were wigged out most of the time, it was much nicer living together. And besides, I couldn’t really afford my own place. Miron had stolen a big pile of wedding invitations from Uzi, and we would use them to make filters for joints. “How can you go and marry someone whose mother’s name is Yentl?” he would ask Uzi whenever we’d smoke a joint together, and Uzi would just stare at the ceiling and give that spaced-out laugh of his. The truth was that even though I was on Miron’s side on this, I could see it wasn’t much of an argument.

Three days before the wedding we held a séance. We bought a piece of blue construction paper, I drew all the letters on it with a black marker, and Miron got a glass from the kitchen, one of those cheap ones. He said he’d had it for ages, from his parents’ house, and that Nimrod must have used it. We turned out all the lights and placed the glass in the middle of the board. Each of us put a finger on it, and we waited. After five minutes, Uzi got tired of sitting there, and said he had to take a shit. He turned on the lights in the living room, found a week-old sports section, and locked himself in the bathroom. Miron and me rolled a joint meanwhile. I asked Miron—if it had worked, and if the glass had moved, what did he expect to happen. That pissed Miron off, and he said it was too early to say it hadn’t succeeded and that just because Uzi gets bored with everything so quickly, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t going to work. After Uzi finally came out of the bathroom, Miron switched the lights back off and asked us both to concentrate. We put our fingers on the glass again, and waited. Nothing happened. Miron insisted that we try again, and neither of us could work up the energy to argue with him. A few minutes later, the glass began to move. Slowly at first, but within seconds it was racing all over the board. Miron left his finger on it the whole time and kept writing down with his other hand each of the letters that it stopped on. T-r-i-l-i-l-i-l-i-l-a the glass hummed, and came to a smooth stop on the exclamation mark in the right-hand corner of the board. We waited a while longer, and nothing happened. Uzi turned on the light. “Tri-li-li-li-la?” he said, annoyed. “What are we, in kindergarten or something? You moved it, Miron, so don’t give me any Agent Mulder shit. Tri-li-li-li-la? Fuck it. I’m beat. I’ve been up since seven. I’m going to sleep at Liraz’s.” Liraz was the Turnip’s name, and she lived close by. Miron kept staring at the board with the letters he’d drawn even after Uzi left, and for a while I read the sports supplement that Uzi had taken to the bathroom, and when I’d read it all, I told Miron I was going to crash. Miron said OK, but that first he just wanted us to give one more chance to the thing with the glass, because no matter how much he thought about it, that Tri-li-li-li-la thing didn’t mean a thing to him. So we turned out the light again, and put the glass in place. This time it started moving right away, and Miron took down the letters.

D-O-N
’-
T-L-E-A-V-E-M-E-A-L-O-N-E
the glass said, and then it stopped again.

Mazel Tov

The wedding itself was awful, with a rabbi who thought he was a comedian and a DJ who played Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin. Still, Miron met this girl there with a squeaky voice but an amazing body. Plus, after the ceremony, he freaked Uzi out when he told him that the glass he’d stepped on was the one we’d used for Nimrod’s séance. While this was going on, I got another of my anxiety attacks and puked about four pounds of chopped liver in the toilet.

That same night, Uzi and the Turnip flew off on their honeymoon in the Seychelles. Me and Miron sat on the balcony drinking coffee. Miron had a new thing going now. Whenever he’d make us coffee, he’d always make one instant for Nimrod too in the séance glass, and he’d put it on the table, the way you leave out a glass for Elijah on Passover, and after we were through drinking, he’d pour it down the sink. Miron did his version of the DJ, and I laughed. The truth was we were incredibly sad. You could call it chauvinist, possessive, egocentric, lots of names, but the whole wedding thing weighed us down. I asked Miron to read me a chapter from that book of his, the one he writes whenever he flips, and is supposed to replace the Bible. Actually, I’d asked him a million times, and he’d never do it. When he’s flipped he’s scared someone will steal his ideas, and when he’s sane he’s just embarrassed. “Come on,” I said. “Just a chapter, like a kind of bedtime story.” And Miron was so depressed that he agreed. He pulled a bunch of his scribbled pages out of his shoe drawer. Before he started reading, he looked at me and said, “You realize it’s just the two of us left now, don’t you? I mean, Uzi will still be one of us and all, but he won’t be on Nimrod’s rounds.” “How can you tell?” I said, even though in my heart I’d thought of this even before he said it. “Listen,” Miron said. “Even Nimrod knows it isn’t right to pick on someone who’s already married. The way he flips us out isn’t always the best idea either, but the truth is that he wouldn’t be doing it to us if he didn’t feel deep inside that we agree. There’s nothing we can do about it. We’re screwed, Ron. There’s just me and you, one week each, like kitchen duty.”

Miron picked up the pile of pages and cleared his throat, like a radio announcer who chokes in the middle of reading the news.

“And if one of us suddenly goes?” I asked.

“Goes?” Miron looked up from his pages, confused. “Goes where?”

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “Just goes. Imagine what if tomorrow the woman of my dreams comes on to me in the street, and we fall in love, and I marry her. Then you’d be the only one left to flip with Nimrod, full-time, alone.”

“Right.” Miron gulped down the last drops of his coffee. “Good thing you’re so ugly.”

To Shmulik

I got Tuvia for my ninth birthday from Raanan Zagoori, who was probably the cheapest kid in the whole class. He lucked out, and his dog had puppies right on the day of my party. There were four of them, and his uncle was going to dump them all in the river, so Raanan, who only cared about how to not spend anything on the class gift, took one of them and gave it to me. The puppy was tiny, with a bark that sounded more like a wheeze, but if anyone got on his case, he’d give a deep, low kind of growl that didn’t sound anything like a puppy, and it was funny, like he was impersonating some other dog. Which is why I decided to name him Tuvia, after Tuvia Tsafir, the impressionist on TV.

From Day One, my dad couldn’t stand the sight of him. Tuvia didn’t care much for Dad either. The truth is, Tuvia didn’t much like anyone, except for me. Right from the beginning, even when he was just a little runt, he’d bark at everyone. And when he got a little bigger, he would snap at anyone who came too close. Even Mickey, who isn’t the kind of guy who ever talks trash about anyone, said my dog was messed up. He never snapped or did anything bad to me though. He’d just keep jumping on me and licking me, and whenever I’d move away from him he’d start whining. Mickey said it didn’t mean anything, because I was the one who fed him. But I’ve met lots of dogs who bark even at the people who feed them, and I knew that what Tuvia and I had going on between us wasn’t about food, and that he really did like me. He just did. For no reason. Go figure out a dog. But it was something strong. The fact is, my sister fed him too, but he hated her like hell.

In the morning, when I’d go to school, he’d want to come with me, but I’d make him stay behind because I was afraid he’d make a lot of noise. We had a chain-link fence around our yard. And sometimes, when I’d come home, I’d catch Tuvia barking at some poor slob who’d had the nerve to walk down our street. Tuvia would get so mad that he’d smash right into the fence. But the second he spotted me, he always melted. Right away, he’d start crawling on the ground, wagging his tail and barking about all the assholes who’d walked down our street and gotten on his nerves that day, and about how they were lucky they’d made it out of there. He’d already bitten a couple of them, but lucky for me they didn’t complain, because even without that kind of thing, my dad was watching Tuvia, just waiting for the chance to get rid of him.

Finally it came. Tuvia bit my sister, and they had to take her to the hospital for stitches. The minute they got home, Dad took Tuvia to the car. I didn’t need long to figure out what was going to happen, and I started to cry, so Mom told Dad: “Come on, Joshua, why don’t you just forget it. It’s the kid’s dog. Just look at how upset he is.” Dad didn’t say anything, just told my big brother to come with him. “I need him too,” Mom tried. “He’s a watchdog, against thieves.” And my dad stopped short just before he got into the car, and said: “What do you need a watchdog for? Did anyone ever try to steal anything in this neighborhood? What’s to steal here anyway?” They dumped Tuvia in the river, and stuck around to watch him being washed away. I know, because my big brother told me so. I didn’t talk to anyone about it though, and except for the night they took him away, I didn’t even cry.

Three days later, Tuvia turned up at school. I heard him barking under the window. He was incredibly dirty, and smelly too, but other than that he was just the same. I was proud of him for coming back. It proved that everything Mickey had said about his not really loving me wasn’t true. Because if the thing between Tuvia and me had been just about food he wouldn’t have come right back to me. It was smart of him to come straight to school, too. Because if he’d headed straight home without me, I don’t know what my dad would’ve done. As it was, as soon as we got to the house Dad wanted to get rid of him. But Mom told him that maybe Tuvia had learned his lesson, and maybe he’d behave himself now. So I hosed him down in the yard, and Dad said that from now on he’d be on a leash all the time, and that if he pulled anything again, that would be it.

The truth is, Tuvia didn’t learn a thing from what happened. He just got a little crazier. And every day, when I’d come back from school, I’d see him barking like a maniac at anyone who happened to walk by. One day, I came home and he wasn’t there, and Dad wasn’t there either. Mom said they’d come from the Border Patrol because they’d heard he was such a feisty animal that they wanted to recruit him, and that now Tuvia was a scout-dog who’d track down terrorists trying to sneak across the border. I pretended to believe her. That evening, when Dad came back with the car, Mom whispered something in his ear, and he shook his head. He’d driven thirty miles this time, all the way to Gedera, before he set Tuvia loose, just to make sure he wouldn’t make it back. I know, because my big brother told me so. My brother also said it was because Tuvia had gotten loose that afternoon, and had managed to bite the dogcatcher.

Thirty miles is a long way, even by car, and on foot it’s a thousand times more, especially for a dog, whose step is like a quarter of a human’s. But three weeks later, Tuvia was back. He was there waiting for me at the school gate. He didn’t even bark when he saw me, that’s how exhausted he was, just wagged his tail without getting up. I brought him some water, and he must have lapped up about ten bowls. When Dad saw him, he couldn’t believe it. “A curse, that’s what this dog is,” he told Mom, who went to get Tuvia some bones from the kitchen. That evening I let him stay in my bed. He fell asleep before me, and all night long he just whined and growled, snapping at anyone who pissed him off in his dream.

In the end it was Grandma of all people that he had to pick on. He didn’t even bite her. Just jumped on her, and knocked her over. She got a bad bump on her head. Everyone helped her up. Me too. But then Mom sent me to the kitchen for a glass of water, and by the time I got back I saw Dad dragging Tuvia toward the car looking really mad. I didn’t even try, and neither did Mom. We knew he had it coming. And Dad asked my brother to come along again, except that this time he told him to bring his M16. My brother was only an army cook, but they issued him a gun anyway. At first, he didn’t catch on, and asked Dad what he needed a gun for. And Dad said it was to make Tuvia stop coming back.

They took him to the dump, and shot him in the head. My brother told me that Tuvia hadn’t realized what was going to happen. He’d been in a good mood, and was turned on by all the cool stuff he found at the dump. And then, bang! From the second my brother told me, I hardly thought about Tuvia at all. All those other times, I couldn’t get him out of my mind, and I’d keep trying to imagine where he was and what he was doing. But this time there was nothing to imagine anymore, so I tried to think about him as little as possible.

Six months later he came back. He was waiting for me in the school yard. There was something wrong with one of his legs, his left eye was closed, and his jaw looked completely paralyzed. But as soon as he saw me, he seemed really happy, like nothing had ever happened. When I got him home, Dad wasn’t back from work yet, and Mom wasn’t there either, but even when they showed up they didn’t say a thing. And that was it. Tuvia stayed from then on. Twelve more years. Eventually he died of old age. And he never bit anyone again. Every now and then, when someone would pass by our fence on a bike, or just make some noise, you could still see him getting worked up, but somehow, just when he was about to lunge, he always ran out of steam.