“I apologize.”
Pogatchnik continued to loom over Shep’s desk, as if wanting something more.
“I humbly apologize,” Shep provided. “I may have had a bad day.”
“Just because you used to own this outfit when it was an itty-bitty local operation doesn’t give you special rights. I’ll cut you slack this time, but any other employee I’d have shown the door. In fact, since you are any other employee—”
“I appreciate the second chance. I never expect special consideration. It won’t happen again.”
Listening to this grotesque public shit-eating from twenty feet, Jackson had a good grasp of why employees were arriving at work with canvas bags full of automatics all across the nation. The “itty-bitty local operation” was particularly hard to take. Shep had sold Knack of All Trades right around the time that the World Wide Web was just taking off big time, and how was he to know that the handyman biz would burgeon online? After Pogatchnik registered the domain name www.handiman. com (www.handyman.com had already been taken, but they got all the clients who couldn’t spell; this being America, that hadn’t curtailed their business in the slightest), their customer base exploded. Pogatchnik took all the credit, as if he’d invented the Internet itself, like Al Gore. Now the company was probably worth four times what that pond scum had paid for it, and Pogatchnik had started running television ads of himself tunelessly belting an excruciating variation on Sammy Davis, Jr, “The handyman, oh, the handyman can!” that drove Jackson to change the channel with an urgency bordering on hysteria. It had seemed so cool at the time, that check for a million smackers, and now it turned out that selling Knack was the dopiest thing Shep had ever done.
When the two grabbed their customary sandwiches at a café up the street – Jackson could have lived without all the buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto nonsense, aka ham and cheese – he had to ask: “What was all that mea culpa ass-lick with Pogatchnik?”
Shep was always a contained character, but even for Shep his affect all morning had been inhumanly flat, cooperative to the point of non-existence. As if you could run him through the paces of a DUI stop and he’d touch his nose for you and stand on one leg and count back from a hundred by sevens and it wouldn’t matter that you weren’t a cop and he hadn’t even been driving.
“Oh, that,” said Shep in a monotone. “When I left Handy Randy on Friday” – the guy never called the company Handy Randy, he always called it Knack; Christ, the poor chump sounded like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke after he’s been in that tiny sweat box for days and he says, Yah sir, yah sir, because his will is broken – “I think I said something like, ‘So long, asshole.’ It was an indulgence. I didn’t think I was coming back.”
“Okay, I can see saying sorry, but did you have to crawl?”
“Yes, I did.”
Jackson thought about it. “Health insurance.”
“That’s right.” Shep took one bite of his sandwich and put it down again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I got the impression that my colleagues were aware that I’d originally planned on an excursion. The fact that I came to work today seemed to be the source of some amusement.”
“Look, I’m sorry. Last week Mark was being sarcastic again, and – I guess I should have kept my trap shut. But I was so sure you were really going to go this time … I’m not making any excuses, but it would have been easier on both of us if you’d kept your grand plan to yourself years ago until you were good and ready to press the Eject button.”
“Years ago there was no reason for me to keep it quiet. It was just what I was going to do.”
“Still, I wish you’d let me tell the staff at Knack, about Glynis. Not let them think you didn’t go to Pemba because you’re chicken, or some loony fantasist. They’d give you a lot less grief.”
“Glynis doesn’t want it out. I got permission to tell you and Carol. But otherwise, it’s her business. I’m not going to use her to make my work life more agreeable. It isn’t agreeable anyway and it never will be, so really it doesn’t make any difference.”
“Why do you suppose she wants to keep it a secret?”
Shep shrugged. “She’s private. And letting it be common knowledge makes it real.”
“But it is real.”
“All too,” said Shep.
“Listen,” said Jackson as they headed back. “You want to swing by the house for a beer before you drive back to Elmsford?”
It was obvious that the prospect of doing anything for fun or for comfort or for any reason that had to do with himself and what he might “want” had become foreign to Shepherd Knacker overnight, but Jackson had asked him to do something, so he would do it. “Sure,” he said.
I can’t stay long,” Shep warned as he drove them to Windsor Terrace.
“That’s all right. We have to meet with that FD support group at nine anyway. Which I dread. Oh, it would be okay if it were only sharing info on the side effects of medication and stuff. It’s the whole Jewish thing that gets a bit much. I mean, don’t take me wrong, I’m not one of those ‘self-hating Jews.’ I’m just not especially, well, Jewish.” Jackson was babbling, but with a zombie at the wheel someone had to say something. “My mother isn’t observant, and my father has this Basque thing going, which is kind of cool – not that I’d blow up any Spanish politicians over it or anything. And then Carol, well, she was raised Catholic. She had one grandfather on her father’s side who was Ashkenazi. So we get all this pressure at the support group to stuff Flicka full of gefilte fish, and technically Flicka’s not even Jewish.
“And these Orthodox loons … When they get married, the couples refuse to get the DNA test. Even after they’ve had an FD kid, they won’t get amnio. There’s a family in Crown Heights has three of them. Perfect punishment for being that stupid. Because, sure, Jews are down on abortion. But despite that, the rabbis in every form of Judaism – reform to ultra-orthodox? They all tell you that if the fetus has FD, get rid of it. Like, God doesn’t want them to suffer. It’s that bad.
“It just slays me, you know? Supposedly it’s the Jewish faith, and you’d think you could choose, right, what you believe in? But no. These fucking genes have been stalking me, man, one generation after another. It’s like being mugged by a rabbi.” Considering, Jackson shouldn’t be complaining about anything on his own account, and he shut up.
Carol and Shep hugged, and Carol said she was so, so sorry. Settling in the kitchen, Shep explained that he’d spent most of the weekend on the Internet, and told them what he knew. He said he was taking a personal day at the end of the week, to go in with Glynis and meet with an oncologist, after which they’d be better informed. Carol asked how he thought Glynis was taking it, and Shep said that she was pissed off but that she was always pissed off, so it was hard to tell. Then Carol asked how Shep was taking it, and he seemed to find the question irrelevant. Obviously I’m scared, he said, but I can’t afford to be scared, or to be anything else, either. I’m the one who has to keep it together. So it doesn’t matter how I am. I don’t matter anymore. It was the first thing he’d said all day with real passion.
Carol commiserated over Pemba, though Shep knew perfectly well that she’d
