A Private Sorcery by Lisa Gornick Page B

through herblouse. She seems more alert, and I can’t help wondering if she’s taken off her jacket on purpose.
    â€œDo you own your apartment?” Green asks her.
    â€œNo, we rent.”
    â€œCar, boat, stocks, bonds, artwork, jewelry, anything of significant value?”
    â€œWe each have an IRA. Saul has his stereo and record collection. We have a few paintings, pieces we bought from a young artist, nothing that we could get any real money for.”
    â€œHow about you, Pops?”
    I freeze. No one has ever called me Pops. An old, horrid feeling surfaces from when I was a kid and someone would yell Hey, Jewboy and I would die a thousand deaths, afraid to fight, humiliated to just walk by, praying they would think I hadn’t heard.
    â€œI own my house. An IRA. Some stocks and bonds.”
    â€œCar?”
    â€œA Honda Accord. My deceased father-in-law’s Mercedes-Benz.” “What’s the house valued at?”
    â€œI couldn’t say. We’ve never had it appraised.”
    â€œThree hundred grand?”
    â€œMore. At least four.”
    â€œWhat year’s the Benz?”
    â€œ1962.”
    Green jots numbers on his desk blotter pad. He rubs the bump on his nose, which looks from this angle like it’s been broken.
    â€œHow much you got liquid?”
    I add in my head. Bank accounts. Credit lines. “Maybe thirty-seven thousand.”
    â€œYou put the house up as collateral and the first twenty-five K, I’ll post the bond.”
    I think about it. So, if you skip town, I’ve sold my house for two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. No. Wrong. If you skip town, I’ve sold my house for zero dollars since there won’t be any money or any house.
    Rena touches my arm. “We should talk about this.” She looks at theclock on Green’s desk. It’s nearly four-thirty. “How late are you here?” she asks Green.
    â€œSweetheart, this ain’t a nine-to-five business. I’m here when I’m here. Could be eleven tonight. Could be three in the morning.”
    â€œI’ll need to discuss this with my wife,” I say. “The house is in her name, too.”
    â€œYou talk about it with whoever you want, Pops. You can talk about it with the mayor, as far as I’m concerned. Only, those are my conditions and you might as well know, I don’t negotiate. I go with my first instinct, and it’s a superstition of mine not to tamper with that.”
    R ENA SUGGESTS I STAY over rather than drive back and forth again from New Jersey. I accept, letting myself entertain the idea that she’d prefer not to be alone, a delusion that fades in the face of her careful politeness beneath which I can see what a strain she finds even simple conversation, how inconceivable it is to her that I or, I suppose at this point, anyone, might be a comfort to her.
    We walk in silence. She pulls a beret out of her coat pocket and stuffs her hair inside. The sky is muddy, neither black nor blue, and there’s a messy half-moon hanging low. The temperature has risen as it does on those days when nightfall draws a curtain on the wind. When we get to Franklin Street, she says, “I guess we should get the subway here.” On the platform, a toothless woman in a flowered skirt is singing in Portuguese. During the chorus, she claps her hands and moves in small circles, first one direction, then the other. She shifts from side to side and I remember when you were first learning to walk how, when you heard music, a record I was playing or a phrase on television, you would stop and stare as if trying to find the instrument. Planting your feet wide apart, you’d sway back and forth.
    A young ponytailed man stops before the singer. He’s carrying yellow roses wrapped in white butcher’s paper. He hands her one. She makes an ironic little curtsy and sticks the stem through her matted hair. The words are close enough to