The Queen and I by Russell Andresen

stroked Herman.
    “It’s his own damn fault, you know,” Jacob started. “All the man ever had to do was show me just a little appreciation and respect, and I would never have even come to you when you first contacted me.” He shook his head with disgust. “When he made a toast to me that night, I could have spit in his face. All of those years and all I get is a toast ?”
    “Another actress with breast cancer, what are they eating out there in California?” Mendel was talking to himself again.
    “You are getting your revenge, Jacob. Just be patient and enjoy the show.”
    “I have every intention of enjoying every moment of it. Maybe I’ll write a play about it someday.”
    “ Ja , and I’ll produce it!” Heinrich roared into laughter. “And when we are done with ruining his career, I am going to take so much pleasure in ruining his life.”
    “Why does he wear those pants? He’s never been circumcised,” Mendel remarked with disgust.
    Jacob looked at his drink intently and asked, “I was wondering, do we really have to send him to the island? I mean, ruining his career is pretty bad.”
    “You have your idea of revenge, I have mine.”
    “This woman wouldn’t know the difference between Fiddler on the Roof and a fiddler crab.” Mendel’s private conversation with himself continued.
    “The man insulted my cat, and nobody insults Herman; isn’t that right, Herman?” Henry made kissing sounds at his adoring feline.
    “I just thought.”
    “Don’t think,” Mendel interrupted, now a part of the conversation, “It makes our schmekels itch.”
    * * *
     
    The dark clouds continued to move in over Jeffrey and everything he touched. After he realized that he had been robbed of one of his scripts, he looked through his entire library to see if anything else was missing and found that he had not lost anything else, but either Mendel or Jacob had vandalized certain scripts, leaving entire acts of the play illegible. Since Jeffrey did all of his work by hand, he was left without copies. It was infuriating to the point of numbness.
    To add further insult to his professional injury, he had just received word that the Shlomo Theater that was housing A Dreidel Spins in Yonkers had been bought by an anonymous buyer, who insisted on closing the theater immediately for massive renovations, so the play would have to take a hiatus until they could find a suitable replacement. As luck would have it, no theater was available.
    He knew that Heinrich Schultz had to be behind this, and undoubtedly Mendel Fujikawa had sunk his teeth into this perverse little game that they were playing. What he wasn’t sure of was how much, if any of this, was Jacob’s doing.
    Try as he may, he just could not bring himself to accept that his former assistant’s betrayal could possibly run any deeper than simple theft. It just was not like the man whom he had gotten to know so closely over the last decade. But how well did he actually know him?
    He thought about that for a minute and realized that he wasn’t even sure if Jacob’s parents were alive. He had no idea what his girlfriend’s name was, if he even had one, and knew next to nothing about the man’s personal interests. For all intents and purposes Jacob was a stranger, and that was Jeffrey’s fault and no one else’s.
    This was definitely a hit to his system and the way he did business, but he figured that everyone went through bad times in their lives, everyone got knocked down from time to time, and when that happened, it was not how hard you got hit, but how often you kept getting up.
    This was a phase, and Jeffrey knew that this too would eventually pass, but the real question was just how long this run of bad luck forced upon him by the vindictive Heinrich Schultz and Mendel Fujikawa would last. Jeffrey had no choice but to remain positive and work at getting his life back on the track that it had been on before he left for that fateful vacation.
    But the problem