The Global War on Morris (10 page)

THE BAYVIEW MOTOR INN

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2004

B
ill Sully had a front-row seat from the FDA control room in Washington and Agent Leone sat nervously in his car in the Bayview parking lot. Tom Fairbanks monitored a bank of television screens in Melville. And Agent Russell fidgeted in his vehicle under the flickering neon of the
BAYVIEW M
OTOR INN
sign. One video surveillance system affixed to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit five hundred miles above Bellmore assisted them. In addition, six Sanyo digital binocular cameras with 5x telescopic lenses and high-speed shutters; two Nikon Infinite-Range Day Color/Night Black-and-White video cameras with 5-50 mm adjustable telephoto zoom lenses; two Hitachi long-range parabolic listening systems with pinpoint accuracy to one-thousand yards; one Toshiba laptop-based digital video recorder with 72x CD-RW, a 120 fps, 320x240 recording system, and 360GB storage capacity; and dozens of AAA batteries stuffed into the glove
compartments of the small fleet trailing Victoria and Morris to their less-than-secret rendezvous that evening.

All watching Morris Feldstein and Victoria D'Amico. Watching and waiting for them to do something. To do anything.

N
u? So what am I waiting for already?
Morris asked himself. He practiced his breathing exercises. The windshield was fogging heavily and almost everything outside was fading from view: the dim light fixtures hanging in front of every room of the Bayview, the passing headlights on Merrick Road, even the garish neon from the shopping center across the street. Then, fearing that Victoria might disappear as well (in a sudden rubber-burning, brake-squealing, panicked recognition of the mistake she was about to make), he whined, “
Gottenyu
” and pushed open his car door.

A warm breezed brushed his face, and he could taste the salt air from the Atlantic. He gazed for a moment at the second-floor balcony. Every room had two windows facing the parking lot. A curtain was drawn across every window. Some of the rooms were pitch black, and others flashed tantalizing columns of light where the curtain fell short of the window frame—a peep show that didn't offer much of a peep.

Morris dug his hands in his pockets and walked to Victoria's car. Every step was weighed down by the gravities of doubt, self-loathing, and fear. But those forces were matched by another force that pushed Morris forward. An irresponsible force that drowned out the cautious voices in Morris's mind. It exclaimed, “Soon I'll see Victoria naked!”

Which is exactly what kept him going, until he arrived at her car and heard her window hum open.

“Hello, Victoria,” he said. He sounded as if he were greeting his tax accountant.

“Hi, Morris!”

“So how was the rest of your day?” he asked.

“Fine. And yours?”

Cars swooshed past on Merrick Road.

“Fine. Just . . . did a few things,” reported Morris, and then jiggled some change in a pocket.

“Yes. Me too.”

Refined social graces are imperative in the moments before skulking into a motel room for some primitive grunting. It lends a certain air of decorum.

“So,” Victoria sighed. “Do you want to get a room?”

“A room? Of course. A room. Should I go to the front office now?”

Victoria giggled. “Or I can go. If you want.”

“No, I'll go. Should you wait here? In the car, I mean?”

“Okay. Unless you want me to come with you.”

“You mean go together?”

“We could.”

“At the same time?”

“Or I can stay here.”

F
rom his seat, Sully dropped his head into his hands and moaned, “Christ, it's like they're negotiating troop positions in a cease-fire!”

M
orris raised his palms. “No. You stay here. I'll go get the room. Then I'll meet you back here. At the car.”

“Okay. I'll wait here.” And then, eyeing the nondescript sedans idling in the parking lot, Victoria said, “Wow, it's crowded here, isn't it?”

Morris turned toward a sign that flickered
OFFICE
in dim red letters against a white background, dropped his head as low as his chin would allow without denting his chest cavity, and hurried through the lot.

In the front office, a lonely, overworked fluorescent bulb struggled to do its job, and a clerk stood behind a chipped Formica counter, dressed in a wrinkled black shirt and a carelessly knotted yellow tie. His eyes were locked on a small television that sat at the edge of the counter. To Morris's discomfort, the clerk seemed to be
watching a selection from the Bayview's extensive “Discreet In-Room Adult Pleasures Library.” Unless “Oh yes, yes, there, uh-huh, right there, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, ooooooh” accompanied by the warbled twang of a guitar was a new Food Channel special featuring Rachael Ray basting a turkey. Which was possible.

Just next to the television was a wobbly Lucite brochure holder, stuffed with helpful tourist tips, as if to lend the Bayview a sense of respectability. Because it was a good bet that after sex so illicit and so depraved that it had to be conducted in a cheap motel room, one would feel the sudden urge to “Visit Sagamore Hill, the Bucolic Estate of Theodore Roosevelt, our Twenty-sixth President.”

Morris had developed two scripts for this moment. There was “A horrible fire just destroyed my home but thank God my loving family is visiting relatives down in Trenton so I need a room just for the night” or “I'm an electronics salesman and I'm too tired to drive all the way home to Trenton so my loving wife suggested I take a little nap here because she thinks I'll fall asleep at the wheel on the New Jersey Turnpike. Women are really something, aren't they?” But before he could say a word, the clerk gave him a look that said, “Save your breath because I've heard them all and don't give a damn.” Then, after returning his eyes to the moaning and groaning of the Food Channel or twenty-four-hour-sex network, or whatever it was, said to Morris, “Standard room forty-nine dollars plus tax. Deluxe, seventy-nine plus tax. Theme room ninety-nine plus tax. Honeymoon special, one forty-nine plus tax.”

Now what? No one told him there would be a menu.

“What's the difference between the standard and the deluxe?”

“Jacuzzi. And the Throbomattress five thousand.”

“Standard! Please!” Morris plunked down three twenty-dollar bills and waited for the clerk to fish out his change and a key.

M
eanwhile, from a control room at the FDA, William Sully was canvassing screens and snapping his fingers as if directing a live
television reality show. He pitched his body toward the console of monitors and snapped commands for close-ups and wide shots. He listened to the transmitted chatter of agents reporting on every motion of the stars of their show: Morris Feldstein and Victoria D'Amico.

“Subject B exiting front office. Returning in the direction of Subject A. Over.”

“Subject A exiting her vehicle. Walking in the direction of Subject B. Over.”

“Both subjects proceeding on foot toward middle staircase. Over.”

“On stairs . . . proceeding up stairs . . . both subjects now on balcony of floor two. Repeat. Now on floor two. Over.”

“Unit Three: I got 'em. Subjects proceeding north on balcony. Passing room two-zero-three . . . two-zero-five . . . two-zero-seven . . . two-zero—hold it! Stand by . . . stand by . . . subjects now reversing . . . you see them, Unit Two? Over.”

“Unit Two, roger. Two-zero-seven . . . two-zero-five . . .”

Sully watched as Morris fumbled with the key in front of room 205.

“Now entering room two-zero-five. Repeat, two . . . zero . . . five. Over.”

The door closed, and Bill Sully smiled.

T
he door closed, and Morris Feldstein felt nauseous.

It wasn't the room that sickened him. The décor was surprisingly pleasant, like the floor display in a furniture showroom. It was dominated by a king-sized bed draped with a pink-and-black floral spread and a mountain range of oversized pillows that might require a dynamite charge to remove. There was a gray carpet with signs of dropped cigarettes, a spilled drink, or the rubbing and chafing of bodies. And the walls featured gold-framed abstract art that represented—­depending on your powers of observation and your insight into Freudian psychoanalysis—either the twin forks of Long Island or a woman in a pre-coital recline.

It wasn't even the unique odor of the room that nauseated him—a sharp blend of antiseptic cleansers, furniture polish, stale tobacco, and cheap air freshener. What made Morris nauseous was the distance—about ten yards—between where he stood and the bed Victoria now occupied. She had made the trip, it seemed to Morris, the way a runner on first base steals second—charging without hesitation. Once there, she had draped her hair over the front of her shoulders, and flashed the most inviting smile that anyone had ever flashed at Morris Feldstein.

That's what made him nauseous. And it wasn't the mild, light-headed queasiness that one can manage with a few deep breaths of air and a gentle rubbing of the stomach. No, Morris sensed that this nausea could lead to the spewing of entire body organs. Which is why he conditionally accepted Victoria's inviting smile by whimpering “Be right back” and turned into the bathroom with his lips sealed.

The faucet squeaked when he turned it, and a resistant dribble of tepid, rust-colored fluid trickled into his palms. Then, after several belches, the faucet spurted an unpleasant combination of stale air and brackish water, which turned after a few spurts into a cool and consistent stream. He splashed his cheeks and ran his wet palms behind his neck and under his collar. And when he looked in the mirror he could barely recognize himself. His skin was flushed and his eyes uncertain. His face shimmered from either tap water or sweat, he couldn't tell. He wasn't even certain who he was looking at. Was it the Morris Feldstein that he had stared at every morning for fifty-seven years—the one whom he could reliably depend on not to make waves? Or was this a new, lascivious, corrupt Morris Feldstein?
Like that
Star Trek
episode
, he thought.
The one where the transporter malfunctions and accidentally divides William Shatner into the meek Captain Kirk and the maniacal bloody-lipped Captain Kirk
.
God, I think I forgot to T
iVo that one, too!

He stared hard into the mirror
. What am I doing? Who am I?

Nothing but the sound of water falling from the faucet and splattering against the sink.

He turned off the faucet and wiped his face with a towel, which he noticed was stained with faint splotches of brown and yellow. It had a musty scent. And just as he reached for the door, having accepted the humiliation of explaining to Victoria that he could not have sex with her because he was too nauseous and didn't want to upset his long-standing record of not throwing up before, during, or even after sex, he heard a voice.

It was the last voice he thought would come to him under the circumstances. A voice from so far back in his life that it took him a moment to remember.

“Assistant Rabbi Kaplan?” he asked.

It was. Assistant Rabbi Marc Kaplan, who had coached Morris through his bar mitzvah forty-four years earlier at the Hillel Torah Hebrew Academy of Bayside. Then, as now, the voice was heavy and solemn, suffused with years of accumulated rabbinic study.

Assistant Rabbi Kaplan's voice said:

“Class, today we will study the teachings of Judaism's vision of the ideal human. The great scholar and ancient Rabbi, Rabbi Hillel. Who taught
tikkun olam
, the repair of an imperfect world. The Rabbi said—and repeat after me, class—‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?' ”

Morris repeated the words, watching his lips move in the bathroom mirror.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” he whispered.

“And if not now, when?”

“That's correct, Morris!” Morris looked in the mirror and saw the ethereal reflection of an ancient figure, dressed in black, with a long white beard cascading down his chest like a frothy waterfall.

“Is that you, God?” he asked.

“Sure. God appears as a burning bush to some people, and in the bathroom mirrors of seedy motel rooms to others. No, I'm not God. But close. I'm Hillel. Rabbi Hillel.”

“This is a dream,” Morris mumbled.

“Dream. Vision. Prophecy. What's the difference? My question is this: Are you going to go through with it? With the shikse outside? If not, why not? If you are, when already?”

“You think it's okay?” asked Morris.

“Whoa! Not up to me. That's a higher pay grade. I'm just saying—your whole life has been about not making waves. Not causing trouble, right?”