The Merchants of Zion (15 page)

Dimitri put away his phone and our group's chatter died down. Soon we were a band of stony-faced cowboys in a spaghetti western, waiting for the abandoned town to explode into a shootout. A group of teens and twenty-somethings sitting on a stoop with a broken door, smoking cigarettes and drinking from brown paper bags, whistled as we walked past. Mary drew closer to me, clutching my arm.

It's a strange feeling walking through a poorer, ethnic neighborhood with your white, obviously not-poor friends. Race is a factor, but it's more than that—I'd had similar experiences stopping for gas in backwater Midwestern towns. We weren't in danger, but a sense of unwelcome pervaded the air; this place had its own community and we didn't belong to it. We were four outsiders with no obvious reason for being here.

“Hey Cliff...” James said.

“What?”

“You know where the word ghetto comes from, right?” he asked, a little too loudly.

“Would you shut up?” Dimitri hissed.

“It was used to denote Jewish communities in Europe. Before World War II,” I said.

“I mean before that. Like the etymology.”

“No, although I can guess you're about to tell me.”

“Pretty sharp, Cliffster. It comes from the word 
gateaux
, which is French for cake. You see, all the bakers in old Paris were Jewish. So if you were going to pick up some baked goods, you would say you were going to the 
gateauxerie.
 Everyone knew that was where all the Jews lived, so after a while people referred to the entire neighborhood by the shorthand 
gateaux
, and when it made the jump to English it got bastardized even more, all the way down to ghetto.

“I don't think the Jews are famous for being bakers.”

“Of course they are. Bagels and shit, right?”

The Well-Tempered Clavier was flanked by a liquor store and a washateria with boarded windows. A girl Elly's age rode up and down the sidewalk on a rusty bicycle with flowing pink ribbons rode under the watchful gaze of a woman who was eighty-five at the youngest. She sat in a wooden chair, a long pipe smoldering in her lap. One black eye tracked us from beneath a tangle of unkempt gray hair while the other—a smoky glass bowl with a submerged sapphire, the outline of an iris—rolled listlessly in its socket. She reeked of marijuana, and I couldn't shake the feeling she was a witch. Mary mouthed “scary” to me and I assented, nodding my head.

Above the tinted windows and dented, off-white door hung a wooden sign etched with the words “Coffee Shop.” The depressions, once painted black, were worn down to bare wood and scattered flecks of paint. Dimitri and I had stumbled in here years ago to ask for directions after getting lost exploring the neighborhood. We'd wanted to come back the next week, but being both lost and high couldn't remember where it was and were unable to find it online. It became a running joke: the experience had been our shared hallucination, or we'd wandered into a parallel universe, until one day Dimitri mentioned it on a whim to the counter girl at the bodega on the corner and she gave him directions—it was down the street from where she lived.

A bell rang when I pushed open the door and James, Mary, and Dimitri filed in behind me. Their faces were red from the heat and pit-stains were spreading across Dimitri's shirt. The sun didn't beat down on us inside and it felt cooler, but only slightly so. The Well-Tempered Clavier had no air conditioning and the ceiling fans circulated blasting hot air.

The front of the room was narrow, with just enough room for a serving counter and a few tall tables where two people could sit on barstools and share a hookah. Towards the back of the shop the room ballooned into a circular space with booths, lumpy used couches clustered around plywood coffee tables, and a full-fledged bar.

Dim lighting filtered through the clouds of smoke pushed down by the fans, churning shadows across the anonymous faces lounging around the room. A beaten-up grand piano stood in the center, dusty and unused. The tobacco in the hookahs masked the smell of pot and though an innocent observer might find the customers unusually sluggish, no reasonable suspicion would be aroused.

A black man with a beehive of dreadlocks slouched on a stool behind the counter. He was chatting with a short Hispanic woman.

“Hey Merch, how you doing?” I asked. He took my hand, wrapping his hands around it so our thumbs touched each others wrist. A necklace with the Star of David bounced jauntily against his chest.

“Babysitter, you haven't visited us in ages.” He had a thick Caribbean accent—he'd once told me he moved to the city from Trinidad and Tobago after he'd been caught sleeping with a politician's wife. Listening to him speak was like hiking through the mountains—the first syllable of each sentence rose like the face of a cliff before dropping off with a quick succession of valley words, then he would peak with another drawn out word and repeat the pattern. “Gödel, you came too. And you brought new friends, how kind.”

I said, “This is my new roommate James, and this is, um, my friend Mary.”

“It is wonderful to meet you both. I am the Merchant of Zion—you can call me Merch—and this is my wonderful wife,” he said, gesturing at the Hispanic woman. “You can call her Honey, because she is so sweet.” He had nicknames for everyone, and never divulged his real name no matter how much Dimitri and I needled him. He'd taken his 
nom de guerre
 from the book, which he'd never read, because he liked the ethos of spreading joy and enlightenment packed in its title. “Babysitter, what can I get for you on this beautiful today.”

James muscled to the front. “We're looking to smoke and drink some, Merch. What sort of weed you got? Personally, I'm a fan of Canadian 'dro, but anything from the Pacific Northwest will do.” I rolled my eyes at Mary.

“This ain't California, man. All we've got is from Jamaica. One kind, no menu.”

“Let's see the bud.” The Merch pulled a glass cookie jar from beneath the counter and picked out three choice nuggets. James leaned close and sniffed them, then turned them over in his hand. After examining each one long enough to let everyone know he was a pot connoisseur—I half expected him to produce a magnifying glass—he pronounced his satisfaction. He asked for a two grams, which the Merch weighed out on a brass scale.

“Also, a round of drinks,” James said. “And we'll need two hookahs.”

We found a booth in the corner. Dimitri, myself and Mary squeezed into one side. James sat alone on the other. “More room for me,” he said, spreading his legs wide as he settled in.

“Okay, Babysitter,” James said. “Why's he call you something so stupid?”

Dimitri answered before I could. “The first time we were here, Merch came over and smoked with us. Cliff was telling him about his job and he thought it was hilarious—an entire job to educate one little girl. He said—” Dimtri mimicked the accent, “'Soooo you  are a man and you choose to be a professional babysitter. I see. I seeeeeee.”

The impression was spot on, and we all laughed. “And then he talked to Dimitri, who was off in another galaxy,” I said. “Merch asked him about his job, and Dimitri babbled on forever about math. He kept saying, 'Gödel saw it man, he fucking saw it.' Over and over again, and when the Merch wanted to know Gödel was, Dimitri placed his hand on the Merch's shoulder, looked him straight in the eye, and said 'Gödel is God. Gödel is fucking God.”

“I stand by it,” Dimitri said, blushing slightly. “If there were such a thing as God, it would be a manifestation of Kurt Gödel.”

“I'm sure you'll both have silly nicknames by the time you leave,” I said.

Honey brought the two hookahs over on a tray. “Thanks Honey,” James said as she wiggled away.

Nothing was set up for us—the materials were provided and discretion left to the customer. Two hookahs—three feet tall and made of blue glass with abstract gold designs—two bowls of tobacco, a half-dozen coals, a lighter, and a grinder. “Hand over the pot,” Dimitri said to James.

“Can we only plus one of the hookahs? I don't feel like smoking right now. Maybe later,” I said. I didn't want to be caught stoned if Ruth showed up.

James scoffed and Dimitri raised an eyebrow, but they agreed to only mix the pot into one bowl of tobacco. He broke a nugget in half and put it in the grinder. When he finished, James said, “Are you sure you ground it enough? It looks clumpy.”

“It's fine. Trust me.” He mixed the weed and tobacco in the hookah's bowl, which he covered with a wire mesh screen. He then placed a lit coal on top. I prepared the other hookah. Dimitri sucked the hose and the water in the hookah bubbled like a yawning spirit. He exhaled from his nostrils. The smoke jetted onto the table, crawling on its surface before rising slowly towards the ceiling.

Dimitri sighed. “Marijuana is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for human flourishing.” He passed the hose to James.

“You smoking?” I mumbled to Mary.

She squeezed my hand. “I'm good for now.” We shared the other hookah. A second after inhaling she coughed.

“Virgin smoker?” James said. “Hang out with this kid long enough,” he nodded at me, “you'll be sucking it down in no time.”

“That's not fair,” I said, trying to blow smoke rings. Six puffs and two puny successes. “Look, I can't do it. Not like Dimitri.”

He reverted to a thick Russian accent. “Ve 'ave no patience for inferior American engineering.” He blew a ring that expanded into a hula hoop over the table, then shot several smaller smoke rings through it like darts.

James asked Mary about school, her job, and aspirations. Dimitri produced his tablet from his inseparable manpurse and doodled over graphs and diagrams, interjecting into the conversation occasional commentary. I watched the three of them, unable to decide if James was trying to pick Mary up or merely being friendly. His aura of unpleasantness was submerged beneath a goofy smile and bloodshot eyes.

“I sang in a bunch of musicals back in high school,” he said. “Our theater program had ridiculous funding... some bigshot Broadway producer donated a shit ton of money so his son would be cast as the lead every year. The kid sucked, but overall it was a good time. Almost made me major in musical performance, but there's no money in it. The best Broadway actors, if they're not already movie stars, make what? A few million? Shit traders make that much, and the good ones make that in a day. Or in any case, they did when I started school. Now it's all about who you know.”

“Oh please. You didn't see the Panic coming?” Dimitri said. “Of course if you give monkeys that much money they'll fuck it up. There were more people working on Wall Street than there are intelligent people in the entire world. And when you fill your roster with second-rate mathematicians and physicists, of course it's all going to crash and burn.”

“No way, the free market is too smart for that—the entire collapse was orchestrated.”

“Like the Jews did it? I wish my Rabbi had mentioned it to my parents beforehand,” Dimitri said.

They went off on a good-natured—for them—argument about the complicity of the elites in the world's misfortune. Not a question of if, but how much, and whether it was on purpose. They'd found common ground, and if not friendly, had at least moved past unconditional hostility. Mary hooked her foot around my ankle and rested her head against my arm.

“How do you like Brooklyn?” I asked.

“Love it. I'll have to move out here when I graduate.”

The Well-Tempered Clavier, closer to empty than not when we arrived, began to fill in. It was a diverse crowd in both race and class. A team of scruffy construction workers lounged at a table and two businesswomen in poly-thousand dollar pantsuits huddled at the bar—sharing a joint and leafing through a stack of ringed binders. In the booth next to us two men and a woman were speaking in German.

The woman had shoulder length, platinum hair and a lacy, neon green dress. One of the men was wearing a black turtleneck sweater. I couldn't believe he hadn't died of heatstroke. The other wore an I heart NY t-shirt. They were giggling like babies and rubbing their faces with their palms.

“How come the police don't come bust this place?” Mary asked.

“We're not exactly sure,” I said. “We had a few theories, but the one we settled on was that they opened when weed was legal but didn't get proper licensing from the city. So when they rolled backed the law no one knew to shut it down.”

“As long as they keep a low-profile, they'll be left alone,” Dimitri said. “The more autocratic society becomes the less authority penetrates into places like this. They don't care what people do out here,” Dimitri said. “Media, check. Finance, check. Everything else is noise. And all the city cares about is keeping Battery Park from becoming a pilgrimage for divers.”

“They couldn't even keep the subway running,” Mary added.

“Exactly.”

“So you agree with me, I fucking knew it,” James said. “It's a plot—”

“A Zionist plot?” Dimitri asked

“Shut up.” James glanced over his shoulder at the Germans as if they were secret government agents waiting for him to slip up. He whispered, “They want to keep the public in a constant state of fear to keep us from rebelling.”

“Which is why they also want to outlaw guns?” I added sarcastically.

James didn't notice. “Obviously. And why they've carried out false flag operations like the airborne toxic event and the manufactured flu pandemic. Or mandatory vaccinations. Robespierre says its the only way they can keep power. He thinks—”

“You're still reading that stuff?” I asked.

“I think he makes a lot of sense,” Mary said. “After all, he's on the run. Why would the government care what he wrote if it didn't feel threatened?”

“Are you a Jacobin? Or just high? He's a lunatic. I'm no fan of the government, but seriously...” I appealed to Dimitri. “Come one, tell them that's insane.”

He recused himself and inhaled from the hookah. “I don't know man, I don't know.”

“Your girlfriend has a good point. The government cannot be trusted.” James searched for a parting thought. “Ever.”

With their newfound conspiratorial connection, James and Mary delved into his paranoid fantasies. He was ecstatic to find someone who didn't outright ridicule his beliefs.