Breaking Glass


Arnold came to visit Linda and me in Prescott. He and Karen have property in Green Valley and he rolls across the desert this way on occasion. His father's family is from Odessa, in the Ukraine, and his mother's family is from Alexandria. He is British by accent but a naturalized American by "show us your papers." On Friday night we watched, "Everything is Illuminated," which is set in the Ukraine, and revolves around Odessa.

It's an excellent movie, about a Jewish boy who goes to the Ukraine to try and find what happened to his grandmother's family. He is a vegetarian, and a collector, and plays well off the translator he has hired to help him. There is also a grandfather who is the driver, and his dog, Sammy Davis Junior Junior.

About the only time the collector became really exasperated with his guides was when the grandfather didn't believe Sammy Davis Junior was Jewish. "He's the most famous converted Jew in the world," he said. And when he would do something really unusual, because of his cultural ignorance, the guides would explain, "He doesn't eat meat."

This became my favorite line during Arnold's visit, to explain why he's so odd. "He doesn't eat meat."

I was feeling angry about Feinstein's support for the Mukasey nomination, a clear continuation of the consolidation of the power in the executive. I figured what the hell, Arnold is Jewish, maybe it's all his fault. After all, he doesn't eat meat. But he wasn't any happier about it than I was. One of the first things he asked was, 'Did you see what Feinstein did?" He wasn't any more amused by her and Schumer than I was.

Nor was I amused to look around Coyote Joe's and determine that I was probably the oldest person in the place. How did that happen? If I wasn't the oldest I was in the top four. The Cheektones were playing and they were keeping it tight and right. We had met Don Cheek while dining at El Gato Azul, where he was playing an amplified acoustic and singing songs for the diners. One of his songs was, "We'll Believe Anything," and it was a tribute to the people of America during the Bush years. I thought it might piss somebody off but most of the diners applauded it.

Everybody at Coyote Joe's seemed to be pleasantly toasted enough to throw their arms around each other sometimes and bounce around to the music. The bandstand was on the back patio, where there's a separate little bar house, like the ones they have in the islands.

At ten o'clock the action moved inside, where a Beatles tribute band, Ringo McLennonSon, was starting their first set. Linda was sipping a Bushmills on the rocks and I was nursing a Jack. Arnold was drinking "bubbly water," which was what he looked like when he danced. I've known him for many years, and one thing that is a constant in his life is his love for the Beatles. He said when he was a kid in England they loved the music, but when they went dancing, they danced to Ska or Raggae.

After a four day visit, Arnold left this morning for Green Valley, and Linda left for Phoenix to be at a mediation in a corporate lawsuit. The painters are covering the windows with translucent plastic, getting ready to turn the house from white to a deep green. Instead of exploding from the hillside it will now blend into it. The trim will get a new coat of black and the decks a new coat of redwood stain. Slowly the house has been transformed over the past two or three years. There is a pad back among the rocks where the hot tub used to be. We will put a room there, maybe a meditation room.

Because Arnold retains a crisp British accent some people just want to talk to him because he's foreign. I don't think of him as foreign because we were neighbors thirty years ago. I remember once when I introduced him to Maryam, a Persian woman with blue black hair and eyes overflowing with humor and mischief. She would say, "I think there are all these windows looking out at the world, Dan, and sometimes, we are looking through the same window."

That was how friendships developed. We found ourselves looking out the same window. And on the day in my memory, I felt shut out of the conversation. Arnold and Maryam were slicing the air with an exchange of humor, but I wasn't following it, which made me feel socially orphaned. "My god," I said. "This is how your wife feels when she comes over here and we're joking around."

It was true, and it was a different wife than Karen. Arnold lived around the corner. He would come over to play darts, which was a preoccupation we shared. His wife would call and as soon as he was talking on the phone -- or more accurately listening on the phone -- he began to deflate, as if he'd been injected with a sedative. By the time she actually arrived he was docile enough to be led away for Saturday chores.

Because he's English he didn't play baseball when he was a kid, so I took him out once to show him how to play baseball. After all, he taught me to play Cricket. There was a park across the street with a backstop. We bought a glove and a ball and a bat and went over to the park. I instructed him to stand over by the back fence and I tossed the ball up to hit it out to him. I missed. How did that happen? I never miss. I threw the ball up again. I missed again.

It had been so long since I played baseball I had actually lost the skill. This pissed me off. I don't throw a ball up to hit it and then not hit it. This time I swung around hard, and there was a solid crack as the ball found its way to the Archilles heel of the field. There was a high fence along the edge of the park where there was a house, but one window toward the top of the house wasn't protected. That was where the ball went, smashing cleanly into the upstairs loft, or whatever it was.

Arnold was recalling that day while we were up at the lookout on Thumb Butte Loop, where the forest opens out on the valley far below. We had set up some cans and were throwing rocks at them. I don't know how the conversation came around to those moments when the spirit takes control, but I think it might have been linked to Tom Waits singing "Crossroads," from The Black Rider. Some bullets are special, for one target, or one person, and no matter where you aim, the bullet goes where it wants to go.

We were talking about those moments in time when we transcended the ordinary progression of daily life. "Remember?" he asked. "The Russian girl out by the Sea Cliffs?" And I was reminded of the joke about the Irish woman who confesses she had sex with the butcher inside the church. The priest tells her she's already confessed that sin and been absolved. "I know father," she says, "but I do love to recall it."

I don't know if I ever told the story to anyone else. I was walking along the path overlooking the ocean, at Land's End, when I met a pretty woman looking at the very same ocean on the very same day. Because of this shared interest in the ocean we remarked on the aesthetics. As we were talking I absently reached down and picked up a stone and my body took over, following through in a smooth underhanded whirling wrist snap that shot the stone into a pop bottle that exploded fifty feet away. It was a zen moment.

"I was just as surprised as she was," I said. "If somebody had handed me a stone and asked me to do that again, I would have been in trouble, because I can only do that on command, and it's not me that gives the command."

"And she just kissed you, a full on mouth kiss?"

"She had no choice. It was an act of God, and like I said, she was Russian."

Arnold nodded and focused on hitting the can with the stone. "It's a whole body thing," I said, whipping around and firing a stone at the target. I hit about six feet to one side. "Old age is a bitch, isn't it, man?"

Posted: Mon - November 12, 2007 at 11:34 AM