Текст книги "The Butcher's Theatre"

Автор книги: Jonathan Kellerman

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

The waiter was a tiny, hyperactive Vietnamese, one of the boat people the Israelis had taken in several years ago. He rushed in and out of the kitchen, bouncing from table to table carrying huge trays of food, speaking rapidly in pidgin Hebrew and laughing at jokes that only he seemed to understand. The large center table was occupied by a party of Dutch nuns, cheerful, doughy-faced women who chewed energetically and laughed along with Nguyen as they fumbled with their chopsticks. The rest of the customers were Israelis, serious about eating, cleaning their plates and calling for more.

Aliza took in the activity, the polyglot madness, smiled and stroked her husband's forearm. He reached out and took her fingers in his, exhibiting just a hint of the strength stored within the oversized digits.

It had taken her some time to get used to it. She'd grown up a farm girl, on Kibbutz Yavneh, a bosomy, big-boned redhead. Her first beaus, robust, tractor-'driving youths-male versions of herself. She'd always had a thing for big men, the muscular, bulky types who made you feel protected, but never had she imagined herself married to someone who looked like an oversized Mongol warrior. And the family: her mother-in-law your basic yiddishe mama, her hair in a babushka, still speaking Hebrew with a Russian accent; Abba

Haim an old Buddha, as yellow as parchment; Yossi's older brother, David, suave, always wearing a suit, always making deals, always away on business.

She'd met Yossi in the army. She'd worked in requisitions and had been attached to his paratrooper unit. He'd stormed into her office like a real bulvan, angry and looking ludicrous because the uniform that had been issued to him was three sizes too small. He started mouthing off at her; she mouthed back and that was it. Chemistry. And now little Rafi, straw-haired, with almond eyes and the shoulders of a working man. Who'd have predicted it?

As she'd gotten to know Yossi, she'd realized that they came from similar stock. Survivors. Fighters.

Her parents had been teenaged lovers who escaped from Munich in '41 and hid for months in the Bavarian forest, subsisting on leaves and berries. Her father stole a rifle and shot a German guard dead in order to get them across the border. Together they traveled on foot, making their way through Hungary and Yugoslavia and down to Greece. Catching a midnight boat ride to Cyprus and paying the last of their savings to a Cypriot smuggler, only to be forced off the boat at gunpoint, five miles from the coast of Palestine. Swimming the rest of the way on empty stomachs, crawling half-dead onto the shores of Jaffa. Avoiding the scrutiny of Arab cutthroats long enough to reach their comrades at Yavneh.

Yossi's mother had also escaped the Nazis by walking. In 1940. All the way from Russia to the visa-free port of Shanghai, where she lived in relative peace, along with thousands of other Jews. Then war broke out in the Pacific and the Japanese interned all of them in the squalid camps of Hongkew.

A tall, husky theology student named Huang Lee had been held captive there, too, suspected of collaborating with the Allies, because he was an intellectual. Dragged out periodically to endure public floggings.

Two weeks before Hiroshima, the Japanese sentenced Huang Lee to death. The Jews took him in and he evaded execution by hiding in their midst, being passed form family to family under the cover of darkness. The last family he stayed with had also taken in an orphan from Odessa, a black-haired girl named Sonia. Chemistry.

In 1947, Sonia and Huang came to Palestine. He converted to Judaism, took the name Haim-"life"-for he considered himself reborn, and they married. In '48 both of them fought with the Palmah in Galilee. In '49 they settled in North Jerusalem so that Huang Haim could study in Rabbi Kook's Central Yeshiva. When the children came-David in 1951, Yosef four years later-Huang went to work as a post-office clerk.

For twelve years he stamped packages, noticing all the while the enthusiasm with which his co-workers devoured the dishes he brought for lunch-food from his childhood that he'd taught Sonia to cook. After saving up enough cash, the Lees opened the Shang Hai Palace, on Herzl Boulevard, in back of a Sonol petrol station. It was 1967, when spirits were high, everyone eager to forget death and find new pleasures, and business was brisk.

It had remained brisk, and now Huang Haim Lee was able to hire others to wait on tables, free to spend his day studying Talmud and playing chess. A contented man, his sole regret that he hadn't been able to transmit his love for religion to his sons. Both were good boys: David, analytic, a planner-the perfect banker. Yossi, wholly physical, but brave and warmhearted. But neither wore a kipah, neither kept Shabbat nor was attracted to the rabbinic tractates that he found irresistible-the subtleties of inference and exegesis that captivated his mind.

Still, he knew he had little to complain about. His life had been a tapestry of good fortune. So many brushes with eternity, so many reprieves. Just last week he'd shoveled dirt over the bare roots of his new pomegranate tree, the last addition to his biblical garden. Experienced the privilege of planting fruit trees in Jerusalem.

Aliza saw him smile, a beautiful Chinese smile, so calm and self-satisfied. She turned to her husband and kissed his hand. Yossi looked at her, surprised by the sudden show of affection, smiled himself, looking just like the old man.

Across the room, Huang Haim moved his bishop. "Checkmate," he told Rabbi Stolinsky, and got up to take the baby.

Elias Daoud's wife had grown fatter each year, so that now it was like sharing a bed with a mountain of pillows. He liked it, found it comforting to reach out in the middle of the night and touch all that softness. To part thighs as yielding as custard, submerge himself in sweetness. Not that he would have ever expressed such sentiments to Mona. Women did best when they were keyed up, just a little worried. So he teased her about her eating, told her sternly that she was consuming his salary faster than he could earn it. Then silenced her tearful excuses with a wink and a piece of sesame candy he'd picked up on the way home.

Nice to be off-duty, nice to be in bed. He'd acquitted himself well, done an excellent job for the Jews.

Mona sighed in her sleep and covered her face with a sausage of an arm. He raised himself up on his elbows. Looked at her, the dimpled elbow rising with each breath. Smiling, he began tickling her feet. Their little game. Waking her gently, before climbing the mountain.

She was exactly the kind of girl his father would have hated, Avi knew. Which made her all the more attractive to him. Moroccan, to begin with, purely South Side. One of those working-class types who lived to dance. And young– not more than seventeen.

He'd spotted her right away, talking with two other chickies who were total losers. But no loser, this one-really cute, in an obvious look-at-me kind of way. Far too much makeup. Long hair dyed an improbable black and styled in a fancy, feathery cut-which made sense because she'd told him she cut hair for a living; it was only logical that she'd want to show it off. The face under the feathery bangs was sweet enough: glossy cherry lips, huge black eyes, at the bottom a little pointy chin. And she had a great body, slender, no hair on her arms-which was hard to find in a dark girl. Tiny wrists, tiny ankles, one with a chain around it. And best of all, big soft breasts. Too big for the rest of her, really, which played off against the slenderness. All of it packed into a skintight black jumpsuit of some kind of wet-looking vinyl material.

The fabric had give him his opening line.

"Spill your drink?" Giving her the Belmondo smile, curling it around the cigarette, putting his hands on his hips and showing off his tight physique under the red Fila shirt.

A giggle, the bat of an eyelash, and he knew she'd agree to dance with him.

He could feel the big breasts, now, as they did the slow dance to an Enrico Macias ballad, the discotheque finally quiet after hours of rock. Nice soft mounds flattening against his chest. Twin pressure points, the hardness in his groin exerting a pressure of its own. She knew it was there and though she didn't press back, she didn't back away from it either, which was a good sign.

She ran her hand over his shoulder and he let his fingers explore lower, caressing her tailbone in time with the music. One fingertip dared going lower, probing the beginnings of her gluteal cleft.

"Naughty, naughty," she said, but made no attempt to stop him.

His hand dipped lower again, moving automatically. Cupping one buttock, nice and rubbery, all of it fitting into his palm. He pinched lightly, went back to massaging her lower back in time with the music, humming in her ear and kissing her neck.

She raised her face, mouth half-open, kind of smiling. He brushed her lips with his, then moved in. There was a tangy taste to the kiss, as if she'd eaten spicy food and the heat had remained imbedded in her tongue. His breath, he knew, was bitter with alcohol. Three gin and tonics, more than he usually allowed himself. But working the murder case had made him nervous-all that reading, not knowing what he was doing, petrified of looking stupid-and now that it was over he needed the release. His first night back in Tel Aviv since the hassle with Asher Davidoff's blonde. It wouldn't be his last.

In the end it hadn't turned out bad. Sharavi had asked him to write up the final draft of the report, wanting him to be some damned secretary. The thought of all those words had made his knees go weak and he'd surprised himself by opening his mouth.

"I can't do it, Pakad."

"Can't do what?"

"Anything. I'm going to quit the police force." Blurted it out, just like that, though he hadn't come to a decision about it yet.

The little Yemenite had nodded as if he'd expected it. Stared at him with those gold-colored eyes and said, "Because of the dyslexia?"

It had been his turn to stare then, nodding dumbly, in shock, as Sharavi kept talking.

"Mefakeah Shmeltzer told me you take an extraordinary amount of time to read things. Lose your place a lot and have to start over again. I called your high school and they told me about it."

"I'm sorry," Avi had said, feeling stupid the moment the words left his lips. He'd trained himself long ago not to apologize.

"Why?" asked Sharavi. "Because you have an imperfection?"

"I'm just not suited for police work."

Sharavi held up his left hand, showed him the scars, a real mess.

"I can't box with bad guys, Cohen, so I concentrate on using my brains."

"That's different."

Sharavi shrugged. "I'm not going to try to talk you into it. It's your life. But you might think of giving yourself some more time. Now that I know about you, I could keep you away from paperwork. Concentrate on your strengths." Smiling: "If you have any."

The Yemenite had taken him for a cup of coffee, asked him about his problem, gotten him to talk about it more than anyone ever had. A master interrogator, he realized later. Made you feel good about opening up.

"I know a little bit about dyslexia," he had said, looking down at his bad hand. "After '67, I spent two months in a rehabilitation center-Beit Levinstein, near Ra'nana-working on getting some function back in the hand. There were kids there with learning problems, a few adults too. I watched them struggle, learning special ways to read. It seemed like a very difficult process."

"It's not that bad," Avi replied, rejecting the pity. "A lot of things are worse."

"True," said Sharavi. "Stick around Major Crimes and you'll see plenty of them."

The girl and he had been dancing and kissing for what seemed like hours but had to be only minutes because the Macias song had just ended.

"Anat," he said, escorting her off the dance floor, away from the crowd, away from her loser buddies, to a dark corner of the discotheque.

"Yes?"

"How about going for a drive?" Taking her hand.

"I don't know," she said, but coyly, clearly not meaning it. "I have to work tomorrow."

"Where do you live?"

"Bat Yam."

Deep south. Figured.

"I'll drive you home then." Her back was to the wall and Avi put his arm around her waist, leaned in and gave her another kiss, a short one. He felt her body go loose in his arms.

"Umm," she said.

"Would you like another drink?" Smile, smile, smile.

"I'm not really thirsty."

"A drive, then?"

"Uh… okay. Let me tell my friends."

Later, when she saw the BMW, she got really excited, couldn't wait to get in.

He switched off the alarm, held the door open for her, said, "Seat belt," and helped her fasten the harness, touching her breasts in the process, really feeling them, the nipples hard as pencil erasers. Giving her another kiss and then ending it abruptly.

Walking around to the driver's side, he got in, started up the engine, gave it gas so that it roared, slipped an Elvis Costello tape in the deck and drove away from Dizengoff Circle. He took Frischmann west to Hayarkon Street, then headed north on Hayarkon, parallel with the beach. Ibn Gvirol would have been a more direct route to the destination he had in mind, but the water-hearing the waves, smelling the salt-was more romantic.

Years ago Hayarkon had been Tel Aviv's red light district, actual scarlet bulbs glowing atop the entrances to sleazy sailor bars. Fat Romanian and Moroccan girls in hot pants and net stockings slouching in the doorways, the color of the light making them look like sunburnt circus clowns. Crooking their fingers and warbling bohena yeled! "Come here, little boy!" When he was in high school he'd gone there plenty, with his North Side friends, getting laid, smoking a little hash. Now Hayarkon was fast becoming respectable, the big hotels with their cocktail lounges and nightclubs, the cafes and bars that picked up the overflow crowd, and the hookers had moved on, farther north, to the dunes of Tel Baruch.

Avi shifted into fourth and drove quickly toward those dunes, Anat grooving to Costello, snapping her fingers and singing along with "Girl Talk," her hand resting casually on his knee, not even bothering to point out that Bat Yam was in the opposite direction.

He drove past the bathing beach, came to the entrance to the port, where Hayarkon ended. Speeding over the Ta'-Arukha Bridge, he crossed the Yarkon River and kept going until he reached a construction site just south of the dunes, but with a view of the cars parked in the sand.

Coming to a stop in the shadow of a crane, he turned off the engine and switched off the lights. From the dunes came the sound of music-drumbeats and guitars, the whores partying, sashaying in the sand, trying to create a mood for prospective customers. He visualized what was going on there, the action in each of the cars parked in the sand, and it turned him on.

He looked at Anat, took her hand in his, used the other to pull down the zipper of her jumpsuit, slide inside, and feel those amazing tits.

"What?" she asked. Which sounded silly, but he knew all about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"Please," she said. Not making it clear if it was please go on or please stop.

It was all on the line now, time to go for it.

"I want you," he said, kissing each of her fingers. "I've got to have you." With just a touch of begging, the eagerness that he knew they all loved.

"Ohh," she sighed, as he began nuzzling her palm, licking, doing what he did best. What really made him feel important. Then sudden tension in that wonderful little body: "I don't know…"

"Anat, Anat." Slipping the jumpsuit off her shoulders, the vulnerability of sudden nakedness causing her to cling to him. "So beautiful," he said, taking a good look at the unfettered breasts, milky white in the night light. Not having to fake it.

He played with her, kissing each of the tiny, pebbly nipples, sucking on her tongue, and stroking her labia through the shiny black fabric. Taking her hand and guiding it to his erection.

When she didn't pull away he started to relax. When she began to wiggle and squirm, he smiled to himself. Mission accomplished.

Nahum Shmeltzer listened to scratchy Mozart and ate chickpeas from a can. On the arm of his easy chair was a plate containing slices of yellow cheese that had begun to stiffen, around the edges and a pool of unflavored yogurt. He'd mixed the instant coffee too weak, but it didn't matter. It was the heat he wanted-to hell with the taste.

His home was a single room on the street level of a building in Romema. A sorry structure that had been built during the Mandate and remained unmodified since that time. The landlords were rich Americans who lived in Chicago and hadn't been to Jerusalem in ten years. He mailed his rent check to an agency on Ben Yehuda each month and expected nothing in return but basics.

Once upon a time, he'd owned a farm. Five dunams in a quiet moshav not far from Lod. Peaches and apricots and grapes and a plot for vegetables. A tired old plow horse for Arik to ride, a flower greenhouse for Leah. A chicken coop that yielded enough eggs for the entire moshav. Fresh omelettes and dewy cucumbers and tomatoes each morning. Back when taste had been important.

The road to Jerusalem had been lousy back then, nothing like the highway you had today. But he hadn't minded the daily drive to the Russian Compound. Nor the double load-working the streets all day, coming home to break his ass farming. The work was its own reward, the good feeling that came when you sent into bed each night, aching and ready to drop, knowing you'd given it your best. That you were making a difference.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI the Nazis had put on the signs they hung in the death camps. Work creates freedom. Those fucking assholes had meant something different, but there was truth in it. Or so he'd believed then.

Now everything was all fucked up, the boundaries gone– the borders between sane and insane, worthwhile and worthless… He caught himself, stopped. Philosophizing again. Must mean he was constipated.

The record, stopped.

He' got up out of the chair, turned off the phonograph, then walked two steps to the kitchen area and dumped the uneaten food into a cracked plastic wastebasket. Lifting a bottle of hundred-proof slivovitz from the counter, he carried it back with him.

Slipping slowly from the bottle, he let the liquor run down his gullet, feeling it burn a pathway straight to his stomach. Internal erosion. He imagined the damage to his tissue, enjoyed the pain.

As he grew progressively intoxicated, he began thinking of the butchered girl, her crazy eunuch of a brother. The punk they'd dug up on the olive grove, the maggots already holding a convention on his face. The case stunk. He knew it and he could tell that Dani knew it. Too clean, too cute.

That crazy, dickless eunuch. Pathetic. But who gave a shit-fucking Arabs slicing each other up over crazy pseudo-cultural nonsense. Lumpen proletariat. How many countries did they have-twenty? Twenty-five?-and they whined like shit-assed babies because they couldn't have the few square kilometers that belonged to the Jews. All that Palestinian bullshit. Back when he was a kid, the Jews had been Palestinians too. He'd been a goddamned Palestinian. Now it was a fucking catch phrase.

If the government was smart it would use agents provocateurs to fuck all the Arab virgins, convince the families that Ahmed next door had done it, supply them all with big knives, and set off a wave of revenge killings. Let them wipe themselves out-how long would it take? A month? Then we Zhids could finally have peace.

A laugh. With the Arabs gone, how long would it take for the Jews to chew each other up? What was the joke-a Jew had to have two synagogues. One that he went to, one that he rejected. We're the princes of self-hatred, the standard-bearers of self-destruction; all you had to do was read the Torah-brothers fucking over brothers, raping their sisters, castrating their fathers. And murder, plenty of it, nasty stuff. Cain and Abel, Esau going after Jacob, Joseph's brothers, Absalom. Sex crimes, too-Amnon raping Tamar, the Concubine of Gilead gang-banged to death by the boys from Ephraim, then cut into twelve pieces by her master and mailed to all the other tribes, the rest of them taking revenge on Ephraim, wiping out all the men, capturing the women for you-know-what, enslaving the kids.

Religion.

When you got down to it, that was human history. Murder, mayhem, bloodlust, one guy fucking over another, like monkeys in a cramped cage. Generation after generation of monkeys dressed in people-suits. Screeching and cackling and scratching their balls. Pausing just long enough to cut one another's throats.

Which made him, he supposed, a fucking historian.

He raised the bottle to his lips and took a deep, incendiary swallow.

How he loathed humanity, the inevitable movement toward entropy. If there was a God, he was a fucking comedian. Sitting up there laughing as the monkey-men yammered and bit each other in the ass and jumped around in the shitpile.

Life was shit; misery the order of the day.

That's the way it was. That's definitely the way it was. He gave a boozy belch and felt a wave of acid pain rise in his esophagus.

Another belch, another wave. Suddenly he felt nauseated and weak. More pain-good, he deserved it for being such a weak, naive shmuck.

For understanding the way it was but being unable to accept it. Unable to throw out the pictures. Goddamned fucking framed snapshots on the table next to his cot. He woke up each morning and saw them first thing.

Starting the day off right.

Pictures. Arik in uniform, leaning on his rifle. To Abba and Eema, With Love. The kid had never been original. Just good.

Leah at the Dead Sea, in a flowered bathing suit and matching cap, covered to her knees with black mud. Rounded belly, lumpy hips-looking at the picture he could feel them under his fingertips.

Tomorrow morning he'd throw out the pictures. Right now he was too tired to move.

Bullshit. He was a coward. Trying to hold on to something that didn't exist anymore.

One year they were there; the next, gone, as if they'd never been real, only figments of his imagination.

A good year for death, 1974.

Eleven fucking years and he still couldn't deal with it.

Not only that, but it was getting to him more, working on Gray Man, now this one, the cruelty. The fucking stupidity.

Monkeys.

Tough guy.

Shmuck.

He drank some more, disregarding the pain. Pushing himself toward the blackness that always came.

The kid had been bivouacked in the Sinai, reading a book in his tent-Hegel, no less, according to the military messenger. As if that made a fucking bit of difference. Picked off by some faceless Egyptian sniper. Next year, on the same spot, a bunch of assholes from Canada built a luxury hotel. A few years later, all of it was back in Egypt. Traded for Sadat's signature. The word of a fucking Nazi collaborator.

Thank you very much.

Leah never recovered. It ate her like a cancer. She wanted to talk about it all the time, always asking why us, what did we do to deserve it, Nahum? As if he had an answer. As if an answer existed.

He had no patience for that kind of thing. Got to where he couldn't stand the sight of her, the crying and the whining. He avoided her by burying himself in the double load, catching assholes, growing peaches. He came home one day, ready to avoid her again, and found her laid out on the kitchen floor. Cold as slate, waxy gray. He didn't need a fucking doctor to tell him what the story was.

Cerebral aneurysm. She'd probably been born with it. No way to know, tsk, tsk, sorry.

Thank you very much.

Fuck you very much.

Gene and Luanne wanted something authentic, so Daniel and Laura took them to The Magic Carpet, a Yemenite restaurant on Rehov Hillel, owned by the Caspi family. The dining room was long and low, bathed in dim, bluish light, the walls alternating panels of white plaster decorated with Yemenite baskets, and blown-up photographs of the '48 airlift after which the restaurant had been named. Swarms of robed and turbaned Yemenite Jews alighting from gravid prop planes. The Second Wave of emigration from San'a. The one everyone knew about. If you were Yemenite they assumed you'd come over on the Carpet, were genuinely shocked when they found out Daniel's family had lived in Jerusalem for over a century. Which in most cases meant longer than theirs.

"You were right," said Luanne. "This is very hot, almost like Mongolian food. I like it. Isn't it good, honey?"

Gene nodded and continued spooning the soup into his mouth, hunched over the table, big black fingers holding the utensil tightly, as if it threatened to float away.

The four of them sat at a corner table shadowed by hanging plants as they feasted upon steaming bowls of marak basar and marak sha'uit-chili-rich meat soup and bean soup.

"It took me a while to get used to it," said Laura. "We'd go over to Daniel's father's house and he'd make all these wonderful-looking dishes. Then I'd try them and my mouth would catch fire."

"I've toughened her up,"said Daniel. "Nowshe takes more spice than I do."

"My taste buds are shot, sweetheart. Beyond all pain." She put her arm around him, touched his smooth brown neck. He looked at her-blond hair down and combed out, wearing a little makeup, a clinging gray knit dress, and filigree earrings-and let his hand drop to her knee. Felt his feelings surface, the same feelings as when they'd first met. The mutual zap, she'd called it. Something to do with American comic books and magic powers

The waitress, one of the six Caspi daughters-Daniel could never remember who was who-brought a bottle of Yarden Sauvignon and poured the wine into long-stemmed glasses,

"In your honor," said Daniel, toasting. "May this be only the first of many visits."

"Amen," said Luanne.

They drank in silence.

"So you enjoyed the Galilee," said Laura.

"Nothing's like Jerusalem," said Luanne. "The vitality– you can just feel the spirituality, from every stone. But Galilee was fantastic, just the same."

She was a handsome woman, tall-almost as tall as Gene -with square, broad shoulders, graying hair marcelled into precise waves, and svrong African features. She wore a simple boat-necked dress of off-white silk striped diagonally in navy-blue, a strand of pearls, and pearl earrings. The dress and the jewelry set off her skin, which was the same color as Daniel's.

"To be able to actually see everything you've read about in the Scriptures," she said. "The Church of the Annunciation, realizing that you're putting your feet down in the same spot where He walked-it's unbelievable."

"Did the guide take you to see the Church of Saint Joseph also?" asked Laura.

"Oh, yes. And the cave underneath-I could just visualize Joseph's workshop, him working there on his carpentry, Mary upstairs, maybe cooking or thinking about when the baby was going to come. When I come back and tell my class about it, it will inject a real sense of life into our lessons." She turned to Gene: "Isn't it just amazing, honey, seeing it like that?"

"Amazing," said Gene, the word coming out slurred because he was chewing, the heavy jaws working, the big gray mustache revolving as if gear-driven. He broke off a piece of pita and put it in his mouth. Emptied his wineglass and mouthed thank you when Daniel refilled it for him.

"I'm keeping a log," said Luanne. "Of all the holy spots we visit. For a project that I promised the children-a Holy Land sojourn map to hang up in the classroom." She reached into her purse and took out a small note pad. Daniel recognized it as the type that Gene used, marked LAPD.

"So far," she said, "I've got eighteen churches listed-some of them we haven't actually gone into but we've passed them close by, so I consider it legal to include them. Then there are the natural landmarks: This morning we saw a stream in Tiberias that fed Mary's well, and yesterday we visited the Gethsemane garden and the hill of Golgotha-it really does look like a skull, doesn't it?-though Gene couldn't see it." To her husband: "I certainly saw it, Gene."

"Eye of the beholder," said Gene. "Are you eating all of your soup?"

"Take it, honey. All the walking we did, you need your nutrition."

"Thanks."

The waitress brought a plate of appetizers: stuffed peppers and marrows, chopped oxtail, kirshe, pickled vegetables, slices of grilled kidney, coin-sized barbecued chicken hearts.

"What's this?" asked Gene, tasting some of the kirshe.

"It's a traditional Yemenite dish called kirshe," said Laura. "The meat is chopped pieces of cow's intestine, boiled, then fried with onion, tomatoes, garlic, and spices."

"Chitlins," said Gene. Turning to his wife: "Excuse me, chitterlings." He took some more, nodded approvingly. Picking up the menu, he put on a pair of half-glasses and scanned it.

"Got a lot of organ meats here,"he said. "Poor folks'food."

"Gene," said Luanne.

"What's the matter?" asked her husband innocently. "It's true. Poor folks eat organs 'cause it's an efficient way of getting protein and rich folks throw it away. Rich folk eat sirloin steaks and get all the cholesterol and clogged arteries. Now you tell me who's smarter?"

"Liver is an organ meat and liver is loaded with cholesterol," said Luanne. "Which is why the doctor took you off it."

"Liver doesn't count. I'm talking hearts, lungs, glands-"

"All right, dear."

"Those people," said Gene, pointing to pictures on the walls. "Every one of them is skinny. They all look in great shape, even the old ones. From eating organs." He speared several chicken hearts with his fork and swallowed them.

"It's true," said Laura. "When the Yemenites first arrived, they had less heart disease than anyone. Then they started assimilating and eating like the Europeans and developed the same health problems as everyone else."

"There you go," said Gene, looking at the menu again. "What's this expensive stuff-'geed'?"