Peep Show by Joshua Braff Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t care.”
    We all get close to the plot and Brandi kneels to touch the engraving. “Happy birthday, Mr. Arbus,” she says. “I hear you were quite a man.”
    A deep, deep breath from my father. “You both have about ten relatives on this plot, not including my mother. She wanted to be in Jersey with her sisters. My aunt Gertrude, my father’s sister, is somewhere out there, toward those sycamores, along that fence there, ya see where I mean?”
    â€œWhat’s that sound?” Debra says. “Fireworks?”
    I point the camera at my grandfather’s plot. The engraving, the yellowed grass, the small stones left on top.
Click
.
    â€œMicklin and my father got first-run movies for years. Tell me if I’ve told you this story already. I ran the projector with Chaplin and Errol Flynn films and everything Lionel Barrymore did in those days.”
    â€œLionel Barrymore?” Brandi asks.
    â€œThe contact wouldn’t run dry until the early forties and my father and Uncle Joe started getting films from another source. I’d be the one who went and picked the canisters up at a trucking yard in Jersey City.”
    A family of five walks by us. The man and the boy wear yarmulkes. “
Shabbat shalom
,” the man says to my father, who ignores him.
    â€œ
Shabbat shalom
,” Debra responds.
    â€œTuschsky was very kind to me, never once treated me like a kid. He was a big drinker and he liked to gamble all day but that son-of-a-bitch was never afraid to put his arm around me and even used to kiss me . . . on my forehead. Something my father would never ever do.”
    My dad kneels on the grass before his father’s plot. “Happy ninety-first birthday, Papa.”
    Brandi steps closer to him and waves Debra and me toward her. It’s awkward for me. Staged sentimentality. I don’t really move but then my sister’s hand is out and I take it and we all end up behind my dad.
    â€œFamily is the only thing that matters. These two people right here are my children. Your beautiful grandchildren,” he tells the stone. “You met David a while back but he’s changed a lot. He’s a man now. Look at him. I know he’s gonna make me so proud out there . . . with his old man. And
this
, this person over here is my girl. I don’t get to see her as much as I used to, as much I need to. My God, she’s growing up so fast, Papa.”
    Debra bends to hug him, and I wish I’d done that too.
    My father is silent for a minute and stands, his cheeks lined with tears. “Okay,” he says, “I love ya, and I just wanted to say hello and happy birthday. So, good-bye for now. We’re gonna go do something fun. Right?”
    â€œRight!” says Brandi.
    We walk back down the path toward the car and I notice that Debra and Brandi aren’t next to us. When I look back at them their faces are so close, their noses practicallytouching. I lift my camera and decide to call this one
The Hasid and the Stripper. Click
. Top five this week:
    5. Smashed TV
    4. Styrofoam Wig Head
    3. Old Man with Hand in Garbage Can
    2. Burnt Orange Sun Setting between Skyscrapers
    1. The Hasid and the Stripper
    â€œDavid,” my father says.
    â€œLooks like Deb and Brandi are friends,” I say.
    â€œYeah, yeah,” he says. “She can be a nightmare, that one. You wouldn’t believe what she was laying on me all night.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œGo ask her. It’s what we were fighting about. Or go ask Ira. He’ll tell you.”
    â€œWhy can’t you tell me?”
    â€œThey want to upgrade, like everyone else, just go and turn the place into a goddamn peep show. Big plans, big ideas, put the film peeps in, the live peeps in, just turn it all into a big fuckin’ gyno exam. I tell them over and over, nothing brings the scum in faster than the peeps, but they don’t care, they see dollar signs in