Reunion by Hugh Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

heart, fish in order to avoid flesh, some kind of kosher impulse still vibrating inside him, an impulse to imitate his spiritual Master for so many years, Menke Katz, the great Kabbalist, whose special maggid (heavenly messenger) would come to him nightly and reveal things to him about the inner workings of The Divine, the Shekinah coming like the spirit of some sort of mammoth, eternal Sabbath Bride, to unite with the Male Principle inside the divine substance, so that all sexuality in the universe was a sort of pale reproduction of the inner-workings within the divine substance Itself …
    â€œI’ll have some fish.”
    â€œWe can go half and half. A little fish wouldn’t kill me. Although I was reading last week in one of the journals that the latest research indicates that fish doesn’t help the heart at all, it was all a big mistake … ”
    â€œWhat does anyone know?” he said with a touch of cynical finality.
    What did anyone know … or care …
    Like every morning back home when he’d take the dog out to do his necessities, 9:15, there’d be this old lady walking up the hill across the street with her jogging outfit on, seventy-five, eighty, determination on her face, like she was going to fool God, Death wasn’t going to get her, she’d be the one exception to the Universal Conflagration. Or the professor he saw most mornings, jogging shoes on, walking briskly up the street, heavy briefcase in hand, the same look of dogged determination on his face. The Eternals!! That’s what they thought.
    Thanatopsis.
    The Earth nothing more than one vast tomb.
    Up to the Member’s Dining Room.
    More of the same vast crowd, Buzzy remembering soccer games in Brazil/Peru where the crowds ran out with such madness that people were actually trampled and killed.
    The Maitre D’ recognized him. Italian. Robust. A little greyer than he’d been the last time Buzz had seen him, what, a year or two before, but still his same bustling, outgoing self, a man who saw Maitre-Deeing as something on the same level as being a symphony conductor or Chairman of the Board at Ford, Buzz loving to see someone actually happy in his own skin, happy in his own job.
    â€œAh, Professor Lox, to what do we owe the honor of this occasion?”
    â€œGrammar school class reunion!” he said.
    â€œGrammar school class reunion?”
    It was a little ‘unusual,’ if not ‘unique.’
    â€œThe last time I saw them they were fourteen, this time they’ll be sixty four.”
    â€œThat sounds … how shall I put it … I was going to say appalling … horrendous … frightening … ”
    â€œAll of that and more.”
    â€œWell, we’re glad to have you here,” looking down at his reservation-book, “The first free table we’ll have will be in [checking his watch] two and a half hours … ”
    â€œTwo and a half hours?!?!”
    â€œWell, you know it’s not just the ‘member’s’ lounge any more. It’s been opened up to the general public, and,” looking around with an expression of slight disdain, lowering his voice, “you know how that becomes … ”
    â€œWell, I have a starving wife on my hands,” said Buzz, “we can try downstairs.”
    â€œThe cafeteria?!?!” said the Maitre D’ with uncensored horror.
    â€œWell …” Buzz shaking hands with him, the Maitre D’ looking resigned and tragic.
    â€œA bientôt!!”
    â€œA bientôt!!”
    You almost forgot for a moment that you were in the realm of the Hog Butcher of the World.
    Downstairs to the cafeteria. The same general melée.
    â€œI feel like Custer’s Last Stand,” said Buzz, practically screaming in order to get through to Malinche.
    â€œCustard?”
    â€œToo many people.”
    â€œIt’s like home,” she said, for a moment his mind twisting back to