Read Online Love Is the Law by Nick Mamatas - Free Book Online Page A

before she started making out with Greg. After that, I just wanted to talk to her. Bernstein always said that he had almost no other men in his life—in his real life, that is, outside of his busy days writing and responding to letters. We ’ d found one another thanks to a complex of sociosexual reasons, the demand for yin by yang, and “vice-a-voisa” he had said to me once. Bernstein had a bit of a Queens accent, and years of isolation on Long Island did only a little to dampen it. Only when he was performing a ritual or speaking with his true Will behind him did his voice change, growing deeper, almost senatorial, and the nasal buzz of his voice vanished.
    I called WUSB and asked if they had anything by the Abyssal Eyeballs, which was sort of a fool ’ s errand, since their library was so huge. Then I called the concert line, but it was still the same tape from the day before. There were never too many shows on a Tuesday night.
    And then I was at loose ends. For years, I ’ d been wandering from encounter to encounter, from weirdo to weirdo, hunting for other members of the Imaginary Party, my haircut a freak flag which people could salute. I found one in Bernstein, then he was taken from me. I decided to give Grandma another whirl and planted the painting of Crowley ’ s Tower card in front of the television. The apartment was only a one-bedroom, so she slept on a fold-out couch in the living room. When she awoke, it was slow and awkward, as if each new day was truly a disappointing surprise.
    Grandma ’ s eyes focused on the painting, as if it were part of the set of Good Morning America . Then she said, “Is it Christmas? Is Jerome coming again?”
    “Did he only come on Christmas?” I asked.
    “Well, he always came on Christmas,” Grandma said. “His parents were Orthodox Jews. He liked the idea of Christmas, I guess, since it was forbidden fruit for him.” It had never even occurred to me to think of Bernstein as a human being with parents, possibly siblings, with connections to the world other than the ones he had revealed to me.
    “When did you last see him?”
    “Oh, oh . . . years ago,” she said. “Just before we lost the house.”
    “Really?” I wanted to reach out and shake her, to crack open her head like an egg and paw through the stupid goop of her brains for the information. “He was at the house?”
    “He bought the house . . .” she said. “He was going to let us stay.” She sucked on her lip for a moment. “But then he didn’t.”
    “This is Christmas Jerome you’re talking about. Jerome Bernstein bought our house when the bank foreclosed?”
    “That’s right.”
    “That’s fucked.” So fucked it was hard to believe. Memories drift like ice floes in the dark sea of Grandma’s mind. Sometimes two different ones collide and combine into a new memory of something that never even happened. When Grandma was in her right mind, she hated cursing. Even “shut up” was too much for her. She’d tell me, “Say ‘be quiet’ if you must say anything, because the word ‘quiet’ ends with a smile. ‘Shut up’ ends with a frown.” When I turned thirteen I started saying “lighten up” to her in response, but she never did point out that I was still frowning. She would just frown and wander away.
    Now her antipathy toward cursing was gone. “Oh yes, very fucked indeed,” Grandma said. “That’s what put Billy over the edge, I’m sure.”
    “Well, why did he?”
    “Why did who do what, dear?”
    “Why did Jerome buy the house?”
    “Oh, Jerome didn ’ t buy our house!” she said.
    “Who did?”
    “Billy ’ s other friend from school.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Was the name of Billy ’ s other friend from school . . . Jerome?” Grandma just looked at me. Sometimes a little presto-changeo like that could help her brain reset, but not this time.
    “No, no,” she said. “Jerome is a Jew. This was the other fellow. Billy ’ s friend from school.”
    “The