Vigil by Robert Masello Page B

that his delusional episodes were under control and that he, Ezra, was no longer a threat to anyone, and certainly not to the sovereign state of Israel. Or, on the other hand, he could tell the truth—he could tell her what the stolen scroll was gradually revealing to him—and risk being committed to some institution where the only rolled-up paper he’d ever see again would be the toilet tissue.
    It wasn’t a tough call.
    “The change of scene has done me good,” he said. “Here, in my old rooms, in New York City, I feel a lot more relaxed. I don’t feel any of that mania I experienced in the Middle East.”
    She gave him a fishy look. He hadn’t sold her.
    “And the voices? Of angels?”
    “I never claimed that it was angels who actually talked to me. Even at my worst, I never said that.”
    But she wouldn’t let him duck the question. “Whatever you believed the voices were, do you still hear them? You have to tell me, Ezra, if you are still experiencing auditory hallucinations. Otherwise, it’s very hard for me to help you.”
    That, he thought, was worth a laugh. The very idea that Dr. Neumann could offer him any help at all, apart from keeping his prescriptions filled, was a joke.
    “No, I’m not having any hallucinations,” he said, once again carefully skirting the truth. “Everything I hear, and see, is real.”
    From the look on her face, his powers of persuasion still needed work.
     
As did his patience. Sitting, now, in the dining room of the Sutton Place apartment, it was all he could do not to bolt from his chair. But the price of living here, Ezra reminded himself, was enduring the occasional scene like this.
    His father sat at the head of the table, in a silk smoking jacket—since when had he started wearing those?—and Kimberly sat at the other end, with her perfect hair and makeup and outfit. Ezra was stuck in the middle, and in jeans and a Gap sweatshirt he was feeling distinctly underdressed.
    Gertrude put the bowl of sautéed potatoes and onions down by Ezra’s elbow—“Eat all you want,” she said, “but save room for dessert”—then turned back toward the kitchen door.
    “That will be all, Gertrude,” Kimberly said, quite unnecessarily, as the door had already swung shut behind her.
    Ezra took some of the potatoes and onions, then tried to pass them to Kimberly, who held up her hand as if he were trying to pass her a bowl of rancid milk. He handed them instead to his father, who had to pull back on the sleeve of his too-tight smoking jacket in order to reach them.
    “I had a chance to talk to somebody in the Israeli embassy today,” Sam said, portentously.
    Ezra kept his head down and ate his veal and potatoes.
    “They’re not going to pursue the matter,” Sam said.
    “What matter?” Kimberly asked, sipping her wine.
    “The matter of Ezra’s criminal trespass.”
    Here it came. First Dr. Neumann, and now his father. Was anyone ever going to let it go?
    “Criminal trespass? Where?” She looked at Ezra with what might have passed, if he hadn’t known better, for maternal concern. “What’s this all about?”
    “You want to answer that, Ezra?” his father echoed.
    “If you spoke to the embassy, then you already know all about it.”
    “I want to hear it from you.”
    Ezra took another quick bite—there was no telling how much longer he’d be at the table—then said, “I knew what I was doing.”
    “Don’t you always,” Sam replied acidly.
    “They’ve got so many rules and regulations over there about where you can go, what you can do, who you can talk to, that if you observed them all, you’d never get anything done.”
    “Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, they have all those rules for a reason? That maybe the government of Israel knows more about how to run things than you do?”
    “They know how to run a government—and even that’s debatable—but they don’t know a damn thing about what I do.”
    “And what is that, Ezra?” Kimberly