Shadows of Berlin

20.

A Dinner Roll

Out of the oven, the chicken Kiev receives cooing accolades from Tyrell and Rachel, but not so Aaron. Naomi places it on the hot pad at the center of the table with her oven mitts on and invites Tyrell to carve it into slices, addressing him as “Boyfriend.” Aaron looks on sullenly, causing Rachel to fill in for the empty spot he’s occupying. “It smells delicious,” she declares and gets busy helping Naomi with the vegetable dishes. Mashed potatoes seasoned with paprika and minced garlic, and asparagus served with a cream of mushroom sauce, looking as bright as fresh oil paint on a palette. Rachel notes the tins of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup lying in the garbage pail.

“It all smells so wonderful,” she confirms again, sinking a large serving spoon into the corner of the mashed potatoes. Naomi is setting out a basket of dinner rolls and covering them with a striped tea towel to keep them warm as they sit down to eat. Tyrell assists Naomi with her chair in a gentlemanly fashion, forcing Aaron, who is midsit, to quickly hop over and follow suit with Rachel. “Thank you, Husband,” Rachel offers him.

Naomi raises her glass of Chianti for a toast that serves as a blessing. “Blessed is he who creates the fruit of the earth. Or in this case, the fruit of the vine,” she says with a smile. “L’Chaim.”

“L’Chaim,” Rachel echoes pleasantly.

Tyrell declines to attempt “L’Chaim” but is smiling when he says, “To your health.” Aaron? Nothing. He just takes a deep swallow from his goblet. But as the dishes are passed and plates filled, he begins to raise himself from his silence. A friendly barracuda.

“So what do you do, Mr. Williams?” Aaron is interested to learn.

“He’s a lawyer,” Naomi answers for him. “Just graduated from Columbia Law School.”

“Well.” Tyrell smiles in modest correction. “Actually I’m not a lawyer yet. Not yet,” he repeats. “I still have to pass the bar.”

“Oh, but you will pass it,” Naomi assures him. “I know you will. You’re brilliant. He’s brilliant,” she assures all.

“No,” Tyrell disagrees in a good-­natured way, slicing his asparagus. “That is not true. Far from it.”

“It is true,” Naomi replies, then turns to Rachel with a confidential smile. “You should see him play chess.”

“Oh? You play chess?” Aaron asks, as if this might interest him, the man who’s played checkers his entire life.

“I play a bit of chess, sure,” Tyrell admits.

“He practically put himself through law school with it,” Naomi announces, and here’s the chicken tuck of Aaron’s chin jerk.

“You play for money?” he asks.

Tyrell must pick up on the ambivalence, because his answer is constrictive. “I’ve made a couple bucks,” he confesses. “But I’ve lost a couple too. More than a couple.” He smiles. “There are plenty of people whom I’ve played who are ten times better than me.”

“He means the Russians,” Naomi kibbitzes. “There’s a whole crowd of all these old farts from Leningrad or wherever over in Washington Square. But you’ve nearly beaten what’s-­his-­name,” she reminds him. “The grand master.”

“Yaakov,” Tyrell says and frowns lightly.

“Right. That’s him. Yaakov.” She pronounces the name as if it’s the name of a new Soviet secret weapon. The Yaakov Bomb.

“Really. A grand master.” Aaron grins with a touch of malice. “So how much did he take you for?”

“Nothing. Yaakov doesn’t play for money. And I’ve never ‘nearly’ beaten him.” Tyrell pokes his fork into the food on his plate. “Not by a long shot. I had him on the run for a minute or two maybe, but that was just luck.”

“Okay, if you insist,” Naomi surrenders. “But this from the man who doesn’t believe in luck.”

“I agree,” Rachel hears herself say. “I don’t believe in luck either, Mr. Williams.”

“True,” her husband confirms, chewing. “She doesn’t. You never hear her say, ‘good luck,’ my wife. Not even ‘break a leg.’” And then, “So,” he says, chewing. “Mr. Williams.” Swallows. “If you don’t mind me asking. How old are you?”

“He’s thirty,” Naomi answers.

“And who am I asking, you?” Aaron says to his sister. “I think if the man is thirty years old, he can speak for himself.”

“That’s right. I think I can,” Tyrell assures Naomi firmly. “I’m actually thirty-­one,” he says and takes a bite of his chicken. “This is delicious, Naomi,” he tells her, eliciting a girly grin that might even qualify as starry-­eyed.

But Aaron is still stuck on Tyrell’s age. “Thirty-­one,” he says with a frown. “Isn’t that a little late, you know, for just graduating college?”

“Well, not really college. Law school, I think, is considered to be graduate studies,” Tyrell corrects mildly, thoughtfully. “But you’re right. It is late.” To this he nods in agreement. “I started late, you might say. I had an undergrad degree from City College—­”

“On full scholarship,” Naomi interjects.

Tyrell simply smiles over the top of that fact. “In engineering,” he finishes. “Worked for a firm uptown for a while. But. I don’t know.” He scratches his head, frowning. “Swimming in electrical schematics and all, day after day? After a while, I was looking for a change. And then,” he says, “Uncle Sam decided I should spend twenty-­four months in Korea with the Eighth Army, Second Infantry Division. It wasn’t till afterward that I went back to Columbia for law on the G.I. Bill.”

“He was in combat,” Naomi cuts in sharply, informing her brother with reverent relish. “Against the Red Chinese.” The words Red Chinese are spoken as if a more lethal opponent on earth cannot be imagined, though oddly her eyes are still smiling.

“Really?” says Aaron, eyes flat. A frown of stilted interest. “I didn’t realize that, ya’ know, everybody over there was actually fighting.”

A small, infinitesimal pause as Tyrell absorbs this remark before he answers. “Actually, you’re correct about that, Mr. Perlman,” he says. “I wasn’t sent there to fight. I was sent there as a pack mule. The army didn’t put Negro troops in the front lines,” he says. “Instead they had us in the rear, hauling supplies and digging latrines. Dug a lot of latrines, I can tell you that,” he recalls with only a tiny glimmer of polite bitterness.

“Aaron went to school on the G.I. Bill too,” Rachel hears herself announcing, but that’s all she can manage to say.

“Yeah, though not exactly for a real degree,” Naomi points out. “Not exactly at Columbia University.”

“No, well, that’s true,” Aaron agrees. An admission. “Not exactly that. Two semesters at N.Y.S. Applied Arts, Brooklyn.”

“So you were in the service too, Mr. Perlman,” Tyrell adds chivalrously, trying to keep things from disintegrating.

“The service? Yep,” Sergeant Perlman answers. “For the big one. Duration plus six. Though I was stationed stateside. In California.”

“A fortunate man,” Tyrell says plainly.

Naomi, however, scoffs. “Yeah. Keeping Culver City safe for democracy.”

“Naomi,” Rachel breathes.

“No, it’s okay.” Aaron raises his palm. “She’s right. I wasn’t exactly raising the flag on Iwo Jima.” And then he makes his confession. “I was in the Three-­Ninety-­Fourth Quartermaster Detachment, Mr. Williams. Technical services. I coordinated logistics with the U.S.O. Victory Circuit on the West Coast.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” Tyrell offers.

“More fun than hand-­to-­hand combat.” Naomi nods, scooping another helping of the mashed potatoes onto Tyrell’s plate. “Wouldn’t you agree, Aaron?”

“Oh yeah. Much more fun,” Aaron replies. “For me it was just hand-­to-­hand with the caterers,” he says with a sharp downturn of his lip. “But I’m confused. Maybe somebody can explain to me how hauling supplies in the rear and, well, digging out latrines qualifies as combat duty.”

“Aaron,” says Rachel. “There’s no reason to ask such personal questions.”

“No, it’s okay,” his sister insists firmly. “I’m proud of how Tyrell served his country.” Turning to Tyrell, she prompts him. “Tell him, Tyrell. Tell him about the Chongchon River.”

Tyrell frowns. “Naomi.”

“Please. He needs to know. How many times have you said that America’s forgotten about the war in Korea, like it never happened. We all need to know,” she says.

A breath. “Okay. If, uh, if that’s what you want.” Tyrell swallows some wine and scratches his head again, as if activating the memory. “The Second Infantry Division,” he says. “We’d, uh, we pushed the NKs… I mean, the North Koreans… We’d pushed them back. Past the Thirty-­Ninth Parallel and all the way to the border with China on the Yalu River. So we thought, okay, we had ’em pretty well whipped. That’s what everybody believed, I guess. The brass even commenced what they called the ‘Home-­by-­Christmas’ offensive,” he tells them. Rachel can see the pain of this memory drifting across the man’s eyes. “But things don’t always go according to plan in the army. Do they, Mr. Perlman?”

“They do not,” Aaron must agree.

Tyrell takes a breath. “One night at the end of November… Well, it was a bit of a surprise, if I can put it that way, when a few hundred thousand Chinese regulars came screaming across the river with their bugles blowing. We were…” he starts to say and stops. Searching for the correct word perhaps as he shakes his head. “We were overwhelmed,” he says. “Half the division was simply—­annihilated.” It’s the only word he can find to describe it. “Out of the forty-­two men in our platoon, I was one of only six who made it out alive. The rest of them? I don’t know. Maybe they’re still there lying in those mountain fields. Nothing but bones by now, I suppose.”

A dead silence reigns over the room. It settles as if those bones have been scattered across the table.

“Helluva story,” Aaron admits quietly, staring into his wine before taking a frowning swallow. His face is flushed.

“Not a very happy story for the dinner table,” Tyrell tells Naomi, as if to say, I told you not to push me on it.

Naomi absorbs this and sucks in a breath. “I’m gonna open that second bottle of wine,” she announces.

The meal continues with the passing of side dishes and the refilling of glasses. But Rachel can see that her husband’s face has darkened. His color has settled into a flush of male embarrassment. He’s quit his interest in the food on his plate and pours more wine. “Mr. Williams,” he begins, even though his sister hasn’t finished talking about how she got her recipe for the chicken from The Joy of Cooking. “This old guy. ‘Yaakov’ you called him,” Aaron begins. He speaks the name into the air as if to consider it more clearly. “The great grand master or whatever. He’s a Jew?” Aaron wonders. “I mean, ‘Yaakov.’ It sounds like a Jew’s name, am I right?”

“I really don’t know, Mr. Perlman,” Tyrell answers, tending to his plate. “I’ve never asked him.”

“Oh, so you can’t tell,” Aaron concludes. “I mean, he doesn’t have a huge schnozz or anything? He doesn’t talk obsessively about how much money he’s losing—­but oh, that’s right. He can’t possibly be a Jew, can he, because with him, no money changes hands.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Naomi demands sharply over Tyrell’s silence.

“What?” Aaron is just an innocent guy. “I’m just making conversation with your friend here, the lawyer. Oh, I’m sorry—­the almost-­a-­lawyer. You know,” he says, returning to his plate with alacrity, cutting up a spear of asparagus, “I mean, what do I know from chess? I’m just a Jew from Flatbush. But Rachel’s Uncle Fritz plays, doesn’t he, sweetheart?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “He tried to teach her how to play too, if memory serves, but she could never remember how the pieces moved.”

Rachel tries to maintain a smile. “I don’t have a mathematical mind,” she admits.

“You’re an artist, Naomi tells me,” Tyrell suggests helpfully.

“Yeah, if she ever stops glaring at an empty canvas,” Aaron answers for her, chewing as he cuts up more asparagus. Rachel feels it like a knife stab.

“Well, I could never paint any kind of picture,” Tyrell declares. “That takes a special kind of talent that I do not possess.”

“Naomi, I’m going to get a glass of water,” Rachel says.

“Oh, let me.” Her sister-­in-­law starts to rise, but Rachel waves her off.

“No, no, no. I’ll get it.” At the sink with her back to the table, she listens closely to the water gurgling into the glass from the tap. Her hand trembles as she drinks it. She is having a problem. An old problem. After going hungry in hiding, it’s still painful for her to eat in public. She has managed to train herself away from it, but it can still turn up during moments of tension, and right now, she has a killing desire to start hiding food instead of eating it. She drinks the water down as Naomi appears with an empty platter and a few utensils greasy with sauce that she sets in the sink.

“You okay?” Naomi asks.

“Yes. You?”

Naomi shakes her head ruefully, turning on the tap to rinse the plate. “My brother. What a piece of fucking work.”

“Should I make him take me home?”

“Nah, Tyrell can handle it. He’s been handling bigoted assholes his whole life,” she says with smothered anger. Rachel wonders: A bigoted asshole? Is that who she’s married? Naomi shows her a forced smile. “Go. Sit back down. I’ll be there in a minute. I just wanna get a jump on some of the cleanup.”

Rachel assumes that it’s Naomi’s excuse to escape for a moment too and nods. But when Rachel returns to the table, she can’t help but focus on the dinner rolls in a basket, and she thinks if she could only slip one into her sweater pocket, that might be enough. Just to know it’s there. Just to know she won’t starve. That she won’t ever be starved again. Just a dinner roll, that’s all. Then she eyes Aaron’s wine goblet. He’s just refilled it with the last of the Chianti. It’ll make a mess of his slacks, but he deserves an embarrassing ride on the subway, so Rachel reaches for the basket of dinner rolls.

“Shit!” Aaron yelps as he leaps up from the table, his lap drenched by the overturned goblet.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry, Husband.” Rachel is apologizing loudly, heatedly, but the deed is already done, the dinner roll has been expertly pocketed. And it would have been perfect, a flawless theft, if she had not been caught by a blink of Tyrell’s eyes.

Naomi is on the job with a dish towel. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She clucks maternally at Aaron as if he’s obviously overdoing it. “For god’s sake, it’s not the end of the fucking world. Besides, you deserved it for being such a first-­class putz all night. Remember what Pop used to say? Ess, bench, sei a mensch.” Eat, pray, and be a man! Not a putz.

Aaron grabs the towel from her and starts roughly brushing at the wet spot. “Yeah? Thanks for the reminder, Sis,” he says acrimoniously. “Just tell me how this is going to look when I get on the fucking subway, huh? The man who’s pissed himself.”

“So take a taxi,” says Naomi.

“Right. Money to burn.” Aaron frowns, embarrassed at having to tamp dry the crotch of his slacks in front of another man. “Take a taxi,” he smirks, shaking his head.

“Oh, for… I’ll give you the goddamned two dollars, cheapskate!” Naomi detonates, her face bleached by the burst of anger. “Jesus Christ!”

The float of traffic noises from the street suddenly becomes very pronounced in the silence that follows. Aaron glares, jaw clenched. Then abruptly, he frowns and swipes at the stain on his trousers again. “Well, let’s not bring him into this,” he requests, then adds, “No offense meant, Mr. Williams.”

“None taken,” Tyrell assures him cleanly.

Aaron has had enough of mopping up and tosses down the dish towel with a huff, then sits, elbows on the table, fingers woven together. “I have a clumsy wife sometimes,” he tells Tyrell without rancor, simply explaining one of the small banes of his fucking existence. “And I’m sorry if I’ve been offensive,” he says as he refills his goblet from the bottle of white. “As my wife can testify, I’m sure, she married a jerk.” He shrugs and then tips back the wine.

There’s some problem with the I.R.T. at West Fourth, so they have to walk to Christopher Street and Sheridan Square to take the Broadway Local to 23rd. Not much is said. Aaron sits beside her on the subway with his coat closed over the wine stain. The local is slow and truculent. A rattling bucket of bolts, schlepping its sardined passengers from one stop to the next.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Rachel says finally.

But Aaron only looks at her as if he’s really a mile or two away. “What?”

“I didn’t spill the wine on you purposely,” she lies.

“Okay,” he shrugs. Willing to accept this.

The train lumbers into the 23rd Street station with a dull blast of thunder and starts to brake.

“This is us,” Aaron announces blankly.

It’s a ten-­minute walk to their apartment building. As they cross Ninth Avenue, Rachel pulls the dinner roll out of the pocket of her sweater and drops it in the gutter for the pigeons to fight over.

“So why do you think your husband acted in such a hostile manner?” her shrink wonders aloud.

Rachel draws in smoke from her cigarette. “I don’t know.”

“Do you,” the doctor asks, “believe he is bigoted? Racially speaking.”

“No,” she says. “Yes. I don’t know. It shocked me. I’ll admit this. I’ve never once heard him speak a single insulting word. How is it called? A slur,” she says. “But I have noticed that he keeps a certain distance in place with the Negro men working at the restaurant. The gentleman who plays the piano. The doorman. He’s often overtly chummy with them, like they’re friends, but still there’s a barrier he keeps up. It’s a fausse amitié,” she says. “According to his sister, their father was the same way.”

The doctor nods without expression. “So you think that your husband’s attitude may be inherited? Copying his father’s behavior?”

“I never knew his father, so it’s hard for me to say. But I do know that underneath their bickering, he really does worry about Naomi. He feels responsible for her. You know, not only is he the older brother, but with his father gone? He’s the man of the family. Isn’t that the expression? That’s why Naomi tries so often to thwart him.” Touching the cigarette to her lips. “And I think it frightened him. His sister with a Negro man? What would that mean for her future? Greenwich Village is one thing, but how will the rest of the world see it?”

“Is that how you see it?”

“No. The world is an ugly and dangerous place for everyone. People will do as they will do, for good or ill, no matter what color they are. But Aaron? He is still naive in this way. He still believes that a person can be safe in life. So perhaps his fears got the better of him? Though I believe he is terribly ashamed of himself for how he acted.”

“He told you that?”

“Not in so many words.” Exhales smoke. “But he is.”

“So,” the good doctor points out, “you didn’t actually discuss it between you?”

“We did try,” she tells him. “I told him that I didn’t understand why he had tried to make Mr. Williams out to be anti-­Semitic. Without any cause at all. As if he was simply digging out an excuse to dislike him.”

“And”

“He said he didn’t need an excuse. But. As I said, I think in the end, it was all much more about Aaron’s relationship with Naomi than it was about Naomi’s relationship with Mr. Williams.”

“And what,” the doctor wants to know, “is the effect of all this friction on Mrs. Perlman?”

A glance up. “His mother?”

“No. You, Rachel.” The doctor lifts his eyebrows above the frame of his glasses. “You. The subject of our discussions here.”

Rachel feels her stomach tighten. “I spilled his wine.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Because he was being insulting?”

“No,” she says. “Because I wanted to steal a dinner roll.”

Dr. Solomon looks back at her, obviously patient.

She inhales smoke more deeply. “I was afraid,” she says painfully, “that there wouldn’t be enough food.” She shifts. The chair she is filling feels suddenly painful to sit in. “It strikes me at times. I wanted to hide a piece of bread.”

And now the doctor observes her with a great projection of sorrow. “I understand,” he whispers.

But does he? Can he? She doubts it. Not really. He can’t understand the agonizing urgency of it. U-­boat Jews wandering Berlin without shelter, without food for days. Searching refuse bins for scraps. The gnawing anguish, the belly cramps, the terrible pains inflicted by one’s own body in the absence of any nourishment. The imprint that starving makes on a person’s body, on their soul. The shame it perpetrates on the young girl who still lives inside her.

Her mother believed in drawing. She had received a classical training at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where proper draftsmanship was considered an essential skill. Before she applied the first brushstroke from her palette, the entire composition was worked out in charcoal across the face of the Dead Layer. Perfect propositions meant perfect harmony. Eema believed in re-­creating the music of the spheres in her art. But Rachel never had the patience for Pythagoras. Her mother would force her to lay down a sketch on the canvas, but it was never harmonious. It was rushed and rough, because it was the color she was hungry for. The paint wet on her brush swiping color across the surface.

Now, however, the colors of her desire have all grayed. After the Episode, they became mud and gravel and ashes. A night in a straitjacket contaminated her desire. Color led her to insanity, and those smears of saffrons and scarlets and cobalt blues that have long since dried to her palette? They only serve to taunt her now.

She has put the canvas away. It wouldn’t fit in any closets, so she had no choice but to slide it under the bed, where it lies in the dark, gathering clots of dust. She sits on the windowsill by the fire escape. Her coffee cup is in her hand. She is still dressed in her pajamas as she stares out the window. Parked cars jam the street as delivery trucks try to artfully navigate the narrow passage. The buildings look dusty in the undiluted morning glare as she sips at her cup. Aaron drinks his coffee with milk, but she cannot stand it that way and must have it black. People pass on the sidewalk below in an oddly aimless fashion, as if the light or the early morning chill has shrunk their ambitions for the day.

Aaron is at the table. For breakfast, she had poached him two eggs for his toast, though perhaps they’re not so perfectly shaped. Aaron hasn’t complained about their odd shapes, however. As long as they’re messy when he puts his fork into them, that’s all he cares about. He likes his toast soaked in yolk.

On his way out the door for work, he asks her, “Is my tie straight?”

Rachel adjusts it. “Yes, it’s you that’s crooked.”

“Funny.” He offers her a peck on the lips, and she takes it.

“Have you talked to Naomi?”

“No,” says Aaron leadenly. “Have you?”

“She’s not mad at you.”

“No? Well, that’s what she tells you, just to lure me into her trap. Then the next day, they find what’s left of me in the East River.”

“Tyrell seems like a very decent man. And I think they really care for one another.”

“Terrific,” he says. And then, “I’m only thinking of her, ya know. Naomi has lost her fucking mind with this guy? Okay, fine for now. But what’s gonna happen in the future? That’s all I’m saying. I’m trying to save her heartache is all. And him too,” he declares. “Him too. He even said that his family was against him dating a white girl.”

“Did he say that?”

“Sure. Weren’t you listening? About his sister?”

“His family must be fearful for him.”

“And they’ve a right to be, God bless ’em,” Aaron declares as if his point has finally been proven. “They’re fearful for him, just like I’m fearful for her.” He says this, then huffs out a breath. “Look, I don’t wanna talk about this right now, okay? You can berate me later. Right now, I gotta get to work before they let the salmon go bad.”

“I’m not berating you. Just stop being so judgmental for once.”

“For once. Great,” Aaron says. “Okay, so I’m the big problem here, huh?”

“You know that Jews are not always considered to be ‘white.’ And I don’t mean in the old country. I mean right here in America. Think about that.”

“All right—­you don’t need to explain to me what it means to be a Jew in this country. I think I know that by now. My question to you is: What if he was German?”

Rachel’s jawline tenses. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means: What if he was German? What if Naomi’s new boyfriend was named Wilhelm instead of Williams?”

Rachel steps back from her husband. “Aaron,” she murmurs, her expression darkening.

“I’m sorry. I know, I’m touching the taboo subject. I’m just the Jew from Flatbush, while you’re the one who lived through hell. I have no right, I know that. But I’m also not the one who can’t go down to the basement to ask the super to unclog the friggin’ pipes because he’s a goddamned Kraut.”

“Go to hell,” Rachel says flatly. And when Aaron realizes that maybe he’s gone too far and tries to retract, she pushes him away.

“Rachel, look…”

“I said, go to hell!” She shouts at him this time. “Go! Go make sure your precious salmon doesn’t go bad. Go!”

He gazes back at her, face pallid, then puffs a sigh. “Okay,” he says and wiggles his finger in his ear as his face bloats with a frown. “Okay. Look, I’m sorry. I overstepped. It was unkind.”

“Unkind?” Rachel turns back, her eyes hot and her face wet with tears. “You have no conception what it was like. You don’t know,” she blames him. “And once more, you don’t want to know. You think you’ve done your duty,” she cries, smearing away her tears. “You think you did your part. You married the poor refugee who’d escaped with her life and nothing more. And so that somehow absolves you from any guilt. Any guilt that while you were busy schtupping pretty shiksas in California, there were millions of Jews living in terror and despair! Millions shipped off in filthy boxcars like animals! Millions of Jews funneled into the gas chambers! Including my mother!”

Aaron stares at her, stunned. His face completely blank and devoid of color. But Rachel can do nothing but collapse into the chair and sob into her arms.

And then he is beside her. His voice is helpless, but his arms are there, enclosing her. “I’m a putz. I think we’ve established that. You married a putz, and I should be sorry for you. But never, Rachel. Please. Don’t ever think that I married you out of guilt. I married you because you are the woman I love, and that is the only reason.”

She turns her head and lets herself be enfolded by him, sobbing against his skinny polka-­dot tie, wetting his clean white shirt. The grief, the drowning, unfathomable grief is too much. The grief of a victim, the grief of a betrayer, the grief of one who has survived. She carries all three. The image of the schoolgirl is buried in the corner of her mind. Her braids. Her burgundy beret. A child innocent as rain.

But Aaron is there. A wall for her to wail against. Finally, she manages to tell him, “You married me because I was the only one who would have you.”

“That too,” Aaron agrees and kisses her softly on her head. “That too.”

“You should go,” she tells him, sniffing. “Your salmon.”

“The hell with the salmon,” he answers, rocking her lightly. “The salmon can turn to shit for all I care. Let ’em eat pollack.”