The Best Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing just beyond a framed doorless doorway leading to the inner offices. As I walked through, an alarm went off, just as they do in airports.
    As I stepped back, Miss Atherton laughed uncomfortably, holding out a plastic tray. “You must have quite a few keys or a lot of change. Could you drop them in here while you pass through?”
    I put my key case, car keys, and a lot of change on the tray. “That’s what did it,” Miss Atherton said, her voice trying to make light of the procedure.
    I passed through the portal. No alarm. Miss Atherton handed the tray to me so that I could repocket my things.
    I passed the plastic tray to Ezra. “Very up to date,” I said.
    Ezra put a metal pillbox next to his keys on the tray. “You should carry those pills for me, Ben. I only take them when I’m going to be around you.”
    The secretary led us past two closed doors to the corner office and gestured to the open door. Beyond it we could see sofas and chairs, a Dufy on the wall, and, as we stepped forward, in the distant corner a man coming toward us with an energetic stride. Not quite as tall as I was, a natural blond beginning to gray, in his face a strong elegance his father did not have. He looked as if he ought to be a Ford Foundation executive—until he spoke.
    Pumping my hand, he said, “I’m pleased to see you.” His voice barely betrayed the gritty consonants of his childhood.
    “We met,” I said, “at your father’s house.”
    “I remember.” He shook Ezra’s hand as Ezra introduced himself.
    “Let’s get away from the desk,” Manucci said and guided Ezra and me to a sofa facing an armchair. “Please understand, I don’t know anything about your business. I’m not prepared to put a contract in front of you today”—this at me in particular—“and you didn’t have to pay a lawyer to come. I’m seeing you because my father called.”
    “I understand.”
    “I need a briefing.”
    I nodded. “Mr. Hochman prepared a short memo with the facts,” I said, opening my attaché and handing it to him. “I should explain that Mr. Hochman isn’t just my attorney. He’s a close friend.”
    “Good,” Manucci said. “Maybe I should have brought a close friend.” He chuckled. “How about some coffee, with a little anisette, maybe?”
    I remembered the Sunday morning long ago when Louie announced that for a change he wasn’t going to pay his respects to Aldo Manucci alone. Our family had been invited to Sunday dinner with their family, an honor, an event. My mother refused. Louie begged her not to be difficult, this was very important. Zipporah insisted that he was going out of fear of not going. “He makes a beggar out of you,” she said. Louie’s fury frightened me. “Manucci never makes me beg. You make me beg you to come with me. Do you think he invites customers for Sunday dinner? We are friends now, Italians, Jews, it doesn’t matter, our blood might yet cross.”
    I remember, later that day, my mother wanting to tuck the cloth napkin under my chin to keep the spaghetti sauce off my grown-up shirt and my only tie. I took the napkin from her. I could do it myself. And I remember the food, veal, and eggplant, and zucchini—I remember asking its name—and at the end, a cheesecake totally unlike the ones Louie brought home from the Jewish bakery, and with it, coffee and anisette. A drop or two was poured into my cup, though I was only twelve, with my mother protesting and Aldo Manucci saying, “It’s all right, next year he’s a man according to you, right?”
    My nod now gave Aldo Manucci’s son license to pour steaming black brew from the sterling silver coffee pot into the small, hand-painted porcelain cups. From the sideboard came the bottle of anisette.
    “Just a drop,” I said.
    “For flavor,” Manucci said.
    What might he have become if his father hadn’t been a moneylender? Even when I was twelve I couldn’t imagine myself sitting at a workbench the way Louie did day after