The Seven Good Years Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t look the least bit friendly anymore, started talking to me in the same familiar Japo-German dialect. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have bribed them with a good hot dog. Uzi’s Excel charts left no doubt that I could barely afford a warm coat and a pair of shoes. I kept phoning the bank. In our first few conversations, Jason sounded optimistic. Then he began getting defensive and, at a certain point, simply indifferent. When I asked him if he was looking at my investments and trying to do something to salvage what was left of them, he explained the bank’s policy: proactive management began with portfolios of one million dollars and up. I knew then we’d never again take a gondola trip together.
    â€œLook at the bright side,” Uzi said, and pointed at the picture of a friendly-looking man in the newspaper’s financial supplement. “At least you didn’t invest your money with Madoff.” As for Uzi, he made it through the crisis unscathed; he gambled all his money on wheat crops in India or weapons in Angola or vaccines in China. Before that conversation, I’d never heard of Madoff, but now I know all about Bernie. In retrospect, apart from the bit about the rip-off, we have a lot in common: two restless Jews who love to make up stories and have been sailing along for years in a gondola with a hole in the bottom. Did he, too, once, years ago, dream he was selling hot dogs at the train station? Maybe he also had some true friend, like Uzi, who never stopped giving bum advice?
    The guy on the news just announced a state of alert in the middle of the country and that there are roadblocks on some of the highways. There are rumors about a soldier being abducted. On my way home I buy a pack of diapers for Lev and stop at the video store to pick up a few episodes of
The Wire
and a bottle of iced tea. Just to be on the safe side.

Long View
    T he pleasant-voiced captain apologizes again over the loudspeaker. The plane was scheduled to take off two hours earlier and we still haven’t left. “Our crew still hasn’t been able to determine the problem with the plane, so we need to ask our passengers to disembark. We will update you as soon as we can.”
    The skinny young guy sitting next to me says, “It’s me. I did it. When we got on the plane, I talked to my wife on my cell, remember? She told me she was on the way to the beach with our daughter and the baby. I’m sitting here with my safety belt buckled, and all I can think is, Why the hell am I going to Italy? Instead of spending Saturday with my wife and daughter, why am I flying six hours, including a connecting flight, for some hourlong meeting my boss said was important? I hope the plane breaks down. I swear, that’s what I thought, I hope the plane breaks down, and look what happened.”
    As we reenter the terminal, a big woman wearing a flowered dress and dragging a suitcase the size of a coffin goes up to the skinny guy and asks him where we’re coming from. “Who cares where we’re coming from”—he winks at me—“the main thing is where we’re headed.”
    A few hours later, when I get on the small, crowded replacement plane that will take me to Rome on my way to Sicily, I’ll walk down the aisle and notice that the skinny guy isn’t there. Throughout the flight, I’ll picture him on the beach in Tel Aviv building sand castles with his wife and kid, and I’ll be jealous.
    I also have a wife, and a little boy, waiting for me in Tel Aviv. From the start, this trip was really inconvenient for me, too, and with every minute of delay it’s becoming less desirable. On Saturday evening I’m supposed to take part in an event at a small book festival in the town of Taormina. When the organizers invited me, I agreed to go because I thought I could take my family along, but a few weeks ago my wife realized that she had a prior work