Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
Of course! A double life, such as I lead. And both lives saved for me and Israel by my mezuzah, cylindrical symbol of my faith.
Perhaps, it was no mere chance that Room 1818 was assigned to me. Perhaps ...
But there was no more time to think. Bond was due downstairs in ten minutes to perform his “cover” role, the second of his lives. He must now slip into this external character, play it charmingly and well. For M. and Eretz Israel!
2 The Man from “Mother”
“... and so, charming ladies of the Upper Middle Lower Township, Pennsylvania, Chapter of Hadassah,” said Bond, “your purchases of Mother Margolies’ Activated Old World Chicken Soup and, indeed all of Mother’s fine products, not only put the glorious culinary traditions of our ancient heritage upon your tables, nourishing your loved ones, but also assist your brethren in Eretz Israel, the Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Magnesia, to protect and defend its hallowed borders!”
Two hundred women, who had been nodding their teased hairdos approvingly all through his speech, burst into wild applause. Vivacious Mrs. Charlene Krosnick, president of the chapter which had booked the Palmetto Roach’s fabulously decorated Pina Colada Room for its post-midnight brunch, beamed at Bond from her dais seat. “Tell them how, Mr. Bond! Tell them how!” And she gave his thigh a sudden squeeze.
Bond permitted a quick smile to force itself through the teeth he had been gritting for the last twenty-five minutes. Mrs. Krosnick, he noted, was quite a dish, tawny, full-breasted, possessed of two glowing schav-green eyes that held promise.
“How, you may ask, can purchasing this superior chicken soup aid Israel’s gallant freedom fighters, your cousins across the sea, in their never-ending struggle? I shall now tell you a heart-warming thing: Mother Emma Margolies, the sweet, saintly old woman who has lent her skill and name to these splendid foods, has stipulated that fully twenty-five per cent—I’ll repeat that—twenty-five per cent of the gross proceeds—or the Schwartz proceeds, if that happens to be your name (Explosive laughter greeted his quickly conceived witticism.)—will be donated to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, thus enabling it to acquire the cream of the world’s obsolete weaponry.”
An even bigger round of applause followed his revelation of Mother’s charity.
“Such a brilliant speaker and so handsome, too!” said Cheer & Sorrow Secretary Mrs. Carol Bernstein, nudging Mrs. Marcia Freeman, Isometrics & Diet Cola Chairman. “Wonder if he’s married.”
“Nah ... those dark, cruelly handsome types with scars on their cheeks never are,” responded Mrs. Freeman sagely. “So forget about him for your Merry Robin. Better she should marry that dental technician from Allentown.” Thus cavalierly discarding Merry Robin’s chances at the devastatingly debonair Israeli, Mrs. Freeman began to scheme: How can I get him to meet my Tara Lynne? And what’s his name anyway? Her bejeweled fingers skimmed the program past “We shall all stand reverently as Mrs. Nettie Berk sings ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ ‘Hatikvah’ and ‘Hello, Dolly!’“... past “welcoming remarks by Mrs. Charlene Krosnick, president” ... lingering on “Our Guest of Honor, Mr. Israel Bond, public relations representative of Mother Margolies, Tel-Aviv, New York and Miami Beach.”
Israel Bond! A wonderful name, indeed, for a man from the Holy Land. And just look at Charlene Krosnick eating him up with those greedy eyes. Not that she blamed Charlene. Charlene’s husband, Max, was a fine provider and all that, but, well, dull... in the way a man can’t afford to be. Mrs. Freeman, who had spent one mad impetuous night with Max at a Harrisburg motel, knew this all too well.
No, she couldn’t blame Charlene. This Bond was quite a hunk of man. Though surely he needed a better tailor. His right shoulder was easily two shades darker than the rest of the suit.
At the lectern, Bond, feeling the blood soaking through, thought: Time to wind up this ghastly charade. Refreshing his parched throat with a quick, careless toss of Mother Margolies’ Old World Parsley Tonic (“It Bubbles from You the Troubles”), he dragged deeply on a Raleigh and concluded: “It’s been my pleasure to greet you dear Hadassah ladies, all of you truly ‘N’Shay Chayil,’ Women of Valor. Like so many other Israelis, I have marveled at your indefatigable good works which have culminated in the magnificent Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem on the outskirts of Jerusalem. This hospital, I am informed, is adding a new wing which will house exclusively the husbands of Hadassah members who have contracted stomach disorders from their wives’ cooking.
“And now other commitments dictate my regretful departure. But please do not leave. You will soon see a highly entertaining color film featuring Mother Margolies herself, who takes you on a tour of her factory. As for me, let me say ‘shalom,’ hoping that we shall all meet again on the slopes of Mount Tabor in Israel for the High Holy Days. In the meantime, remember our motto to be found on every can: ‘Like Mother Used to Make It, Mother Makes It.’ And so, shalom, shalom, I’ll say shalom; it’s the nicest greeting I know ... it means goodbye, salud, bon jour ... and twice as much as hello.”
He sat down heavily, then rose reluctantly, painfully to acknowledge their standing ovation. As the women regained their seats, they looked at him, squeezing their support hose-covered thighs in longing, sibilant sounds escaping their lips. Mrs. Krosnick again pressed against his thigh, then blushed.
It’s coming, Bond thought. He’d seen the lovely matron’s eyes X-raying his body all through the speech.
The room was darkened now and on the screen Mother Margolies was dicing carrots and turnips, sprinkling her commentary with old country aphorisms for which she had become justly famous: “The fool pours tapioca down an empty coal mine, but the wise man ...”
Another squeeze on the thigh, this time more demanding.
It happened before in dozens of other places: Bronx, Teaneck, Denver, LA, Sausalito. Wherever Bond, in his cover role as Mother’s spokesman, appeared there was invariably a hot-eyed, well-proportioned matron. She might be an ORT president, a JWV Auxiliary commander, a Worthy Keeper of the Seal of the Link of the Golden Chain ... and inevitably with a weary, inattentive husband named Max, Lou, Sheldon, etc., who had not been doing his homework. Ach! Stupid men they had to be to leave these treasures unattended!
Now Charlene was walking arm in arm with him, trying to make conversation as they passed through the lobby. Bond knew it would be hard for her, yet her compulsion was overpowering her. It’ll be hard for me too ... with this shoulder.
In the background he could hear the Hadassah “girls,” as she termed them, singing a jolly pep song-parody to the tune of Belafonte’s famed Calypso song, “Matilda.”
Ha-dass-ah!
Ha-dass-ah!
Ha-dass-ah! Helps poor sick Jews escape Venezuela!
All together now!
Ha-dass-ah...
“I’m glad your girls asked me down, Mrs. Krosnick. You certainly know how to handle a lovely affair.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at the way I handle an affair, Mr. Bond. And please call me Charlene.”
Smiling at her clever double-entendre, Bond awaited the next incriminating sentence. “And you must call me Israel.”
“I’d love to ... Israel,” she gushed. Then, at a loss for more meaningful conversation, she stammered, “Did ... uh ... did you enjoy Nettie Berk’s singing? She sings in our temple choir, you know. And also in our township’s inter-faith Quaker chorale. Quakers are lovely people, don’t you think?”
“Why, yes,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve met many Quakers in the Middle East. Some of my best friends are Friends. Does Mr. Krosnick approve of your organizational activities, my dear?”
“Oh,” she said with some petulance. “Max doesn’t pay much mind to anything I do. Too busy with the country club, golf and all that. He’s probably dreaming about winning the Masters right now—in our cosy master bed back home in Pennsylvania. Thirteen hundred and ninety-four miles away.”
Well, Bond mused, that’s that. She’s made the pitch. Anyway, it’s for Mother, he thought. A little consideration from me and the ladies of Middle ... Lower Upper ... or whatever the hell that township is ... will buy 150 cases of chicken soup a week. It’s for Mother.
Thirty minutes later, in 1818, Bond had won Mother a convert for life.
She had become a raging, uncontrollable flood of passion, the sandbags of frustration swept away by love’s sweet torrent. “Israel! Israel! My
schoenkeit
, my love! You’re a continental man of the world. I’m yours to use ... yours! Make love to me ... daring love ... make French love to me! Yes, make it French!”
So he had put one of his international recordings on the phonograph and taken her violently as it spun, furnishing a uniquely Parisienne backdrop to their lovemaking. Unfortunately, he had chosen “The Recorded Speeches of Charles DeGaulle,” but somehow it seemed to drive her even more insane.
Nestled in the crook of his bronzed arm, she made the horrifying discovery of his shoulder wound. “Oh, darling! And I made you love me ... with this? What pain you must have been in!”
And she hugged him with a joyous squeal when he’d gallantly responded, “Charlene, there was a far greater, sweeter pain—if you know what I mean.”
“How did you get that terrible slash on your shoulder?”
Bond said airily, “Oh, I’m an Israeli secret agent and a Syrian fanatic tried to kill me.”
“Be serious!” she said with mock solemnity. And he made up a story of falling in a shower.
Br-r-r-ri-i-i-ng!
The phone. Who could be calling at this hour?
An emotionless voice: “Mr. Bond? The tire of Meyer the buyer is on fire.”
Click!
Bond’s grey eyes narrowed. A tire-Meyer-buyer-fire message was big stuff. Something was popping. Time to send Charlene Krosnick back to her mundane suburban world. M. wanted him —fast!
3 The Hebrew Himalayas
His rented Rambler purring easily and effortlessly at thirty-eight miles an hour, Bond gunned it north on the smooth-riding, bump-free super-highway, his destination Upper New York State’s famed resort center, the Catskill Mountains, known to the average man as the “Borscht Belt.” But to the very “in” group Bond ran, drank, and loved with (people who were by taste, temperament, and sophistication justly entitled to include themselves in the Pepsi Generation) it was incisively termed “The Hebrew Himalayas.”
M.’s urgent message, relayed through 11 1/2 (a midget whose cover roles took various forms—sometimes a Little League shortstop, other times a fireplug) had made him drop everything, which resulted in a painful buttock bruise for the ebullient Charlene Krosnick, and impelled him eagerly, tensely toward his next assignment. Trained traveler that he was, Bond had cut his packing time to a bare minimum by giving away most of his clothing to the friendly bellhop, grabbing a cab (“Driver, get me to the Miami Airport in twenty minutes and there’s a box of Luden’s Medicated Cough Drops in it for you!”), and churning with a powerful sprinter’s closing kick into a Delta Airlines jet just as the boarding stairway was being pulled away. Three hours later in the Yucatan, his ardor cooled somewhat by his blunder, he boarded an Eastern Whisperjet for New York’s Kennedy Airport. Only the urgency of the moment led him to take the Whisperjet. It was one plane he had always entertained suspicions about. True, the whispering was far superior to noisier jets, but somehow he felt the plane was plotting against him.
The flight had been uneventful, even boring, Bond thumbing listlessly through such
Reader’s Digest
articles as “The Courageous Comeback of Venereal Disease,” “Sex and the Single Wing,” an excerpt from a best seller by a University of Pennsylvania football coach, and “Is TV Violence Affecting Our Youngsters?” an expose the Digest admitted in a black-bordered box preceding the story that it was forced to print posthumously, the author having been shot to death by his seven-year-old nephew during a commercial break on “Bonanza.”