MEN, MUSCLE, and MAYHEM Read Free Page B

and then pulled her cell phone out of her purse.
    “I may have changed his diapers and potty trained him, and I have always known it was a large one, but I don’t think he needs to wake up and find his mother staring at his naked body,” Rose said as she started dialing the phone.
    “What was in that syringe?” Robert asked.
    “Manischewitz Concorde Grape,” she answered matter-of-factly.
    Rose called her friend Gert, and with Robert’s help, they walked Mordecai to Rose’s car – a brown Eldorado. Before she got behind the wheel, Rose said to Robert who was still in a state of shock, “I am truly sorry, but you cannot see my son again. It is a matter of life and death.”
    Robert did not argue; he understood. Well, he didn’t really understand, but he also didn’t want to witness anything like that again. He also never wanted to sleep with another Jew for fear he would accidentally kill him.
    Rose spent the night at Mordecai’s to be sure he was all right. The next morning, she lectured him, ending with, “Superman has Kryptonite, and you have treyf . If you ever eat treyf again, I cannot guarantee I will be there to save your life. Perhaps you should carry a Manischewitz pen.”
    “Yes, Mother,” Mordecai said, then he kissed her on the cheek. He then looked up and cocked one ear toward the window.
    With a flash and a whoosh that almost blew off her wig, all Rose saw was a dark blue and white streak go out the window followed by a crash of glass as he had forgotten to open it.
    “What do you call a Jewish superhero?” she said out loud, while shaking her head and smiling, “A klutz.”
     

A REAL GYM
    Michael spent more time than he wanted on the road. When he accepted the job as a consultant for the Department of Homeland Security, he thought he would be spending his time in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, but that was not the case. Michael found himself waking up in sleepy little towns that cartographers did not take the time to notice. Towns with names like Pungo, Kincaid, Swelterville and Destination, a town so small it was named for being a stop on a long abandoned railroad.
    In an effort to ensure that the government would function in the event of a national emergency, Michael’s job was to negotiate contracts for bunkers and other sites to house the country’s leaders. Uncharted towns made the perfect locations for these future government facilities. The secret was negotiating a deal that did not bring attention to the sleepy hamlets. Many of the civic leaders wanted the attention and hoped to boost their economies with the government contracts. Michael, however, managed to quiet their aspirations with promises of infrastructure improvements, new schools and other necessary projects.
    One Monday, Michael arrived in Erlach, Virginia, a town, located southwest of Richmond, but so small, that even the citizens of Virginia’s capital had never heard of it. He was pleasantly surprised to find a motel off the main highway through town. At sixty miles per hour, one blink and the motel would have been missed; two blinks and the town would have disappeared.
    Michael grabbed his bag from the trunk of his car and knocked on the office door to the Erlach Motel, which was attached to the Erlach Diner, a converted railroad dining car that held the promise of good Southern cooking that Michael always craved. No one answered the door, so Michael walked over to the diner and entered.
    It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and only a couple of patrons, mostly elderly gentlemen who looked as if they had retired from a lifetime of dairy farming, were sitting at the counter. Michael sat on a stool and removed his jacket.
    At forty-one, Michael looked to be in his prime. He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and jeans. Michael loved working out, and it showed. He was six-foot-two and weighed 240 pounds. Although on the road, Michael managed to find a gym most every place he went, and when none was