Act of God

one?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I noticed you said ‘was.’ ”
    “What?”
    “When you mentioned Darbra, you said she was just a
    secretary.”
    “Right.”
    “Why past tense?”
    Bernstein looked at me hard. “Because she doesn’t show up for work, doesn’t even do us the courtesy of calling in, and this after she got a week’s vacation only three months into the job, she doesn’t have a job in my mind anymore.”
    “Can I see her office?”
    “All right.”
    He used the same key to open the final door on the corridor, the one closest to the swinging doors back to the store. A cubbyhole more than an office, with just a desk and computer terminal and the collection of paperclip holder and stapler and in-boxes you’d expect.
    “Mind if I have a look?”
    “What, at her desk?”
    “The drawers.”
    “The hell could her drawers have to do with Abe?”
    “I don’t know, but I’m guessing Mrs. Rivkind also told you I’m looking for Darbra at her brother’s request.”
    “She told me. And I told her it sounded like the rest of it, cockamamie.”
    “Can I look?”
    “Look. Look all you want. Long’s I’m standing here, see what you find.”
    Hard to argue with that. The center drawer had a ruler, staple remover, and assorted blank papers and forms. More Papers and forms, these with envelopes, in the left-hand top. Second drawer had tissues; a bottle of aspirin; cough drops; Plastic spoons, forks, and knives; two different brands of granola bars; and the menus from three take-out places. The 4ird drawer had a collapsible umbrella and a pair of Lady Reebok aerobic shoes with short white cotton socks.
    “Any treasures?”
    “No.”
    “Then come into my office, we can get this over with.” Bernstein locked Proft’s door. “It’s genetic, you know.”
    “Genetic?”
    “The obesity. I’m not fat, I’m obese, account of three-ten’s way more than a hundred-twenty-five percent of my ideal body weight. But it’s not like I got some control over it. Just metabolism, you’ve got it in the family, you’re born with it. You can diet, you can exercise, doesn’t matter. Whatever you lose, you pay for it in the side effects. It’s like Biafra, or that Somalia now. Most people spend all their time thinking about food, obsessing over how good it’d be to have this or that. Me, I was cold.”
    We moved into the partners’ office. “Cold?”
    “Yeah, like shivering. Teeth chattering even, middle of summer, didn’t matter. I tried the diets and I tried the exercise and thank God I finally got this doctor, straightened me out. He told me they did this study on obesity, something like ninety percent of the people in it said they’d rather be blind than fat. Blind. You know why?”
    “No.”
    “Because when you’re blind, people want to help you out. Nobody thinks to help a fat person because they figure it’s your own fault. But it’s not.”
    “Genetics.”
    “Like I said. So now I’m just content being me, with some pills here and there for high blood pressure, whatever.” Bernstein glanced at the bustle-back chair with the bleached spot near it, then shook his head as he lowered himself into the other, mirror-image chair. The seat crackled, the springs creaked. “You know, he was the only one.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Abe. Take a seat.”
    I pulled over a captain’s chair. “Mr. Rivkind was the only one?”
    “To never make fun of me. He never once looked at me like he didn’t want to be like that, fat. Obese. You know why?”
    “No.”
    “He was in one of the camps as a kid. Buchenwald .”
    Bernstein pronounced the “w” as a “v.” I just nodded. “Abe, he was like a little kid, and he starved, like all the rest. Things were awful then, unimaginable. I mean, my dieting? Nothing. These starving Africans? Horrible, but at least nobody’s putting them in ovens. Nothing compared to the camps, to hear Abe tell it. That’s why he hired Beverly , you know.”
    “She said a probation officer put in a word for her.”
    “Yeah, that’s how come Abe got asked. He handled hiring, running the store. Me, I’m more the merchant, the guy who makes the buying decisions on the stock. But Abe hired her because he never forgot the Liberators.”
    “The airplanes?”
    “No, no. The black troops, our boys, end of World War II. This battalion of tankers, the 761st, I think was its number, but they called themselves the Black Panthers. Maybe that’s where the political guys, the