May We Be Forgiven

takes it out. The iPad glows. “It really is a beautiful object, isn’t it?” I tap around at the various applications.
    “How do I get to the pictures?” I ask.
    George taps something, and the photos of the kids open up, interspersed with images of guns and other military paraphernalia.
    “What’s that?”
    “Just stuff,” he says. “Remember how we used to play army and Hogan’s Heroes and all that?”
    “Yeah,” I say.
    “I got back into it—not much to do up here.”
    “Fun,” I say. I tap on his mailbox—an e-mail in Hebrew pops up. “Hard to read without my glasses,” I say, pretending not to realize it’s in another language. Until I saw the photos of the missile launchers with Arabic writing, and the e-mails from Israel, I didn’t really believe Walter Penny—I thought it was some crazy game. But now it makes sense. George always liked to be a big shot, to wheel and deal, and playing war was a childhood favorite.
    “It’s so fucking slow,” George says, grabbing the iPad from me and shaking it like an Etch A Sketch.
    “I’m sure there’ll be a faster one soon,” I say, taking out the envelope of papers I need him to sign. “Sorry to bother you with this stuff; I’ve not been able to get your lawyer on the line.”
    “Me either,” George says. “He’s not answering my e-mails.”
    “You want me to ask around about finding someone new?”
    “Maybe,” George says, using the car hood as a writing surface and scrawling his signature on one document after another.
    I start to relax.
    “You brought my underwear?” he asks.
    “Yep.”
    “Good,” he says. “The stuff they give us is crap. Government-issue Jockeys, chafes around the leg—so you’re raw and can’t run, and it’s too damned binding. Big balls,” he says.
    “Yes—you’ve often said that about yourself.”
    “And the pots and pans?” he asks, still signing.
    “Got ’em. You doing a lot of cooking?”
    “It’s not like I’m in the Domino Pizza thirty-minute delivery zone.”
    “What do you make?”
    “Cheese sauce and peanut sauce; there’s a lot of flour, butter, cheese, peanut butter, and pasta—not so much sugar—we need more sugar. Have you got any?”
    I pull a couple of packets of Splenda out of my pockets. “If you’d asked I
    would have brought—”
    He cuts me off, as though trying to keep it short. “Candlesticks?”
    “This is what I could find,” I say, handing them to him. “They were Jane’s.”
    He takes the candlesticks like that’s the most important part of all. “Matches?”
    I open the passenger door of the car and dig around in the glove compartment; stuff falls out.
    “Give me the flares,” George says, “I might need those.”
    “This isn’t fucking trick-or-treat,” I grumble as I hand him the flares and the rest of the snacks I packed for the ride. George plucks a half-empty Coke from the cup holder and sucks it down.
    “Amazing,” he says. “The flavor, it’s like the nectar of the gods. I wish they’d get a fucking Coke machine in this place.”
    “I brought you a gift,” I say, pulling out the cookie tin. George immediately looks both excited and concerned.
    “Is that Lillian’s tin?”
    I nod enthusiastically.
    “What happened—she died?”
    “It’s on loan; she’s fine,” I say, suddenly panicked. I hadn’t thought about this part—about how it would happen that I had Lillian’s tin. I knew that Lillian’s cookies were a good lure.
    I proudly open the tin, having replicated the same old crinkly, rarely replaced circles of wax paper, the cookies vaguely pale but rich with lumps of chocolate chips and walnut halves.
    “How many?” George asks, looking at me expectantly, like a child, not realizing that if he wanted it the whole box could be his.
    “Two?” I suggest.
    “Per person?” he asks.
    I shrug, imagining he wants his two and my two as well.
    “Are they kosher?” George asks. I’m caught off guard.
    “I don’t know if Lillian keeps kosher,” I say, genuinely perplexed.
    “I think she does,” George says, wanting it to be true.
    His friend Lenny steps out from behind a tree directly behind me and scares the hell out of me. “So you’re the putz?”
    “This is Lenny,” George says. “He’s part of the program.”
    I hold out the tin. “Would you like a cookie?” I ask.
    And then they are upon us. Like fucking Spider-Man—they drop from the sky. The cookie tin flies out of my hand. There are men