Instagram and facebook encourage brevity – not my natural inclination. If you’re interested, this is the narrative just before the start of the reading:
Two friends, waiting for treatment at LCI
“Pinochle, right? Great game.”
“I know, it’s great.” Yitzhak – Itzo, to his friend – agreed.
“Where’d ja learn it?” Darwin was wearing pajamas and a robe.
“Handed down three generations. Three? Yeah, think so. Three. Back in the day, my great grandparents immigrated from Belarus – like from around Minsk. We’re Jewish, ya know. They wanted to get away from the pogroms, back before the Tsar and his family were offed by the commies.”
“Whoa, Itzo! Very heavy backstory.”
“Yeah. No shit. Great game though, right?”
Between the two of them, the two retired card players – patients at LCI – they controlled about fifty billion in assets. Their conversation was sprinkled with the arcane declarations and challenges that were a part of the game of pinochle.
Yitzhak Shapiro continued,
“When I was about seven, we would visit my grandparents in Brooklyn. And I remember when they were peering over their cards at each other – they were wound up like gunslingers. And one of them, called out to the other ‘Ah, I’ll spit in your eye’. I know context is everything but that’s all I can remember.”
“Awesome, Itzo. That’s a tender memory. Family time is the best.”
Yitzhak was dressed very casually in sweatpants and a knit shirt. The two of them were in a mixed-use space and Darwin Howe was waiting to be seen for an appointment. The long corridor of the wing was carpeted and expensively furnished on one side and the other side had a hard-surfaced utilitarian floor for heavy, wheeled medical equipment, gurneys and staff foot traffic. They were in large overstuffed chairs and using a coffee table that was too low for a card game.
Shapiro was with his family. His wife, Rebecca, and his daughter, Mary Louise were just out of hearing range, sitting together on a large overstuffed couch. Mary Louise considered the card players and inquired:
“So mom, I understand the mission – family love and support – and I am totally down with that. But I forgot the special word … why are we here?”
“Mitigation.”
“Yeah. Mitigation. And I know that if we are here, at LCI, for ‘mitigation’, it’s because, medically, LCI can do stuff that’s not covered by insurance, that’s totally experimental, and maybe barely legal. So it’s kind of a hail Mary pass – especially if you’re rich. That’s what I read, anyhow.”
“Well .. they won’t be hiring you to do their public relations but that’s pretty close to the mark.”
“Mom. Who’s the old dude that Dad’s playing cards with?”
Event Horizon 