He meets me at a Tempe Israeli restaurant he frequents and it is soon apparent he has been bothering the pretty waitress there for some time. He tells me that here his name is Rocky, that everyone calls him that here. He certainly doesn’t look like a Rocky. Rockys don’t bald.
It doesn’t take long. Before the tahini arrives he has made reference to my mother (with whom I’m told he has always been in love); pointed out a girl that can’t be more than thirteen (asking me if I like her, making sure I’m still not gay); and ham-handedly attempted to coax me into voicing discontent over my 103 year-old great-grandmother, his grandmother. I try to tell him that I’ve never allowed her or my other relatives influence into my life in the way he has, that I control their involvement. He seems surprised and indignant at how meddlesome they’ve been throughout his life. I ask him what did he expect, they’re Jewish women in Texas. I tell him again that people only have as much influence over you as you give them. He seems not to have heard. It occurs to me that if my car hadn’t broken down on the way to the coast I might never have had to see him again.
I’m in for it, so I take it head on. “Rocky”, I say, why don’t you tell me your version?
He starts at the end with his mother and her new husband, describing terrible things they’ve done to him that to a third party sound entirely sensible. Speaking about the mother’s new husband’s disingenuousness, oblivious that he has never once met the man in good faith. Grousing even that the husband never fell into the obvious traps set for him. The mother doesn’t care; the sister is cold; the grandmother is manipulative; when he visited the new husband’s daughter in Arizona they asked him to leave!
We make it to the killing before dessert. It’s where we were heading all along, and I’m glad he, Rocky, chose a remote table on the vacant patio. The waitress, who has been watering us regularly, disappears. He tells me the story the way I’d been told he would. He’d been working full-time behind the counter at one of his father’s convenience stores and attending classes all day. Before he was nineteen he’d been held up at gunpoint three times. He brought the gun from work back home. He heard a noise. Women had been assaulted in the area. He heard someone on the roof. He went outside to bring his garbage to the curb. He brought the gun. Everyone in Texas had a gun. The hopped up speed freak came out of nowhere, he jumped off the roof and ran straight at him, screaming, holding a knife.
Rocky stands me up. He plays himself. He turns and sees me running towards him. He reaches into his belt and pulls the gun. He pulls my knife hand up and away, pushes the gun into my chest and fires. I begin to fall back but he holds me there and empties the clip into me. I slump back into my chair, looking into his fixed eyes and his too-boyish face. At some point the waitress brought the check. No baklava. Other versions of the story have Rocky chasing the man for several blocks.
We adjourn back to Rocky’s bachelor pad, fourteen feet square, belongings in boxes and bed on blocks. I may be its inaugural visitor. His phone rings and he answers it, “Rock!”, and speaks to someone about a synagogue youth group run he is helping to organize. To my chagrin, I find that I am expected to share the bed and Rocky sleeps only in his briefs. I dig out my long sleeved pajamas.
As we lay in the dark, he asks me if I’m wondering why he calls himself Rocky now. I stay silent. He tells me it’s what his father used to call him when he’d been good.
When he loved him.