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------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------The screen door banged. Morris was back from his morning walk. He hung up his jacket. -------"Just did something dumb," he said. -------"You, Morrie?" Terry said with a laugh. "You don’t do dumb things." -------"I told Bennie I’d go with him to the Men's Coffee Club." -------"That's great. It’ll do you good to get out." -------“Maybe,” Morris said, “but it’s a big group. Could be anybody there.” -------“Don’t worry, Morris. You’re always telling me it doesn’t matter.” -------Morris nodded. He’d said it too often. “What difference does it make? Why does it matter?” It mattered to her, and she was right. He was lucky she’d stuck with him. ------- -------The Coffee Club met in the basement of Holy Martyrs Church. Strange name, Morris thought. Bennie said to wait for him in the parking lot. He watched the cars drive in. Everybody came early. Bennie pulled in beside him, and Morris got out and locked the car. -------“We’ll get you a name tag inside,” Bennie said. “Half the guys couldn’t remember their own name without one.” He glanced at Morris and laughed. “I should have told you. You ought to be either bald or gray-haired.” Bennie was bald. -------Inside the church basement dozens of older men were milling around, standing and sitting at tables, talking or staring into space. Bennie showed Morris where to sit. “I have to set up the sound system. I’ll be back to introduce you.” -------A tall, good-looking man called the meeting to order. He was the only person wearing a jacket and tie. The guests were introduced one at a time. The first man talked for five minutes about his distinguished career in marketing. A round-faced old guy sitting next to Morris poked him on the arm. -------“This is very unusual,” he said with a scowl. -------When Bennie introduced Morris, Morris said he thought the Cape was a great place and he was glad to live there. He spoke for less than 20 seconds and was enthusiastically applauded. -------Announcements took another ten minutes. These were mostly reports on members who were in the hospital or sick at home. Cards would be sent. Morris looked around the room. Some men appeared to be nodding off with the meeting barely underway. Morris began to have a bad feeling. -------The discussion leader changed each week. He was expected to introduce himself at some length, and he did.. Gregor’s story was interesting. His family was from Eastern Europe and had spent four years in a DP camp after the war. They’d finally made it to the U.S., where Gregor attended MIT on a full scholarship. -------The discussion topic was modern technology. Morris had bought a computer for Terry, He and Terry both had cell phones. The old guys had nothing good to say about any of it. Cell phones didn’t work. No one wrote letters or spoke face-to-face anymore, their kids couldn’t write a sentence or add a column of figures, they were addicted to computer games and sent text messages while driving. It went on and on. One man admitted that he wrote emails to friends and another pointed out that he couldn’t read a hand-written letter. They were heard politely, and the gripe session ground on. -------Morris was amazed. How could seventy-five educated and prosperous old men be so down on what the rest of the world was in love with? They seemed to be echoing one another without enthusiasm. -------They broke for coffee and doughnuts. Morris was used to the easy friendliness of Cape retirees, but he didn’t find it here. A few men turned their backs on him. He had an interesting conversation about China with a man who’d been a captain in the merchant marine. -------Several small groups were huddled in private conversation. When he went by one table to get more coffee he heard them speaking German. It was all they’d spoken at home when he was a child. ------- -------“How was it, Morrie?” Terry asked. -------“Boring,” Morris said. “But something funny was going on. I’m pretty sure some of the old crocks are Nazis.” -------“Nazi’s on Cape Cod! How could you tell?” -------“The same way Nazis can tell a Jew. Not big shots, they’d have been too young.” -------“What’ll you do?” -------“Do? Nothing. They’ll die off in a few years. Creeps me, though. Old bastards living the easy life, laughing about the good old days. Nothing I can do, Ter. It’s too bad I....huh.” -------“What, Morrie?” -------“I was thinking it’s too bad I don’t have pictures, but I just remembered, Bennie does. He was going to put up a bulletin board with names and faces, and some of them didn’t go for it. Big surprise!” -------Morris excused himself and went into his office. He came back smiling a few minutes later. “Bennie’s going to email me the pictures. I can send them to a guy I know.” -------“Who’s that, Morrie?” -------“An old Jew. Lives in Vienna. Likes to hunt.” ------- ------- |