“It’s navy,” Epstein muttered, slapping the tweed and woolen sleeves as they swung past. But the coat, which he could not say was rather like the one on the table, only far softer and more expensive, was nowhere to be found. “This is ridiculous,” he sputtered. “Someone must have taken it.”
Epstein could have sworn that he heard the clerk laugh. But when he spun around to look, her stooped, squarish back was turned and she was already helping the person in line behind Klausner. Epstein felt the heat rise to his face and his throat constrict. It was one thing to give away millions of his own volition, but to have the coat taken off his back was something else. All he wanted was to be away from there, to walk alone through the park in his own coat.
There was a ring as the elevator arrived and its doors rolled open. Without another word, Epstein snatched the coat lying on the table and hurried toward it. Klausner called after him, but the doors closed just in time and the elevator carried Epstein down alone through the floors.
At the hotel’s side exit Abu Mazen’s men were piling into the limousine. On the last of them Epstein spotted his coat. “Hey!” he shouted, waving the rough garment in his arm. “HEY! You’re wearing my coat!” But the man didn’t hear or chose not to, and as he slammed the door behind him, the limo pulled away from the curb and floated down Fifty-Eighth Street.
Epstein looked after it in disbelief. The hotel doorman eyed him nervously, concerned, perhaps, that he might make a scene. Glancing morosely at the coat in his hands, Epstein sighed instead and dipped one arm and then the other into the sleeves and shrugged it onto his shoulders. The cuffs hung over his knuckles. As he crossed Central Park South, a cold gust blew through the thin material, and Epstein reached instinctively into his pockets for his leather gloves. But all he came up with was a little tin box of mints printed with Arabic script. He popped one into his mouth and began to suck; it was so spicy it made his eyes tear. So that was how they grew the hair on their chests. He descended the stairs and, entering the park, made his way along the path that edged the pond filled with reeds.
The sky was a dusty rose now, failing orange to the west. Soon the lamps would come on. The wind picked up, and overhead a white plastic bag billowed past, slowly changing shape.
The soul is a sea that we swim in. It has no shore on this side, and only far away, on the other side, is there a shore, and that is God.
It was a line from the little green book Maya had given him for his birthday almost two months ago, parts of which he had read so many times that he knew them by heart. Passing a bench, Epstein doubled back and sat down, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Recalling that it was empty, he jumped up in alarm. The book! He’d left it in his coat! His coat, which at the moment was making its way east on the back of one of Abbas’s henchmen. He fumbled around for his phone to text his assistant, Sharon. But the phone was also nowhere to be found. “Fuck!” Epstein shouted. A mother pushing a double stroller along the path gave him a wary look and increased her speed.
“Hey!” Epstein shouted, “Excuse me!” The woman glanced back, but continued moving briskly. Epstein ran after her. “Listen,” he said falling breathlessly in step beside her, “I just realized I misplaced my phone. Can I borrow yours a second?”
The woman glanced at her children—twins, it seemed, bundled into furlined sleeping bags, noses wet and dark eyes alert. With a clenched jaw, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Epstein plucked it out of her palm, turned his back on her, and dialed his own number. It rang through to his voice mail. Had he turned his phone off earlier, at the closing for the loan, or was it Abbas’s man who’d done it? The thought of his calls going through to the Palestinian filled him with anxiety. He dialed Sharon’s number, but there was no answer there, either.
“Just a quick text,” Epstein explained, and with numb fingers tapped out the message: Contact UN Security Council ASAP. Coat mix-up at Plaza. One of Abbas’s cronies made off with mine: Loro Piana, navy cashmere. He pressed send, then typed another line: Phone and other valuables in coat pocket. But just as he was about to shoot that one off, too, he thought better of it and erased it, lest he tip Abbas’s man off to what he unknowingly had in his possession. But, no: that was ridiculous. What could he possibly want with a stranger’s phone and an obscure book by a dead Israeli poet?
The twins started to sneeze and snuffle, while the mother shifted impatiently from foot to foot. Epstein, who had no experience with the receiving side of charity, retyped the text, sent it, and went on holding the phone, waiting for it to buzz to life with the assistant’s response. But it remained inert in his hands. Where the hell was she? Not my phone, obviously, he typed. Will try you again soon. He turned to the woman, who grabbed back the phone with a grunt of exasperation and marched off, not bothering to say good-bye.
He was supposed to meet Maura at Avery Fisher Hall in forty-five minutes. They had known each other since they were children, and after his divorce Maura had become his frequent companion at concerts. Epstein began to angle west and northward, cutting across the grass, frantically composing texts in his head. But as he passed a bush, a flock of brown sparrows shot up from it and scattered into the dusky sky. At their sudden burst of freedom, Epstein felt a wave of consolation. It was only an old book, wasn’t it? Surely he could track down another copy. He would put Sharon on the case. Or better yet, why not just let the book go as easily as it had come? Hadn’t he already taken what he needed from it?
Lost in thought, he entered a tunnel under a pedestrian overpass. As he shivered in the dank air, a homeless man stepped out of the dark and into Epstein’s path. His hair was long and matted, and he reeked of urine and something festering. Epstein removed a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it into the man’s callused palm. As an afterthought, he fished out the box of mints and offered those as well. But it was the wrong decision because now the man moved jerkily, and in the darkness Epstein saw the flash of a knife.
“Gimme the wallet,” he grunted.
Epstein was surprised—Really? Could the afternoon strip him any further? Had he given so much that, stinking of benefaction, the world now felt free to take from him? Or, just the opposite, was it trying to tell him that he hadn’t yet given enough, that it wouldn’t be enough until there was nothing left? And was it really possible that there was still a mugger left standing in Central Park?