Looking for Cows

The pilgrims broke out in yet another ecstatic rendition of the chorus of the Messiah song:

"Moshiach, moshiach, moshiach, ai yai yai yai yai.
Moshiach, moshiach, moshiach, ai yai yai yai yai yai."

Again and again and again. If the Messiah-in-Waiting was eavesdropping he had to get their message: Enough already. We really need you. Now.

We want Mashiach now
We want Mashiach now
We want Mashiach now
And we don't want to wait!

"Which is all fine and dandy," Harry said to Gomez while the pilgrims sang."But have they ever stepped to think of how it will all unfold?"

"What's there to get, Harry? The Messiah comes, brings on world peace and I'll never have to work again. Sounds good 'nuff for me."

"That's the difference between you and me."

"That you still want to work when the Messiah comes?"

"No, that I went to Hebrew school while you were eating BLT's."

"Slathered in mayo."

"Good word choice, Gomez, 'slathered'."

"Good non-sequitar, Harry."

"Okay, you're clever, Gomez. Signs of intelligence acknowledged. But your deficiencies on Messianic times are apparent. Have you any idea about the weird shit that will happen?"

"So you want me to ask: 'Like what?'"

"Here's what, Gomez. The dead will live again? I mean, isn't that frightening?"

"Yeah, like Michael Jackson's Thriller. Crazy zombie shit."

"Like what are you going to your grandmother who returns to this world afterspending the last ten years spying on you from the netherworld."

"You think they do that shit? How embarrassing?"

"Tell me about it, especially if you've into Asian lesbian foot fetish porn!...Like my cousin Joey Prager with the bleached teeth and slicked back hair."

"And small dicks! Those kind of always have tiny dicks and wax their chests!"

"  ?!"

"This is what my cousin Jonathan Bieberkraut tells me based on his observations in the showers experiences at the St. James Tennis Club...Not that he's a watcher or takes notes..."

The rolling pilgrimage moved into confession hour. Pilgrims took turns broadcasting their stories over the static-ridden bus sound system:

The Tubby Bubbe, with her orange helmet hair and too much gold jewelry kicked off the round. "When I took this trip last year with Rabbi Itzie, God bless him, I had just been diagnosed with cancer..."

The pilgrims sighed a collective, "Oiiii..."

"I prayed at the tomb of the rebbe for my health and three months later, the cancer was gone."

The mole on her that theoretically could have been cancer was begging.

The Merchant was next. "Last year my business was in ruins..." He closed his jean store, promptly flew to Israel and deposited $175,000 in a new bank account. Then he became a contractor in the home renovation business.

"After I took this trip with Rabbi Itzie, I started a new business and it immediately took off..."

The profit margins were high because he never paid his crews.

"My eldest daughter, Tiffany, was nothing but trouble, running around with all kinds of men," the Wife of Sherman Oaks confided. "Nothing but the wrong kind. I took this trip and prayed that she should change her evil ways..."

And vowed that she would break off her torrid affair with the dapper Jeweler with the manicured hands and irresistible smile. It still wasn't easy for the single mom to raise her feisty daughter Tiffany, but it at least kept her home every night except for Thursdays, casino night at her cousin the Gambler's house. Tiffany straightened up and only ran around on Thursdays, but discreetly with the Jeweler's charming son.

So many had changed their evil ways.

Good for those pilgrims, Harry thought. His brushes with good fortune, or what seemed like it at the time, came about without any dramatic, tear-laden prayers over a saint's tombstone, but over a knish, over the twenty-second phone call at the end of a day of rejection, or after months of hard work writing a script. Miracles were designed, manufactured, ploddingly created.

Harry studied the passing scenery. The desert. A perfect backdrop for the pilgrim tribe. Not wandering through the desert this time, rambling through it. As foreign to Harry as space. Where had the days gone when he'd look out the car window counting cows with his brother on the way to a weekend in the country? Whoever counted the most cows on their side won. Harry shut his eyes and tumbled back into that world. Cows.

"I'm having a cow, Harry, I'm soooo bored."

Harry snapped out his daydream and stared at Gomez.

"   ."

"You're creeping me out with that look, Harry."

"I need to see some cows, Gomez. I need to see something familiar."

"I think we both need our mommies."

Harry shot Gomez a look.

"Right now just a cow would be nice," Harry said.

"You want a cow, they want salvation..." Gomez pointed to the grieving couple sitting in front of them across the aisle who reading psalms. Like psalms would make the nightmare go away. Like psalms would grant salvation.

"I'd settle for home, for my old room with my baseball posters and hockey cards taped to the wall. Where I could make adulthood go away. I'll never be ready for all of this."

"And what about me and my fake girlfriends? I'm breaking up with all of them."

Confession time a la deux.

"I'm...I'm..."

"Yeah, you're afraid of everything, Harry. " Gomez tapped the window excitedly with his index finger. "Look, there's a dude ranch with horses!"

Harry phased out into a waking dream world. "Horses! I see a horse! It's worth two cows! I win! I win!" Harry cried.