Casual
STELZER, IRWIN M.
Casual DEBTOR NATIONS In my old neighborhood, an IOU meant something. Not the formal, lawyer-written documents that are used today, but the currency of reciprocal obligation widely in use on the...
...For another, Tony Blair understands that in this world you stick with your longtime friends, even when you are a little queasy about what such loyalty will do to your political standing at home...
...So I told her to see George at the restaurant...
...Not the formal, lawyer-written documents that are used today, but the currency of reciprocal obligation widely in use on the Lower East Side of Manhattan...
...Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, and my old friend George would approve of his courage and understanding of just what an IOU is all about...
...The restaurant has taken off and become a hot spot...
...Never mind that if Ronald Reagan hadn't forced the Russians to tear down that wall, half of them would still be locked inside the nation-prison that was East Ger-•many...
...That would have been insulting to her and to me, as he saw it...
...And they are busy figuring out how to prevent American companies from getting a toehold in key German industries such as energy and broadcasting...
...He is gone and missed, as is the sense of reciprocity that knitted our Lower East Side together...
...She did...
...members such as Syria, Zimbabwe, and other pillars of the international community go along...
...All of which proves that we shouldn't bother with our so-called allies when deciding what to do about Saddam...
...The place also had a real New York atmosphere of the sort tourists don't write home about...
...It is this system that academic communitarians and other do-gooders are trying to figure out how to have government simulate...
...And as I would have seen it...
...The Russians are no bet-/ Lt« ter...
...And in those days frugal working girls viewed credit cards as a short-cut to penury...
...Take the French...
...But business was terrible, and the joint was about to close...
...Besides, what's a friend for...
...Fast forward two years...
...The Germans are no better...
...By way of thanking us for keeping on the pressure that brought the Communist regime down and removed the terror of a late-night knock on the door, they have decided to shore up Saddam with a massive infusion of investment, and help Iran to become a major nuclear power...
...With Putin for a friend . . . The British are a different case...
...And I am on business in Seattle, sick as I have ever been...
...George is no longer with us...
...The main problem was that all George surveyed were empty tables...
...We knew good steak and gigantic lobsters when we saw them...
...IRWIN M. STELZER...
...Cita came, I recovered, came back to New York, saw a real doctor...
...Trauma over...
...No counting...
...Good luck to them...
...They have promised not to help us if we decide to eliminate Saddam's threat, unless U.N...
...After all, the food was good and theater tickets were conjured out of thin air for the biggest hits on short notice...
...There was a neighborhood guy I'll call George—a bookmaker and ticket scalper who decided to live his dream and open a restaurant in the theater district...
...So I call my then-fiancee, and now wife, Cita, and ask her to come out to tend to me and to get me home to a real doctor, it being common knowledge that no doctor west of Park Avenue could cure anything...
...After they surrendered to Hitler despite having more men in the field than did the Germans, we got the Nazis out of their country while they were trying to figure out how to fit into the everlasting Reich's new world order...
...At that late hour, Cita did not have enough cash to buy a ticket for a cross-country flight...
...Instead, they lead the current anti-American charge by cozying up to the North Koreans after we break off discussions with their crackpot dictator, unleashing European Union officials to threaten any country that shares our views on the new world court with exclusion from membership, and trying to keep our television programs off the European air...
...In part he just loved greeting guests, schmoozing them, and being king of all he surveyed...
...But a legitimate business also gave him a way to account for income and justify to the IRS the lifestyle he and his family were clearly enjoying...
...But you don't see our French friends reaching in their pockets to hand us a thank you note...
...You see, they don't understand reciprocity...
...And Seattle, I had been told, was west of Park Avenue, a fact that seemed to me to be of relevance only to pilots, until then...
...At / the time my firm and I were his ' biggest regular customers...
...I can go snow blind looking around j this joint," he told me one night...
...He pulled a fistful of bills from his pocket—cash was always his preferred medium of exchange—and gave it to her...
...And then we kept them safe from the Russians for fifty years...
...So I offered to pay in advance our best guess as to what our bill would be over the next year...
...For one thing, we owe them for standing up to Hitler, alone, while we dithered...
Vol. 7 • September 2002 • No. 48
