“Worried you’re being tracked?” David said.
“No,” Rachel said, “I stopped being worried about that years ago. The nice thing about paranoia is that you’re not surprised when the FBI does have ears on you.”
David wanted to laugh. Wanted this whole situation to be funny, because at the bottom, at least, it was absurd.
“How’s Bennie?”
“I left him there,” she said. “They’re going to do a PET scan, just to be sure. It’s all probably nothing. Besides, we practically own the hospital now. May as well get our money’s worth.”
“I want to thank you for everything you did while I was incapacitated,” David said.
“It was nothing,” she said.
“It wasn’t nothing,” he said. In fact, Rachel had managed all of his care. Whenever David had any complaint, large or small, it was handled immediately. He didn’t like his blanket? A goose-down duvet was delivered from Bloomingdale’s. He couldn’t sleep because of the noise inside the hospital? A white noise machine appeared on his bedside table. It all happened without a word of attribution, but he knew this was because of Rachel. “Why didn’t you visit?”
“I couldn’t see you like that.” She pointed up ahead, toward the Temple. The parking lot was filling with cars, David could see. Must be the parents coming to pick their children up from the day school. “My father would like to see you this week. If you have a moment.”
“Of course,” David said. “How did the naming ceremony go?”
“He didn’t make it,” she said. “He’s slipped very far, you should know.”
“Okay,” David said.
“Which is why I didn’t bring him to see you,” she said. “I didn’t think he should see you like that. I didn’t think it would be good for you, either.”
“I understand,” David said, because of course he was the one who’d charted this course for Rabbi Cy Kales. It was either slip into dementia or slip off this mortal coil. Those were the two choices he’d been presented with, and over the course of the last two years, Rabbi Kales had played the role flawlessly. David was sure Rabbi Kales was as sharp as ever.
“I’m not sure you do,” Rachel said. “He doesn’t recognize Bennie anymore.”
“What about the girls? How are they taking it?” David asked. She and Bennie had two daughters, Jean, who was sixteen, and Sophie, who was eight.
“It’s all a holy terror,” she said. “I need to get Jean on the pill before she comes home with a bump. And Sophie’s wetting the bed again.” She shook her head. “Our therapist thinks I should put them both in boarding school.”
“You’re seeing a therapist?”
“What was I supposed to do?” she said. “You weren’t taking appointments in the hospital.”
“Does Bennie know?”
“Jean’s started cutting, too,” Rachel said.
“What? When?”
“It’s not your problem,” Rachel said. “She did it at home and at school. Roberta Leeb called it in, I guess.”
“It was Roberta’s duty to report that,” David said. He knew Roberta well. She was one of the few teachers at the Barer Academy who wasn’t afraid to tell him, constantly, her thoughts about everything. “How’d you keep Child Protective Services out of it?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I assume my husband has powers of persuasion that I’m unfamiliar with.”
“Bennie didn’t tell me any of this,” David said.
“Why would he?”
“I guess I just thought . . .” David paused, Rachel staring at him now, the hint of a smile on her face.
“What?” she said. She tucked her arm through his, pulled him close to her, whispered, “That you’re a real rabbi?”
“I am,” David said.
“You’re not even Jewish, Rabbi Cohen,” Rachel said.
David pulled away from Rachel, let her pass him on the sidewalk. They were in front of the Aquatic Center now. He’d overseen the final stages of that building, helped raise the last $150,000 to equip the dressing rooms with indoor warm-down pools, what the coaches swore was needed to turn the Barer Academy’s young swimmers into Olympic hopefuls. David could hear the voices of children, the whistles of coaches. He could take out his knife and plunge it into Rachel’s back, drag her into a thicket of bougainvillea, dump her body, hope for the best for a few hours, then have her in a grave after sundown.
But there, on the light pole, was a missing-person flyer for Melanie Moss, the last woman he’d killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for confusing David, for presenting an obstacle to his freedom, her presence still walking around in his subconscious, and sometimes his conscious, too, like right now. Melanie standing in her government-proper black slacks, blue shirt, and black jacket, her neck crooked from David snapping it.
“Everything okay, Rabbi Cohen?”
David whipped to the right, his knife in hand. One of his security guards stepped out of the shadows between the Aquatic Center and the center’s admin offices, David a millisecond from plunging his knife into the man’s eye.
“I’m fine,” David said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“That’s the whole point, Rabbi,” the officer said. He grabbed David’s wrist, gingerly, pressed his arm down. “Sir, you don’t need that knife. I know you’re scared, but all having a knife will do is give a bad guy another way to kill you.”
“Yes,” David said. “Thank you.” He put the knife back into his breast pocket. “I’m not myself these days.”
“I know, Rabbi,” he said. “Which is why we’re all looking out for you. You’re on the safest street in America right now, sir.”
WHEN DAVID CAUGHT UP TO RACHEL, SHE WAS DIGGING A LIGHTER FROM HER purse, a cigarette between her teeth. “You want one?” she asked.
