“I didn’t realize you were.”
“Don’t be naïve,” Bennie said, “it doesn’t suit you, Rabbi.” He headed for the front door, David behind him. “I look all right?” he asked before they stepped outside. “I got sick in your bathroom.”
“Yeah,” David said.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
“Not today.”
Bennie stepped out on the front porch, looked into the sky, took another deep breath, which then unfurled into painful-sounding hacks. He spit a gob of blood onto the pavement, wiped it with his shoe.
“The Talmud says if you see a house on fire in the distance, do not pray that it isn’t your house.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s either your house or it’s not,” David said. “God can’t change it. You’re gonna die. It’s how you continue living that matters. That’s what I take it to mean.”
Bennie hacked another gob of blood onto the pavement but didn’t bother smudging it away. “My house is on fire, no doubt about that.” He waved Avi to pull up closer. “Get in the front, Rabbi. May as well get used to the view.”
FIFTEEN
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002
LAS VEGAS, NV
SOME SHIT IS FORETOLD: THE TORAH STUDY GROUP RAN LONG BECAUSE THE Torah study group always ran long. Rita Wolfe did not understand the notion of redemption through kindness and spent the last twenty minutes talking about all the times her family “shit on her” when she was being kind—and how they still talked about her like she was a convert because she’d, briefly, had an affair with a Mormon congressman from Reno.
“Rita,” Rabbi Cohen said, as the other eight ladies in the group gathered the remaining butter cookies and mint Milanos into their Tupperware, “my advice is that perhaps if you keep doing the same thing and are unhappy with the results, stop doing that thing.”
Rita Wolfe burst into tears. “You’re telling me I’m crazy, aren’t you?”
Rabbi Cohen waited a moment to see if any of the other women would comfort her. He got the impression, after about ten seconds, which is an eternity when someone is sobbing, that the other congregants didn’t think much of her.
Rabbi Cohen said, “Rita, you misunderstand me.”
“You just told me I’m the very definition of insanity,” she shouted. “You can be a real golem, Rabbi. I thought I missed this group, but it turns out maybe I just missed the ritual. Well, you won’t need to worry about my descent into insanity any longer.”
He waited another ten seconds. Nothing from the women. Susie Helms actually peeled a Milano apart and licked the mint, eyes on the show.
“If that’s how you feel,” Rabbi Cohen said, “we’ll miss you.” Kristy Levine caught his eye, shook her head almost imperceptibly, as if to say, It’s not worth it, then sat down beside Rita.
“Rita, what the rabbi is telling you is that you’re too good for these people. You’re trying to redeem them with your kindness. He’s telling you to redeem yourself with your kindness. Do you see the difference?”
Rita dug in her purse. Came out with a Kleenex, blew her nose, dropped the Kleenex on the floor, then kicked it under the table. “I do,” Rita said. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry you’re upset,” David said.
“No you’re not,” she said. She stood up, picked up the last remaining plate of butter cookies, and dumped them all into her purse. “You should sue to get your old jawline back. You look twenty years older.”
“I APPRECIATE WHAT YOU DID BACK THERE,” DAVID TOLD KRISTY ONCE everyone else had emptied out of the community room.
“It was nothing,” Kristy said. She took off her baseball cap and set it on the table, scratched at the stubble on her head.
“Your hair is growing back nicely.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” Kristy said, “even if it’s a lie.” She cocked her head, curiously. “I like your new jaw, by the way. So don’t take what Rita said personally.”
“My mother came to see me in the hospital and burst into tears,” David said. “Said it looked like they’d removed all the Ashkenazi from me. Wanted to know if the doctors were all goyim.”
“Were they?”
“Half and half,” David said. “I’ve had a deviated septum all along, apparently. So for the first time in my life, I can actually breathe. A tiny mitzvah.”
“Your mom still staying with you?”
“No, no,” David said. “She’s back east.”
Kristy stretched her arms above her head and let out a little yelp of a yawn.
“You look tired.”
“You’re not supposed to tell women that.”
“You seem tired,” David said, “am I allowed to say that?”
“Bad week,” she said. “My lung function isn’t good, and I breathed all that shit in the air all week long.”
“Were you working . . . whatever that was?”
