“So what’s bothering you?”
Once Jacob was out of earshot, Rachel leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Daniel, I don’t even know. The closer we are getting to the wedding, the more uncertain I’m feeling.”
Daniel carefully stirred the spoon in his boiling-hot tea. “What exactly are you unsure about?”
“Everything.” Rachel felt her anxiety sink heavily in her stomach like a huge Chinese dumpling.
Daniel stopped stirring. “So you’re saying you are unsure about marrying me?”
Rachel began to cry.
“You choose to bring up this issue after we’ve already started planning for our wedding?”
Rachel flushed red with shame.
“Rachel, I don’t know what’s going on with you. Talk to your friends, a rabbi — a therapist if you must. But if you want to be my wife, you’ll have to get real sure, real fast.”
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, then nodded. “Maybe you should take me home now.”
Daniel asked Jacob for the check and more tea, and then told him to put the leftovers into containers to go as he cleared away their dishes.
Jacob returned with the bill and tea but not with the leftovers.
“Sorry,” Jacob said. “It’s late, and the rabbi already left. We can’t work in the kitchen after he leaves.”
“That’s not
my
problem,” Daniel said quietly as he looked at Rachel and then back at Jacob. “Pack it up for me.”
Jacob shook his head. “I’m sorry, but the kitchen is officially closed now. I only kept the restaurant open for you to finish your dinner.”
Daniel brandished the bill. “I paid for the meal. I want the rest to go.”
“I can’t, sir.”
Daniel sat squarely in his chair. “If you can’t use the kitchen, you can buy packing materials elsewhere.”
Jacob turned a bright crimson and stared out the window at the December snow.
“Why don’t you come back another time?” he offered politely. “I’ll see that you get a meal on the house.”
“No, I want my leftovers.”
Rachel leaned over. “Please, I don’t need the leftovers. Let’s just go.”
Daniel glared at Rachel and pounded his fist on the table. “But it’s mine!”
Jacob took a step back and held up his palms. “Okay. The food belongs to you.” He turned and gazed at Rachel. “It all belongs to you.”
At close to midnight, Jacob asked the men cleaning in the back to keep an eye on the restaurant, as he donned his jacket and went out into the cold to see if he could get packing containers from a coffee shop down the street.
Daniel watched him go and laughed as Rachel gazed after Jacob in horror.
“Really, I won’t eat it,” he confided as he stirred his tea. “But he should know who is in charge.”
Rachel felt sickened to the core of her soul. “Don’t you think you’re being a little tough? He’s only doing his job.”
“How dare you question me?” Daniel exploded, and slapped Rachel’s hand with his burning hot spoon.
She instinctively retaliated, throwing her ice-cold glass of water in his face.
Jacob returned, coughing from the outside cold, with a container from the nearby coffee shop.
“I have to get out of here.” Rachel grabbed her coat and purse and breezed past Jacob out the door, leaving Daniel sitting wet and livid. She ran holding her coat like a cape, slipping in her high-heeled shoes, heading for the train station to take her home to Brooklyn.
She heard the sounds of someone running behind her.
Daniel. To apologize?
She reached the train station and decided to face Daniel. She halted and pivoted on her feet.
Only it wasn’t Daniel who had run after her.
While many people in Brooklyn were working on their romantic relationships, one person was working on a relationship of a different kind altogether. On a Saturday night in December, Aryeh Kaufman was in an intense discussion with his boss, Harry Green.
Harry, over eighty years old, though with the countenance of a much younger man, sat behind his antique mahogany desk, searching the top drawer for a Cuban cigar, while Aryeh stood before him still in his raincoat, the collar haphazardly stuck inside his shirt.
“Harry, we’ve checked your books again and again,” Aryeh said. “We’ve found terrible errors. Five million dollars flooded in from where?”
Harry nodded the same way he would if his wife was telling him about what she just bought at Loehmann’s.
“Business is good,” he said, suddenly pleased that he found what he had been searching for. He inhaled the pungent aroma of his cigar. “Aah, they make them good over there. Sweeter than the American ones.” He handed the cigar to Aryeh. “Want one?”
Aryeh shook his head, instead pacing on the pink marble tiled floor in Harry’s study. A stack of papers secured under his arm, Aryeh paced as if he were mentally reviewing a Talmudic discourse. “But Harry, the same five million is going straight out to charitable contributions.”
“I like to spread the wealth.” Harry bit the tip off of his cigar as if giving it a
bris
and leaned back in his wood-paneled study. While he kept his office like a pigsty, his home was his wife’s domain: a luxurious palace.
“Spread wealth to Kaplinsky’s Monevitcher Yeshiva? Harry, please.” Aryeh arrayed the papers in front of his boss.
Harry briefly looked them over, and then winked as if Aryeh was telling a good joke. An old joke, though. One that he’d heard before.
“How’s your father, Aryeh?” Green lit up his cigar and motioned for Aryeh to sit down.
“This isn’t about my father, Harry.”
“You are a sharp boy, like your father. It’s good that you are on top of your work, kiddo. How about a raise?”
Aryeh sat forward in the antique brown leather chair. “This isn’t about me either, Harry. It’s about you. It’s about your company.”
Harry puffed on his cigar, blew out a ring of smoke, and stared straight at Aryeh. “What are you saying?”
“Harry, you are a creative guy, and I’ve always known you to be a man of integrity. But what am I supposed to do with five million dollars of laundered money?”
Green momentarily turned white, but he soon regained his jovial pink. “It’s not what you think, Aryeh. It’s just business.”
Aryeh took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It’s monkey business.”
“This goes on all the time.”
“Keep this up and you’ll be
doing
time.”
Harry laughed. “I’ve never seen you like this before, Aryeh. I always thought you to be the quiet type.”
“Don’t digress, Harry. If I caught on to this, how long before the IRS catches on?”
Green frowned. “How about you do your job well, so they don’t?”
Then Aryeh turned white. “Are you asking me to commit fraud for you? To cook the books? It’s a federal offense.”
“Only if you get caught.”
Aryeh was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. Green took his silence as acquiescence.
“Look, we’ve been doing this for years. I’m surprised it took you this long to catch on.”
Aryeh shook his head. “No, I can’t be party to this. It’s wrong. It’s illegal. If you get caught, Harry, you’ll be going to jail.”
Harry sighed. “So you think I’m just a greedy pig with nothing better to do?”
Aryeh stared at him.
Harry took another puff. “Coffee is doing phenomenal. I made upscale coffee what it is today.” He blew a series of smoke rings. “I don’t need the money. I’m doing this as a favor between friends.”
Aryeh pounded his fist on Harry Green’s desk. “I don’t care why you are doing this. The Feds won’t care either. They will catch you and fry you. And anybody else associated with you.”
“Then I guess it’s too bad that you already are associated with me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How long did it take you to catch on, kiddo? Years? You think the Feds will buy that from you?”
Aryeh blanched. “Don’t play your mind games with me, Harry. I had no knowledge of this. And if I’m ever called to testify, I won’t cover for you.”
Harry slowly exhaled his cigar smoke. “If they come for me, they’ll put you away, too. Put a Jew behind bars. It’s their favorite sport. Just like in the Old Country.”
“Harry, please. This is
not
the Old Country.”
Harry fumbled in his desk and took out a faded black-and-white photograph. A smiling, pudgy little girl sat in a formal pose with a solemn-looking boy. “Look.”
“What is this?”
“My brother and sister.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister. That’s Elliot?”
Harry’s eyes darkened to the spent coldness of ashes. “No. That’s not Elliot. This picture was taken when I was twelve years old, right before the end of World War II. In the Old Country.”
Aryeh fingered the old photo.
Harry got up from his chair and began to pace. “That was Avram Yitzchak. My younger brother. And my younger sister Sarah Rivkah; she looked just like our mother. Mama — what a beauty. She had a smile that could melt an ice block. She’d sent me with my older brother Elliot to the United States to live with distant cousins. It was her dream that we become Americans, and she was trying everything she could to join us. Everybody in the shtetl envied us for a dream that went up in smoke.”
Aryeh gulped.
“‘Come now,’ I’d begged her. ‘I can’t leave Grandma,’ she said. Her mother was sick, you know. ‘I need to find her someplace safe; I’ll come as soon as I can.’”
Harry spoke, but he wasn’t there. He was in a distant time and place. “I worked hard for years and managed to get tickets for them on the S.S. St. Louis to Cuba. But when Cuba demanded an additional five hundred dollars a person to disembark, I didn’t have the money. The St. Louis sailed on to Florida and I went down to meet them. Surely America would let in refugees, right? The boat was in the harbor and I could almost touch them.”
Harry looked Aryeh in the eye. “The Coast Guard didn’t let them land here. My family was fleeing Nazi persecution, and they were sent back to Europe, to the camps where the Nazi sons of bitches slaughtered my family. And there was nothing Harry Green could do about it.”
“Harry,” Aryeh said quietly.
“German marines they let into this country. But Jews with visas? Who filled their quotas? They all hate us, Aryeh. They all want to see us dead.”
Aryeh solemnly shook his head. “Harry, I am so sorry about your loss. I never knew. But I can’t say that I agree with your philosophy.”
“FDR knew about the camps, the trains transporting our families to death. He could have bombed the trains to stall even a few thousand deaths. But he didn’t care, Aryeh. What’s another Hymie, anyway?”
Aryeh rose from his seat, realizing that any conversation about Harry’s accounting discrepancy was a moot point. “I’m sorry. But I can’t be a part of the way you do things, Harry.”
Harry stubbed out his cigar. “You do what you have to do to survive. Survival takes money; I try to help our people.”
“You’re hurting your survival, Harry, not helping it.” Aryeh shook his head. “You’ll have to find someone else to take your fall.” He gently handed the photo back to Harry. “I’m sorry.”
• • •
A tuxedoed piano player sat in the grand marble lobby of Medici’s restaurant. He played a moving piece by Tchaikovsky on the glistening ebony baby grand piano as a bald waiter with a big mustache ground pepper over Leah’s pasta.
Leah sat with Eli Feldman in the balcony overlooking the lobby, a floating candle on their starched white linen tablecloth casting mild shadows against the marble balcony.
They talked.
They talked of dreams and hopes and wishes and likes and dislikes. They spoke of hobbies and friends and family and politics. They discussed and debated, agreed and disagreed. But Leah had something to tell Eli.
She stopped talking to focus on her food, nibbling on the watercress salad laid out artfully on her plate. “The food here is great,” she said. She looked up from her plate to find Eli gazing at her.
Leah tried to divert the feeling. She’d agreed to go out with Eli, but only as friends.
What will he think when I tell him?
Leah sighed.
Eli sat back in his handcrafted chair and watched Leah. He smiled.
“You’re special,” Eli stated directly, searching Leah’s face for a reaction.
Leah tried to control the heat on her cheeks, but it was impossible. She wanted to become a doctor — there was no going back now — but there was something else she had to tell Eli. How would she do it?
“Thanks,” she said finally as she smoothed the napkin on her lap. “You’re special, too.” She tried to change the direction of the conversation. “I really enjoyed the concert.”
“They chose a good score.”
The piano music stopped and the hum of the patrons’ chatter filled the room. The lit candle was burning out, leaving behind a soft, smoky smell. Leah and Eli just sat and gazed at each other quietly.
She knew.
They both knew.
How could she honestly fight it?
The waiter brought the chocolate mousse on gold-rimmed china and re-lit the candle.
Leah grabbed her spoon and swallowed a bit of dessert. Eli did the same.
Leah finally broke the silence. “Eli, have you heard of Wolfy Krumeister?”
And then Leah did it. She told Eli about Wolfy. How she wanted to be friends with him, as Rachel had advised. How she had … kissed him … and maybe even enjoyed it … It was only one time, and Wolfy wanted more. Much more. When she refused, he spread rumors about her. She tried to stop them, but there was nothing she could do …
Eli nodded. “My parents were upset when they heard about the rumors. But I told them I didn’t believe it.”
Leah continued to tell Eli about how her mother felt that she’d pretty much ruined the family’s reputation. About how her Aunt Suri tried to help but only made things worse. About her big fight with her mother just before Simchat Torah …
Eli looked at Leah squarely in the eye. “Leah, I don’t care about rumors. You’re fun, you’re sweet. You’re smart. And really cute.”
Leah’s cheeks felt hot, as she internalized Eli’s compliments. “Eli, you know, you rock. But you have to understand, I can’t get serious with anyone unless I know I can also pursue a career. It’s been hard growing up with my mother always so tired … Working so hard for so little … I need to get ahead. I can’t stand feeling so freaking vulnerable all the time.”