The Lovers

When I entered, there was only an old man sweeping the floor. I stared at him. He had been there when last I visited, and he had been sweeping then too. I gues R a too. I gsed that he was always there: cleaning, polishing, watching. He looked at me and nodded in recognition.

“The rabbi is not here,” he said, instinctively understanding that there could be no other reason for my presence in this place.

“I called him,” I said. “He’s expecting me. He’ll be here.”

“The rabbi is not here,” he repeated with a shrug.

I took a seat. There didn’t seem to be any point in prolonging the argument. The old man sighed, and went back to his sweeping.

Half an hour passed, then an hour. There was no sign of Epstein. When at last I stood to leave, the old man was seated at the door, his broom held upright between his knees like a ba

“I told you,” he said.

“Yeah, you did.”

“You should listen better.”

“I get that a lot.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “The rabbi,” he said, “he does not come here so much now.”

“Why?”

“He has fallen out of favor, I think. Or perhaps it is too dangerous for him now, for all of us. It is a shame. The rabbi is a good man, a wise man, but some say that what he does is not fit for this, this Bet Shalom.”

He must have noticed my puzzlement. “A house of peace,” he explained. “Not Sheol. Not here.”

“Sheol?”

“Hell,” he said. “Not here. No longer here.”

And he tapped his foot meaningfully on the floor, indicating the hidden places beneath. When last I had visited the Orensanz Center, Epstein had shown me a cell beneath the basement of the building. In it, he had secured a thing that called itself Kittim, a demon who wished to be a man, or a man who believed himself to be a demon. Now, if what the old man was saying was true, Kittim was gone from this place, banished along with Epstein, his captor.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Bevakashah,” he replied. “Betakh ba-Adonai va’asei-tov.”

I left him there, and stepped outside into the cold spring sunlight. I had come here for nothing, it seemed. Epstein was no longer comfortable being at the Orensanz Center, or the center was no longer willing to countenance his presence. I looked around, half expecting to see him waiting nearby, but there was no sign of him. Something had happened: he was not coming. I tried to pick out Louis, but there was no trace of him either. Still, I knew he was close. I walked down the steps and headed toward Stanton. After a minute, I felt someone begin to fall into step beside me. I looked to my left and saw a young Jewish man wearing a skullcap and a loose-fitting leather jacket. He kept his right hand in his jacket pocket. I thought I could discern the gun sight of a small pistol digging into the material. Behind me, another young man was shadowing my footsteps. They both looked strong and fast.

“You took your time in there, &rdq R an there, &uo; said the man to my left. He had the slightest hint of an accent. “Who knew you had such patience?”

“I’ve been working on it,” I said.

“It was much needed, I hear.”

“Well, I’m still working on it, so maybe you’d like to tell me where we’re going.”

“We thought you might like to eat.”

He steered me onto Stanton. Between a deli that didn’t appear to have brought in fresh stock since the previous summer, judging by the number of dead insects scattered among the bottles and jars in the window, and a tailor who seemed to regard silk and cotton as passing fads that would ultimately bow down before artificial fibers, was a small kosher diner. It was dimly lit, with four tables inside, the wood dark and scarred by decades of hot coffee cups and burning cigarettes. A sign on the glass in Hebrew and English a

Only one table was occupied. Epstein sat in a chair facing the door, his back to the wall. He was wearing a black suit, with a white shirt and a black tie. A dark overcoat dangled from a hook behind his head, topped by a narrow-brimmed black hat, as though their occupant were not sitting below them but had recently dematerialized, leaving only his clothing as evidence of his previous existence.

One of the young men took a chair and carried it outside, then took a seat with his back to the window. His companion, the one who had spoken to me on the street, sat inside but on the opposite side of the door. He did not look back at us.

There was a woman behind the counter. She was probably in her early forties, but in the shadows of the little diner she could have passed for a decade younger. Her hair was very dark, and when I passed her I could see no trace of gray in it. She was also beautiful, and smelled faintly of ci

I took the seat across from Epstein but turned so that I also had a wall against my back, and could see the door.

“You could have told me that you were persona non grata at the Orensanz Center,” I said.

“I could have, but it would not have been true,” said Epstein. “A decision was made, one that was entirely mutual. Too many people pass through its doors. It was not fair, or wise, to put them at risk. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but there was a purpose: we were watching the streets.”

“And did you find anything?”

Epstein’s eyes twinkled. “No, but had we ventured farther into the shadows then something, or someone, might have found us. I suspected that you would not come alone. Was I right?”

“Louis is nearby.”

“The enigmatic Louis. It is good to have such friends, but bad to have such need of them.”

The woman brought food to our table: baba ghanoush with small pieces of pita bread; burekas; and chicken cooked with vinegar, olives, raisins, and garlic, with some couscous on the side. Epstein gestured to the food, but I did not eat.

“What?” he said.

“About the Orensanz Cen R aOrensanz ter. I don’t think I believe that you’re on such good terms after all.”

“Really.”

“You don’t have a congregation. You don’t teach. You travel everywhere with at least one gunman. Today you have two. And there was something you said to me, a long time ago. We were talking, and you used the term ‘Jesus Christ.’ None of that strikes me as very orthodox. I can’t help but feel that you might have earned a little disapproval.”

“Orthodox?” He laughed. “No, I am a most unorthodox Jew, but still a Jew. You’re a Catholic, Mr. Parker-”

“A bad Catholic,” I corrected.

“I’m not in a position to make such judgments. Still, I am aware that there are degrees of Catholicism. I fear that there are many more degrees of Judaism. Mine is cloudier than most, and sometimes I wonder if I have spent too long divorced from my own people. I find myself using terms that I have no business using, slips of the tongue that embarrass me, and worse, or entertaining doubts that do not entertain me. So, perhaps it would be true to say that I left Orensanz before I was asked to leave. Would that make you more comfortable?” He gestured once again at the food. “Now eat. It’s good. And our hostess will be offended if you do not taste what she has prepared.”

I hadn’t arranged the meeting with Epstein to play semantic games, or to sample the local cuisine, but he had a way of manipulating conversations to his own satisfaction, and I had been at a disadvantage from the moment I traveled here to meet him. Yet there had been no choice. I could not imagine Epstein, or his minders, permitting an alternative arrangement.

So I ate. I inquired politely after Epstein’s health and his family. He asked about Sam and Rachel, but he did not pry further into our domestic arrangements. I suspected he was well aware that Rachel and I were no longer together. In fact, I now believed that there was little about my life of which Epstein was not aware, and it had always been that way, right from the moment my father approached him about the mark on the man who died beneath the wheels of a truck, and whose partner had subsequently killed my birth mother.