Damaged Goods by Thomas Friedmann

Author:Thomas Friedmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504024051
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

19.

Even Rachel’s presence could not dispel the uneasiness of approaching Rosh Hashanah. Not in Crown Heights. Summer not yet done, Elul, the month of preparations, begins. In streets still empty, the morning call of the ram’s horn demanding repentance, reminding of obligations, can be heard. Attendance at the Loew’s on Nostrand Avenue drops perceptibly on Saturday nights; even the romantic and lush Romeo and Juliet plays to empty houses. The Kosher Pizza Shop on Kingston begins to close earlier, its bright lighting suddenly unappealing. The Sabbath-observant-car-rental-and-driving-school suffers too. Anything catering to leisure or amusement falls on hard times. It is not a frivolous time of year. The evening news empathizes. Egypt is restless, Ho Chi Minh suddenly dead. Although a drop in monthly call-up is anticipated, the withdrawal from Viet Nam moves slowly and the fate of Israel, government sources say, is intricately tied to Viet Nam’s. Not needing encouragements toward sobriety, I found myself to be a very serious young man at this time of the year, marking the shortest distance between Father’s house and Rachel’s and hauling myself earnestly back and forth between them.

Before making the right turn into Empire Boulevard I would stop by the precinct house on the corner and get waved directly upstairs to Detective Meisner. My Lancer had become familiar. The cops came to accept it as their own and did not ticket it if I parked it illegally.

Whenever he saw me, Detective Meisner would say, “Still looking,” even smile at me. But despite his violet striped suspenders and thick mustache which suggested an interest in crimes of passion, he cared more for the technology of detection than the psychology of guilt. He prayed to the computer, sacrificed to the lie detector, was brought to near arousal by print-outs of statistics and voice patterns. He was eager to solve more challenging cases than my mother’s disappearance. A green-sneakered rapist was loose in the area and stone throwers had somehow eluded the patrol car permanently stationed outside the Lubavitcher Rebbie’s residence. Worse, a load of caskets was stolen from Ortiz’s Funeral Parlor right across the street and Meisner had a feeling the three cases were related. I left him to his dreams of flickering lights and headed toward Rachel, passing along the way the drawn white blinds of Rabbi Baumel’s learning parlor. The yeshiva, shuttered until after the Fall Holidays, gave me an Indian summer of freedom while the Rabbi and I waited out the results of the Draft Lottery Bill being debated in Congress.

The only other landmark before Rachel’s building was the bulletin board outside the entrance to Prospect Park, with its listing of daily events. I would check it hurriedly, fearing the day it would announce the opening of the Wollman Rink for ice skating, knowing that such an official acknowledgement of water freezing over would be an undeniable sign that it was time for searches to end and mourning to begin.

Not that I was eager for the additional responsibilities that mourning would have brought.

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