The boys start down the aisle.
– They’ll take you to the edge of Gibeah. From there you find your own way home.
I nod.
Still he holds my hands.
– The lecture on war was wasted on you, yes? You know what war is already. But perhaps not the one on love? I think not.
He squeezes tighter.
– Know what you love best before you sacrifice on its behalf.
He looks at the boys, and they are on Lydia, one on each limb, another to bind her while they hold her down and she screams.
I jerk my arms back and the Rebbe turns them under and lifts them and I freeze.
– Think what you love best.
Lydia is on the floor.
Screaming.
– Joe! Joe!
I relax my arms.
Moishe eases his grip.
– Good, yes? Think, yes? You know this is as it must be. Her mother was Jewish, she said, yes?
– Joe! Don’t you let these fucking lunatics keep me!
– Her mother was Jewish. Perhaps not of Benjamin, but a woman of Jewish blood, descended of a woman of Jewish blood. And she has the blood of Gibeah. She is ours. You know this, yes. Even if she does not, you know this.
– Fucking, Joe! Joe!
– Her children will make the tribe stronger. Her children will be clean. Can carry blood for the sons and daughters of Gibeah.
– Oh no, fuck no!
Her arms and legs are bound. One holds her head, another gags her. She twists and struggles and keens through the gag.
The Rebbe raises a finger.
– Know what you love best, and what you are willing to sacrifice for it.
I look at all the blood smeared in this temple. I look at Lydia.
And I know what I love best. The only thing I love. And what I will do for her. And how little time I have left to do it.
I stop looking at Lydia and look at him instead.
– Hey, man, I barely know the chick. All I’m interested in is a ride home.
The boys hoist her high and bear her out of the room.
They keep my blade and my works and my guns, but they give back my money and my keys, and they let me ride in the backseat instead of the trunk.
One of the boys on either side, two more up front, they drive me in Axler’s mom’s beaten Caddy.
Out Ocean Parkway to the Prospect expressway and the BQE, we trace back the route I took with Lydia through Red Hook. No one says anything. The car smells like the blood we’ve all spilled. Dry and crusted to our clothes. It burns the nostrils, as if someone had spilled a can of paint thinner in the car. One of the boys keeps his window down and rides with his face tilted into the wind.
At Hicks, the driver swings off the expressway and pulls to a corner and one of the boys gets out and holds the door for me as I climb out. It’s the head scratcher. He avoids my eyes, but I’m not looking at him. I’m looking at the ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, the walkway that spans its length, the dark sky above it, starless.
He gets back in the car.
I rap a knuckle on the door before he can close it.
– Got any idea what time it is?
He looks at me, looks away.
– Just go around to the other side of the ramp. Some stairs are there. You have plenty of time to walk back.
– Sure, but do you know what time it is?
He closes the door and they drive away, the right front tire grinding against the crumpled fender when they turn at the corner.
The ice air off the river burrows into the wound in my ribs and the holes in my leg and arm. I pull my coat closer around me and walk a block to Cadman Plaza West and limp across it in front of some traffic and follow a path around a little park and hit the sidewalk on the other side and walk down it and find the staircase cut into the stone footing of the bridge and I go up and stand on the wood planks of the walk and look at downtown Manhattan about twenty minutes away. At the other end of the bridge somewhere is a yellow cab waiting for a fare, waiting to take me the fuck home.
I turn around and go back down the stairs.
Jesus loves me and I find a 24-hour deli on Henry Street.
A crackhead skips from foot to foot in front of the door. He skips a little farther to make room for me.
– Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?
I walk inside.
– Catch me on my way out.
He skips and smiles toothless.
The beer cooler is locked. I look for the clerk, see that no one is in the store. I think about breaking the glass, remember the precinct house we passed as we came off the expressway just down the street. I smell something and walk to the counter and lean over it and see the guy on his knees, curled over, his forehead touching the prayer mat that covers the floor. I wait a minute while he chants.
He stands, rolling the mat and putting it and a copy of the Q’uran on a shelf above the condoms and hangover cures.
– Sorry. These hours. I have to sneak it in when I can. My imam would shit.
He looks up and sees my scab-crusted face and the blood-soaked shirt stuck to my chest and his eyes drift down and he sees the hole in my pants and the bloody denim.
– Uh.
– The cooler’s locked.
He looks up.
– Uh.
– It’s not mine. The blood.
– Uh.
– In an accident. Driver got messed up bad. Most of it’s his.
– Uh.
– I could use a beer.
He nods.
– Right.
He comes from around the counter.
– Sorry. Have to lock it while I’m at prayer.
He unlocks the cooler.
– Chester out there would come in and try to clear out every forty in the place if I didn’t.
I reach in the cooler and grab a six of Bud and a 40 of Old English 800.
At the counter he bags the beer and tosses in the two packs of Luckys I ask for.
– That it?
There are some odds and ends hanging on wire hooks above the candy racks. Scotch tape, blunted scissors, notepads, sewing kits, playing cards, a spatula, toilet plunger, screwdriver. I take down a sewing kit and a
