Blues in the Night Read Online Free PDF

table. I do remember worrying that we wouldn’t have anything to talk about, but we ordered dinner and drank white wine—he sipped, I quaffed—and I found myself relaxing as we played catch-up over the sushi and miso soup and well into the main course.
    “Have you seen . . . ?” and “Are you still in touch with . . . ?” and “Did you know that . . . ?” and “Can you believe . . . ?”
    We had done well. We were doctors, lawyers, electricians, contractors, stockbrokers, plumbers. We were homemakers and teachers and politicians and CEOs. We sold medical equipment, homes, insurance, clothing, cars, and telecommunication systems.
    Most of us were married and raising families. A few, including Zack, were still single or, like me, divorced. Zack didn’t mention Ron, but I assumed he knew about us. I wondered why he’d never married, whether he’d come close.
    There were other names we didn’t mention, because I didn’t want to dampen the mood, and I suppose Zack didn’t, either. Names that hung in the air like invisible specters. Jonathan Kaymer, who succumbed to lymphoma a year after high school. Batya Glazer, newly married and pregnant, her parents’ only child, having a snack in a Jerusalem pizza shop when a suicide bomber detonated explosives, killing Batya and fourteen others. Mark Lodenberg, a stockbroker on the ninety-eighth floor of the south World Trade Center tower that terrorists had attacked.
    And Aggie Lasher, my best friend, whose brutal murder five years ago continues to haunt me and pushes me to explore the caverns of the dark side of the mind, searching for answers that I have come to realize may not be there.
    “I guess you’re the only writer in the group,” Zack said. “I read your work, you know. Your books and feature articles. I look for your byline all the time.” He chewed a roasted potato.
    No further comment, so I assumed he was being diplomatic. His opinion shouldn’t have mattered, but of course it did. I’ve published numerous articles and one book and received my share of good reviews and some klunkers, along with varied comments from readers and friends (“You’re not Shakespeare,” one of my college classmates opined). I’m still vulnerable to criticism and wish I’d develop a turtle skin like Bubbie G, whose
“pfuff”
blows off hurtful comments like a dandelion’s fur.
    “You’re very good, Molly,” Zack said. “I mean,
really
good. Your language, your style. The way you capture the essence of the people you’re writing about, the pathos.”
    “Don’t forget my syntax,” I said, uncomfortable with his praise now that he was giving it.
    He cocked his head. “Why can’t you take a compliment? Just say, ‘Thank you’?”
    “Thank you,” I murmured, annoyed with the flush of pleasure working from my neck up to my face.
    He studied me for a moment, chewing another potato. “So what are you working on now?”
    I told him about the book I’d just finished, about the chromium-six piece, about the
Crime Sheet
, which made me think about Lenore. She’d been on my mind since I’d visited her yesterday, and I wondered how she was doing.
    “What made you decide to write true crime?” he asked.
    “I’m not sure.”
Aggie Lasher,
but that wasn’t something I wanted to go into. “Let’s talk about you. When did you decide to become a rabbi?”
    “Sometime in my second year in Hakotel.” He saw my raised brow. “You’re surprised I went there?”
    “I’m surprised you lasted,” I said, my tongue loosened by the wine. I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.” Hakotel, which means “wall,” as in the Western or Wailing Wall, is an Orthodox, post–high school Jerusalem yeshiva for motivated, self-disciplined males interested in intensive, all-day Talmud study. Not exactly a match for the Zack who had flitted not only from girl to girl but from interest to interest. Often, though, when we were alone, I’d sensed a deeper, more serious side. . . .
    “See,