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want to keep anybody waiting.
    He had a point. I didn't want to be a charity case, a poor immigrant with these guys. This was different from how I felt with Axel. With Axel, I had a feeling he was in greater trouble than I was, and it was dangerous to bring it up.
    "I don't want sympathy," I said.
    "Fair enough," Ted said.
    "My mother's still in Germany," I said.
    "Well, I figured that."
    "That's enough," I said.
    Ted thought that over. "It sure is."
    I told him I had a lot to think about, that we could leave it alone for now. My mother's letter gave me a sense of urgency—but it also had narrowed some options. I never was going back to Germany, for starts.
    * * *
    By afternoon I didn't know much except that I was a New Yorker. Everything I was going to do would be seen through a layer of fine black soot and the sound of I-dare-you. I had to move toward a future where I worked with Axel and tended my mother. All of us would be citizens. New York citizens. In the meantime, I would learn as much as I could. If I was in New Orleans, I was in a place where English was spoken the way it was spoken in New York, and pale imitations of Jews recognized each other. I asked Ted for Letty's phone number.
    "What do you want that for?" Ted said.
    "Do you think I might ask her to go on a date?"
    "Aw, man, I grew up with Letty. You don't want to go out with Letty." I told him I thought she was very nice. I also reminded him that Alan had no claim on her. I was being an I-dare-you New Yorker.
    "Okay, I'll tell you the truth," he said. "See, you have to be almost a direct descendant of Judah P. Benjamin to impress her mother. Oh, and it helps if you own half of Canal Street."
    I didn't understand.
    Ted asked me if I remembered Shirley. Of course I remembered Shirley. For a fraction of a second I had considered Shirley as an option before looking at Letty.
    "I happen to know for a fact that for as long as anyone can remember, Letty's parents have made no secret that they think Shirley isn't good enough to be her friend. Which is ridiculous. It's not as if Letty is going to marry her."
    I asked him what was wrong with Shirley. I thought she was a little off-putting as a possible girlfriend for me, but that had nothing to do with what Letty might want.
    Ted folded his arms in front of him as if he were going to give me a lesson that would supersede anything else I might learn in New Orleans. "There are Jews in New Orleans, and there are Jews," he said. "Shirley is the wrong kind. Not as far as I'm concerned, mind you, but the Adler's think she's beneath contempt."
    I'd been able to tell both she and Letty were Jewish by simple physiognomy, so to me they were equal. Jewish was Jewish. Certainly where I came from the government had rules about who was Jewish, but the quality of Jewishness was never an issue. The only times Jews hated Jews was when they hated themselves.
    "The Third Reich didn't discriminate," I said.
    "Well, the Adlers do," Ted said. "Shirley's last name is Hurwitz, which means her parents are a lower class kind of Jew. I think it means Eastern European. And that means conservative or orthodox. The Adlers want to be assimilated. They want to pass for gentiles. So actually practicing Judaism is like practicing voodoo, only a lot more embarrassing."
    "I think my ancestors were at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella," I said, trying to be funny, though it was true. "That's very western European."
    "That buys very little in New Orleans," Ted said. "Except maybe around Mardi Gras."
    We both laughed. I needed that laugh.
    "This is America," I said.
    "New Orleans is not America," Ted said. "In fact, America is probably not America."
    * * *
    The High Holy Days were early that year, starting the second week in September, and I was grateful because I needed the time to think on Yom Kippur. I chose the synagogue on St. Charles Avenue that Ted suggested, though he claimed to know little more than that it had air conditioning. I was beginning