by Julia Dahl
“Look,” says Johnny, showing me his viewfinder, pressing buttons to zoom in on her face. Her lips are blue and she has a completely shaved head.
“See,” he says. “She’s a Jew.” I look at him and he looks toward the Hasids. “They make their women shave their heads.”
“No, they don’t,” I say, but I don’t actually know whether he’s wrong.
“Yeah, they do,” he insists. “Haven’t you ever noticed all those women wear wigs?”
I stare at the woman’s image in the camera. Her mouth is open slightly and the corners of her mouth seem to be pulled back in what I can’t help but picture as a scream. White, bloodless cracks run down her lips. One of her front teeth is chipped, and her left eye is swollen shut. It looks like a giant pink and purple gumball.
“Fucking dead Hasid,” says Johnny. “You better try to talk to those dudes now. They’re gonna close up tight as a pussy soon as this gets out.”
He’s probably right, but I stay put. I’m straining to get one last glance at the woman as the men lift her up and set her into the black bag. One long zip and she’s gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Iris is smoking a cigarette outside the bar when I get there.
“Rebekah!” She’s begun drinking already.
“You got off early,” I say. It’s barely five. DCPI said definitively they weren’t going to have an ID for hours, so Mike said I could take off.
“I snuck out,” she says. Brice, the highlighted honey, is beside her, and just like DCPI, he’s in a wool coat and no hat, gloves, or scarf. He smiles, displaying teeth so straight and white and square, I would have said they were dentures on anyone over fifty. Iris drops her cigarette to the sidewalk and smears it with the round toe of her knee-high boot. “Let’s go back in.”
I follow the two of them inside, through the seasonal plastic and canvas vestibule and past the velvet curtain that keeps the cold out. Frau Flannery’s is packed. There’s a mountain of coats in one corner and, because there is about a sixty-degree difference between the air outside and inside the bar, the big front window is steamed up like a Caddy at a drive-in.
Tony is behind the bar, interacting with the cash register. Iris drags Brice to the bar, where two girls from our class are sitting. Hannah is a legal secretary; Jenny fact-checks at one of the food magazines.
“Hi, ladies,” I say, scooting up into the bar stool.
“Hey,” says Hannah, putting one arm around me in a half hug. “Did you just get here?” I nod.
Jenny raises her pint glass. “I’ve been here since three.”
“Jenny got laid off.”
“Fuck,” I say.
Jenny raises her eyebrows and gulps from her beer. “No work tomorrow.”
“What happened?”
Jenny is still drinking, so Hannah answers. “The magazine is folding.”
“Folding?”
Jenny finishes her beer and sets it down on the bar a little harder than she probably meant to. “Yup. The EIC called us into her office right after lunch. She was crying. She was like, I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Was circ down that much?”
Jenny shrugs. “Probably. I mean, it’s totally their fault. Instead of making the magazine better, they fucking spend zillions on this fucking consulting firm from Wall Street—because they so have their shit together—to tell them where to trim the fat. Apparently, we’re fat.”
“The whole magazine?”
“Fat.”
I shake my head and Iris and I exchange a look. None of this is surprising in the least. We all know what’s happening to the fancy New York City publishing world we dreamed of in college.
“And, of course, I get nothing. No severance, no two weeks paid. Fucking nothing.”
“You’re still freelance?” She gives me a look, like, duh. We’re all freelance. My insecure job at the Trib is probably more secure than any of the jobs my friends have. Magazines die, but tabloids always need people willing to run around the city picking up quotes. I could probably keep this gig until I’m forty. And anyway, insecurity is something I’m used to. My dad was always there, and his wife, Maria, has been my stepmom since I was five, but you don’t grow up knowing your very existence sent your mother packing without developing a sense that the bottom can always drop out and you should probably be prepared.
The hole my mother left in me never healed. It’s like the space my wisdom teeth left in the days after I had them pulled: a raw gap, tender and prone to infection. The woman in the metal cage—her open mouth and exposed breasts and bare head, her stark, cruel anonymity—poked at it. I’ve had countless fantasies about my mom’s life the last twenty years: I’ve imagined her married, beaten by her husband, dying in childbirth, turning mute with the shame of abandoning me, committing suicide and leaving a note addressed to me; in my mind she’s come to Orlando and watched my school play from the back row, then ducked out when the curtain fell; she’s fled again, and is trying to contact Oprah to reunite us. She could be doing anything right now. She could have been in that cage.
Hannah and Jenny go to the bathroom. Tony is no longer behind the bar, so Iris and I order beers from a woman with frizzy hair and blue eyeliner. She takes our order and fills it without ever really looking at us. I assume Tony knows I’m coming here tonight—Friday night is UCF night—but I’ve given him the brush-off since our last date. I’ve been processing a conversation we had over dinner at a brick-oven pizza place on Flatbush a little over a week ago, and I’m still not sure how I feel. We’d just ordered wine and were talking about our days. I told him about being sent to cover a fire in a housing project in the Bronx the day before.
“Did they send you because they know you’ve written about that before?” he asked.
“What?” I said. I’d written a series in college about fire hazards in Section 8 housing, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t told him about that.
“The fires in those apartments. From last year. You won a prize, right?”
“You read that?”
“I Googled you. It was really … sad. I couldn’t believe the things that one guy said to you. ‘You get what you pay for.’ Unbelievable.”
I should have been flattered. Even Iris was impressed when I told her about it afterward. She said it meant he was genuinely interested in me, and that he didn’t feel threatened by my success. But I felt violated. Like he’d poked into my world when I hadn’t invited him. Like he should have asked permission. I stiffened up immediately. When the pizza came—a scrumptious-looking white pie with artichoke hearts and spinach—I had no appetite. My stomach was buzzing with anxiety and we didn’t stay for dessert. Mercifully, Tony read me, and just gave me a quick hug when we parted at the steps of the subway.
“Where’s Tony?” asks Iris.
“He was here a minute ago,” I say. Brice is standing behind her, gazing around the bar, tipping a bottle of Bud Light to his lips every minute or so. He’s like her page.
“Are you still pissed he Googled you?”
I shrug and drink my beer.
She puts her hand on my leg and leans toward me, tilting her head. Iris’s mother died during our freshman year. She’d been fighting breast cancer since Iris was thirteen, but the cancer won. I saw pictures of the two of them before prom and at Iris’s high school graduation. Her mom didn’t look good. Her skin was gray and her eyes hollow. After she died, Iris used to cry about all the ugly things she thought about her mom. She said she used to beg her to wear a pretty scarf or a hat to cover up her bald head. She tried to drag her for manicures and to department stores for clothes. But her mother didn’t care, or didn’t have the energy, or both. Iris said she felt like her mom had died years before the cancer killed her. She gave up on herself, Iris said. She didn’t think it was worth it to pretend she was still pretty. Her mom couldn’t have known how much her daughter needed her to pretend. Both motherless at nineteen, we got high one night and pretended we were each other’s mothers.
Tell Mom what’s wrong, we said, and we took turns putting our hands on each other’s knees, leaning in and nodding sympathetically, listening, pledging love “no matter what.” As Mom, it turned out, we both gave pretty good advice. Who knows who I was modeling: some mash-up of Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life and the silent, smiling women who bake cookies for groups of children in Nestlé commercials? Maria left advice-imparting to my dad. I think she was uncomfortable playing mom to the little girl who never knew hers.
“I thought you really liked him,” Iris says.
“I did,” I say. “I do.” I look up at Brice, a little uncomfortable talking about anything in front of him, but he’s got his eyes on the TV above the bar. Good boy.
“So give him a chance,” says Iris. “When was the last time you actually liked a guy?”
It’s been a while. “I know,” I say. We both drink from our beers, and then Iris changes the subject.
“How was your day?” she asks. When we created the Mom game, “how was your day” was very important. Mothers always ask about your day. Apparently.
“I was on a body. A woman. She was naked.”
“You saw her?”
I nod. “She was just lying there, in this crane. In the cold. And there were all these men around. Oh, and there were Jews.”
“Jews?”
“Like, my mom’s Jews. With the …” I make a spiral motion with my finger indicating sidecurls.
“Really? Did you talk to them?”
“I talked to a little boy, actually. Just for a minute.”
Hannah comes back and takes her seat. Iris straightens from her Mom posture; our game wasn’t a secret the year after her mom died, but four years later, I think we might both be a little sheepish about how much we still rely on it.
Right behind Hannah comes a group of men. They squeeze in next to Brice, one snagging Jenny’s stool.
“Excuse me,” says Hannah. “This seat is taken.”
“I know,” says the new occupant, a big guy with a goatee. “By me.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” she says, snapping instantly into bitch mode. Hannah raises the left corner of her upper lip and reaches her arm across the bar, in some attempt to keep him from ordering. “My friend is in the bathroom and this is her seat.”
“Look,” says the man, turning toward her in his enormous puffy coat. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells like dust. “I’m fucking beat and your friend didn’t leave no handbag….”
“She didn’t need to leave a handbag,” says Hannah. “I said I’d watch her seat.”
Now the man’s friends are watching. I’m trying to figure out how to avoid becoming involved. Brice steps back, probably thinking the same thing. Iris and I angle away, sipping our beers and watching.
The man sighs. He looks exhausted. “Well, you did a shitbag job, lady.”
Hannah puffs out her chest. “Lady! Don’t you fucking …”
“Look, hon, all you had to do was ask me to move. I’m not a pig. But I don’t take orders from no bitch. Not today.”
Hannah’s mouth hangs open and for a moment, she’s speechless. And then Jenny comes back from the bathroom.
“Uh, hello!” shouts Jenny, taking long, uneasy strides toward the bar. She’s moving so fast, she stumbles and plows right into the man in her seat, spilling a pint glass of beer she must’ve swiped from some pushover Florida boy all over him. The man jumps up, and as he tries to wipe the liquid off his lap, shoves Jenny, who falls dramatically to the floor.
“Oh my God!” she screams.
“Did you see that?” shouts Hannah.
Jesus. I hop off my bar stool and kneel down beside Jenny. “Come on,” I say. “You’re fine. It’s okay.”
“He fucking hit her!” shouts Hannah.
“He didn’t hit her,” says Iris, but not loud enough that Hannah pays her any attention.
The man is wiping beer off his jacket, unzipping the front and shaking out the cuffs. His friends have backed away. Tony appears and offers Jenny his hand to get up.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “She’s fine.”
But Hannah’s not done. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” she calls to the bartender. “Did you see what just happened here? I was saving my friend a seat and he took it and then … now … he just pushed her!”
The bartender stares at Hannah. She rubs her forehead with nicotine yellow fingers and looks to Tony.
“Can I get a towel, Maureen?” says Tony. Maureen tosses him a towel.
“Here you go, man,” he says. “This round’s on me.”
The wet patron nods and wipes off his coat.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, putting my hand on his back. Tony smiles at me and winks.
“Why are you saying sorry?” says Hannah.
“Can I get you ladies another couple drinks?” asks Tony. It shouldn’t surprise me that he’s good at managing drunk people, but the ease with which he’s taken control of the situation, careful not to imply fault or favor, is suddenly incredibly attractive. We fucked on our first real date, and it was pretty awesome. He made me come with his hand and afterward, when I turned my head to see his face, he had this enormous smile spread across it, like he’d just won the lottery. Then he slid inside me and made me come again. Could I just drag him into the bathroom right now and spread my legs and get fucked against the tiny sink? I slide my hand down his back and touch his ass through his jeans. He looks down at me, surprised, and pleased. Standing beside him now, the fact that I’d been irritated by his interest in me seems very silly. I hope he forgives me.
“Another round would be great,” I say, leaning in like he’s mine.
But Hannah is over Frau Flannery’s.
“This place sucks,” says Hannah, taking her purse from the hook beneath the bar. “Come on, Jenny.”
Jenny looks at me and Iris. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused. I hug her close and then. Hannah whisks her away. Iris winks and turns toward Brice, leaving me and Tony alone in the crowd.
“That was exciting,” says Tony.
I slide my hand around to his back again and he pulls me to him. I look up—he’s a head taller than me—and to my great pleasure, he kisses me. Right there in front of everybody. I can’t see Iris, but I bet she’s smiling.
“I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole,” I say, loving the way his soft chest feels against mine. He is about to say something when my phone rings. It’s the desk.
“I’ll be back,” I say.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I angle through the crowd to a space by the door and answer.
“Hold for Cathy,” says the receptionist. I hold.
“Rebekah, you were on the Gowanus body, right?”
“Right.”
“Who was out there? What was the scene like?”
“Um, how so?”
“They might need a couple extra inches for the second edition. Vic Hubbert told me to check it out.”
Cathy Richards is on the Sunday desk, but she sometimes picks up overnight shifts. Vic Hubbert runs the night shift and compiles the police blotter. He is way past retirement age.
“The workers seemed shook up. The owners were a little weird, but they’re always kinda weird.”
“The owners? What do you mean weird?”
“Sorry. I mean … They were Hasidic.”
“Hasidic?”
“The Jews, in black hats …”
“I know what Hasidic means.”
I hear typing.
“What was the name of the yard?” she asks.
“Um, I forget. Hold on.” Shit. I should know this. I pull out my notebook and flip the pages. “Smith. Like the street.”
“You think it’s owned by Hasidics?”
“I don’t know for sure. I talked to a kid at the gas station across the street and the guy at the counter said the boy’s dad owned the yard.”
“Get his name?”
“The kid? Yakov.”
“Last name?”
“Last name … he said it, I think.”
“Where did you talk to him? Wait, how old?”
“I don’t know, like eight or nine maybe?”
“We can’t quote him. Did he say anything interesting?”
“Not really. He came in with his dad and another man but they left him there.”
“They left him?”
“He seemed comfortable. I mean, if it’s the family yard, I figured he’d been there before.”
“Okay. But you didn’t get a last name.”
“I did…. Um, fuck.”
“Find it. I’ll call you back.”
I flip through my notes three times, but the last name isn’t in there. I pull out a pen and circle some possible quotes. The cashier’s reaction: “I can’t believe it.” And the Jewish van. I look up and catch Tony’s eye. He’s back behind the bar. I mouth “work” and roll my eyes. He winks.
Cathy calls back.
“Library is working on an address for the owner. What time did you start?”
“Nine.”
“Vic wants to door-knock.” She is typing. “Let me see who’s on the schedule tonight….”
“I’ll go,” I say. I’ve never volunteered for a double shift before. But I’ve also never been on a story that in any way involved the Hasids. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even read a story about them, not in the Trib, anyway. It’s a funny secret, I think, that I’m one of them and they don’t know it. Or maybe I’m not. Can you be Hasidic without all the dress-up and the rules? Is it in my blood?
“Yeah? Okay, hold on, I’m gonna get Vic on speaker.”
I hold.
“Hello?” Vic’s voice is a croak. It’s more than just smoking. He sounds like someone’s scraped his throat out with a fork.
“Hi,” I say.
“You talked to the owner?” asks Vic.
“I talked to a little boy. The bodega worker said his dad owned the yard.”
“They were Hasidic?”
“Yeah.”
