“I am.”
“Good,” he says. “I have some information I would like to share with you. I realize it is a lot to ask, but might you be able to travel to Roseville tomorrow to meet in person?”
“I might,” I say, thinking, maybe Saul will loan me his car. “Were you a friend of Pessie’s?”
“I did not know her particularly well. But I believe her death may have been part of a larger plot.”
“A plot?”
“I do not wish to say more over the telephone, if you do not mind.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let me get back to you in a couple hours. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” he says, and gives me his phone number,
When we hang up I Google Nechemaya Burstein. He is, apparently, a member of the Rockland County Chevra Kadisha, which is a Jewish burial society. His name pops up in a 2012 article in The Journal News about two men from Roseville traveling to Israel to attend a conference on Jewish burial rites.
“As our community grows, so do our responsibilities,” he is quoted as saying. “This conference is an opportunity to improve our response to those in need.”
The group’s Web site doesn’t say much-just that they are members of the National Association of Chevra Kadisha and affiliated with three funeral homes, two of which are in Roseville. I encountered a Jewish burial group once before when the NYPD allowed their members to snag Rivka Mendelssohn’s naked body from a pile of scrap along the Gowanus Canal. At the time, those black-hatted men did not strike me as the kind who would reach out to a secular female reporter with a tip. But maybe it’s different upstate.
Iris finally comes out of her bedroom about twelve thirty. She’s got her hair in a ponytail and is carrying a yoga mat.
“I figure if I’m bailing on work I should do something semi-productive,” she says, opening the refrigerator. She picks up a carton of orange juice and shakes it, then pours some into a glass that had been sitting upside down on the drying rack in our sink.
“You are a better woman than I.” I haven’t done any sort of physical exercise, other than walking to and from the subway, since getting out of the hospital in January. I know enough to know that I should; that exercise is almost as good for depression and anxiety as, well, antidepressants and antianxiety pills, but going to the gym-or yoga or Zumba or spinning or whatever Iris does-feels really, like, optimistic. Like, look at me, I’m so healthy. Fuck that.
“You working your shift?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Brice is coming over tonight. I was thinking maybe we could all get drinks together or something. Are you done at ten?”
“Should be,” I say.
“Cool. I’d love us to hang out a little more.”
“Yeah?”
“You’d like him if you got to know him,” Iris says. “It’s stupid that you judge him by the way he looks.”
“I don’t,” I say.
“Yes, you do,” she says. “I love you, but sometimes you’re kind of a reverse snob. Just because he likes nice clothes and products doesn’t make him an asshole.”
“I never said he was an asshole.”
“He told me he loves me the other night,” she says, sitting on the sofa.
“The other night? You didn’t tell me!”
“I’m telling you now,” she says.
“Did you say it back?”
Iris nods.
“Is this a good thing?”
“I’m really happy,” she says. “It just feels fast.”
“They say when you know, you know,” I say.
“He mentioned getting married.”
“Are you serious?” Pop, there goes the pilot light in my stomach.
Iris nods.
“How long have you been dating?”
“Four months, but three exclusively,” she says. “But it’s… intense. He really knows what he wants. Ford offered him a job managing models in Asia…”
“Asia?!”
“He’s not gonna take it,” she says. “He doesn’t want to leave New York yet.”
Yet.
“But his career is good,” she continues. “And he wants a big family.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-eight.”
Iris wants me to say something encouraging, which is what a real friend would do. A real friend would be thrilled for her. A real friend would feel elation, not dread.
“What are you telling me, exactly?”
She hesitates, unsure herself, it seems. “I guess I’m telling you that… he might be the one.”
“The one? Do we really believe in that?”
“I do,” she says. “You know that.”
“Do I, like, need to look for a new roommate?”
“No,” she says, sounding slightly irritated. “I mean, maybe, eventually. But… I’m trying to tell you something happy. And kind of scary. Like, what if this is the guy I’m gonna have babies with?”
“And I’m being selfish.”
“A little.”
I exhale and lean forward to hug her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m happy for you.”
What I don’t say is that I worry I may have forgotten what happiness feels like. I’m not a zombie like I was a couple weeks ago, but what she’s going through-falling in love… I can’t even fathom such a thing.
“Thanks,” she says, getting up. I can tell I’ve hurt her. I can tell that the way I reacted has made a mark, maybe even a permanent one, on our friendship. I am ashamed and afraid at the same time. But I don’t know what to do.
“I’m sorry, Iris,” I say again.
“It’s okay,” she says. But I can tell she’s shut me out. She rinses her glass and grabs her keys.
“So, I’ll see you tonight?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says. “We’ll be here.”
After Iris leaves, I stay curled on the couch for a few minutes, trying to think my way out of the pain in my stomach. You haven’t lost your best friend over one selfish reaction, I tell myself. You haven’t.
Ten minutes later, I send Iris a text that says “I love you” and then I call Saul and tell him about Nechemaya.
“He wants to meet in Roseville,” I say. “Any chance I could borrow your car?”
“Sure,” he says. “You’re in luck. I’m staking out a nightclub in Greenwich Village but there’s a bench on the sidewalk outside. The Doom Room. Do you know it?”
“The Doom Room? No. What are you doing there?”
“My client thinks her husband is seeing a dominatrix,” Saul says, chuckling.
“It sounds like we’ve switched jobs.” I staked out a fetish place in Queens last year when we got a tip that a local politician was into S &M. The Trib paid day rates to keep a photog and a reporter sitting outside for almost a week, around the clock, to get that story. But none of us saw him coming or going. I don’t miss that kind of work at all, but I know that I have to prove myself capable of coming up with headlines on my own if I have any hope of getting a staff job-and thus some freedom-at the Trib or anywhere else. Coming up with headlines means having sources, which are basically impossible to cultivate sitting at a desk rewriting copy. I’ve been hiding in that office since Aviva called. It’s time to get out.
“I went to a chulent last night,” I say. “And I met a guy who knew Pessie. Listen to this: the Sam she was engaged to is Sam Kagan. Aviva’s brother. I found a number for him in Roseville and when I called the woman said he hadn’t been there in years. I asked for Aviva, too, and the woman got all upset. She definitely knew her.”
“How old is this Sam?”
“The readout I got from the library at the Trib says he’s my age, almost exactly.”
“You know,” says Saul, “I believe Aviva’s mother died in childbirth while she was in Florida…”
“What? Wait, how long have you known that?”