“Yeah, yeah,” Shull muttered, “good Shabbes, l’Chaim. Next Year in Jerusalem.”
“Is something wrong? What’s wrong?”
Tober unlocked the coffee shop. It had closed its doors to the public long ago but its big stainless-steel coffee urn was still operational, its grill and freezer.
Shull stepped behind the counter. He looked oddly chic back there in his dark, expensively tailored suit. “You want something with your coffee, Rabbi? There’s marble cake in the bell. We might have some fruit in the back. I could heat soup in the microwave. I could make toast.”
“Coffee’s fine.”
“This was before your time,” Tober said. “When the hotel was still open for business. This coffee shop had one of the finest kosher chefs in all America behind the counter.”
“I’d heard that,” I said.
“Talk about your funeral baked meats,” Shull said.
“There just wasn’t the business,” Tober said. “We couldn’t justify it.”
“We had to send him packing.”
“The Association hired him for the prestige and convenience.”
Tober meant the Greater Lud Merchants’ Association. Even the anti-Semite, Seels, was a member. Even I was.
“Then, when business dropped off …”
“That’s the thing,” I broke in. “I don’t understand how business can drop off.”
“That’s because you’re a scholar, Rabbi.”
“Not so much a man of the world.”
“You busy your head with the important things.”
“Blessing the bread.”
“The candles.”
“The wine.”
“Making over dead people.”
“Making over God.”
“Look,” said Shull, “you don’t have to worry.”
“Your job is assured,” Tober said.
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of my employers as some other rabbi might have thought of the people on the board of directors of his congregation. Trustees and governors.
They were not like the women.
They watched me like a hawk.
They listened to every word of every eulogy, professional as people at the rear of a theater on opening night, interested as backers, hanging on the sobs, waiting for the laughs and show stoppers.
“My job is assured?”
“If it’d make you more comfortable we could draw up a new contract.”
“I don’t think I—”
“Sure,” Tober said, “we could stick in a no-cut clause, guarantee you four or five more years.”
“Five or six.”
“Sure,” said Tober, “what the hell.”
“But—”
“You know what keeps us going?” Shull said.
“The perpetual care,” Tober said.
“The perpetual care and the exhumations.”
“The perpetual care and the exhumations and the deconsecrations.”
“The perpetual care, exhumations, deconsecrations and the deliveries of the disinterred we make out to the Island.”
“The perpetual care, exhumations, deconsecrations and the deliveries of the disinterred we make out to the Island and up to Connecticut.”
“Because this necropolis is dying on its feet.”
I’m a fellow whipsawed between admiration and contempt, hard men and soft women, needful daughters and loony wives, God jerks and morticians.
“Think, Rabbi. How many graves and tombstones have we dug up this year? Just this year? How many times have you found yourself having to mumble deconsecration prayers over some watertight, concrete vault?” Tober asked, emptying his cup and rinsing it in the deconsecrated sink.
“Sure,” Shull said, “that’s what keeps us going.”
“Fashion!” Tober grumped.
“Fashion and the interment customs. The laws and principles of the Funeral Code of the Great State of New Jersey.”
“We live by checks and balances, Rabbi.”
“And what if,” Shull put in, “God forbid it should come to this, the fashionable Long Island or fashionable Connecticut funerary lobby bastards ever got to our Trenton bastards and made them do away with the points in the code which keep us viable?”
“Exhumation taxes.”
“Fees for rezoning deconsecrated back into consecrated ground.”
“The ten-buck-a-mile charge, point A to point B, to move the disinterred across a state line.”
“All your prohibitives and pretty-pennies.”
“Pffft!”
“Up in smoke.”
“Gone with the wind.”
“But it makes you more comfortable we draw up a brand-new contract.”
“No cut for two or three years.”
“One or two.”
“Sure,” said Tober, “what the hell.”
Shull took an ice-cream scoop from behind the counter and hung over the open freezer, studying the flavors. “Hey,” he said, “I’m going to make myself a frappe. Anyone else? How about it, Rabbi? You up for a frappe?”
“Why are you saying these things to me?” I asked Tober. “I don’t know why you’re saying these things to me,” I told Shull.
“Listen,” Tober said, “we’re not the type to go behind your back.”
“Of course not,” Shull agreed. “Believe me, Rabbi, if we had a beef we’d be in touch.”
“We perfectly understand your position,” Tober said.
“We comprehend totally your point of view.”
“It isn’t as if we could reasonably ask you to fix up your eulogies.”
“Good Christ, man, you never even knew these people!”
“By the time you see them they’re already dead!”
“All you got to go on is what their loved ones tell you about it,” Shull said.
“You going to trust loved ones at a time like that?”
“With all their special stresses and vulnerabilities?”
“Though you have to, of course.”
“Even they tell you their daddies could fly.”
“Stand around in the air like a guy on a staircase.”
“It’s the age-old story.”
“Garbage in, garbage out,” Tober said.
“We won’t stand on ceremonies. What it comes down to is what it came down to the last time,” Shull said.
“Arthur Klein and Johnny Charney have been asking about you again,” Tober said.
“What with death moving further and further out on the Island and up to the bedroom communities in Connecticut, well,” Shull said, “we don’t honestly see how we can continue to protect you.”
“I’m a rabbi,” I protested.
“Of course you are. I’d come to you myself for spiritual guidance. Wouldn’t you, Shull?”
“In a minute, Tober.”
“I studied Talmud. What do I know about real estate?”
“Plots,” Tober said, laughing lightly. “Not real estate. Burial plots. Real estate is something else altogether.”
“They tax real estate.”
“We believe in the separation of church and real estate.”
“Posolutely,” Shull agreed.
“It’s Klein’s opinion you wouldn’t even need a realtor’s license.”
“Charney’s too.”
“Please,” I said, rising to go, “I’m not your man.”
“It isn’t as if you’d be knocking on doors.”
“Is that what he thought, Tober, he’d be knocking on doors?”
“Leads,” Tober said, “you’d be following leads. Charney said to say.”
“All you’d have to do is close.”
“And collect the commission Klein says you’re entitled to.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee.” Again I raised my imaginary cap. “Reb Tober. Reb Shull.”
It was always astonishing to me to see them work in tandem, zip through routines I knew had to have been rehearsed, the letter-perfect meeting of their minds, their rhymed intentions. Though of course this wasn’t the first time they’d introduced the subject. For years they’d been after me to work part time at Lud Realty with Klein and Charney. Indeed, though they professed to be passing along Klein’s and Charney’s views — the business about the realtor’s license, the commission, the leads — the idea of my selling cemetery lots had been theirs. They thought a rabbi would have extra authority with the customers.