A thought occurred to him, and he reached for the phone and called Lawrence Gore.
"Is Billy there with you. Larry?" he asked.
"No, Ellsworth, he just left, anything important? I could yell to him from the window."
"No, and I'd rather you didn't tell him I called." He chuckled. "I'll see you tomorrow at the bank and I'll tell you about it. By the way, what time did he get there?— About eight? What do you know?"
The boy must have left within minutes after he had been locked in, he rubbed his hands together gleefully-Wonderful!
12
WITH HAT AND COAT ON, HENRY MALTZMAN TOOK A QUICK look around the office, snicked off the lights and prepared to leave, then the phone rang. It was Laura, of course, she always managed to catch him before he left.
"Henry? Would you stop by the market on your way home? I need a few things."
"Sorry, Laura. I'm not coming straight home. I've got to see the rabbi first. It's important."
"Well, couldn't you pick up these few things first and—"
"Nothing doing. I'll get stuck at the market, and then by the time I get to the rabbi's, he'll be getting ready to leave for the evening service."
"Then after you see the rabbi—"
"The market will be closed. No. Laura, you'll have to get them yourself or just manage without."
"But we're having people over tonight. Have you forgotten?"
"No, I haven't forgotten. But I can't help you. Call the market, they sometimes deliver in an emergency."
In the rabbi's living room, half an hour later. Maltzman talked of his great coup. "Do you realize what it will mean for the temple, having a man like Ben Segal as a member?"
"What will it mean?"
"More members." Maltzman answered promptly. "Everybody likes to belong to an association—a club, a lodge, a temple, what have you—with a big shot. It's human nature. If it's a big, successful business tycoon like Ben Segal, maybe they figure his luck will rub off on them. Or maybe they hope to transact some business, or even get some advice on some stock they own. Mostly, it's just so they can do a little name dropping. 'I was saying to Ben Segal—you know, of the Rohrbough Corporation—he's a member in our temple—' That kind of thing."
"Well, I can think of better reasons for joining a temple, but I don't insist on them," said the rabbi good-humoredly.
Maltzman grinned. "Or we wouldn't have enough members for a minyan."
The rabbi grinned back. "All right, so did you sign him up?" "Well, there's a little hitch, from his point of view." "What's the hitch?"
"Well, see, when he was a youngster, his folks were awfully poor, they had this little store where he used to help out right after school. So at the time, when he was thirteen, they couldn't afford to have a Bar Mitzvah for him."
The rabbi smiled. "So?"
"So it bothers him, he feels he's not really a bona fide Jew, he's that kind of guy—awfully sincere, all the different cities they lived in—see, they moved around a lot because he'd take over a corporation, in Detroit, say, and they'd move there, and then they'd trade it for a corporation in Dallas, say, and they'd move there, living in hotels all the time—so in all these cities, he never joined a synagogue, mostly I guess because he never got around to it, and wasn't planning to stay long, in any case, but also because he felt he wasn't really a Jew, not having been Bar Mitzvah."
"But surely, you explained—"
"But here, he's planning to stay." Maltzman hurried on. "He didn't get control of Rohrbough to trade it, he's planning to run it, and he's planning on building a house in the area and living here, he wants to become part of the community, that's when I braced him about joining our temple, and he springs that Bar Mitzvah thing on me. I was just going to tell him it made no difference, when his wife tells how she heard about some old geezer of seventy out in California who just got himself Bar Mitzvahed, and why couldn't he do the same thing, and right then it came to me—the gimmick!"
"The gimmick?"
"That's right. Ever since I became president, and even before, I’ve been searching for a gimmick, the gimmick that would sell the temple. You got something to sell, you need a gimmick. In my line, when I first started selling houses, it was tiled bathrooms with glass shower doors. You had a house that was built solid with nice large sunny rooms in a nice location, it didn't mean a thing without a tiled bathroom. It caught the eye. It didn't have a tiled bathroom, forget it, well, after a while all houses had tiled baths, so you had to come up with another gimmick. So they came up with tiled kitchens, then it was kitchens with wood cabinets, then rumpus rooms, then finished cellars with a bar. Get the idea? So when I became president of the temple, and decided that what we needed was more members. I tried to think of some gimmick that would bring them in. I've been racking my brains for a gimmick, and then Mrs. Segal tells about the old guy who was Bar Mitzvah, and her husband is interested, and right away I’ve got my gimmick, he wants a Bar Mitzvah? Swell! We'll give him a real one, we'll send out invitations to everv Jew in the communitv, members and nonmembers. 'You are cordially invited to join with us in worship and attend the Bar Mitzvah of Benjamin Segal.' We'd do it up brown, he'd make the usual speech—"
"Today, I am a man?"
Maltzman grinned. "Sure, why not? I'll bet he'll go along, then I'd make my little president's speech and give him a prayerbook like we give all the Bar Mitzvahs, and then you'd give him your blessing and make your little speech the way you usually do, then we'd have a party in the vestry so he could get to meet everybody. I even had tha idea we'd give him a bunch of fountain pens as a gag—" "Fountain pens?"
"Oh, I guess that was before your time. But when I was a kid, a fountain pen was the most popular gift for the Bar Mitzvah boy. Not ballpoints, but the kind with a gold nib that you fill yourself from a bottle. See, the kid would be going on to high school where he'd need it, they cost anywhere from a couple of dollars to fifteen or twenty, so it was a pretty good gift, too, Gosh, when I was Bar Mitzvah, I must’vegot half a dozen. I wore them all in my breast pocket the next day, so I looked like the doorman at the Russian Samovar. Segal is my age, so he'll know about it and get a kick out of it."
"I see."
"So is it all set?"
"No, it's not all set. Mr. Maltzman. I certainly have no intention of going along with the gag. Mr. Segal was Bar Mitzvah when he was thirteen whether he knows it or not, there's no special rite or ritual required. It's automatic. It's not like baptism. It isn't initiation into the religion or the tribe, that's what circumcision is. If Mr. Segal feels that he wants to be rededicated to the religion of his fathers, it would make more sense if he had himself circumcised again."
"That's crazy!"
The rabbi nodded. "But at least it has some justification in logic. Bar Mitzvah, though, merely means that one is of age, old enough and presumably mature enough to take responsibility for one's own actions and sins. It's just like becoming twenty-one, or eighteen, or whatever the age is now where you can make your own contracts. No special ceremony is required, no party and no speeches. When you're twenty-one you can vote or make a contract, well, that's all that Bar Mitzvah means, that you are of age."