You Never Know

Nice house, nice street, nice neighborhood, not a crazy belt king palace.

"What for? So I should get the evil eye?" Alvy would say.

Especially when the home was in the wife's name. You never know.

"Am I looking to make the cover of People magazine?" he'd say.

No, Alvy Shugar never craved the limelight, unlike his second wife, Candy, who once graced the covers of less prestigious periodicals like Jugs and Moto Vixens.

"A fancy house? Who needs the attention?" Alvy would say.

Especially when you declare an annual income of $27,500. Who needs any of it?

Harry rang the door bell and Candy answered.

"Hello," Harry said to her cleavage.

"What took you so long?"

Just say the magic word.

"Baby."

"Oh, Harry."

"Oh, baby."

And that's all it took to get it going in the vestibule.

"Candace are you okay?" a nasal voice said from the living room.

"Stop," Candy whispered to Harry. "Help me get rid of this rabbi."

Candy straightened out her itsy-bitsy black lycra dress. There wasn't much to straighten
out though. Harry adjusted his hard-on. (What were Joey Prager's pecker-a-porter rules?
"Puerto Ricans pack it to the left, polacks to the right and schvartzes strapped to the thigh.") Where did that leave Harry? Better to just untuck the shirt and walk bow-legged.
Candy led Harry and his hard-on into the living room where Rabbi Shimmy was gnawing on a piece on a biscotti.

"Mmmm," Rabbi Shimmy cooed. "A kosher biscuit at it's finest." He coughed. "A little dry however..." The rabbi looked Harry up and down and quickly assessed that the young man had the donation potential of $250 a year. But that was just to start. Reel him and work the lines. "And who do I have the pleasure of meeting here?" the rabbi continued while rising to greet Harry. He cleared his throat; an avalanche of crumbs cascaded down from his scraggly beard and rumpled black coat onto the floor.

"This is Alvy's cousin, Harry Starr," Candy said while grabbing for the Dirt Devil. She learned long ago that where there were rabbis and refreshments, there were crumbs.

"Very nice, very nice. Is there anything better than a family visit? Harry, did you put on your tefillin today?" Rabbi Shimmy shouted over the drone of the Dirt Devil. He coughed up a piece of biscotti lodged in his throat. "A cold glass of seltzer would be nice. Lemon-lime if you have."

"Let me see what I have in the fridge, Rabbi Shimmy. Talk to Harry while I look for the bottle."

"Of course, what a pleasure it would be to share some quality time with my new chaver, Harry Starr. By the way, are you related to Ira Starr? He owns an impressive luggage and handbag repair shop."

Actually, yes. Ira was Harry's grandmother's first cousin, but why create an ice-breaker?  It was bad enough that he made eye contact with the rabbi. Harry shrugged his shoulders and answered, "No." No big deal, he thought. Everyone bullshits God's soldiers:


"A donation? It's been a tough year."

" I can't make it that night.".

" Nice seeing you."


 When all they really want to say is, "Leave me alone!" Still, Harry felt shitty about lying to a holy man.

"Interesting," Rabbi Shimmy said. "I thought I detected a family resemblance. It must be the height. I don't encounter that many tall Jews."

"It's the new generation. We drink a lot of milk."

The rabbi chuckled and a dry booger flew out of his left nostril and fluttered onto what was left of his biscotti. "You are quite the comedian, Harry Starr!"

Harry forced himself not to gag when the rabbi ate the rest of the biscotti. Between the beard and the booger, the holy man was grossing out Harry and it filled him with rage. He thought of decking Rabbi Shimmy with an uppercut to the jaw, but recoiled at the thought of touching the scraggly beard. Maybe there were more boogers hiding out in them thar hairs? Inevitably the shame of entertaining such puerile thoughts set in, so Harry prayed to God for forgiveness. Maybe this was a set up, a test, a trial? Like Isaac bound up on Mount Moriah as a sacrifice. That was Abraham's test. Harry was confronted with a kosher booger. That was his test.

"Good, otherwise I would have had to be the bearer of sad tidings. My dear friend, Ira, just had a triple bypass." Rabbi Shimmy lifted the plate of biscotti and offered one to Harry. "Biscotti?  To coin a name used by the trendy set. I, however, am perfectly content to call these delightful goodies, mandel bread. Do you know how important a name is, Harry?"

"Not really," Harry sighed.

"Of paramount importance! And Harry, what is your Hebrew name, if I may ask?"

"Chaim."

"Ah, Chaim. A wonderful name, the name of life. Perchance you have heard of Chaim Plotnick?"

Harry imagined himself giving the rabbi a headlock and a noogie, grinding his knuckles into Shimmy's pallid temple while yelling, "Shut up!" Of course, he felt awful about it. Better to think about doing Candy on the kitchen counter. Sweet sweet Candy.

"No, never heard of him."

"And why should you? The man lives in Australia. Made a fortune in the scrap metal  business and then built a magnificent synagogue with a Jewish day school in Melbourne..."

Insufferable. Harry bit hard on the inside of his lip. What if this was the moment he long dreaded where he lost control? Where his animal impulses took over? It happens all the time. Someone flips the finger and gets beaten to death. Fodder for the crime column in next day's paper. Or a stupid rush of road rage leads to murder. "Be careful," his father told him ad nauseam. "You never know."

You just never know.

A life-saver. Candy finally returned with a tall glass of lemon-lime seltzer. "One last bottle in the laundry room," she said while winking at Harry. Candy handed the rabbi his tangy thirst-quencher.

Rabbi Shimmy took a long gulp and sighed. "A little slice of heaven. Let the others have their Rolls Royces and silk foulards. Give me a cool sparkling beverage to sooth my parched throat and I am a rich man." He yawned and sunk back into the couch. Candy smiled at him.

"Suddenly I seem to be overcome by fatigue although my day is far from finished." Shimmy peeked at his Timex, raised his eyebrows in surprise and yawned again. "Oh my, I'm running late. Evening prayers in forty-six minutes and then my Talmud class. Where did the time fly by?" He yawned once more, then keeled over in a deep sleep.

"?" Harry sat there stunned, mouth agape.

"I knew the tranquilizers would do the trick," Candy said while putting her arms around Harry and shimmied into his lap. "Let's fuck now."

"Baby," Harry whispered as he plunged into her cleavage. Oh shit! The the plane ticket!, he remembered and bobbed back out of her magnificent breasts. He sucked in a lung full of oxygen, hyperventilated and said, "Don't forget your plane ticket, or Alvy will never forgive me."

"You're a bad boy, baby. A very bad boy," she said while flinging off her itsy-bitsy black lycra dress.

And for the first time in Harry Starr's young adult life, he felt complete, fully realized. He just felt shitty about it.