“Could be angina,” Babka said. “Or an AMI.”
“AMI?”
“Acute myocardial infarction. Heart attack.” She unbuttoned the man’s collar.
Angie flew in from backstage to announce that an ambulance was on the way; the show was canceled.
To his shame, Zach’s first reaction was, “There goes my night.” His second reaction, “Why do bad thoughts happen to good people?” was only slightly redemptive. He was a good person, he told himself, had simply been overexcited by the evening’s prospects. Now, he shifted his full attention to the victim, felt for him, worried about his survival.
Babka had one hand on the man’s chest, the other pressed against the side of his neck. “No pulse! We have to start CPR.”
“I don’t know how,” Zach replied, embarrassed. Every January, his gym offered members a free course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He’d never taken advantage of it.
“It’s not hard, watch me,” she commanded. Her knees straddling the man’s hips, she leaned over, pinched close his nostrils, forced open his mouth, covered it with her own, and blew two quick breaths into his lungs. “That’s your part,” she said, rising slightly. “I’ll compress his chest fifteen times and when I say ‘Blow,’ you’ll do what I just did.”
Zach nodded, impressed by her self-assurance, humiliated by his inadequacy. He locked his lips around the victim’s mouth like a gasket, felt the sandpaper stubble of a two-day beard against his chin, tasted aftershave lotion, then garlic and cheap wine and marveled that he had come to be exchanging body fluids with one stranger while taking orders from another who could be his fated one, or simply nuts. The moment felt surreal, yet profound. Falling into the rhythm of Babka’s pumping, he lost count of his exhales, of all sensation in his jaw, of time and space and everything but her strong, steady count and the power in his lungs, until, suddenly, his mouth was pulled off the man’s face like a suction cup off a tile wall.
“We’ll take it from here, buddy.” It was an EMS worker in green scrubs.
“Domino’s could’ve made it here faster,” Babka snapped, sweat staining the underarms of her leotard, loose strands of hair dangling from her bun. She fired off the facts as she accompanied the patient into the ambulance. “He showed Levine’s sign about eight minutes ago. Typical ischemic cardiac pain. Passed out before I could get his name, age, or history.”
Before the back doors slammed shut, Zach saw the paramedics hook the man up to an armada of blinking machines. Babka had a smile on her face when she came out. “EKG looks good!” She high-fived Angie while Zach, slumped in one of the folding chairs, could barely summon the energy to brush her palm.
After the ambulance raced off, sirens wailing, Angie set the work light on the stage and cast a disapproving eye on Zach as she headed for the door. Only then did he realize that he was still wearing his blazer.
“You’re my SJM, aren’t you?” asked Babka, her handshake firm.
“Is it that obvious?”
“No, but I’m psychic.”
“I’m Zach Levy. You’re incredible! What do you do for an encore, tracheotomies?”
“I thought you were in the market for an M-R-S, not an E-M-T.”
“Why not both?” Zach massaged his numb jaw with both hands as Babka pulled a chair up beside him. He liked the way she smelled, a blend of makeup, sweat, and mint. “I mean it—that was one helluva finale. When you first jumped off the stage, I thought you were either gunning for a heckler or losing it.”
She grinned. “Courage in women is often mistaken for madness.”
“Where’d you learn CPR?”
“My last job. One of our senior VPs had a heart attack and died at his desk. Management made the course mandatory after that.” (Zach had forgotten the “recovering investment banker” line in her letter.) “I once saved a guy in accounting. It was April 15, tax day. Put two and two together, it spelled heart attack, even without Levine’s sign.”
“You said that word to the medic. Levine’s sign?”
“It’s what the bald guy did when he was in pain,” Babka replied. “If someone clenches his fist to his chest and uses words like ‘crushing,’ you know it’s not a fish bone or stroke. It’s cardiac.”
Zach moaned. “Oy, a heart pain named for a Jew. That’s perfect.”
“Not the pain. The diagnosis. Levine did us a favor.”
“You certainly did that man a favor. You saved his life.”
Babka shrugged. “Save one life, you save the world.”
That line had been woven on a tapestry in Rabbi Goldfarb’s study, along with its source, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a, but Zach never expected to hear it from a woman he met through a personal ad. He studied her face; it was blank as paper. “Last I checked,” he said, “most people don’t quote Talmud on a first date.”
“Oh, is this a date?” Babka said, with a mischievous smirk. “I thought it was an audition.” She retrieved the commissar’s coat and hat and dumped them in the prop trunk. “I just love the idea that the air we breathe contains 21 percent oxygen and the air we exhale contains only 10 percent oxygen, and yet it’s enough to keep someone alive. We’re the only species that can breathe life into one another.” She hopped on the platform stage and picked up the Smirnoff bottle, sucking a dram or two before passing it to Zach.
The liquid scorched his throat. “Hey! I thought actors drank fake booze.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m an artist,” she frowned. “Wait here while I change into street clothes?”
Ten minutes later, she returned wearing an Indian-style chamois dress the color of butterscotch, a silver necklace studded with turquoise stones, beaded moccasins, her hair plaited in two thick braids, hardly the average person’s idea of street clothes.
Zach gave her a thumbs up. “Your Pocahontas is even better than your Yentl.”
For the better part of an hour the two of them sat in the vacant theater passing the vodka bottle between them while Babka peppered Zach with questions that none of his countless blind dates had ever asked. Did he ever experience anti-Semitism? Cheat on an exam? Consider suicide? Zach answered each query honestly, no slick fibs or exaggerations. If she turned out to be his bashert, he wanted her to see him for the person he was.
“Cheated, once, on an algebra test,” he said. “I’d been out with the mumps when the unit was taught and never made up the class.”
“Shoplift?”
Thinking back to the stores on Kingsbridge Road, he shook his head, “Most of the shopkeepers in my neighborhood were refugees like my parents. How could I stiff them?”
“Anti-Semitism?” she prodded.
“A kid called Brendan Riley once threw a handful of pennies at me and shouted ‘Go fetch.’ I’d never heard the stereotype about Jews and money. Every Jew I knew was poor.”
Babka smiled, tippled the vodka bottle, was quiet for a minute, then bit her lip. “Ever want to kill yourself?”
He looked at her. “Never,” he said firmly, then, as if his reply needed a rational justification, added, “My parents were survivors.”
Babka’s eyes widened. “No way! Mine, too. Mom, Dachau. Dad, Theresienstadt. Yours?”
Zach sighed. “Mom, Auschwitz. Dad, Polish Resistance.”
“The way I look at it,” Babka said, “being a survivor’s kid is a reason to kill yourself. Didn’t you hate being defined by your parents’ tragedies?”
“I still define myself that way,” he admitted.
She took his hand. “What do you say we move the party to my place?”
Though Babka’s one-room studio on the Bowery, a fifth-floor walk-up, had a double-height ceiling, its ambience was that of a crowded, chaotic Middle Eastern souk. Kilim rugs were thrown helter-skelter across the floors and every piece of furniture—sofa, tables, chairs, hassocks, everything but the radiator—was topped by some color-saturated cloth. Yellow fabric studded with tiny mirrors draped the three windows on one wall. A huge skylight composed of long glass
panels filled the slanted portion of the roof looming above a queen-size bed that was flanked by two end tables swathed in madras material. The bed was covered by a furry throw that, in a former life, could have been a llama, and scattered along its headboard was a row of throw pillows clad in jewel-toned silks.
Though dazzling, her place was more like a gypsy tent, not a Jewish home. A person couldn’t light Hanukkah candles here without singeing some schmatta, and there was no room for a toy box, much less a crib or a changing table.
Just then a door swung open and a stocky black man bounded out of the bathroom wearing only a towel.
“Yo, Babs,” he said, jauntily. “I thought I heard voices.”
“Charles, meet Zach. Old friend, new friend. Zach, Charles.” Babka toggled her thumbs at each man. She couldn’t have been more nonchalant about the encounter. The half-naked man, equally sanguine, whipped a wave in Zach’s direction before crossing the room to retrieve a large-toothed comb from the pocket of the Knicks jacket hanging over the back of a chair, then whistled his way back to the bathroom. “Charles lives in the bowels of Brooklyn and plays sax in a club down the street,” Babka explained, “so when he needs a shower between sets, he comes here. Always calls first, but if I’m not home, I’ve always told him he can use his key.”
Zach consciously decided not to be judgmental and to simply admire Babka for her generosity. Still, when she opened the louvered doors on the far wall exposing a kitchen alcove, he was relieved. He wanted her to be normal. She might have a naked man in her bathroom, but she had a sink, stove, and refrigerator like other people. She was literate enough to send up haiku poetry and Jewish enough to quote the Talmud. They had survivor parents in common. She knew CPR. She could save their children’s lives. Wait, he told his galloping thoughts, stop getting ahead of yourself.
Charles emerged from the bathroom wearing black pants and a chartreuse shirt with the tails out. He slipped his arms into the Knicks jacket, tossed off another wave, then mimed a jazzman cradling a saxophone and played himself out the door. Zach couldn’t help but wonder how many other men had Babka Tanenbaum’s key.
“Drink?” she asked.
“Beer would be great.”
“For future reference, what’s your brand?”
Future reference. She was getting ahead of herself, too. “Heineken, thanks.” He lowered himself into one of her overstuffed armchairs.
“Favorite time of day?” she asked.
“Sunset. You ask a lot of questions for a nonlawyer.”
“Questions save time.” She went to the alcove and brought back two bottles of Corona, probably the last guy’s brand.
“When do I get to ask you questions?” Zach leaned back in the chair.
“Now.” A small, round ottoman that looked like a pincushion on steroids was suddenly wedged between his legs with Babka on it, her knees a few inches from his crotch. She smiled. “What do you want to know?”
Zach wanted to know everything about her, but her close proximity threw him. “What’s your greatest regret?”
“That I’m not good at sports. Same question to you, greatest regret?”
Where to begin? Zach thought. Making a huge vow when he was too young to know what he’d agreed to. Losing his marriage. Letting Anabelle go. Leaving Cleo. Having to find “the right kind of woman” rather than to simply fall in love.
“Not meeting you five years ago,” he replied, his one glib line of the night.
“Trust me,” Babka said. “Five years ago I wasn’t worth meeting.”
Zach set his Corona on the side table, took hold of Babka’s braids and gently pulled her face toward him. Her lips weren’t Cleo’s. Maybe it was too soon. He let go of her hair. “What’s with your funny name?”
“It means fir tree.” She shot him a teasing glance.
“I didn’t mean Tanenbaum.”
“Ohhh! Babka?” She laughed, exaggerating her delayed comprehension. “It’s a coffee cake.”
“I know it’s a coffee cake. My folks came from Kraków, the birthplace of babka.”
“Wrong. It originated in Russia. As an Easter cake. It took Polish Jews to add the good stuff—nuts, raisins, rum. Which reminds me: how about a rum and Coke?”
Zach said he would stick with beer. She withdrew her knees from between his legs, went to the refrigerator, pulled out a Coke, and carried it over to the bed, which puzzled him until she shoved aside the multicolored pillows and opened a sliding panel in the headboard to reveal a hidden compartment containing about a dozen different liquors and whiskeys. Zach’s father used to keep one squat bottle of Manischewitz on the kitchen counter for Friday night kiddush and one round bottle of plum brandy, called slivovitz, on a top shelf in the coat closet, to be tapped only for a toast on Rosh Hashana. A fifth of slivovitz could last the Levys a decade.
If her copious supply was a shock to Zach, Babka’s intake was stunning. She’d guzzled vodka at the theater and polished off her beer while he still had half of his left in the bottle. Now, he almost made Levine’s sign when he noted how much rum she poured in her glass of Coke. Maybe she was drinking to compensate for a secret shyness or performance anxiety. Maybe she was under pressure to pass muster with Zach whose ad, despite his efforts to the contrary, may have sounded too exacting. Or perhaps the last guy, the one who drank Corona, had recently dumped her and the booze was dulling the pain.
She sat on the edge of the mattress with her glass. “My birth certificate says Barbara but I’m told my father used to say I was sweet as babka and the nickname stuck with me. Which is more than I can say for my dad.”
Zach joined her on the llama spread and draped his arm over her shoulder. “You look sad.”
“I was remembering Wharton’s quote: ‘Life is either a tightrope or a featherbed.’”
“Which is it for you?” he asked.
“Tightrope. You?”
Tightrope was Zach’s answer too, but he said featherbed as a prelude to tipping her backward onto the many-colored pillows. He unbuttoned her chamois dress and thrilled when his fingers met no straps or hooks, just warm, bare skin. He glanced down at her chest. The flattering amber light from the bedside lamp did nothing to soften the impact of the tattoo inked in blue above her left nipple—a six-pointed Jewish star with the name “Tom” at its center.
Zach yanked back his hand as if it had been scalded. The biblical prohibition against defacing the body had been tattooed on his brain by Rabbi Goldfarb’s repeated invocation of Leviticus 19:28. You must not cut your body for a dead person nor imprint any marks on you. Once, at the schvitz, Zach had seen a man with “Never Again” tattooed on one arm and a Lion of Judah on the other, and the next day, he’d asked the rabbi if tattoos were okay as long as they were of Jewish subjects.
“I don’t care if the guy had the Ten Commandments tattooed on his pupik!” Goldfarb had railed. “God created human beings in His image, so when we deface ourselves, we deface God. It’s like telling Him His creation wasn’t good enough. It’s asur! Forbidden!”
Zach explained why he’d recoiled.
“I’m a yeshiva girl; you don’t have to quote Leviticus. Actually there’s a lot of debate in the Jewish world about tattoos.”
“There’s a lot of debate in the Jewish world about everything,” he snapped. “But I’m sure the Torah you read in Queens says the same thing as mine did in the Bronx.” He heard himself sounding like a Hebrew school hall monitor. Why did he care? He’d met the woman a few hours ago; she owed him nothing. And since when was he a guardian of other people’s piety?
“Are you telling me you’ve never broken a commandment?” Babka asked.
“Not this one.”
“Well this one’s ridiculous. Every time we cut our hair or have our teeth fixed we improve on God’s creation. A tattoo isn’t a desecration of the body, it’s an art form.” She gripped Zach’s finger and guided it around the border of the six-pointed star.
Moments ago, Zach was aching to touch h
er; now he shook her off. “Was it art when the Nazis tattooed us?”
“I’ve got a Star of David on my chest, Zach. Not a number.”
“The Nazis put Jewish stars on our chests too,” he said. “Theirs was a mark of inferiority. Mine’s a proud declaration of my identity.”
“Your identity? Who’s Tom?”
“My late husband.” She gathered up the chamois dress and covered her bare breasts. “Tom was killed two years ago. Hit and run.”
Zach felt sick to his stomach. “I’m so sorry, Babka.” He looked up beyond the skylight as if God had the next line. Hexagons of chicken wire were embedded in the glass, safety mesh to protect those below should the panes ever break. Suddenly, the mesh became barbed wire, the moon a searchlight.
As soon as his flare-up subsided, Zach apologized for overreacting. “My mother had numbers tattooed on her arm. She kept trying to scratch them off. There was dried blood on the left sleeve of every blouse she owned. The wound would grow a scab but when it healed, the numbers were always there.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Babka whispered. She let the dress drop and reached for his hand.
He laced his fingers through hers. “Let’s give it a minute, okay?” He didn’t want their lovemaking to begin with apologies.
Both of them leaned back on the pillows and waited for the pall to pass—his outburst, her husband, his mother, Rabbi Goldfarb, the past that never lets the present rest in peace.
The next morning, Zach awoke to Georgia O’Keeffe clouds floating on a deep blue field. Babka asked if he wanted to go out for pancakes; there was a great diner a few blocks away. Nothing would have pleased him more but he had a brief due the next day, Monday. She made coffee while he showered. He dressed quickly and was already down on the Bowery hailing a cab when he remembered the paltry contents of his wallet. For a second, he considered hiking back up the five flights to borrow some cash from Babka, then decided the four bucks would cover his fare to the office and, given the usual turnout of weekend workaholics, someone would lend him money for lunch, maybe dinner, too, if the brief took him that long to finish. From now on, though, he was going to insist that all poker debts be remitted in small denominations.
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