The first time Lila knowingly broke the Sabbath, she thought the sky would fall on her.
It was a reasonable assumption in light of her age – sixteen – and her upbringing. Her parents hadn’t been as strict as others in her neighborhood community on the Upper West Side, but Sabbath observance was nevertheless a big deal. Lila recalled one incident when she was little – four or five, she didn’t remember exactly – when she was playing in the living room and found some crayons lying on the floor. She picked two of them up, looked for a piece of paper and began to draw.
“Stop that!” said her mother, yanking the crayons away.
“But why?”
“It’s Shabbos. You don’t draw today. It’s work!”
Lila accepted the rebuke and never did it again. As she grew older, the rules became so ingrained she never questioned them, never even realized others behaved differently than her own family and their friends. Only when she left the cocoon of her Jewish day school for Bronx Science did she meet others very much unlike her, Jews and non-Jews alike. Different stories, different rules, different backgrounds.
Teachers and students alike puzzled over Lila’s absences for holidays they did not observe or understand. During Passover, she brought a box of matzoh to school and one girl openly ridiculed her for eating “that weird cardboard.” Others chimed in and Lila, humiliated, didn’t return to the cafeteria until the holiday was over.
She was different. And she didn’t like it.
Even the manner of her breaking the Sabbath was different; she didn’t follow her peers, go out clubbing on a Friday night or drive a car on Saturdays. She chose a much quieter way.
Lila customarily went for a walk on Saturday afternoons. Sometimes, if her mother was up to it, she went along with her daughter through Central Park on a specific pattern Lila had formulated. This time her mother begged off, claiminga desperate need to nap.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” said Lila. Her mother made noises about being extremely careful but Lila ignored them.
Instead of following her usual pattern – sticking only to the west side of the park before returning home – she cut through via the 96th Street pathway to the East side, immediately spotting a Starbucks on the corner of 95th and Madison.
Why not, she thought, and hurried inside.
With her short black coat, jogging pants and trainers, Lila looked like every other customer lining up for their lattes. She took her cue from the woman immediately in front of her and ordered a grande skim mocha.
“Four twenty-five, please,” said the barista in a voice that had probably uttered those words a thousand times before.
Lila fumbled to retrieve her wallet. She always carried it with her because she was paranoid something might happen to her while she was out, and if she didn’t have any ID she’d be buried in Potter’s Field without anyone knowing her name.
She opened up the wallet and took out a five-dollar bill. Nothing happened.
She handed the bill to the barista, who gave back three quarters as change. Nothing happened.
She moved over to the counter and retrieved the waiting latte, the cup so hot it nearly burned her hands. Nothing happened.
She spied a table in the back and immediately sat down. She couldn’t stop shaking. She wondered if the drink would kill her.
But it didn’t. She drank the entire latte in nearly one gulp, and waited. Nothing happened.
The sky hadn’t fallen on her. She glanced furtively around the shop, hoping no one would notice, would cast judgment, would out her as a law-breaking heathen. But each customer was too busy waiting in line, drinking beverages, typing on laptops or yakking on cell phones.
Lila looked at her now-empty cup. And realized she’d been had. The illicit knowledge filled her with a mix of glee and anger.
Now that the chasm had been breached, she wanted more.
* * *
Little by little, Lila drifted further away from the rules and religion she knew best. Going away to college helped, as did the move back to the city for grad school where, against her parents’ wishes, she rented an East Village apartment with her best friend Esther. They’d met up at Brandeis, where shared complaints about family issues forged a strong bond between them. Now Lila had a partner in rulebreaking, in presenting a front as a nice religious girl even as she stretched that description to its breaking point.
God didn’t punish her for going to class on Succoth, for ending Passover a day early, then two, then three, for making Lotus her club of choice on Friday nights or frequenting Fifth Avenue shops on Saturday afternoons when she claimed to be at a friend’s house for Shabbat lunch.
Each transgression gave Lila the same heady thrill others obtained from shoplifting or burgling a house or perhaps even killing someone, though she thought she’d have a long way to go to reach that final state. Even Lila had her limits.
Oddly, some things remained constant: she fasted for the entirety of Yom Kippur, cleaned to obsessive-compulsive excess to ready the apartment for Passover and shied away from non-kosher meat. There were some lines she simply could not cross, some ties she had to keep to religious observance, although she never found a logical explanation why.
But one line proved much easier to jump over than Lila originally imagined. After losing her virginity to a pimply, pro-Israel activist, she knew she could do better. She wasn’t promiscuous but she made the most of her opportunities, including a wannabe beatnik poet (too insensitive) a neuroscience post-doc (too demanding) and one of her psychology teaching assistants (finally, she got it right.)
By grad school Lila counted fucking as one of her greatest skills. Those she took as lovers didn’t disagree, publicly or privately. But something was missing.
She met Joey at a club in the meatpacking district, going with Esther on a whim after their scheduled plans with Lila’s classmate Gretchen fell through. They’d just declared the club a complete dud and were in search of the cloakroom when Lila spotted him near the bar. He wasn’t her type at all – shorter than her liking, thickening middle, thinning hair – but the way he commanded the bar simply by his presence drew her to him immediately. Others, too, as three implant-aided blonde bimbos hung onto every word as he sipped his beer.
Esther returned with their coats.
“I’m staying,” said Lila.
Esther followed her roommate’s gaze. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Why would I?”
“You know who he is, right?”
“Obviously, you do.”
Esther frowned. “Joey Gregoriano. Claims he’s some kind of land developer of West side properties, but it’s all a front. He’s got ties to the Gambinos and was almost indicted last year for fraud.”
Lila turned towards the bar. “You certain keep tabs on him, Deb.”
“I’m interning in the Manhattan DA’s office soon. I have to stay current.”
Lila kept her gaze on Joey, now working on another drink. Esther’s warnings only turned her on more.
Esther handed over Lila’s coat, disgusted. “Suit yourself, then.” She stalked off without saying goodbye.
Lila debated her next move. Brazenly approach, like the blondes fawning over him now, or something more subtle? She chose option #2, casually flinging her coat over her left shoulder as she walked towards the bar.
“I’ll have one last Sierra Nevada,” she said, even though she’d drunk dry martinis the entire night.
“Five fifty.” Before Lila could reach into her purse to pay, a bill made its way over to the bartender’s hand. She turned to her right, staring head-on at Joey Gregoriano’s slightly lopsided grin.
“It’s on me.”
She took the drink and slid her hand down the length of the glass. “Thanks. I’m Lila.”
“Joey.”
“I know.”
He laughed. She liked it. “Everybody does.”
Five minutes later another drink appeared in front of her. When she drained it, another immediately showed up. Later, Lila wouldn’t remember the small talk or what finally spurred her to leave with him, but she chalked it up to curiosity.
And when he lay back on the hotel room suite bed, her mouth still hovering over his dick, she smiled. There really was something better about an uncircumcised man.
* * *
After several weeks of semi-regular hotel room sex, which improved Lila’s knowledge of Joey from zero to minimal, he asked her a favor.
“I’ve got a small problem,” he said as she cleaned him up.
“Don’t you have other people to take care of your problems?”
He took the towel from her and threw it on the floor. “Nobody’s available. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you.”
At first, Lila said no. She never asked what it was Joey did, and he never offered. She had one goal in this so-called relationship: to get her brains fucked out on a regular basis. Joey fulfilled the need quite successfully, and she wasn’t interested in any further involvement.
“Baby, there really isn’t anyone I can ask,” insisted Joey. “It’s urgent and I’m desperate here.”
Lila looked at his cock, flaccidly drooping to the left. She was losing interest in the novelty of rubbing his foreskin up and down, of licking it with her tongue or taking him inside her. The interest was waning on his end, too. He hadn’t paid much attention to her the last few days, and she wondered how many other girls had taken her place already.
“It’s not going to be anything that’ll get me in trouble, right?”
He took her face in his hands, the stare so deep she couldn’t look away.
“I would never, ever do that to you, as long as I live.” His voice was soft but resonant.
“What’s this, some kind of proposal?” Lila was still skeptical.
He laughed, just like the time they’d first met. “I doubt that’s what you really want.”
“You’d be right.”
What the hell, she thought, even if what he wanted of her wasn’t illegal, it might still be illicit, which suited her fine.
“So what do I do?”
A simple exercise, as it turned out; he needed a sculpture transported to a warehouse in Hackensack so it could be delivered to California as part of a shipment with other sculptures.
“I thought you were a land developer,” Lila protested. “Since when have you been into peddling art?”
“I do a lot of things,” Joey said.
“Oh really,” she countered. “I’ll just bet you do.”
She reached for him, and the conversation stopped.
Two days later, after informing her parents she’d be in Riverdale for the weekend, Lila took the bus to a body shop on 30th and 12th to pick up the Lincoln Town Car rented in her name. She paid the fee up front and inspected the car. It was, to the best of her limited knowledge, clean.
She hadn’t driven a car since her Brandeis days, and Lila was scared shitless. But as she drove further up 12th Avenue to pick up the statue, the old reflexes returned, quickly turning to annoyance as traffic stayed jammed the entire way.
Lila parked the car outside an unmarked building at the corner of 11th and 52nd. A burly man waited outside.
“You Ms. Kahane?” He pronounced it Ka-HAIN.
“It’s Ka-HAH-na,” she corrected.
“Your pickup’s ready.” He motioned for her to follow.
She found the statue easily as it was the only item not wrapped up. It depicted two lovers locked in a close embrace, and was entirely tan-colored except for a brown discoloration near the lovers’ heads.
“What’s that?” she said, pointing to the blemish.
The burly man shrugged. “Came that way.”
“How heavy is it?”
“Dunno. It was here when I got in this morning.”
Lila lifted the statue, surprised at its lightness. She set it back down.
“Anything I should sign?”
He gave her a piece of paper and a pen. Lila signed at the bottom after taking a cursory glance at the legalese, spotting nothing out of the ordinary.
She hauled the statue to the car and stored it in the trunk. Opening the driver’s side door, Lila rummaged for the directions Joey gave her. They instructed her to follow 12th Avenue back down to 42nd, take the Lincoln Tunnel and take the second exit towards Hackensack.
As she turned off, flashing lights blinded her left mirror, then the back windshield. She didn’t register them at first, only realizing the lights and siren were meant for her when the cop car was directly on her bumper.
Lila pulled over at the shoulder. She stayed in her seat and kept her belt on.
When the cop – an overweight woman with sagging jowls and mousy brown hair – came over, Lila rolled down the front window.
When asked for her license and registration, Lila dutifully handed them over. Then the cop surprised her.
“We need to check the trunk, Ms. Kahane.” She pronounced Lila’s name correctly, making her instantly suspicious.
“May I ask why?”
“Just open the trunk.”
She reached for the automatic button but the cop shook her head. “Give me the keys.”
Lila handed the keys through the open window. The cop locked the car – pointlessly, Lila thought, she wasn’t going anywhere – then opened the trunk with the key. A minute passed, then another.
Lila willed herself not to worry, but wondered what was taking so damn long.
The cop finally returned. Her expression was grim, and Lila knew what would come next.
“Step out of the car, Ms. Kahane, and put your hands on the windshield.”
Lila did so, and the next moments were a blur. She hardly paid attention as she was read her rights and given the usual Miranda warnings. Her ears only perked up when the cop announced Lila was being taken in on suspicion of first degree murder.
“Excuse me?” she said to stall for time.
“You heard me. You’re under arrest for murder. Handy to have the weapon in the trunk with the victim’s blood on it, I gotta say.”
Indeed it was, Lila thought, her wrists fitting perfectly into the handcuffs slapped on her.
* * *
The cheap public defender Lila’s distraught parents hired gave her the story a few weeks later. Joey’s big problem was worse than he’d realized. Another girl was giving him grief, hinting loudly at being a bigger and more permanent part of his life, making noises about child support. And Lila was starting to bore him, but she was too smart to stay dumped without a proper explanation. So why not solve both problems at once?
The burly man had been the other girl’s killer, but the piece of paper he’d shoved at her face to sign was her own confession, detailing why insane jealousy had prompted her to hire him for the other girl’s murder. When Lila heard how much she allegedly paid for the privilege, she couldn’t help laughing. He’d been ripped off, netting only five grand and ten years in jail.
When she asked what she could do about it, the lawyer was apologetic. That was the problem with signed documents and intent. Fifteen years on a plea was the best offer he could get.
Her parents visited often at first, then less so. Esther never bothered. As time dragged on, Lila accustomed herself to the prison walls. They were the only company she had now.
She thought back to that Saturday afternoon so long ago. When a simple latte had changed her world.
She was wrong. The sky had crashed on her after all.
