Departures

“Yes, and this is what it got me.” He heard her get up. “What are you doing?” he asked in some alarm.

“Getting a hat.”

“What for?”

“So I can come with you, of course.”

He was still gaping when he stepped into the hall. He finally found his tongue.”What are you coming with me for? You were the one who told me to say the R strain was trafe and have done with it. You can’t want to go eat pork with me.”

“But it’s not pork, or that’s what you told Delahanty.”

“But to you it is.”

“Who’s the rabbi in this house?” she said, and laughed at his thunderstruck expression.”Besides,” she added softly, ”it’ll be easier if you’re not alone.”

“Thank you,” he said. That wasn’t nearly strong enough. He went over and hugged her. “Have I told you any time lately I think you’re wonderful?”

“Yes, but I never mind hearing it again. Come on; let’s get this over with.”

Traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway never moved fast. Old gasoline-fueled cars, alcohol-burners, and electrics crawled along together. Kaplan had just about decided to make his next car, somewhere in the indefinite future, an electric. With more and more fusion plants coming on line, they were definitely the coming thing. Smog was down, too; not out, but down.

They drove past billboards in Spanish, English, Korean, Japanese, and Hindi. Every decade, it seemed, some new group of immigrants settled in southern California in droves. Kaplan’s neighborhood supermarket stocked nine different chutneys and seventeen curries.

With their superior climate, Westwood and Santa Monica had long dominated the L.A. area, leaving the old downtown to stagnation again after its rebirth in the 1970s. Skyscrapers flung long afternoon shadows across the San Diego Freeway as Kaplan and his wife swung norm.

The parking garage in the building that housed the headquarters of Genetic Enterprises went down eleven levels underground. The elevator’s surge was like a rocket lifting off, but it was not the only reason the rabbi’s stomach had for lurching.

Genetic Enterprises kept its labs elsewhere in the city, where rents were lower. This was where the executives worked. When Kaplan opened the door to the receptionist’s office, a delicious smell rolled over him like a wave. It was not really unfamiliar; one could not live in Los Angeles without coming across it now and then. But it had never had anything to do with him before.

Delahanty came out almost at once to shake his hand. “Good to see you again,” he said, politely adding, ”A pleasure to meet you,” when Kaplan introduced him to Ruth.

“Shall we get on with it?” she said harshly.

“Of course,” Delahanty said. “Thank you for coming, both of you. I understand how difficult this must be for you.”

You don’t begin to, Kaplan thought, but he and his wife followed Delahanty back into his office. On the desk lay a meat-filled platter. “Blade-cut por-uh, chops,” Delahanty said. “Here, let me heat them up for you.” He popped them into a microwave oven, which obviously had been brought in for the occasion.

As the microwave hummed, Kaplan sighed inaudibly to himself. Perhaps even without meaning to, Delahanty had eliminated a possible last-ditch excuse to chicken out-another inappropriate phrase, the rabbi thought ruefully. He might have begged off by saying that the beast now reheating had not been slaughtered by a shokhet-any ritual butcher would have laughed himself silly at the notion of practicing his skill on a pig. But Kaplan did not insist that his beef and mutton come from the shokhet’s knife; he bought them at the supermarket. And so he could not honestly apply a standard to the R strain different from the one by which he judged other acceptable meat.

But he did avoid cuts from the hindquarters of the carcass. The section of meat through which the sciatic nerve passed was not kosher, in memory of the laming blow the angel of the Lord had inflicted on Jacob when they wrestled through the night. Blade-cut chops, though, came from far forward on the beast.

The reverie was done long before the microwave turned itself off. When it chimed, Delahanty took out the platter and produced some plastic cutlery from a desk drawer. “Would you like me to step out for a few minutes?” he asked.

“No, that’s all right,” Kaplan began, but Ruth broke in, “Yes, please.”

“Of course,” Delahanty said quietly, and shut the door behind him as he left.

The fantasy that flitted through Kaplan’s mind this time was frankly paranoid: he wondered if this was all an elaborate practical joke to get him to eat forbidden food.

He and Ruth looked at the gently steaming chops and at each other. Gathering his pride, the rabbi said, “Me first,” and picked up knife and fork. The meat was tougher, grainier than veal, which to his eye it most closely resembled. He speared it with his fork and brought it toward his mouth.