“If they don’t arrest us first,” Shapiro said flatly, aware they were in the house of a woman who’d been on the speakers’list for the march, a woman the government knew had escaped that day.
“Yes, that clock is ticking isn’t it?” she answered, then walked up the stairs. Shapiro laid his head back against the pillow and, fully dressed, without bothering with sheets or blanket, fell instantly into a deep, healing sleep.
Shapiro prepared omelets for the collection of former strangers sitting at the kitchen table— Katz, Reuben, Abram and Sarah Goldhersh. I didn’t know any of them a month ago, he thought. Now they are all I have left.
“I’m going back to Boston,” Katz announced. “They have no idea I’m involved with anything. I’ll be safe. Besides, I’m the only defense committee lawyer with a security clearance, so I’m the only one who can visit our clients on the cape.” She gave Shapiro a probing look. “Somebody still has to act like a lawyer, right, Ben?”
“Judy, as soon as I show my face you’d be visiting me at that camp,” Shapiro said. “I didn’t please those FBI agents. But if you feel you can still play at being an attorney, well, go for it.” He paused. Looked at the floor. “Those days are over for me.”
“I’m not going to play at being a lawyer, Ben. I still am a lawyer.” Katz was angry. There was no need for him to put her down. “Look, Ben, I understand your pain. No, I know I can’t begin to understand your pain, but I recognize that horrible things have happened to you. But, Ben, I’m in pain, too. We all are. My grandmother, my nana, is in some detention camp somewhere since that march. So why do you have to act like an asshole now?”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I apologize. Tell us what you have in mind.”
“I missed my meeting with my boss, my farewell meeting. I want to see him face-to-face, see what he’ll say to me,” she said. “I have loose ends to tie up. I have to find my nana. Somebody has to get down to that camp to find out what’s happening there. That’s still important, isn’t it?”
“Do you really think they’ll let you into that camp, Judy?” Sarah asked.
“They have to. I’m the lawyer for the organization that represents the detainees,” she said. “I may have to get a court order, but they have to let me in. These people have a right to be represented by an attorney, don’t they? They have rights. Don’t they?”
“Do they?” Shapiro made a show of noisily rising from the table and walking from the room.
Katz left to pack the few things she’d brought when she and Sarah left her apartment to meet Shapiro at the beach. She came down the stairs after several minutes. Shapiro asked her to step outside. He took her hand.
“Judy, I’m worried about you,” he said. “The world’s gone crazy. It’s not like it was just a month ago. You push them now and they’ll lock you up. I’m worried that if you push too hard to get into that camp, you’ll get in, but you won’t get out.”
She squeezed his hand, then threw her arms around him and drew him close. He stiffened. Then relaxed. His arms hung limply, wanting to hug her but unable to do so. After an awkward moment he stepped back and attempted to smile at her.
“I have to try, don’t I, Ben?” she asked. “We can’t just stop trying. When we do that, they win. Right? Then they win?” She tried to smile.
“Okay, be the lawyer,” he said. “Use my office. Tell my partners I’m off on a secret case. They’ll want to know more, but they won’t be surprised. One last thing, Judy. Be a lawyer, Judy. Sue the bastards.” He grinned for the first time since he arrived home from Washington.
“I’ll sue their asses off, Ben,” Katz said. “I’ll do good, you’ll see.” She held both his hands in hers. “Ben, I haven’t been able to find words to tell you how horrible I feel about your son, and your wife. I know I wouldn’t have been her favorite person if she’d known about me, but they didn’t deserve what happened to them. To think that Jews did that. Ben, does that make you wonder what else we might do—who else will be hurt?”
He did not respond.
“Ben, what those people did at the mall, what Abram’s people did in Washington, how is that any different from what has been happening between Jews and Arabs for a thousand years?”
“I haven’t stopped wondering about that, Judy,” he said quietly. “But what happens if we do nothing? They’ve shut off all our other options. All my life I’ve used the courts, the laws, to find justice. Now they say we can’t get into the courthouse. Congressmen, our so-called friends in Congress, won’t return phone calls. When the law won’t protect us, when the government turns on us, what options do we have? That’s what scares me the most. I know there is one thing we absolutely cannot do, Judy. We can’t do nothing. We can’t simply submit. That’s been tried. It didn’t work. We can’t do that.”
He held a fist in the air, smiling.
“Never again. Never again. Right?”
She raised her face, leaned forward and placed her lips gently on his, then circled him with her arms and held him tightly. This time he gave in to his body’s need for comfort, his need to touch and be touched. The kiss deepened as they held each other tightly, their bodies merging, pain and comfort flowing from one to the other and back again.
Finally, Katz stepped back. She gave Shapiro a light punch in the chest and walked to her car.
Debra Reuben watched through the living room window. He just lost his wife, his son, she thought. How could he do that? The outrage she tried to summon refused to respond, replaced by another thought. He’s so alone. I just lost my Chaim. I wish somebody could hold me right now, could reassure me that Chaim died for a purpose, that it is going to be better.
Shapiro returned to the house. Abram Goldhersh placed a huge arm over Shapiro’s shoulder and marched him to the living room. Debra and Sarah were sitting on the sofa.
“Can we trust her?” Abram asked. “She knows everything, and until last week, she worked for the government.”
“She’s a bit confused,” Shapiro said. “It might be my fault, or some of it. She might think I led her on about, well, about my feelings. I might even have led myself on, come to think of it. But after what happened to Sally, to Adam…” His voice trailed off.
“She’s angry and she’s frightened,” Reuben said. “She told me about her dreams; they’re all nightmares. She’s in a camp, hair shaved, striped clothes. Did you know her grandparents were in Warsaw? Her father was actually born in the Ghetto during the Uprising. She won’t let that happen, not again, she said.” She turned to speak directly to Ben Shapiro.
“Ben, don’t compliment yourself that it’s all about you not sleeping with Judy. She’s a Jew. Like the rest of us, she had to decide for herself what that means. She’s decided. She’ll be all right. We’ve been doing a lot of talking, Judy and I. Trust me, she’s okay. There’s a reason each of us is here, including Judy. Including you, Ben. Including you. Just give her a little time.”
“A little time is all we have,” Abram murmured. “Nonetheless, can we agree to keep an eye on our own federal prosecutor while we decide what to do with our own atomic bomb?”
Katz had told them about the data mining capabilities of the National Security Agency. She scared the group so sufficiently that they agreed no telephone calls would be made or answered, not from any phone in the house, not from any cell phone, not even from a pay phone. As Katz described to them, the NSA did not tap individual phone lines. Instead, it monitored every telephone switching center, every location in the country through which every telephone call traveled.