May We Be Forgiven

jacket.
    We exit the building and walk to his car.
    The parking lot is filled with compact cars of various ages. The reflection of the sun off the endless sea of chrome is blinding. Ours is a commuter school. We used to think we were special because faculty got numbered parking places, hot until a graduate engineering student intentionally blew up the car in Spot 454 and the administration decided that it was better for parking to be random, democratic, with the exception of those with handicapped plates.
    The boss unlocks the doors of his Toyota. The song of the automatic lock echoes off the other cars in the outdoor lot. I imagine someday cars will actually answer each other’s chirps in a postmodern reenactment of call and response. Hybrids, where are you? Chirp-chirp, we’re everywhere. He pulls out an envelope from under the seat, a standard white #10, and he hands it to me.
    “Take it,” he says.
    My hands remain in my pockets.
    “Take it,” he repeats more urgently.
    “What is it?”
    “What does it look like?”
    “One might assume it’s money,” I say.
    He pushes the envelope towards me. “You idiot,” he says. “I’m trying to help you. I feel bad, I should have handled things differently, and you,” he says, “you should have finished your book.”
    “Blame the victim,” I say, hands still in my pockets.
    “I couldn’t protect you—I had nothing to use to support my argument.” Again he pushes the envelope towards me.
    “No thanks,” I say.
    “On what grounds?” he asks.
    “On the grounds that I don’t take envelopes of money from anyone. For all I know, you’re setting me up, having your secretary witness, call me in, making me walk out to your car, where you have the envelope hidden; for all I know, there are cameras everywhere, recording this—the car is miked.”
    “You are a paranoid motherfucker,” he says.
    “I am a Nixon scholar,” I shout. “I know whereof I speak,” I say, as I turn on my heel to march across the parking lot and back to the building.
    “Where are you going?” he calls.
    “Office hours,” I say.
    I hear the chirp-chirp sound of him relocking his car, and his hot breath as he jogs to catch up with me. “Look, it’s not about the money,” he says.
    “But you are offering me money, hush money to go gently into the night.”
    “It’s my own money,” he says. “Not the department’s.”
    “That makes it even more perverted.”
    “I hope you’ll reconsider,” he says when we get back to the department. “Think of it as a research grant.”
    I pick up the boxes that I left outside his office door, one of which someone has inexplicably filled with balled-up sheets of paper—all I can think of is target practice.
    There is someone in my office, sitting in the guest chair. His back is to the door, a yarmulke bobby-pinned to the back of his head.
    “Can I help you?”
    “Are you Professor Silver?”
    “I am.” Does he know what just happened in the parking lot? Is he sitting here ready to receive my confession of temptation—is it like some Scared Straight program, or is he part of the setup? “Are you interested in Richard Nixon?” I ask, taking my seat.
    “Not so much,” he says. “I am a rabbinical student.”
    “You get to dress like that even though you’re still a student?” I ask.
    “Dress like what?” he says, looking down at himself. “This is the way I dress.”
    “Are you working for the Chair?” I ask.
    “Pardon?”
    “Schwartz, the Chair of the department, just tried to get me to take an envelope of money from him.”
    “And what did you do?”
    “What do you think I did?” I ask. “I told him to go fuck himself.”
    “I’m interested in your brother,” he says.
    “Drumming up business?”
    “Exploring the Jewish relationship to crime. With the exception of gambling, Jews aren’t much engaged in criminal activity.” He gives me an amused look, like he’s stumbled on a treasure chest of goodies and is trying desperately not to show how excited he is.
    “How did you decide to become a rabbi?”
    “I didn’t decide,” he says. “In my family we are all rabbis. My father is a rabbi, my uncle is a rabbi. My sister is a car mechanic; she felt to be a woman rabbi had too many restrictions.”
    “My brother, George, had a bar mitzvah because he wanted the savings bonds, the clock radio from my aunt, the Cross pen from the temple Sisterhood, and a free trip to Florida from my grandparents. He