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time—”
    “Where’d you get all this bread?”
    “From good old red, white, and blue Uncle Sam. I’m part of the national debt, Pete. Sammy owes me forever for my leg.” He wiped his forehead with his napkin. “Also, I pick up spare change from odd jobs. My needs are simple, and sex is cheap.”
    “All right. Go on.”
    “By the end of the third time, I was pretty wasted.”
    “Were you doping?”
    “No. She was, but I wasn’t. By wasted, I meant tired. I asked her if I could crash out at her place, and she agreed.”
    “For a fee.”
    “It’s America,” Abel said. “Everything has a price.”
    “Around what time was that?” Decker asked.
    “About one, two in the morning. She told me she was through for the evening anyway. She’d made her quota, and her main man would be happy.”
    The waitress brought the sandwiches.
    “I’ll be right back,” Decker said.
    He got up and walked back toward the restaurant’s kitchen, over to an industrial sink. Hanging over the lave was a two-handled brass stein and a roll of paper towels.Decker took the chalice off the hook, filled it with water, and poured it over his hands twice. Shaking off the excess water, he dried his hands and said the blessing for the ritual washing. He walked back to the table, mumbled another blessing over bread, then chomped on his pastrami on rye.
    Abel stared at him. “You’re real serious about this.”
    Decker chewed, swallowed, and gulped down half his orange juice. He said, “My woman is religious.”
    “Your wife?”
    “Not yet,” Decker said. “But I hope to change that very soon.”
    “We’re talking about marriage number two, right? Or is it more?”
    “Only two.”
    “When did you divorce the first one? What was her name? Jean…no, Jan.”
    “Yeah. Jan. I don’t want to talk about her.”
    “Didn’t you two have a kid?”
    “Still do. A daughter—”
    “Cynthia.”
    Decker nodded. “She’s going to be a freshman at Columbia this fall. The marriage was worth it for her.”
    “So she’s what? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
    “Seventeen.”
    “About the same age we were when we met,” Abel said.
    “Frightening,” Decker said.
    “Damn frightening,” Abel said. “Did I ever tell you I got married?”
    “No.”
    “I did. About seven years ago.”
    “What happened?”
    “Nothing. We’re still married, so far as I know. We don’t live together. No one can live with me.”
    “Kids?”
    “Not mine,” Abel said. “She’s got three from previous liaisons, none of them married her. I took pity—seventeen-year-old girl and three kids. Nice chicklet, cute, but stupid as shit. Just can’t say no. So I got her fixed up with an IUD. I send her a little cash, see her when I go back home for Christmas. She’s happy, I’m happy.”
    “It’s great to be happy.” Decker raised his eyebrows. “Let’s get back to the rape.”
    “Where was I?”
    “You paid to sleep over at her house.”
    Abel nodded. “That was the last thing I remember. Next thing I knew, I woke up—handcuffed. My skull is cracked open, and the bitch is screaming bloody murder….”
    “She said you held a shiv across her throat while you raped her. Then you went nuts. She knocked you out by cracking a lamp over your head, then called the police.”
    “I don’t even own a shiv.”
    “You still get those blackouts?”
    “Yeah. But not this time. I was sleeping , Doc. I heard someone screaming, woke up and saw blood.” He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “I thought I was having another routine nightmare. Man, I never stopped getting nightmares, you know. But this one seemed ordinary enough. So I said to myself, ‘Abe, go back to sleep. It’s just another nightmare.’ Only it was real . God, was it real.”
    His eyes became pensive and moist. “I don’t know what happened, Pete. All I know is, when I went to sleep, the girl was whole.”
    “Is it possible that you had a blackout, did something to her, and woke up