“Is this what I have to look forward to if we marry, Rina? Every little transgression or imperfection on my part gets related to the holy man so he can impart his divine judgment on my character?”

She stared at him coldly.

“I won’t even dignify that with an answer.”

“Humor me. Dignify it.”

She spoke through tight lips.

“What we do after we’re married as husband and wife in our own place is no one’s business but our own. But this wasn’t the same situation—”

“All you had to do was wake me up in a couple of hours and tell me to leave. Nothing happened. No one would have been the wiser.”

“We’re not children sneaking behind the backs of our parents, Peter. I had nothing to hide by letting you stay here. I just wanted Rav Schulman to know that.”

“What other things do you tell the great rabbi about me?”

She became furious.

“Nothing.”

“After all, he must have a hotline to God—”

“Every single Jew has a hotline to Hashem, anytime they want. All they have to do is open up a siddur and say tehillim. Rabbi Schulman is respected because he is a tzaddik and a talmid hacham—a pious and learned man—and not because he’s of divine descent. We don’t have popes, remember?”

“Well, some Jews obviously believe they’re more worthy—”

He was interrupted by the phone.

“Don’t answer it!” he ordered.

“This is still my house,” Rina retorted angrily. “I can answer my phone, thank you.” She jerked up the receiver, said hello, then wordlessly held out the receiver to him. He took it, and as he listened, his face became etched in pain. He said that he’d be right down and hung up.

“Bad news?” she asked anxiously.

“Do I ever get good news?” he answered caustically.

Something had deepened his horrible mood, hurting him. “What’s happened?” Rina asked.

“One of my informants, a sixteen-year-old girl who looks like my daughter, is in the hospital, beaten to a bloody pulp. Indirectly it was my fault. She was feeding me information, and when the case began to get complicated, I told her to back off. She didn’t listen, and I think someone got to her. Now she’s hanging on by a thread and I’m pissed off.”

“Peter, you can’t be responsible—”

“Don’t give me your pep rally routine. Life is not sugar and spice. Life sucks. This place sucks. I hate it. I hate the holier-than-thou attitude around here. I hate the self-righteousness! I hate the our-way-is-right-and-your-way-is-wrong pigheadedness. The goddam absolutes. You can believe in your little rules and rituals, but let me tell you something, in the real world there’s no blacks and white—only goddam muddy grays!”