“You know me. It takes me a while to adjust to something new. Don’t concern yourself about me. Just take care of yourself, huh?”

“I will. You do like Eric, don’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s a good kid.”

“It’s hard to find good boys these days, Daddy.”

“Well, he must be special if he hooked you. Go back to your work.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

“Bye.”

She hung up. He stared at the receiver and shook his head in confusion.

Decker sat upright in his solitary bed. It was an extra-long California king with an extra-firm mattress—good for holding a lot of bulk. But lately the only bulk it’d been holding was his own.

Four fucking months.

What the hell was he doing, surrounding himself with foreign words, strange symbols, and mystic concepts which were supposed to bring him closer to God. In his own way, Decker had always felt close to God. They’d reached an understanding based on mutual tolerance: God was tolerant of Decker’s human foibles; Decker was tolerant of floods and earthquakes. Why was he doing this?

Rina, he thought. Was he just doing it to please her? At first, he didn’t think so. He was very curious about Judaism. He wanted something more spiritual, something antithetical to his work. But now he wasn’t so sure that Orthodoxy was the answer.

He looked down at the primer in front of him.

Shalom, yeladim, the first line said.

He could read it. He could actually read and understand that sentence in Hebrew. Whoopee! None of the guys at the station house could read and understand Hello, children in Hebrew.

He went on.

Mi ba?, the book continued.

Four whole months. He was going crazy. Love does have its limitations. If he was willing to accommodate her by subjecting himself to first-grade Hebrew lessons, she should damn well accommodate him a little.

Abba ba, he read.

But it wasn’t stubbornness that was causing her to hold out. It was deep belief. He knew he could probably talk her into sex, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted sex with sanctification. There was something to be said for those ancient Midianite fertility rites.

Mi ba’ah?

She was religious. In a world full of transient morality and situational ethics, her spiritual values—which were good and just—remained absolute. How could he expect her to give up something so essential to her being just to accommodate his physical desires?

Eema ba’ah.

And what about her physical desires? It was chauvinistic to assume he was the only one suffering physically. If she could suppress her sex drive—she being much younger than he was—certainly he could show a little restraint. Give it a year, he said to himself. Priests do it for a lot longer.