I said, “And you are …”

She hesitated. “Cerise.”

“Cynthia Decker.”

I held out my hand. She gave me a limp-fish shake, then regarded Koby. “You don’ talk?”

“Just here for the ride,” he answered.

“You said it, bro’. ’Cause all yo’ be gettin’ is a ride.” She stood up—her lower torso encased in black stretch shorts—and tramped through the archway into the kitchen.

I threw my hands over my face.

“Don’t worry about it,” Koby whispered flatly.

But his eyes were roiling like storm clouds. He was slipping.

We lived in a liberated and somewhat libertine age and the vast majority of the time our skin tones were as relevant as vestigial tails. So when it happened, it was always like a dash of cold water, this thinly veiled hostility. Koby got the worst of it from white men; I got it from black women.

Your men aren’t enough? You’ve got to steal our men, too?

About a month ago, Koby had taken me to a party hosted by one of his friends. It was 80 percent black, 15 percent Hispanic and Asian, and a few stranded whites. By subconscious design, we Caucasians wound up talking together. We swapped stories and formed a consensus. It was easier to deal with hostile women any day of the week. Women sniped with words, men shot with guns.

Of course, Koby’s attraction to me had little to do with my being white and very much to do with my being Jewish. Even more important, I had never been married. Although Koby wasn’t Orthodox like Rina, he was well rooted in tradition. He was born into the Jewish priest class—Kohanim—and I found out from Rina that Kohanim cannot marry divorced women without giving up their priesthood. Which didn’t translate into much; it was a symbolic thing that most American Jews couldn’t care less about. But I knew Koby and I knew he cared—the reason he had asked me soon after we met if there had ever been an ex-husband in the picture. It was obvious he was looking for something more than a casual lay.

Cerise came back a few minutes later. “Yeah. It’d be like I thought. He’s been here, but not for at least four months.”

I was utterly flabbergasted. “He was here?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Oh my God, he’s alive!” I grabbed Koby’s arm and broke into a smile. “I can’t believe it!”

“I don’t know if he’s alive. I haven’t seen him in months.”

“You made my summer!” I was grinning. I took her hand and pumped it. “Now it’s just a matter of finding the right spot. Did you talk to him at all?”

“Girl, we get over a hundred souls walkin’ through that door every day of the week.” She pulled her hand away and shook it up and down. “I jus’ remember him ’cause he got that Down’s face. I’ll tell you one thing. He looked a lot older than that picture.”

“But you think it was him.”