“Maybe not.” He switched on the stereo, turning up the volume to drown me out. Ska with a booming bass line blasted through the speakers of Rina’s Volvo.

I turned off the receiver. “Definitely not,” I continued. “Young people get preference, you know that. And why? Why is one life worth more than another life? Now, suppose the seventy-year-old was a major cancer researcher and the twenty-year-old had Down’s syndrome. Then who’d get the kidney?”

“Yes, yes, you prove your point, Cindy. You should be a lawyer as well as a cop. That way, you can legally defend your self-righteousness. Can we now stop talking and listen to some music?” Again he turned on the receiver full volume.

I sat back in my seat and looked at the roof of the car. We rode with the music blaring for about a minute until he abruptly turned it off. The stillness was thick.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I placed my hand on his knee and dropped my voice to a soothing lilt. “Yaakov, those two kids were punks. And you know how I feel about punks. And I didn’t particularly like being thought of as your bitch for sale. But there’s this side of me that says there’s something sad about them. Their self-esteem must be in the toilet, their images of themselves so low that they can’t possibly conceive of a healthy, good-looking white woman falling in love with a black man who isn’t a pro athlete, a badass rapper, a movie star, or her pimp. To them, it’s as absurd as a blue sun.”

He was silent. But then ever so slowly, a small smile played upon his lips. “You’re in love with me?”

I stared at him in amazement. “Um … let’s think about this. I spend every waking moment of my free time with you, and lots of my nonwaking moments, too.” I tapped his temple. “Duh!”

He didn’t respond. We tooled down the freeway for a minute without speaking.

At last he said, “Every morning I say Sha’charit—prayers to God.”

“I know. Those little black boxes with the straps.”

“Yes, tefillin.” He licked his lips. “In the prayers, there is always Shemoneh Esrei—the silent devotion to God. You take three steps backward; then you take three steps forward and start. But before you step forward … this is the chance for personal prayer, for personal requests.”

A small smile.

“I used to ask God for things—for money, for a raise, for a better position, for a new car at a price I could afford, to help me win the lottery, to let me meet lots of loose women.”

I punched his shoulder lightly. “Did He help you out?”

“Not with the lottery, but very good with the women.”

I punched him again, but harder.

“Silly things.” He let out a laugh. “But now … now I don’t ask for things. I just say, ‘Thank you, God, for sending me Cynthia.’ That is it.” A pause. “I don’t tell God this at prayer time, but I do also say thank you to Him for giving me the privilege of having sex with you—”