Weiser pushed his water glass toward Tepel for brandy, which he gulped. “You don’t really,” he said kindly. “It’s all written down. There’s some information in the Sanhedrin—I don’t know the exact reference—and in Genesis Rabba . . . and most of all in the Sefer Yezirah.”

Waiters went up and down the aisle; in the front of the restaurant, someone was fighting with the cashier. Weiser and Tepel were the only people not listening, but Garfield had a sense of the lives of the people around them, eating lonely dinners in a delicatessen on Seventy-second Street, then going home to their TVs, or, if they were lucky, to a friend’s for tea, or to wait for a son or daughter to call. But as soon as Weiser said Sefer Yezirah, Garfield thought of magic, and had the feeling that for a minute, the three of them were separated from everyone else in the world. Men who knew . . . and were about to know . . . secret words. Men with a mission. Mission made him think again of old movies, and spies; the war room at Fine and Schapiro’s, he thought, and he smiled at Weiser, who smiled back.

“But understand,” Weiser said, “Sefer Yezirah is not a recipe book for making and demolishing golems. It is a guide to the mysterious knowledge of the inwardness of creation. We create with our thoughts, our substance, our spirit.” Weiser looked up at the pressed tin ceiling and painted pipes. “Let me remember all of it,” he prayed, then he looked back at the men with him. “I’m seventy-­eight,” he said, “I forget everything.” He finished his brandy and turned to Tepel who half filled the soda glass. Weiser drank and went on talking.

“Sefer Yezirah reveals the mysteries of the cosmos. If you know them, you can create life. Not to walk or talk . . . but as a symbol of your understanding and love . . . like a diploma almost. If you could give life to clay, you were one with the universe. . . .”

Garfield said, “Some men have made a clay man that kills. We have to stop it, Reb Weiser. We don’t have time to find the reference in the Sanhedrin, or to profoundly understand the construction of the cosmos. We have to stop it tomorrow or next week, before someone else dies. Do you understand?”

The old man stared at them. “You mean right now, today? Someone made a golem?”

Garfield nodded, and Weiser stared at the movie stills.

“I can’t believe you.”

Tepel and Garfield looked at each other. Tepel, who’d already had a lot to drink, said to Weiser, “Look, Sol, you’re an old man, you said it yourself. Nu? Believe us. What difference does it make?”

“But why would they do it?”

“Because they’re all crazy,” Garfield said.

“There’s lots of them?” Weiser asked.

“Eight,” Garfield said.

“How do eight people get so crazy all of a sudden?”