Kaye Zeren Kahn had been her best friend when they were young. Kaye had smoked pot and made love to a man before anyone else. Her grandfather and Rachel’s grandmother had come here on the same boat, from the same village. He had been a draper, first on Grand Street, then with his son in Washington Heights. The Cloisters was almost next door, and Kaye would take Rachel there on Tuesdays to sit in the herb garden and listen to medieval music. Rachel would close her eyes and breathe in smells from another century . . . rosemary, hyssop, galingale, thyme. Kaye took her to the Kettle of Fish in the Village to pick up men, and she taught her how to use Tampax. Kaye would go to the mikveh with her.

She called Kaye, then drove North on the Hutchinson River. Leah fell asleep and Rachel drove in silence to the Port Chester exit.

Kaye lived three miles from the Parkway and when Rachel got to the end of her long curved drive, Kaye was waiting for her with the front door open. They hugged, and Rachel saw tears in her friend’s eyes.

“The breakfast nook,” Kaye said. “It’s the only part of this barn I can stand.” She had tea ready and poured whisky into it, then sat down across the table from Rachel.

“What’s this shit about a mikveh?”

“Talk to me first,” Rachel said. “Where’s your husband?”

“At a medical meeting in Hawaii, fucking his secretary. My sons are at Deerfield, strictly for the goyim, and my mother’s in a retirement home half an hour away playing gin with an old cocker who used to live on 187th Street. I know your news. Adam’s dead and you need a mikveh. What for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You’ve come all over corrupt?”

“I have to go and you have to go with me to make sure my hair doesn’t float.”

Kaye raised her hand to her mouth in shock. Her four-carat diamond flashed in firelight.

“That’s insane.”

“Will you do it?”

“Without knowing why?”

Rachel didn’t answer and Kaye took her hand.

“Tell me, Rache. What can be so secret?”

Rachel stared at her friend.

“I have to kill a golem,” she said softly, “and I must be free of any taint to do it.” Kaye stared at her. “I have to walk seven times around a clay monster saying Michael backwards, then rub out . . .”

“Okay, okay,” Kaye said, “you can’t tell me. Where’s the mikveh?”

Rachel blushed. “I thought you’d know.”

“Terrific. That’s really terrific. Where do I find a mikveh in Westchester, not to mention Fairfield County.”

The women looked at each other; Leah walked uncertainly across the floor, fell next to the work island, and screamed. Rachel ran to her, picked her up, and hugged her. Kaye watched every move.

“Rachel, are you in trouble?”