Rachel was crying silently, but she helped him anyway, and they got Levy onto the bed, got his hat out from under his head and, working together, they rolled him back and forth between them and got his jacket off. Then she undid his belt and took off his shoes, while Hawkins unbuttoned his collar and cuffs. He watched her hands as they moved precisely, gracefully, long fingers at the belt buckle, then shoelaces. He kept looking up at her face and realized that even though she was pale, and her eyes were swollen and red, she looked lovely to him. He didn’t know if that was because she was really so beautiful or if there was just something about her face that fascinated him. He’d only seen her a few times before tonight. The first time was the day Adam married her four years ago, just before they left for Minnesota. He remembered thinking that Adam’s wife would probably look like Rose Pinchik, who was pleasant-­plain with short legs; but when she raised her short veil to kiss Adam, he’d been shocked at how pretty she was, so pretty he couldn’t talk to her except to say how happy he was for them. After that he’d jockeyed around people who got in his line of sight so he could watch her.

“Let’s get his shirt off,” she said, “it’s hot in here.”

He lifted Levy and she got his arms out of the sleeves.

They settled him back and for the first time Hawkins saw the blue numbers tattooed on Levy’s arm.

He touched them with his fingertips.

Rachel watched him. “Didn’t he tell you?” she asked.

“No. Adam did once. A long time ago.” One night at Vinnie’s bar. Hawkins was drunk at the time and all at once he was angry. Not at the Nazis, but at Adam for telling him about something so terrible, so alien. Every Jew in Brooklyn had a hard-­luck story, he thought . . . the camps, the pogroms, the college quotas. The Irish, too, like Mike Carr and Maguire, always sitting with their backs to a wall, as if someone was going to shoot them from the door, and moaning about their troubles. The blacks were no better. Marsh Robinson got drunk there every Wednesday night, picked fights with whites, and carried on about slavery as if he’d just been impressed from Africa instead of being born and raised in Cleveland.