Read Online Salvation Boulevard by Larry Beinhart - Free Book Online

you to lunch.”
    â€œMe? I’m more than a quarter-century older than you. I know that anything goes nowadays, but this is more than I expected.”
    â€œMrs. Rabinowitz, I don’t know that I could keep up with you.”
    â€œI bet you could. But meantime, what do you really want?”
    â€œTo take you to lunch.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œAnd talk to you about the department.”
    â€œYou mean about poor Nathaniel.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou a reporter?”
    â€œNo. No, I’m not.”
    â€œWho are you then?”
    â€œI’m an investigator,” I said. “I’m working for Ahmad Nazami’s defense.”
    â€œShow me. You got ID?”
    â€œYes. I do,” I said and showed her my PI license.
    â€œOkay, what’s your name again? Carl?”
    â€œYes. Carl.”
    â€œYou can take me to lunch, and you can call me Esther. It was nice, bringing me the plant. Nathaniel always used to bring me chocolates. For my birthday. He always got the date wrong, but he always brought them. Really, really good ones. You could put on five pounds just holding the box.”
    Â 
    â€œNate was my favorite,” she said over a bowl of pea soup.
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    â€œAt least you could understand him. These others . . . listen, do you know philosophy?” She was spooning the chunks of ham out of the bowl.
    â€œAre you doing that because you’re kosher?”
    â€œNah, I’m a vegetarian.”

    â€œOh,” I said.
    â€œBut not a religious one. I don’t mind a little meat should touch my food, infuse it with flavor. Thomas Jefferson was like that. I just do it for my health. I want to live forever. I have grandchildren. You want to see pictures?”
    â€œOf course,” I said.
    She took a packet of photos out of her pocket book. “My daughter-in-law, an angel, e-mails me pictures every day.” I accepted them and made the appropriate cooing sounds of admiration. “I print them out myself,” she explained. “Sometimes I Photoshop them, improve them a little.”
    â€œHow adorable,” I said. “So, tell me about Nate.”
    â€œOh, oh, oh, poor Nathaniel. What a nice man. So much fun. We used to laugh. Who would want to kill such a man. Hah! As if I didn’t know.”
    â€œLike who?”
    â€œDon’t be so quick Mr. Investigator, Carl. I use it as a turn of phrase. In the circumstances, I shouldn’t.”
    â€œWhat about Ahmad?”
    â€œAhmad? Kill somebody? Why do you think I’m sitting here talking to you? If I thought it was Ahmad, I would say, Go away. Leave me alone. They got the killer.”
    â€œNot Ahmad, then?”
    â€œNo. No, he and Nate were friends. Oh, how they used to argue.”
    â€œThey argued? But you said they were friends.”
    â€œOh, goyim. What are you, Irish?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMy late husband was Irish. Nice man. But his idea of an argument was to step outside and start punching someone. Argue, like philosophers. For them, that’s like the joy of sex. For most of them. But there are some, they get so serious . . . factions, worse than Trotskyites. You don’t know philosophy, do you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNobody does. I’ll give you a quick overview from the perspective of the departmental secretary and a grandmother who had a very
fine education herself at the City College of New York, back when it was one of the best schools in the country, almost as hard to get into as your Ivy League schools. And it was free. We all think we’ve come so far, but when I was growing up, an education, a fine college education, was free.
    â€œAnyway, there are two main groups. They call themselves continental and analytic. Are you ready? You might want to take notes. This is going to be on the test.
    â€œâ€˜Analytic philosophers want to say only what they can be absolutely, logically certain about.