The plaque says BOMA and there’s no windows, but there is singing, and I go in. I walk there, and I walk past it, and there on the basement door is the number of the place. Maybe a hundred years ago I would’ve stopped to ask if they were okay, but tonight I’m already an hour late, I’m no longer good with people, I’m not looking for adventures, just a way to get home as early as possible - I have to be up for the kids - and I don’t know where I’m going, and it occurs to me that the new address has no apartment number, an impossibility in this neighborhood. Along the way I pass diners, old men in jeff caps walking tiny dogs, single people crying or laughing into phones, and it’s so cold you can’t tell which and maybe it doesn’t matter. I’ve been out of Manhattan nights so long the numbers don’t naked any sense to me and I don’t know whether the walk is normal or ridiculous, but it’s to see Leibish, which is worth a little sacrifice. I take the phone, hungering for that little bit of connection, and he says, “Good to hear you, brother, I’ll see you in a few minutes, right?” and I figure I’ve misread the situation and I figure I’d better take the address and start walking. He tells the concierge, the class is somewhere else, and it’s a cold night so I don’t blame him for staying home but I say, “Could you tell him Matthue says hi?” and the guy looks at me like, what are you, in fifth grade, and asks if I just want to talk. The joke is, most Hasidic rebbes show up with a carful of followers in Biala, you get a follower and a car full of rebbes. There aren’t many Matthues, either, and I recognized the name as one I’d heard in Crown Heights, one Purim several years back, when he asked what kind of Hasid I was and I said Biala Ostrova and he literally fell on the floor in surprise because he was, too, and there aren’t too many of us in the world. Now, when you’re not just Jewish but Orthodox, and not just Orthodox but into weird hippie mystical occult stuff, there aren’t too many people with names like Niccolo. The doorman looked at me askew, but I told him the number and he called up once - no answer - but he tried again and he said into the phone, “Niccolo, someone named Matthue to see you?” I had a work event late I’d be in the city anyway, and I’d been a little antisocial lately but my best friend in town was moving to Texas so I might as well force myself to stay out a bit, right? A band I really like was arranged to play.
My teacher from yeshiva, Leibish, who’s just taken over from the tzaddik Sholom Brodt, was speaking.
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