Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry by Harry Kemelman

was good for him. As for his being so much older – well, I had had enough of the other before I met him. He needed me and I needed him. Yes, I think we had a good marriage.”
    The rabbi hesitated and then took the plunge. “I understand his death was due indirectly to his – to his drinking. Didn’t it bother you – his drinking, I mean?”
    “That really bugs you people, doesn’t it? Well, it bothered Ike a lot, too. Oh, of course it made things hard sometimes. He lost jobs because of it, and sometimes we had to move and that’s not easy, making new arrangements and finding a new place to live. But it didn’t frighten me the way it might some. He was never ugly when he was drunk, and that’s what counts – more weak and silly like, and would cry like a child. But never ugly and never nasty to me. And it didn’t really bother me. My father was a heavy drinker, and my mother was no teetotaler. So I was kind of used to it. Later on, when he got worse and began to black out – that was frightening, but I was frightened for him because there was no knowing what might happen to him.”
    “And did that happen often?”
    She shook her head. “The last couple or three years he never touched a drop, except once or twice when he got started and couldn’t stop. I mean, he didn’t drink regularly. He was on the wagon, but whenever he fell off it was all the way. The last time was months and months ago.”
    “Except for Friday night.”
    “Yes, I forgot about that.” She closed her eyes, and the rabbi was afraid she was going to break down. But she opened her eyes and even managed a smile.
    He rose, as if to signify he had finished. Then he thought of something. “Could you tell when one of these spells was coming on?”
    She shook her head.
    “Can you account for his suddenly starting to drink? Was something bothering him?”
    Again she shook her head. “I guess he was always bothered about something. That’s why people drink, I suppose. I would try to comfort him – you know, make him feel I was always there and would always understand.”
    “Perhaps you were better for him than he was for you,” suggested the rabbi gently.
    “We were good for each other,” she said emphatically. “I told you he was always kind to me. Look, Rabbi, I was no innocent when I met Ike. I had been around. He was the first man I had known who was nice to me with no strings attached. And I was good to him; I took care of him like a mother.”
    “And yet he drank.”
    “That started before I met him. And I’m not sorry,” she added defiantly, “because that’s how I met him.”
    “So?”
    “He had holed up at this little hotel where I was working on the cigar counter in the lobby. If he hadn’t been on a bender, how could the likes of me have met a man like him?”
    “And you feel you got the best of the bargain?”
    “It was the best kind of bargain there is, Rabbi, where both parties feel they’ve got the best of it.”

Chapter Thirteen
    “Yeah, this is Ben Goralsky talking. All right, I’ll hold on… Hello, hello… ” At the other end he could hear someone talking, and then he realized the voice was not talking to him but to someone else in the other room at the other end.
    “Mr. Goralsky? Ted Stevenson speaking.”
    “Oh, hello Ted, nice to hear your voice. Where you calling from?”
    “From our offices.”
    “On Sunday? Don’t you guys ever stop working?”
    “There are no regular hours and no days off for top management in this company, Mr. Goralsky, not when there’s important business to be done. And if you join us, you’ll work the same way.”
    Goralsky had an inkling of the purpose of the call, and the implication of the “if” was not lost on him.
    “We were going to call you yesterday, as a matter of fact,” Stevenson went on, “but we knew it was your holiday and assumed you would be at your synagogue.”
    “Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t go. I was right here all the time. My father