Sweetie's Diamonds by Raymond Benson Page A

what happened to them.   There was very little investigation done because the police didn’t care about porn stars and no family members came forward to make waves.   Lucy Luv and Angel Babe made a few films together and were apparently girlfriends.
    Oh.   My.   God.   I don’t know WHAT to think about that.   My Mom was a LESBIAN?   Could that be possible?
    You know, maybe I’ve got it all wrong and this porn star is just someone who happens to look like my Mom.   Maybe Billy and I are wrong about the whole thing.  
    Of course, I’d like to believe that but something in my gut tells me that it’s all true.  
    Yuck.

13
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    H iram Rabinowitz sighed heavily as soon as the customer left the shop.   He had made only two sales and it was nearing closing time.   As he had already sent home the help, there was nothing else to do but begin shutting down the store.   Being Friday, and Shabbat, it was the one day that A-1 Fine Jewelry closed early.
    Summer had come early to New York.   It was blazing hot outside and Rabinowitz didn’t look forward to walking to the subway.   It was worse underground, waiting in the crowded station on the platform was more like standing in a sauna.   Hopefully he would get a train that was air-conditioned.   Most of them were, but every now and then you got an old one and the A/C was faulty.   That was murder, especially when the train was packed like sardines.   Rabinowitz didn’t like crowded trains.   It reminded him of that terrible day a week after he had turned six years old.   He and his family were herded out of their Berlin home by the Nazis and forced to stand in a smelly, crowded train.   The ride to the death camp had been long and torturous.   Rabinowitz and his brother Moses miraculously survived the ordeal because they were strong, healthy boys who could work, but their parents were not so fortunate.  
    Hiram Rabinowitz surely hated crowded trains but it was the only way to get home to Queens.  
    At four o’clock he finished unloading the display windows and securely locked the merchandise away in the safe.   He stepped out the front door, locked it behind him, and then pulled down the flexible metal security wall.   It was painful to bend over and lock the padlock.   It wasn’t much fun being seventy-two years old and still having to work.   Sometimes he envied his brother for moving west to Chicago for a change of pace but the winters there were deadly.   Winters in New York were bad enough.
    The sun was still shining brightly and he would make it home in plenty of time before dusk.   He ceased being religious years ago but there were certain traditions that were difficult to get out of his blood.   One of those was observing Shabbat by closing early and having a nice dinner at home with candles, challah bread, and prayers.   It reminded him of happier times when his late wife and his three children, now grown, were still around.
    The jewelry store was located in a prime location and had been since he and his brother started the business in the fifties.   Forty-seventh Street was known as “Diamond Row” and it was lined with nothing but jewelry shops and diamond brokers.   Most of them were Jewish, not that it mattered, but Rabinowitz felt at home on the street and that was important.   His routine after closing was to walk east to 5 th Avenue and then downtown to 42 nd Street so that he could catch the number 7 train.   By doing so, he avoided changing trains to get home.   It was a bit more walking but anything was better than standing body-to-body with some stranger in a moving subway car.  
    As expected, the station underground was blisteringly hot and Rabinowitz was sweating before he had completed descending the stairs.   Luckily, the train was pulling into the station just as he swiped his Metro card and went