Base for Your Face

The rabbi didn't smoke, but he'd been disillusioned by his mentor quitting the synagogue where he'd held court for 41 living years. It wasn't a retirement, it was a full-on flight from everything they'd both kept sacred. Explanations were vague, not that any one thing could have accounted for this decision. So when the rabbi as a joke was offered a filter-free American Spirit from a young man on a skateboard he accepted on impulse. Back in the sacristy the rush of nicotine to the brain plowed him over. He first leaned against the wall, in slow motion sunk to his bottom, and then with chest heaving in short rapid breaths he laid flat-back on the marble floor full-on Trainspotting style.

"Whew," he said. "Whoosh."

The rush and the accompanying nausea passed in ten minutes. Lucky for him he went undiscovered. He rose, embarrassed. He wasn't a kid anymore, this rabbi, he was a middle-aged man with responsibilities. A quick penance followed, one meant to put out of his mind the larger implications of this tiny rebellion, not against God or his flock but one that chipped a corner of ice from the flawless geometry of his glacial wall. The rabbi was troubled. The one man he confided in had wished him well, the way people do to someone they expect never to see again.