Fiction | The Mark
If it weren’t for the slice of Ebinger’s Blackout Cake wrapped in cellophane and sitting in the fridge behind a jar labeled ‘Manischewitz Borsht with Diced Beets’ and filled with week-old black coffee, I would already be on a Q train headed for school. Then again, if my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather. One of the sages said that, I’m pretty sure. Maybe Hillel or Shamai or my Great Uncle Nathan who grew up in Bensonhurst with the Three Stooges. That is, if you counted Shemp as a Three Stooge. Which not everyone did. Giving rise to the Great Brooklyn Pilpul of the 1960s. I’m thinking it had to be Great Uncle Nathan. It was his brand of discourse.
It was a Wednesday morning in late November 1968 (in the year of their Lord,...