These days most people in America survive from paycheck to paycheck and New York’s Diamond District has been feeling the pinch, so that my bosses Richie Boy and his father Manny couldn’t offer me a place behind the counter upon my return from the Orient.
“It’s brutal out there.” Manny always kvetched about business, but his business had been bled dry by a long stretch of no sales.
"How bad?"
“I’m totally farblondzhet.” Manny was never confused by a bad situation. He was an optimist at heart.
“Is it that bad?” I divined the answer from the long faces on the other dealers in the exchange.
“I would be lucky, if it was bad.” The Brownsville native had seen more than periods of ups and downs over his eighty years. “Vel ist mir, This is a nightmare, but we’ll get through somehow.”
His son was more of a pessimist. Richie Boy had newly born twins. After the exchange closed we went out for a drink.
“This sucks.”
“Something will happen.”
“Call up your old customers. Make me a sale. I’ll give you half the profit.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” His father was a notorious chiseler.
“Help me and I’ll help you. What I really need is to find a red diamond."
"Red?" The red color came from plastic deformations within the stone. They were very rare and very expensive.
"Red. A sale like that would take off the pressure."
"You have a call for that?"
"From a dealer."
"And you haven't found anything."
"Nothing."
"I'll ask around."
He went home to his wife and I hurried along 47th Street to catch a train to Brooklyn at Grand Central.
Halfway down the block I ran into Abell, a young religious diamond broker with five kids. We hadn’t seen each other for months and the zaftig dealer asked if I knew of a red diamond.
“Red red?”
“Yes, red red.”
"I saw one earlier in the day at a colored diamond dealer’s office, but it’s less than a carat.”
“How much?”
“Less than a million.”
“How much less?”
“I’ll have to make a call.” Abell stepped into a foyer out of my earshot to phone the holder of the red diamond. He came back in less than twenty seconds.
"A little over $600,000 for a .67 pointer."
"Less than a carat. There's nothing else available. Will it work?" Abell clasped his hands in hopes of hearing the right answer.
"Give me a second." It was my turn to use the foyer and I contacted Richie Boy to explain everything.
"Is it available?"
I conveyed the question to Abell, who nodded his head with a smile, then signaled that he had to go. His wife was cooking at home and he loved her cooking almost as much as he loved her.
"Yes."
“If this comes through, then you get a good bone.”
“You said half before.”
“Half if it was a private. This is a wholesale deal. No one is getting rich from it.”
I didn’t argue, since something was better than nothing and the next day I stepped out of the way of the murderous haggling between the holder of the stone, Richie Boy, Abell, his partner, the next person down the line, and the final buyer, but at the end of the day all parties said mazol and the deal was done.
Richie Boy was good to his word on my commish and Abell kicked in some more geld, so it wasn’t for making two phone calls to the right places. The money was shared out in the exchange. Everyone was happy, but Manny.
“You make good sale and you think you’re all heroes.”
“It was a good sale,” I told him.
“And it’s done, so what have you done for me lately?”
“Nothing in the last fifteen minutes.”
Abell shook our hands.
“I have to get you and Richie Boy a good bottle of wine.” Abell was grateful to us. He had a lot of mouths to feed. “A bottle of kosher wine.”
“Kosher wine, feh.” Manny didn’t like anyone who made more money than him and I expected nothing less from the Brownsville native. They grew them tougher than a skinned rattlesnake in that part of Brooklyn.
“There’s good kosher wine,” Abell protested, while sticking his check inside his coat.
“No, there isn’t.” I had tasted enough ‘yayin kashér’ to know that good kosher wine was a trifecta oxymoron.
“It’s all tref to my palate.”
“It isn't cheap.” Abell leaned on the counter. Hassidic cooking was thick with schmaltz had pushed his weight to that of an NFL linemen and he was only 5-11.
“$5 or $100, it's all dreck to me." I liked a good French red, but Talmudic law banned the drinking of wine which might be used to honor an idol such as the Golden Bull underneath Mount Sinai or Jesus or Bacchus, the Greek God of epiphany.
"And he'll drink anything." Richie Boy knew my tastes.
“Wine is drunk for enlightenment,” argued Abell.
"Oblivion is easier to achieve." Richie Boy and I were longtime drinking companions.
"I can’t even finish a glass of glatt yayin and that makes schitkahness impossible.” I liked getting on my drunk.
“I will bring you a bottle of drinkable kosher wine and you’ll sing praise to Chateau Zeitgeist.”
“I’ll believe it when I taste it.” Yayin mevushal has to be boiled to purify it from the touch of an idolater and I explained to Abell, “Back in 1995 we opened a nightclub in Beverly Hills. The previous bar had been Dean Martin’s hang-out. The owner said that we could have the wine stock. I looked at the list. It was very impressive and I asked where was the cave. The owner said, “There’s no cellar here, we kept it upstairs.” The top floor was suffocatingly hot. I opened a few bottles. It had been boiled by the California sun to swill. The same goes for heating kosher wine.”
“You’re wrong and I’ll bet you $100 that you’ll tell me you’re wrong.”Abell waddled from the exchange.
Manny shook his head.
"I know want you're thinking."
"What?"
"That I had wasted too much time on ‘bullshit’."
"Bullshitting is your expertise." It was his second favorite expression. # 1 was calling diamond brokers like Abell ‘piece of shit’.
I headed to the door.
“Where are you going?’
“Out of the zone of misery. Remember I don’t work here.”
I left the exchange and went over to the public library to write. Nothing takes away writer's block like a little money.
The following day I went up to 47th Street to pay off a debt.
Abell arrived in the exchange with a bottle of Chateau Beaucul.
Richie Boy and I thanked him for the offering and we uncorked the bottle.
I spit the first sip into the trash can and yelled at Abell, “Are you trying to kill a sheygutz?”
“Is it bad?”
“Nearly poisonous.” I was less a goy than a sheygutz, which was considered a ‘wise guy’ by some Yiddish speakers. To others it was an insult.
“Sorry, it cost almost $50.”
“I appreciate the gesture, but I lived in France for ten years and this is worst that vin-trois-hommes?”
“What is that?”
“When wine is so bad that two men have to hold you down and pour it into your mouth.”
“Give me another chance.”
“It’s not necessary. Drinking that wine was like having sex with an ugly woman. Something you would never forget and I didn’t need to fuck a ‘messkait’ twice."
“No, I’ll make good.”
"I can hardly wait."
Abell didn’t show up for three days.
Manny mocked my trusting him.
“He maade his money, so why does he have to give you anything.”
"Because he said he would."
“If you’re so in love with Abell, why don’t you marry him?” Manny had a way with words and so did I.
“Because he’s not my type.”
Richie Boy stayed out of the fray, because anytime I took the brunt of the old man’s attack was free time for Richie Boy to make money.
“Don’t you have a home?” Manny was tired of seeing me.
"Yeah, but I like seeing you ready to plotz.”
“Get out of here.” Manny meant it, but only for the moment.
We were old friends and at the end of the week I was selling a diamond to a basketball player in Miami.
On Friday Abell showed up before the rush home for Shabbos with a new bottle in his hand.
“This is the best of the best.”
Richie Boy and I thanked him and I took out the bottle opener and two glasses.
One for me and one for Richie Boy.
Manny wasn’t getting a drop.
Richie Boy examined the bottle and nodded his approval.
Chateau Dionysos was a pricy bottle of wine.
“Let it breathe,” advised Abell.
"Breathe? Sure." I opened the bottle, but it had been a long day. The sale of an eternity band to my NBA client had fallen through the ice. His Miami jeweler was saying that my diamond was a horror.
"Let me know what you think." Abell left the exchange. Shabbos started in less than two hours.
I gave the bottle thirty seconds and poured Richie Boy and myself a glass.
Halfway to the top.
We dipped our noses over the rim. Our eyebrows peaked with anticipation. A single sip sent us into ecstasy.
It was better than good, then again Chateau Lafitt 96 wasn’t glatt kosher.
I tried calling Abell. He wasn’t picking up his phone.
I raised a glass to the air and toasted my friend.
“Here’s to Bacchus. Pagan not kosher.”
Richie Boy clinked his glass with mine.
Manny glowered at his desk and we smacked out lips in appreciation, because sometimes the best things in life many times are kosher and that’s a mitzvah for a goy and a blessing for a sheygutz.
And as the Shabbos starker I knew the difference between the two.
