A DEBT TO THE DEVIL
JEREMIAH HEALY
Don Floyd led me into the memorial chapel as though he’d been there before, despite his mentioning on the drive over from the Lauderdale Tennis Club that he wasn’t Jewish himself. Given the short time I’d lived in South Florida, much less at the Club, the building we entered looked more to me like a Spanish villa than a funeral parlor, what with exterior walls of yellow stucco and orange bumpy tiles on the roof. But around us a lot of grave markers dotted the flat, green meadow.
In a small vestibule, we signed a VISITORS log, Floyd—in the deliberate cadence of his native Georgia—introducing me to people as “Rory Calhoun.” Back in the early sixties, my mom had developed a permanent crush on that B-movie star, so after she married his surname-sake and I came along, my given name was a forgone, if embarrassing, conclusion.
Floyd and I began to follow the flow into the chapel proper. It was a big, square room, with rows of oak benches like Catholic pews but upholstered on the seats, a Star of David carved into each end post. A seven-spiked candelabra stood centered at the front of the room, a large-lettered prayer entitled the “Mourner’s Kaddish” to one side, a similar mural of the Twenty-third Psalm to the other, which kind of surprised me.
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