Free Run You Down by Julia Dahl

She’s from Utah and her family was Mormon. Anyway, in California, I think they actually outlawed it. Or maybe they tried to.”
    “They should,” I say.
    Iris nods. “That guy was amazing,” she says. Dov is surrounded by people; everyone seems to have a question or a story to share. “Are you gonna talk to him?”
    “Yeah,” I say, “but it looks like it might be a wait.”
    “So we wait. I’m getting another beer. I have cottonmouth. I’m calling in sick tomorrow.”
    Iris goes to the buffet, and I lean against a covered piano in the corner of the room, watching. It’s almost midnight on a weekday, but the event shows no sign of slowing down. A group of young men in black hats brings in a case of beer. Three frum girls are bent over an iPhone, laughing. A teenage boy in Borough Park black is challenging a man maybe ten years his senior to explain why, if it’s okay to be gay, it isn’t okay to be a heroin addict or a prostitute or a murderer?
    “If there are no rules, where do you stop?” he asks.
    After about twenty minutes, I see an opening and approach Dov by the buffet table.
    “Hi,” I say, “I’m Rebekah. From the Trib .”
    “Rebekah!” he says, opening his arms for a hug. I oblige. “Thank you for coming.” He looks to his friends and says, “This is the reporter I was telling you about. She found out who killed Rivka Mendelssohn. She’s writing about Pessie.”
    Dov’s friends nod and say hello.
    “Do you have time to talk?” I ask.
    “Of course,” he says. “Let me finish here. There is a diner nearby. Can we meet there in half an hour?”
    “Sure,” I say. Dov gives me directions and Iris and I step out of the noisy, overheated synagogue and into the nearly still late night. Ocean Parkway is a four-lane highway with wide pedestrian and bicycle promenades leading to the beach at Coney Island on either side. It’s a mix of residential and commercial here. Big prewar apartment buildings next to doctors’ offices and day care centers, many with Hebrew lettering on the signs. We pass a Haredi man sitting alone on a bench, talking on his cell phone. He turns away from us as we pass.
    “You seem a lot better,” Iris says as we walk. “Do you think the medication is helping?”
    “I guess it must be,” I say. And then: “Thanks. For, you know. Taking care of me. I know I’ve been a pain in the ass. I just…” Just what? Just everything.
    “It’s okay,” she says. “So you called your mom.”
    “Yeah. I can’t help but think she, like, sees my number and is purposely ignoring me.”
    “That’s dumb. She’s the one that called you.”
    “And now she’s disappeared again.”
    “You’re the most ridiculous pessimist I know. She probably forgot to pay her bill or something.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Have you told your dad she called?”
    “No,” I say. “I thought I’d wait until I actually talk to her.”
    Dov and his friend Frannie get to the diner about twenty minutes after we do.
    Frannie tells us she was also frum, but grew up in Baltimore. She and Dov met through Facebook, and now they’re roommates, along with four other people, in a house near Poughkeepsie. The rent is cheap, and none of them like the big city. Dov says that they’ve both applied to the community college there, but won’t hear whether they’ve been accepted until the summer.
    “Pessie’s sister Rachel told me that Pessie had a bad reaction to her medication, passed out, and drowned,” says Dov. “But when I asked what medication she wouldn’t tell me.”
    “Her husband said she’d been on antidepressants since after the baby was born,” I say. “But you can’t, like, OD on those.”
    Dov shakes his head. “You know that, and I know that, but Pessie’s family probably thinks Prozac is the same thing as, like, OxyContin. They probably heard ‘antidepressants’ and assumed she wanted to kill herself. She still has sisters and brothers who need to get married and a suicide in the