Breit had stopped walking to face Dovi. “Actually, you didn’t choose this, you were born into it. I married into this though, so I did this to myself”

Dovi Loemer stood off to the side of the circle, listening to the casual conversation outside shul. Frankel parked his new BMW X7 near the shul and Brenner, who was standing in the entrance holding an e-cigarette and a coffee, whistled and said “Trust. Fund. Baby.” and everyone laughed.

Frankel picked up a pebble and dropped it into Brenner’s coffee and Haberman jumped and said, “Waste, waste of milk, of coffee, of the cup, what would old Ronnie say?” and everyone laughed again as they went into the Cypress Creek shul for Minchah.

Truth is, Dovi mused, Frankel’s grandfather may have been a millionaire — maybe a billionaire — but most of Cypress had parents or grandparents in the same league. Not much reverence around here, Dovi thought as he opened the siddur and started davening.

  

Coleman was making a shalom zachar so Kolos was in for Shabbos, making Kabbalas Shabbos longer than usual. Halstock, just returned from vacation in Turks and Caicos (Cancun and St. Barts are so yesterday, he said) had a deep tan he seemed proud of until Sutton said, “Did you see the humpback whale, epic, no?” and then Halstock looked confused, because it was clear he had missed that, and his tan seemed to fade a little.

Ahuva wanted to come to the shalom zachar, but Yossi was kvetchy and needed to go to sleep, and — this was the only real drawback of Cypress — there were no babysitters. No one in a development of homes that started at a million dollars was looking for fifteen-dollar-an hour gigs, and the houses were too far from each other to have a neighbor listen in.

Dovi picked up Chezky Breit and they walked down the cobblestone path to Pacific Way. There were wrought-iron lamps every six feet and matching benches at each corner, just in case anyone in a neighborhood in which the oldest resident was thirty-three would find it hard to walk to shul. (Gershonowitz had almost closed a deal with some rosh kollel to buy the bench Rav Chaim had used on the way to Lederman — he wanted to place it outside the Cypress shul. Someone in Bnei Brak had torpedoed it, but Gershonowitz wasn’t giving up. Imagine the zechus, he kept saying.)

The smell of flowers and cured meat merged at the entrance to Coleman’s house, and Dovi made his way between two huge arrangements that looked like small clouds into the dining room, where there was laughter and noise and a professional bartender mixing drinks.

A waiter approached with a plate of cholent, Kolos started “Abba,” and people from all sides waved Dovi over to open chairs.

Shabbos day there was a Kiddush, and Landau and Hyman, who were partners, brought in a case of tequila, creating a small buzz. Tequila was a change from the usual scotch, though Grigorsky whispered that Japanese tequila was in a different league and he would make sure to have it next week and make a real Kiddush.

Shabbos in Cypress.