Special guest joining us tonight. Surprise. Bauer wrote.
Come on, nu, stop the mysteries. Garfinkel answered.
Sitman took a tougher route. Hey, who says you get to invite?

Kivi started typing, then thought better of it and deleted what he’d written. He wasn’t really sure what to say, or how he felt about the fact that Bauer was inviting someone else to dinner with them.

It was long a point of contention between them: Sitman saw the get-togethers as a chill, a chance to relax. “No lachatz of wives or business, you know,” he explained it. Bauer thought that they should be discussing their shared challenges.

Its a good one, youll all be happy. Someone with real insight for us, guaranteed. Bauer wrote.

Bill Gates? Kivi wrote and then stared at his screen as the others read it, one by one, hopeful that someone would write lol. Even a smiley face would have worked.

But he overlapped with Karlinsky. Omg, Nesanel, who?

Sitman was more forceful, going voice note. Nesanel, relax, this isn’t supposed to be an Agudah convention, its just a few guys eating supper. Why do we need guest speakers or panel discussions?
Bauer typed, then stopped typing, then continued, building up suspense.

CJ Korman.
Sitman made a thumbs-up emoji.
Respect, wrote Karlinsky.

Kivi, still slightly peeved about his disregarded Bill Gates comment, the words suspended in space, wrote nice.

CJ Korman, Kivi had to admit, was everything every one of them aspired to be.

Bauer didn’t pretend to be anything other than awestruck. “That,” he said as they watched Korman park his car, “is what I want to look like in ten years. Amazing. Look at him, the walk, the look, the car… I mean, who in Lakewood has an autobiography?”

“An autobiography?” Kivi was confused.

“Yeah, that’s the name of the car. Range Rover Autobiography. Awesome, no?”

“That’s cool,” Kivi said. That’s disgusting, he thought. A car that doesn’t pretend to be anything other than your whole identity.

They were in Teaneck — Korman’s choice — and Bauer had given them a short introduction as Korman walked toward the restaurant.

“I really don’t know him that well, but we ended up at the same table at the Somech thingie last week, and he was saying how no one’s normal anymore, so I told him what we do, that we get together just to schmooze, and he said he’d love to come once and hock with us. Just to be normal with normal guys, he said, and I was like, whenever it works, man, for sure.”

Kivi had been perplexed. CJ Korman was normal? The guy who kept a full-time gardener on staff? Who had taken his family to Iceland for Pesach? Who had an alarm on his whiskey collection? Who brought in an artist from Israel to paint a mural in his dining room?

Garfinkel seemed equally admiring as he watched Korman nod to the hostess on the way in. “Yeah. He’s got the x-factor, for sure.”

“It’s so great to just sit with normal people, you know? I mean like, humans, regular people who can just hang out and talk about regular things.” Korman helped himself to a battered onion ring from Sitman’s plate. “This is just what I needed,” he exulted.

Korman said the words, “just what I needed” as if that were the point of the gathering: as if they’d all gotten out of bed that morning to figure out what it was CJ Korman needed and to make it happen.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 734)