Daniel Barban Levin - Slonim Woods 9: A Memoir

Copyright 2021 by Daniel Barban Levin

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Pursuit originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Provincetown Arts (2011).

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published materials:

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.: Excerpt from Prospective Immigrants Please Note from Collected Poems: 19502012 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright 1963, 1967 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Factory Hollow Press: Excerpt from Mutually Assured Childhood Molestation from Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me by Mark Leidner. Reprinted by permission of Factory Hollow Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Levin, Daniel Barban, author.

Title: Slonim Woods 9 / Daniel Barban Levin.

Description: First edition. | New York: Crown, [2020]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020047466 (print) | LCCN 2020047467 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593138854 (hardcover; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780593138861 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ray, Larry (Lawrence), 1960 | Levin, Daniel Barban. | CriminalsNew York (State)Case studies. | Manipulative behaviorNew York (State)Case studies. | ExtortionNew York (State)Case studies. | CultsNew York (State)Case studies.

Classification: LCC HV6248.R3914 L48 2020 (print) | LCC HV6248.R3914 (ebook) | DDC 364.15092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047466

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047467

Ebook ISBN9780593138861

crownpublishing.com

Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Alicia Tatone

Cover photograph: Djrobgordon

ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

Daniel Levin

Wed, Jun 19, 2013, 5:39 PM

Dear Angela,

I apologize for the delay in my response. My new life (amazing choice of words) is progressing happily! Im working for the Department of Education for New York City now, so I am extremely busy, but completely happy.

I have rather unfortunate news regarding your book and it is involved in something extremely disturbing which I have told very few people. I think it might be the last thing youd expect to hear. I feel obligated to give you ample warning that I am going to share with you something terrifying and awful that Ive experienced in my recent past and which I am telling you, if you choose to read it, in absolute confidence. I am only saying this because as someone who is very busy and probably has her own sense of the scope of our relationship, you should have every right to resign yourself to the notion that I just lost your book, take that as you may, and move on. However, Ive been roiling over this for a few months because I could just have told you that, and not have to deal with talking about what Im about to tell you, but Id rather not lie and diminish my standing in your eyes in the defense of something which has already caused me enough pain and been detrimental to enough of my relationships. So Im leaving the choice up to you whether or not to go on. I realize your curiosity is probably piqued but Im really telling you this is something in which youre probably going to feel obligated to get involved, and I would be completely amazed if you had any idea how to deal with it or even comment on it. However I want you to know that I am sharing this with you not just because I want a valid excuse for not being able to return your book to you right now but because I trust and respect you, and perhaps this is unfair to you, but I do not feel as if I could tell anyone else at this moment, certainly not in the hopes of getting some sort of helpful response.

So, after that protracted preamble, here is the basic idea: I know exactly where your book is, but I absolutely cannot go retrieve it because it is at the apartment where I lived off campus during the summer after sophomore year, the summer after junior year, and the first semester of senior year. When I lived there I was a member of what I can now call a cult.

THE ALARMS KEPT SCREAMING, and we ignored them. While we lined the path waiting for the all clear, Santos and I collected rocks, which we were piling to build a makeshift wall against the cliff outside our dorm. False alarms were frequent and familiar occurrences at Sarah Lawrence, and Id grown accustomed to pretending a whole building hadnt just begun to squawk when I walked past one on the way to class. Our dorms were called Slonim Woods; they squatted at the bottom of a cliff on top of which was a copse of treesthe woods for which the dorms were named. In the brisk New York autumn air, herded into the canyon formed by the buildings and the cliff, Santos and I constructed our wall.

All the residents of Slonim were wearing what looked like costumes of our normal selves, having been rushed out of a shower or roused from an afternoon nap. Santos and I were managing a prodigious stack of rocks, what had turned out to be a surprisingly sturdy monument to our boredom. We had no way of knowing how long it would take the firefighters, who were probably as frustrated as we were, to identify which oversensitive alarm had been set off by some toaster crumb just large enough to have become kindling.

Its unbelievable, Santos said, handing me a rock. I considered the cliff for best placement. Whats happened to them is insane. Talia looks like shes this scrawny girl or something, but shes the toughest person Ive ever known. Growing up in the Bronx was nothing compared to some of the stories shes told me from the shelter. Santos and I had been friends ever since wed been randomly assigned to live together in our first year. Hed been the best roommate you could ask for. He had tough, Dominican parents, which was why, I guessed, he cleaned our whole room practically every day. He didnt smoke, he didnt drink, he didnt even really listen to music. I did every single one of those things, and tried my best to introduce him to them.

The rock I had just placed on the top of the wall wobbled, a little too big. In my elementary school, we were building something like this at recess once, and two kids were carrying a heavy rock and it slipped, I told Santos. One of them had to have the tip of his finger removed. Everyone always made fun of him after that. I cant remember why exactly. They said he smelled bad, I remember that. I think they said his finger was rotting or something, and thats why he smelled. The alarm continued to wail, muffled through our houses brick walls. Do you know Talias dad at all? I mean, have you met him?

No, not besides what shes told me. I know he was in the marines and everything, and hes done some intelligence work. When theyve talked on the phone, Talias put him on speaker with us. Me and Isabella.

I looked up. In the woods on top of the cliff was a ropes course no one used. Mostly people would just sit up there and drink or smoke weed as they watched people stroll by on the path below. In the summer before the school year, our roommate Gabe flew out from California a week early by accident. He tried to secretly camp in this little strip of woods until classes started. He barely avoided getting kicked out of school for that.