“I’m too full for more tea. But I can’t say no to the rugelach.”

Delighted, she placed another one before him.

Finally, both cups were drained, both plates empty. She got up to clear the table.

“Sit!” he commanded, taking away the plates and cups and silverware and taking them into the kitchen. “I’m not helpless.”

“I can see that, Rav.” Slowly, she pushed back her chair. “I’ll just wrap up the cakes. Or should I put them directly into the freezer for Shabbos?”

He hesitated. It was only Monday. “You can put a few in the freezer, but leave the rest out, please.”

“I’ll leave it all out,” she announced. “I can bring something else for Shabbos.”

He looked at her hopefully. “Chremslach?”

“You eat them during the year, not just Pesach?”

“Malka made them for me all year round. With dates and coconut.”

She looked back at him with barely hidden joy, her lips in a tight smile. “Actually, I was thinking a chocolate babka.”

He could almost sense its scent rising like a phantom and filling the room.

23

BREAKTHROUGH WITH GRUB

Shaindele stood once again in front of the dingy door in the musty, dark hallway, feeling lost. He was there, inside, waiting for her. Grub. Just the idea of it sent a hot flash through her stomach and a cold shiver up her spine. She reached back to push in the bobby pins with which she had pinned up her braid into a mature matron’s bun. She had also taken care to wear her ugliest, regulation Bais Yaakov footwear: orthopedic old lady shoes and 60 denier black tights. Her skirt was not mid-calf but ankle length, and her blouse buttoned up practically to her chin. Instinctively, she had done everything to make herself as unattractive as possible. She hoped she had done enough. Inhaling deeply, she knocked.

“Come in,” he said, his authoritative, demanding voice reestablishing and confirming all the memories she had tried so hard to convince herself she had misunderstood. She trembled a little as she opened the door.

This time, he hardly looked up from his desk. She stood there, taking advantage of his momentary disinterest to look around the room. To her surprise, the beach scene was gone. Taking up its space was a truly toe-curlingly ugly oil painting of the Bobelger Rebbe, every gray hair and wrinkle garishly glorified and slapped into place by some color-blind hack who had no doubt learned his “art” through paint-by-numbers kits, she thought. But it was better than the women in bathing suits promoting an air of casual lust.

Finally, she noticed him stir. He put down his pen, smiling at her avuncularly. “How do you like the new artwork, Miss Lehman?”

She lowered her head, making no reply. And Miss Lehman? What was that all about? It sounded almost goyish.