She watched him doubtfully. But he seemed fine. Her childishly smooth fingers shaking, she took it back. This time, she inhaled with caution. The mildly acrid sensation of having bitten into something spicy and overcooked enveloped her mouth and throat, but the lethal sense of drowning was gone.

“See?”

“See what?”

“You won’t die if you break the rules.”

“Why did you want me to meet you here?”

He closed his eyes and looked up at the sky. “I don’t know. You keep coming around. I guess I wanted to figure out why.”

Why, she thought. The question she had been afraid to ask herself. She didn’t have an answer, not one she could give him anyway. So she changed the subject.

“You know your father is the principal of my school. Freidel was two years ahead of me.”

“Yes, my dear sister Freidel. She’s getting engaged, you know. Some future gadol hador,” he said mockingly, grinding his cigarette under his foot.

“She was horrible to me.”

He looked up, grinning. “Freidel’s a bitch. And her husband is a yeshiva moron. She got what she deserved.”

“I won’t be invited to the wedding.”

“Don’t worry about it. Neither will I.”

“Really?” She was shocked. “Why not?”

“Because ‘what’s not nice we don’t show.’ And I’m not nice.”

“What did you do?”

“I dropped out of Lakewood.”

“Oh. My father just dropped out of kollel. He was there for twenty years.”

He leaned forward, suddenly interested. “How come?”

“My mother died. We need the money, so he’s working full-time now. He has a new wife. A baalas teshuva from California.”

“I think I heard about that … A redhead? Right?”

“I guess everybody heard.”

“Lucky him. How did he get away with that?”

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“And how is it now, for him, for you?”

She hesitated. “Better than it was. I had everything dumped on me. My little brother and sister. The housework. The cooking. I hated it. And I don’t think I did a very good job. Freidel used to gang up on me with her friends, make me feel ashamed of … of … losing my mother, that my father had a baalas teshuva girlfriend…”

“Yeah, I bet. She’s so good at that. A real tzadakis.”

“What did she do to you?”

“Nothing special. She just made sure I knew she sided with the rest of the family, and that I was damned to hell for ruining her shidduch chances.”

“Did you?”

“If only! But no. She’s marrying exactly the kind of idiot my parents wanted her to.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing—if you want to be tied to some guy who is not planning on doing anything the rest of his life.”

“Why nothing? He’s learning.”