“He’s sitting on his backside, making phone calls and drinking coffee. And after the wedding, he’ll be busy working hard to get my sister pregnant. In the meantime, she and my father and his father will be sending him money every month to pay the mortgage on an apartment they bought for him until they get him some cushy job as a teacher or mashgiach. That will take a while. He’s got to put in the time.”

“Maybe he loves learning. Maybe he’ll be a great teacher or mashgiach.”

“Right. And I’m going to be a chef at a four-star restaurant. Give me a break. It’s all a big joke, don’t you know that?”

“What’s a big joke?”

“That all the frummies who decide to sit and learn are going to be great scholars. They are just too lazy to get a degree and earn a living. They’re taking the easy way out.”

She knew that wasn’t true. Her father had sacrificed so much to sit and learn. It was his passion, not an easy way out. But she decided not to contradict him. “Is that the reason you dropped out?”

“Well, I didn’t, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was more like I was politely told that I should find another ‘more suitable’ place for myself. In other words, I got kicked out.”

She absorbed this. Only real bums got kicked out of yeshiva. It must have been something awful. She didn’t pursue it. It was much too much information already.

He didn’t seem to mind or even notice her silence. “So what about you, Shaindel? Do you have a boyfriend?”

She shook her head. “And I don’t want one.”

He laughed. “So why do you keep coming to visit me at Moishy’s?”

She shrugged. “I like the pizza.”

He slanted his head, studying her. “Soooo. What is it you like about me, little Shaindele?”

“Who says I like anything?”

“You change out of your Bais Yaakov clothes when you come in. I’m not stupid.”

She blushed. “What do you like about me?”

He turned his head toward her, resting his elbows on his knees. “Well, you’re not fat. And you seem a little more interesting than the rest of the girls around here, who would have gone screaming to their parents and gotten me fired for sending a note.”

So he liked her because she had agreed to do something no respectable girl in the neighborhood would have done! She was hurt. But he had also noticed how she was dressed, that she had been trying to please him. And he as much as admitted that he found her attractive (“You’re not fat”). But in the turmoil of her mixed emotions, she found it hard to separate that out from the rest. It was just one more thing in this whole experience that confused and excited her.