Rochel’s story this morning was about a maid who had been accused of stealing her mistress’s jewelry. It turned out that the mistress had sold them in order to give the money to her elusive lover. Unbeknownst to her, that man was in love with her maid, with whom he had conspired to elope.

“Batya, stand up,” Rochel ordered. “You’re the lover, a dashing Spaniard. Repeat the sentences I tell you, then when I quote mine, you say yours. It’s called a dialogue. Farshteyst?”

Batya, whose mind was also on the promise in the Baron’s project, stumbled on her lines, which seemed unrelated to one another. The sisters laughed, but when Rochel interjected her sentences between Batya’s, the sequence made sense. Encouraged, Batya refocused and repeated her lines with pathos. The scene of misunderstandings and double-talk sounded hilarious.

When she and Rochel finished, the sisters clapped and cheered. Batya loved the applause. It gave her the same joy that fueled her muscles when she performed tango in front of a crowd of sisters and clients.

“Now for the thief’s song,” Rochel announced. “It’s a Yiddish tango, so the rhythm is one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.”

I am Salve, the thief,

Four brothers are we;

One is hungry, the other well fed,

But thieves all four are we.

One is a pickpocket,

The second a pimp, a handsome fellow;

One is a hijacker on the lookout for packages,

And I am a house thief.

The sisters joined in, repeating the lines. Some rose to dance, entangling and disentangling their legs in the tango steps.

Freda interrupted the merriment. “Every moment that you sit or stand is a moment lost,” she snapped. “Rochel, you to your window. Batya, you to the kitchen. Glikel, go help the washwoman hang the sheets. She’s too short to reach the lines.”

Batya retreated to the kitchen, humming the new song. Facing the sink, she yelped when she felt Moskowitz’s warm breath on her neck.

“It’s only me.” He cupped her breast.

Her mouth was dry. She forced her lips to smile. “I missed you.”

“No, you didn’t, but you’re quite convincing.” He snaked his other hand over her other breast and gyrated his hips against her buttocks. “How about the theater tonight?”

Theater? Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She nodded, then found her voice. “Thank you.”

He laughed. “Forever the polite little girl, aren’t you?” He released her and walked out.

The blood pulsed in Batya’s ears with a mixture of hatred and excitement. She arranged a breakfast tray—making sure the coffee was only lukewarm—and took it upstairs to Dora. She knocked on the door before using her key, knowing that nothing lessened the girl’s dread about who was entering. Freda’s patience with Batya’s failure had reached a breaking point, and she had announced that it was time to sell this bad investment.