One Hot December

The door slammed shut and a second later reopened. Flash slipped inside.

“You know this stuff isn’t illegal, right?” Flash said, passing the grocery bag to her downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Leah Scheinberg.

“Illegal or not, I can’t get caught with it,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, digging through the bag with a grin on her face. “I’d never hear the end of it. Here, take a hit. You look like you need this as much as I do.”

Mrs. Scheinberg was eighty-eight years old and had spent World War II working in a munitions factory as a welder—a real live Rosie the Riveter. Flash worshiped the ground she walked on, especially since Mrs. Scheinberg had saved one of her blowtorches from back in the day and had given it to her. Now it was Flash’s most prized possession. So when Mrs. Scheinberg offered her a frosted Christmas cookie, Flash took it, because when a woman is as much of a badass at eighty-eight as she was at eighteen, you ate the cookies she gave you and you did it with a smile.

“These are pretty good,” Flash said, eating an iced Christmas tree in one bite. “No wonder you make me smuggle them to you.”

“If my son weren’t such a stick-in-the-mud, I wouldn’t have to have you smuggle them in for me. Sit,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, pointing at her sofa.

Flash sat and munched on the fistful of cookies she’d taken out of the bag. She loved hanging out at Mrs. Scheinberg’s apartment. It was like stepping back in time to the 1930s. She’d inherited all her parents’ furniture and had it cleaned and repaired so that it looked like new, even if the patterns and styles were from another era. She had art deco lamps on her side tables with geometric patterned shades, a square teak coffee table with chrome legs and a leopard print wall-hanging over the back of the two-tone black-and-white sofa. Mrs. Scheinberg herself looked like she belonged in another era. She wore dresses every single day—not skirts, but dresses. When she went out she put on gloves. When she stayed in she always had on a full face of makeup and had her white hair styled every week. She took a seat in the chair across from the sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles, prim as a schoolgirl while she scarfed down frosted Christmas cookies like a starving person.

“Talk,” Mrs. Scheinberg said between bites. “Why were you late? You put in your notice today?”

“I did.”

“How did Mr. Asher take it?” Mrs. Scheinberg paused in her munching long enough to give Flash a pointed look.

“He took it. He wasn’t happy about it but he said he understood.”

Mrs. Scheinberg waved her hand dismissively.

“Not good enough for you,” Mrs. Scheinberg said. “You’re better off without him.”

“I did find something out about him today, though,” Flash said. “Something surprising.”

“Spill it,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, then popped another cookie in her mouth.

“He’s Jewish.”

Mrs. Scheinberg nodded her approval. “I always liked the boy.”

“You just told me he wasn’t good enough for me.”

“That’s before you told me he was a nice Jewish boy. Why am I just hearing this?”

“Because he didn’t know. We were talking about our parents and he mentioned that his mom died when he was a baby. He said his father never talks about her because there’s a lot of bad blood between the two sides of the family. His dad’s Catholic and his mother was from a pretty conservative Jewish family apparently.”

“Then he’s Jewish.”

“That’s what I told him. Then I asked him if he wanted a bagel.”

“Wicked girl. In my day we didn’t talk to men like that. Well...I did. But most women didn’t.”

“I can’t help myself,” Flash said. “He’s infuriating. I can’t stand being around him. I want to insult him and yell at him and put a ‘kick me’ sign on his back. He turns me into a child. I’m twenty-six. I should be able to talk to a man I’m attracted to without insulting him.”

“You’re in love.”

“Yup.”

“And you’re scared.”

“Yup.”

“Sit up straight and talk to me like a grown woman, Veronica Redding. We’re adults here. Let’s act like them.” She snapped her fingers and Flash sighed and sat up straighter.

“You don’t have much room to talk,” Flash said. “You’re Jewish but you’re addicted to frosted Christmas cookies and you make me buy them for you so your son won’t find out.”

“Where did I go wrong with that boy?”

“Your son runs an entire hospital. He calls you every day. He checks on you three times a week. And he’s nice to me. Nobody’s nice to me but he’s nice to me.”

“Yes, but he has no sense of humor. My son should have a sense of humor. If he caught me with these, he’d throw them in the trash and tell me I shouldn’t be eating goyische food.”

“That’s terrible. If he catches you with them, tell him they’re mine and you were just holding them for me.”

Mrs. Scheinberg laughed. “He’d see right through it.”

“Fine, I’ll keep smuggling them to you. As long as you share.”

“I always share with my girl,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, leaning forward to pat Flash on the knee. “Now tell me more about Mr. Asher. Why were you two talking about mothers?”

“I don’t even remember how we got on the topic. I put in my notice and said goodbye. I was already to the truck when he came out and asked me to stop by his new house and help him with a project. He’s got this fireplace thing that needs some major repairs and it’s...wow. It’s a work of art. But it’s rusted and broken.”

“It needs your help.”

“It does.”

“So you’re going help Mr. Asher?”

“No.”

“You told him no? Are you that angry at the man?”

“I’m not angry at him. I’m not. Not really. Not much, anyway.”

Mrs. Scheinberg raised her eyebrow.

“Okay, I’m angry at him,” Flash said. “He dumped me.”

“You work for him. You expect too much of a man when you ask him to compromise his integrity so you can have a boyfriend.”

“He shouldn’t have slept with me if he felt that way.”

“No, he shouldn’t have. But you were there, too. Don’t act like you were some kind of victim. We both know you were after him even before that night.”

Flash smiled. “I was after him. You would be, too, if you saw him.”