One Hot December

“Oh, I’ve seen him.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“I Googled him. Handsome, very handsome. Nice face, nice hair and nice eyes. Big shoulders. Good strong neck. I loved Dr. Scheinberg’s neck. I liked to nibble it at stoplights in the car. He’d drive home a little faster when I did.”

“Mrs. Scheinberg!”

She waved her hand again, poo-pooing Flash’s shock.

“Don’t be silly. We were married. Sex between a husband and a wife is a mitzvah. And, oh, was it a mitzvah with him.”

“I should do a mitzvah for Ian. I was...not nice to him.”

Mrs. Scheinberg had explained mitzvot were something like commandments. But more than that, more like good deeds or blessings.

“What happened?” Mrs. Scheinberg asked. “And do I want to know?”

“He offered me his friendship and I said no way. He offered to pay me for helping him fix his fireplace screen, and I said I’d do it if he slept with me.”

“Young lady, that is shameful.”

“I know, I know.” Flash buried her head in her hands before looking up again. “He’s never going to love me. Men like that don’t love women like me. They screw women like me. They don’t marry women like me and make me part of their perfect prissy lives.”

“Women like you? What’s a woman like you?”

“I’m blue collar. Ian is very white collar. Seriously, he has the whitest collars I’ve ever seen. He must own stock in a bleach company.”

“I was a welder, too, and I married a doctor.”

“You were a teenage welder because you were helping with the war effort.”

“My mother was a housewife and my father a baker. We were poor, dear. And Dr. Scheinberg was anything but. Now stop with the inferiority complex. Any man would be lucky to have you. Including Mr. Ian Asher. Especially Mr. Ian Asher. And I think he knows it already, which is why he offered his friendship.”

Mrs. Scheinberg stood up and wiped her hands on a lacy handkerchief that Flash guessed had belonged to her mother, much like everything else in this room.

“I think he’s afraid of me.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Mrs. Scheinberg said over her shoulder as she walked to her dining room table. “It isn’t like you’ve purposely tried to terrorize him by playing schoolyard pranks on him.”

“I’m not very good at relationships.”

“You’ll get better with practice.”

“What should I do?”

“I think you should apologize to him for trying to buy his body.”

“But it’s such a nice body.” Flash sighed. “Do you think I should try being friends with him?”

“Being just friends with someone you’re in love with can be hard. And dishonest if you’re only using the friendship in the hopes of it becoming something more.” Mrs. Scheinberg took the lid of a blue-and-white box on her table and removed something from the box wrapped in blue velvet.

“What’s that?”

“My Hanukkiah, but you’d call it a menorah, my darling gentile,” Mrs. Scheinberg said as she carefully unwrapped a silver nine-branched candelabrum. “Moshe gave it to me after he and his wife came back from their last trip to Israel. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Flash walked over to the table and sat down, studying the menorah. It was beautiful. She touched the base—real silver.

“When does Hanukkah start?” she asked.

“Tomorrow evening. Moshe and Hannah are coming over. And Tova, too. If you can behave yourself for one evening, you can come. We’d love to have you.”

Flash gave Mrs. Scheinberg a skeptical look.

“Well, I’d love to have you,” Mrs. Scheinberg said. “Hannah thinks you’re a little strange. I said you’re not strange. You’re a BMW. I didn’t tell her what that meant.”

Flash laughed. BMW stood for Burly Mountain Woman, which is what the tough ladies who lived on Mount Hood often called themselves.

“Can you fetch me the silver polish? It’s under the sink.”

Flash found the polish but before leaving Mrs. Scheinberg’s kitchen she paused and studied the photographs on the refrigerator. They were all of Mrs. Scheinberg with her family—her two sons, her seven grandchildren, an old black-and-white photo of her and her husband, Dr. Lawrence Scheinberg, who’d been movie-star handsome in his prime, a young Humphrey Bogart with thick wavy hair. One photograph was from last year, all the family gathered around a table with Mrs. Scheinberg’s silver menorah front and center. Mrs. Scheinberg had been lighting the very last candle when the photograph had been taken. Everyone in the picture wore a beautiful smile, the same smile, the smile of family. Flash felt a pang of sympathy for Ian. He’d never gotten to take a family photograph like this with his mother and grandparents and cousins. He’d never had the chance to celebrate the holidays that were part of his heritage, never a chance to light a candle on a menorah.

“Mrs. Scheinberg?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Are there rules about menorahs? I mean, Hanukkiahs?”

“Rules? What do you mean?”

She brought Mrs. Scheinberg the silver polish and a chamois.

“Rules about how they have to be made? Or blessed?”

“It should have nine branches, nine candle holders or nine oil holders. Usually eight are in a line. The ninth has to be higher than the other eight.”

“That’s it?”

“They should be made well. That’s all I can think of. Why do you ask?”

Flash opened the bottle of cleaner and went to work polishing the menorah for Mrs. Scheinberg. She had arthritis in her hands and Flash knew it pained her.

“I have an idea for a mitzvah to do for Ian.”

4 (#ulink_7757cb28-3f4b-59b1-ab03-4c3f78f5a58d)

IAN SPENT ALL day working on the new house and trying not to think about Flash. He stripped the old paper out of the downstairs bathroom, sanded the drywall and repainted it the same deep forest green as the living room walls. A huge job for one man and it took him from seven in the morning until five that evening to finish the work. By dinnertime, he was sore, tired and covered in paint and wall dust. He was hungry, too, but couldn’t bring himself to eat until he’d cleaned up. He stood under the hot water in the shower for as long as he could stand the heat. He’d hoped the hard work would distract him from thinking about Flash but it didn’t, not even close. She’d been on his mind from sunrise until sunset, and if tonight were anything like last night, she’d be on his mind until dawn. Why couldn’t he just forget about her? She didn’t like him. She only liked having sex with him. He wanted more than that. She didn’t. She didn’t even want to be friends with him. Maybe she was smart to turn down his offer of friendship. Likely she saw right through it and knew he wanted more than she was willing to give him. Or she knew he was desperate to get closer to her and she simply liked to torture him.

Reluctantly he turned off the shower when the hot water started to run out. He toweled off, pulled on his jeans, ran his fingers through his hair, and walked out of the bathroom.