One Hot December

“Romeo and Juliet.”

“Sort of, yeah. If Romeo was Catholic and Juliet was Jewish.”

“You’re Jewish?”

“Mom was.”

“Then you are, too. Judaism is passed through the mother’s line, not the father’s. Mazel tov, Ian.” She patted him on the head. He would have preferred a kiss but he’d take a head pat. At least she’d touched him.

“Are you Jewish?” he asked.

“I’m nothing,” she said. “I just know about it because of a friend of mine.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No, a friend-friend. You feel any different? Sudden craving for bagels? Suddenly annoyed at me for making a joke about Jewish people liking bagels?”

“I feel...I don’t know how I feel,” he said, trying to wrap his mind around this new information. It didn’t make much of a dent on his soul, but still, it was good to know he had some sort of spiritual connection to his mother. “Dad never told me that. He never told me anything about Mom or that side of my family. He doesn’t talk about her very much. Doesn’t talk to her family. I’ve never even met my grandparents. Truth is, I think he was still in love with her and only separated because his family pressured him to and so did hers. He was only twenty and she was eighteen when they eloped.”

“What was her name?”

He furrowed his brow. “You want to know my mother’s name?”

“Yes, I want to know your mother’s name. Why wouldn’t I?”

He swallowed a sudden lump of sorrow. He didn’t even remember his mother. Why would he be sad thirty-five years after she was gone?

Ian raised his hand and touched one of the iron leaves on the fireplace grate. “Riva,” he said. “But when she went away to college, she went by Ivy. Dad said it was her teenage rebellion, changing her name. And marrying him.”

“Rebellious teenager. I think I like your mom,” she said.

He felt Flash’s eyes boring into him, searching his face, studying him. What was she seeing?

“I can fix this,” she said. “We can fix it. It’ll be a lot of work, but we can fix it.”

“The fireplace screen?”

“Yeah, the fireplace screen. What did you think I was talking about?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I can pay you.”

She stood up and looked down at him.

“I don’t need your money,” she said. “I’m not fixing this for you. I’m fixing it because it’s beautiful and beautiful craftsmanship like this deserves being preserved by someone who knows what she’s doing.”

“Sorry,” he said, standing up. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. You said it was a big job. I don’t want to take advantage of our...”

“What?”

“Friendship?”

“We aren’t friends.”

“Then what are we?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But not friends.”

She rubbed an iron vein on one of the iron stems of the ivy. A piece of rust flaked off on her finger and she shook her head at it like it had broken her heart.

“If we’re not friends, then I should pay you,” he said. “I’m not the sort of man who uses people. I’d have to fork over a thousand dollars to a pro to get this removed, cleaned, sanded, repaired and reinstalled. Either we’re friends and you’re helping me out of friendship, or you’re a professional welder who is doing this as a job. So you either let me pay you to do the work or you admit we’re friends.”

“You can pay me,” she said.

“Fine.” It was anything but fine. He didn’t mind paying her. But he wanted her to admit they were friends or something other than just employer-employee. She’d quit her job today and here she was again, working for him.

“In sex,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” She wiped her hands on her pants. “You can pay me for the work in sex.”

Ian blinked.

“You’re not kidding.”

“Why would I kid about that? You and I have already slept together. You know what I’m into. You’re into it, too. And you’re good at it, very good. It’s not easy finding someone good in bed. That’s valuable to me. I have money. I don’t have someone to have good sex with. It’s the barter system and don’t pretend you don’t want to. You could have asked Crawford to do this work for you. I’m not the only welder you know. I’m just the only welder you’re attracted to.”

“It’s more than attraction,” he said.

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. But it’s more.”

“Whatever,” she said with a shrug. “You decide.”

“You are bizarre,” he said.

“You’re the one who started this so who’s more bizarre—the girl with the blowtorch or the guy who wants to fuck the girl with the blowtorch?”

“The girl with the blowtorch. I’m going to go with that answer.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”

“You don’t even like me,” he said, rubbing his temples in the hopes of keeping his brain from imploding. “You have made it abundantly clear you don’t like me.”

“I don’t have to like someone to have good sex with them. I just have to respect them. You’re a good boss, you run the company well, you treat your employees well and you don’t take shortcuts with your work. That’s attractive to me. I don’t want to hold hands with you and go walking in a winter wonderland, but I’ll spread for you if you’re man enough to take me up on the offer. Because we both know you want to do it, and the only thing stopping you is fear.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yes, you are. You and I had an amazing night together and you dumped me because you were afraid of getting in trouble with dear old Senator Daddy.”

“That’s not why I dumped you.”

“Then why?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“No skin off my rosy nose. So what’ll it be? I can do this work in a day or two. Two days’ work for two nights? What do you say?”

Ian wasn’t prepared to answer that question because he hadn’t been prepared to be asked that question. He’d been propositioned by a lot of women in his thirty-six years. Never once in those years had a woman attempted to barter welding services for sexual services. Was he flattered? A little. Was he insulted? Yeah. Kind of. A lot.

“No,” he said. “That’s what I say. No.”

“Can I ask why you’re saying no?”

“You can,” he said.

She stared at him. He waited. She wasn’t the only one who could play mind games.

“Why are you saying no?” she asked, her mouth a tight line of either tension or disappointment.

“I told you, I don’t like using people. I don’t like being used, either. I’m not going barter my body just so you can get off without getting attached. Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather sleep alone.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s fair.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and typed something. His own phone vibrated in his back pocket a second later.

“What did you send me?”

“The phone number of a guy named Daniel Tang. He’s a metalsmith in Portland. He does killer work, and if you’re willing to pay him to come out here, he will if you tell him my name.” She zipped up her coat and glanced over her shoulder at the sky darkening through the picture window. “I better go. It’s getting late.”

She headed back toward the garage without another word.

Ian rubbed his temples again. This woman blew his mind on a daily basis. And she was leaving. Right now. He heard her in the living room picking up her gear from off the floor and heard her footsteps on the hardwood and heard the garage door opening. She was leaving and he was letting her go. He’d thought of her every single day and every single night for months. She intimidated him, she confused him, she intrigued him like no one else he’d ever met.

And he was letting her go.

No, he wasn’t.

He ran through the house and made it to the door just in time to see her back out of his garage. She had her arm over the seat and was looking back as she turned around in his driveway. He waited and she looked his way one last time. He waved his arm to flag her down, to stop her, to slow her down, maybe. She gave him a little salute in return, and then drove out of his life.

She didn’t even give him a chance to tell her goodbye.

3

FLASH CONGRATULATED HERSELF for not crying on the drive home to her apartment. She’d wanted to. She’d come very close. Then she’d seen that harrowing drop-off down the side of the highway and instead kept her eyes clear and on the road. By the time she pulled into her parking lot, she felt as good as anyone who’d been once again rejected by the guy she was in love with could feel.

“You don’t love him,” Flash told herself as she grabbed her duffel bag and a grocery bag from behind her truck seat. “You just want him.”

She closed her eyes and breathed long and hard through her nose, willing herself not to love Ian. A long time ago she’d read about those gurus who could control their own heart rates, slowing them to the point people could mistake them for dead. Why couldn’t she do that? She should be able to do that, will her heart to not beat so wildly in Ian’s presence. When he’d said his mother’s name and touched the iron ivy leaf on the fireplace grate, she thought she’d die of love for the man. If he was just a pretty face with good hair and a great body and a nice smile, and even if he was just a good person, she might have made it out without falling in love with him. But he was all that and vulnerable, too. That was her Achilles’ heel, her Kryptonite, the one chink in the armor she’d forged for herself. She felt protective of him as she never felt about any other man. She wanted to take care of him, which was stupid because if anyone on earth didn’t need taking care of it was the son of a rich father with a good job and all the luxuries in his life money could buy. But still...it was there, that love, that need to take care of him, and when he’d said he refused to let her use him, she’d almost broken down right then and told him everything she felt about him including all of that. Instead she’d turned tail and ran. He’d offered her friendship when she wanted his body and his heart and his soul. Friendship was the last thing she wanted from Ian Asher.

With a sigh, she got out of her truck, took her bags and walked to the corner apartment on the first floor. A few people had already started decorating for Christmas. She saw lights in windows, battery-operated candles, a few fake snow scenes. Fake snow? All they had to do was drive thirty miles east and they’d be up to their eyebrows in real snow.

She doubled-checked her grocery bag out of paranoia and knocked on the one door on the row with no Christmas decorations in the windows.

A few seconds later the door opened a crack, the security chain still locked.

“You’re late,” the voice inside the door said.

“Work-related. Sorry.”

“You have the stuff?”

“I have it,” Flash said.

“Two bags?”

“Two bags.”

“Anybody see you come here?” the voice asked, and Flash saw two dark brown eyes darting around in the direction of the parking lot.

“Nobody saw me but someone’s going to if you don’t let me in.”

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.”

“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

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.