“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.
“Goddamn, you take long showers,” Flash said. Ian stared into the master bedroom where Flash Redding sat in a leather armchair. He didn’t see all of her because the back of the chair faced the bathroom door. It hadn’t before he’d gotten into the shower but she must have turned it around while he was in the bathroom. He saw her legs dangling over the chair arm and her beat-up red Pumas dangling off her feet. Of course she wore Pumas. Nike owned one half of Portland and Adidas owned the other half. Even her sneakers were subversive.
“Flash, what the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“You invited me over.”
“Yesterday. I invited you over yesterday. And you came over yesterday. And then you left. That wasn’t an open invitation to come into my house anytime you wanted.”
“Should I leave?”
“I don’t know. Tell me why you’re here, and I’ll tell you if you should leave or not.”
“Are you decent?”
“I have jeans on.”
“Bummer.”
“You were trying to catch me naked?” he asked as he walked over and tossed his towel in the laundry hamper. She wore burgundy skinny jeans and a white sleeveless undershirt, which she called a “wifebeater” no matter how many times he told her she shouldn’t use that term. Her brown bomber jacket hung off the bedpost knob.
“No, but I wouldn’t have complained if you were.”
“You know this is creepy, right? You coming into my house while I’m in the shower?” He hated how much he liked seeing her making herself at home in his place. Especially since she was technically breaking and entering.
“Is it?”
“Let’s do a little role reversal here. You’re in the shower—”
She started to take her shirt off.
“Not actually in the shower,” he said.
“Fine. Go on.” She lowered her arms.
“You’re in the shower at your place and you walk out of the shower and I’m in your living room. How does that make you feel?” Ian asked.
“I don’t know,” Flash said. “Why are you in my living room in this scenario?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. If you’re in my living room to rob me, I’d be pissed. If you were in my living room to surprise me with red velvet cupcakes, I’d be happy. If you were in my living room because you’re running from killer ninjas, then I would be surprised because I’m not entirely sure ninjas exist, and if they do, I highly doubt you’d get mixed up in anything that would make ninjas want to kill you. But I wouldn’t be mad. I’d be impressed you got away from them. And then I would go join up with them because I’ve always wanted to be a ninja,” Flash said.
“Flash.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you in my house?”
“I have a gift for you.”
If she’d said she was in his house to assassinate him because she herself was a ninja and had been given orders to kill him, he would have been less surprised than he was at that moment when Flash Redding, a woman he was dead certain loathed him, said she had a gift for him.
“It’s not a throwing star, is it?”
“No, but I could make one if you want one. I’ve never made one before, though. That’s a lie. I have made them. I’ve made lots of them.”
“Flash.”
“What?”
“You’re behaving very strangely.”
“How am I behaving?”
“You’re being...adorable,” he said. “And kind of nice. It’s freaking me out.”
“Imagine how I feel.”
He pulled a plain black T-shirt out of his clean laundry basket and pulled it on. This was not a conversation he should be having half-dressed. He needed to be fully dressed and probably a bulletproof vest wouldn’t hurt, either.
“What are you doing here, Veronica?” he asked, hoping if he used her real name he’d get the real person to talk.
“You wanted to be friends with me and I said no. I changed my mind. I have some friends who feel comfortable coming over to my place and making themselves at home. I thought it was what close friends did. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s twenty-two degrees out and you didn’t answer the door when I knocked even though I know you’re here because I saw your car in the garage window. I came in instead of freezing to death in my truck. I heard you in the shower so I waited outside not facing the shower in case you walk around in the buff like I do.”
“Okay,” he said. “That’s a semireasonable statement. I have some friends who’d do the same thing. So...we’re friends now?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not, but I wanted to give you something, anyway, as an apology for my bad behavior the past few months. You know, the thing with the truck nuts and what not. So here.” She picked up a box that she’d set on the floor by the leather chair and thrust it into his hands. Then she picked up her jacket and started to leave the room.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“I gave you the thing,” she said.
“You aren’t going to stay and watch me open it?”
“Is that something you’re into?” she asked.
“I...guess? I think so? Plus if it’s a bomb I want to make sure you get hit, too.”
“Good idea. But it’s not a bomb.”
“What is it?”
“Open it,” she said.
“Fine. I’m opening it.” He sat down in the chair and ripped the brown paper off the box and opened the lid. There was something wrapped in white tissue paper inside. Too big to be a throwing star. Too small to be a bomb. Unless it was a very small bomb.
Carefully he peeled back the tissue paper.
“It’s a candleholder,” he said, taking it out of the box.
“It’s a Hanukkiah,” she said.
“A what?”
“It’s like a menorah. You light the candles to celebrate Hanukkah. So... Happy Hanukkah.”
“I found out I was Jewish yesterday.”
“And today’s the first day of Hanukkah. I made it. The branches are ivy, see?”
She pointed at the eight branches that looked like normal candle arms until one looked closely and saw they were small and twisting vines of ivy.
“You made this?”
“Last night and today,” she said. “I didn’t have anything else to do. Wait. That’s mean. I had a lot to do, but I did that instead because it was important to me to give you a gift that was meaningful and took work. And it took a lot of work. Not a ton, because I’m good, but a lot. I hope you like it. I think it’s pretty.”
“It’s...wow. It’s beautiful.”
“I made it ivy because of your mom. I thought you should have something to connect you to her. My mom and I are really close. It’s awful you never got to know yours.”
Ian took a long breath and used the menorah to avoid looking at Flash. It was a work of art, this menorah. He didn’t know anything about them, how to use them, what they meant, but he knew it was special and that he was grateful to have it.
“Thank you,” he said, looking up at her at last.
“There are candles in the bottom of the box. Mrs. Scheinberg said you can only use the candles for the menorah. It’s part of the ritual. If you want to talk to her about Judaism or anything, she said you can call her or come visit. She’s supernice.”
“Who’s Mrs. Scheinberg?”
“She’s my eighty-eight-year-old downstairs neighbor. She’s Jewish. She’s also my best friend.”
“You have an eighty-eight-year-old best friend?”
She nodded.
“You don’t do anything the normal way, do you?” he asked.
“Normal is boring. And Mrs. Scheinberg is the shit. She was a welder during the war. She was even in a pinup calendar that was sent to the troops, can you believe it? I saw the picture. Betty Grable had nothing on this lady’s gams.”
Flash spoke quickly, a flood of words tumbling from her mouth. She seemed...nervous. Being friendly was clearly hard for her. It was insanely endearing seeing her nervous.
“Do you want to light the candles?” she asked. “It’s sunset. Mrs. Scheinberg said that’s when you light the first candle.”
“I don’t have a—”
She whipped a lighter out of her pocket, and flicked the flame on before he could finish the sentence.
“Okay, so you have a lighter.”
“Never know when you’re gonna need one,” she said. “Where should we put it?”
“In the window, I guess,” Ian said, embarrassingly happy that she used the word we.
“Which window?” Flash turned around. There were two large windows in the master bedroom.
“Upstairs,” he said.
“But this is the master bedroom, isn’t it?” she asked, following him up the stairs with the box full of candles.
“Guest room. I like to sleep up here,” he said as he headed to the spiral staircase that led from the hallway up to the third-floor loft. The third floor of an A-frame house was the smallest and narrowest. There wasn’t much room except for his bed and a few feet on either side of it. But he liked how high up he was here and how far he could see from the top window. He set the menorah into the bedroom window and sat at the end of his bed.
“How do we do this?” he asked.
“Don’t know, I’m not Jewish. You are.”
“Great. I’ve been Jewish for one day and I’m already failing at it,” he said.
“Hold on.” She pulled her phone from her pants pocket and typed something in. “Okay, Google says to put a candle into the far right candleholder and then light the Shamash.”
“What’s a Shamash?”
“It’s the candle that’s used to light the other candles, it says. You only use that candle. Never use one menorah candle to light the other candles. So the Shamash goes here.” She pointed at the center candleholder that was two inches higher than the others. “Got it?”
“I think so. God forgive me if I do this wrong.”
“I imagine he’s pretty forgiving with noobs.”
“Is that what God calls us? Noobs?”
“Well, whatever the Hebrew word for ‘newbie’ is. I’ll ask Mrs. Scheinberg next time I see her. Oh, there’s some blessings you’re supposed to say.”
“What are they?” Ian asked, feeling wildly uncomfortable with the thought of reciting blessings. He rarely even attended Mass these days.
“I don’t know. They’re all in Hebrew. I can Google—”
“We’ll skip it. I’m a newbie, remember.” He took the lighter from her hand and lit the one candle that went into the center. Then he used it to light the candle on the far right. “Sorry I’m such a noob, God. You know what I’m supposed to say better than I do.”
“Sounds like a good prayer to me,” she said. She sat on the bed next to him and side by side they stared at the burning lights. “It’s pretty.”
“Beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like it. I wanted you to like it.”
“It means a lot to me that you did this,” he said. “I know we’ve hurt each other in the past. I’ve hurt you.”
“I wish you hadn’t dumped me—or at least not dumped me like you did—but Mrs. Scheinberg said you did it out of your integrity and I shouldn’t blame you.”
“Flash...here’s the thing,” he began. “The night we spent together was incredible.”
“Hell, yeah, it was.”
“So incredible that I was going to go talk to Dad and explain the situation—that I was romantically interested in someone who worked for the company, and I wanted to see how to handle it. You know, transfer to another job or something. But before I could go talk to him, something happened.”
Ian didn’t know how to say the next part. He didn’t want to. He hated to embarrass her but he had to tell her. She had to know.
“You remember a guy named John Haggerty?” Ian asked.
“Yeah, drywall guy. He asked me out like five times before I told him I was going to report him if he talked to me again.”
“When I came into work the morning after that night, Haggerty was sitting in front of my desk, waiting for me. He said he had something to tell me. He said it was about us.”
Flash’s eyes widened. He went on before she could ask.
“That night at the bar in Portland, we left together. You remember that?”
She nodded.
“And you remember I kissed you while we were leaving the bar?”
She nodded again.
“And you remember the bar was kind of dark by that time?”
She nodded once more.
“Haggerty was in the bar,” Ian said. “Not only did he see us alone together drinking and flirting. He saw us kissing. He saw us leave together. And he took pictures of it all.”
“Ah...” She closed her eyes and exhaled.
“Haggerty said he wanted a ten thousand dollar ‘bonus’ or he would tape those pictures inside every single locker at the company. He’d also send them to the news so they’d know that Oregon State Senator Dean Asher’s son likes to fuck his female employees, and all of this happens on my father’s watch and wouldn’t that make a great headline. Haggerty’s a piece of shit but he’s a smart piece of shit. He knew how much trouble he could cause with a potential sexual harassment scandal. He was so smug sitting there I wanted to smash his face in. I almost d
id it, too.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I had to see how I could do this without Dad catching on. He said I had twenty-four hours before he told everyone about us and started pasting up pictures. Soon as he left the office, I called the company lawyer.”
“So you dumped me because you didn’t want your dad getting in trouble?”
“I broke it off with you because our lawyer said I needed to. He said you were a ticking time bomb, the only woman who worked on the construction crew, and I’d slept with you. If it made the news or you decided to sue or something...”
Flash made a sound like a bomb going off.
“Yeah,” Ian said. “Our lawyer was ready to kill me. Dad’s a state senator, he said like I didn’t know that already. Lawsuits. Cover-ups. Do not piss off the unions during an election year. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and on and on about how precarious the situation was. That’s the word he used—precarious.”
“Good word.”
“He said I had a choice—either I had to break it off with you completely and forever or I had to tell Dad and let Dad fire you.”
“Fire me?”
“You’d played a couple small pranks on coworkers and the lawyer said those constitute more than enough legal grounds to fire you.”
“We all play pranks on each other. Nobody ever gets hurt.”
“I know, I know.” Ian raised his hands in surrender. “That’s what I told Mac Brand, the company shark. He said I had to decide—either I dump you or fire you. It was so unfair to you in every single way but I didn’t see any other choice. I told our lawyer I’d break it off with you. He called the police and the next morning when Haggerty came into my office, I recorded our conversation, and got him arrested for blackmail. We agreed to drop the charges if he signed a legally binding nondisclosure agreement. And that was the end of it. And us.”
One Hot December (Mills & Boon Blaze) (Men at Work, Book 3) Page 5