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“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.”
