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“Yeah? What’d you have in mind?” Shoshana said, her interest piqued.
“So far? Bingo, fraud prevention, how not to get your pension siphoned out from under you. Boring stuff,” Evelyn cawed a laugh, lifting one wizened hand to adjust her glasses. “I’ve been trying to convince them to do a series on sexual education.”
“She has my full support. People don’t stop living when they hit retirement age,” David said, his voice just behind Shoshana. She startled but managed not to completely embarrass herself. She glanced at him over her shoulder and he winked.
“Exactly,” Evelyn said, triumphant. “I could give you statistics about STIs in the old folks home and it would make your eyebrows stand up.”
“That’s… what does Mark think about this?” Shoshana didn’t know how to respond because she was fully aware this was a real issue, but also, that it was an issue Evelyn was championing was just hilarious. Not because she was shocked that Evelyn still had an interest in sex. More because she suspected Evelyn’s son was thinking of his mother’s double hip replacement and dying of embarrassment.
“Oh, him.” Evelyn rolled her eyes dramatically and waved a hand. “That boy won’t be happy until I’m in a corner tatting lace until my fingers fall off.”
“Youdotat lace, though,” Shoshana said in confusion, remembering some lovely pieces that Evelyn had shown her the last time she’d visited her house to talk about furniture coverings.
“Oh, I do,” Evelyn said, clearly pleased she remembered. “But that’s notallI do. I’ll leave you young people to it, I’m sure you have better things to talk about than the sex lives of old farts.”
Shoshana opened her mouth to respond, but Evelyn was already making her way back up the carpeted aisle to the sanctuary door. She waved to them over her shoulder before pushing open the heavy wooden door and stepping out into the marble tiled atrium.
“Senior sex ed?” Shoshana said. She hadn’t turned to look at him yet, because she could very well imagine the look on his face, and she refused to burst into laughter when Evelyn was still close enough to possibly overhear.
“Like she said, it’s a real problem,” David said, his tone absolutely serious.
Shoshana held his gaze for a beat, then another, then she was falling into him, unable to hold back the low laughter. David chuckled, his hands coming up to her hips, sliding around her back to pull her more firmly against himself. Shoshana didn’t pull away.
“How long do you have me for,” she asked, leaning back to look up into his eyes. She was aware of the yahrzeit boards behind her. She supposed she should feel some sense of shame to be so free with someone in the sanctuary of all places. Especially under the figurative eye of her mother. But she wasn’t, at least, not now when things were so quiet.
“Interesting way to put it,” David said, his head tilting to the side to consider her.
“I meant--”
“I know what you meant,” he said, one of his hands leaving her body to rest casually against the board behind her. “Do you have a yahrzeit coming up?”
“Oh, no, that’s what Evelyn was asking. It’s, uhm, a few weeks from now.” Shoshana stepped back, away from him to look at the board again. His hand spanned four different lifetimes. She gestured to the brass plaque with her mother’s name and dates on it.
“Do you usually--”
“I haven’t been in this place in ages,” Shoshana said, turning away from the wall completely and walking further into the sanctuary. “You know, the other week notwithstanding.”
“I doubt a lot’s changed,” David said. She heard him following her and she couldn’t look at him. On the other side of the sanctuary was another wall of these same plaques. Two down, three from the right on that one. That was her dad. She’d paid for it but hadn’t done anything else. Shoshana closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of the room. It was old candle wax and vellum and well-oiled wood. Her stomach twisted.
“Kathy said you like to hang out in your dressing room,” Shoshana said, turning back to look at him. He was watching her the way he did sometimes. Not judging, just taking her in. Observing. She didn’t want to have to deal with that either.
“It’s a good place to get away, most people forget it exists.”
“Isn’t that what your office is for?” she said, cocking her head, practically curling her hair around her finger. She winced the tiniest bit, hating herself just a little. This place brought it out of her, it always did.
“Ah, but people know how to find my office,” he said, reaching for her hand, Shoshana let him take it, because she was cultivating an addiction to his warmth. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
“Yourdressing room?” she said, then waggled her eyebrows in an exaggerated way, doing a spot-on imitation of Evelyn’s clipped Staten Island twang. “Will there be underwears?”
David’s laugh rang out into the room, sounding big and full and it was impossible not to feel something for him when he looked like that. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it, then tugged her in the opposite direction.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
* * *
Since his conversation with Abi, David had done a bit of research on his own. Nothing too invasive, he didn’t want to betray Shoshana’s privacy, but he had information readily available and he was too much of an academic not to read information.
He hadn’t asked anyone else at least, he reasoned. He could have gone to Kathy, he suspected she was waiting for an excuse to share what she knew. The temple kept records of every family who maintained membership, both past and present. He could have just read her father’s file.
