She quiets, lifts the glasses around her neck to her face, glasses without glass, so just those insectual frames she squints through — into the sanctuary, in its incompleteness less sacralizing than unsettling, a making awkward; her less awed by the filigree gilded overhead, by the imposing bulkhead of the, how do they call it…bima, that’s it with its pulpits plaqued and the ark’s vault installed deep between, behind the door of which the scrolls of the Law are said to be stored, rolled around their tablets, then crowned with a mappa, the wing of a wimple, than it’s her unwillingness to begin with their bargaining, to initialize an offer, though she knows she’s expected to, and yet further that she’s also expected to stall, to postpone and grossly mislead; that’s why, she has to suspect, they’re meeting here, privacy aside: how can you profane the House of God with such a risky business?
Aren’t we paying you by the hour? Der asks, and she sighs and with fingers plumped with smoker’s bruise though veined in delicate bone lays the virginal photo on the seat of her pew, facing down, pretends to refresh herself with the information obtainable on the reverse, then flips and keeping her thumb over the face turns with two breasts so imposing they’re cleaved into one to the lip of the pew behind her to hand the photo over.
Who’s she? Der asks.
The One, says the matchmaker.
Why her?
For you, only the finest…she retracts her thumb slowly, leaving a print swirled in shvitz over the blondish blue of the prospect.
Her name?
Now she goes by Frumie, wiping her hands of it on her skirts.
But listen: she’s bright, and beautiful, like you wouldn’t believe — altogether a fabulous young woman, an excellent match…you couldn’t do better even if I’d had a daughter — even if He’d be marrying me.
Which is an option — I look better in my photos than what you see in person.
I was asking her name, and Der tattoos the pew with a hand gloved in pigskin.
Did I mention beautiful and bright…a great catch, if you’ll excuse me — she happens to be the daughter of your monger, Fischelson the Fish King; I don’t need to tell you he’s offering generous.
A pity we’re not offering him.
Though I’d like to hear from the future groom, at least see Him…and she turns to face Ben seated alongside Der; it’s praiseworthy, how committed she is to even the inconvenience of her pose; her straining across a shoulder, she’s rubbernecking to ask, what are you looking for, Mister Israelien, who and why? what qualities are important? tell me about your mother…
Down the center aisle, a team of workers barrow in the Menorah, set it up on the pulpit right, are fored over a little to the left, that’s right and leave it lie with one of them remaining, who takes from a pocket of his parka a rag and tin and begins in with the polish. Casks of oil are being rolled step-by-step, for its illumination. The woman snorts all the waged patience in the world, begs a sigh out of herself it sounds bad like a cancer of convenience, frowns, then flips again through the stack arthritic or only stiffly. Fine, she’s saying, not Fein, no, flips, forward, back, and nextward, and this while bending and otherwise creasing her shots in a system so private as to be inscrutable maybe even to herself, then cuts, shuffles, finally deals; peeling the first from the top of the stack, then slapping it down over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around. Hymn, so how about Hanna? she asks, your mother’s name…a match already made, if not in heaven then at least in Joysey, she’s upstate, firstrate, no kidding — Hanna now Geffen-Weinstein née Heather Vinelli.
Father’s a senator, as you know, recently aligned himself with the faith — for the votes I’m sure you’d say and you might be right, but still, who wouldn’t.
Her grandfather’s the wine magnate, owns and operates Seedlessence, Inc., exclusive importer of table grapes from Palestein.
The wife’s father’s the big baker, I only pinch his loaves — the lightest around, but crusty enough on the outside…they’re just perfect together, you know?
Der waits until she’s finished to finish himself with this shaking his head, begins again the tap with his fingers.
She reaches exasperated into folds of her garments, onion layers disclosing babushka couture, the flap of her burlap camisole unearthing all manner of lapse and widowed slob: halfzware tobacco, dust of paprika, peppermint, a flask of mashke and the lintily mothballed else, exertions exposing, too, the handle of her dead husband’s revolver, its trigger webbed in reassuring spiderwork; it’s usually kept under the pillow, only brought along on risky consultation — her cleaving a cleft deep into her mammary now, to rise the boozy yeast of those two breasts from one, to produce in fits of fingers and rings of sparkling fauxgold this rolled, tattered photograph she attempts to smooth flat with palm and wrist on the reverse of the facing pew.
