Page 18 of The Dreidl Disaster

“Hey, it’s Liv Nachman,” she said. “You sound busy…is this a good time?”

There was a short pause and what sounded like the squeak of a door opening. “It’s fine, Mayor,” he said. “I’m always busy. How can I help?”

Having found her answer and found herself in the middle of a dead end, she had to push forward. “I just got a call from Jennifer Cohen inviting us to dinner.”

There was a long pause and she felt ridiculously guilty about having waited so long to call him; as the pause continued, alarm bells went off in her head. Could he have made other plans?

“Right,” he said, cutting through the silence. “I was wondering when they were going to reach out.”

Relief. Sweet relief.

He’d been waiting for the call.

“That’s what I was thinking when she called me,” she said before deciding it was better to make sure. “You good for dinner?”

“Calendar is open,” he replied, sounding to her ears as if he’d been smiling. “Anything in particular I should bring?”

This was the tricky part. “Bring a parve dessert. That’s what they’ll want; they’re kosher but they don’t talk about it, so don’t ask.”

“Someone did?”

There wasn’t silence, not even a pause. “Yep.”

This time there was silence. “What did they say, if you know?”

Explaining this was going to be tricky, but she’d done it at least once before. “Someone said something extollingtraditionalvalues, or whatever, at some point in front of Peter and Jennifer, in a way that made it obvious they didn’t consider keeping kosher in line with thosetraditionalvalues. And so the Cohens continued to keep kosher but stopped talking about it.”

“Which is not the solution I’d advise or take,” Artur bit out, before pausing again. What was going through his head? Why was he so angry?

“But,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to her thoughts, “it’s not my house and I wouldn’t be the one explaining why I have two sets of everything in my kitchen, separated by different color labels, and don’t put butter on my mashed potatoes…to someone who’s convinced ‘traditional holidays’ don’t include Yom Kippur, Shabbat, and Passover.”

Sore spot. Bad advice given to a Jewish couple. Right.

“Pretty much,” she said. But apparently now her goal was to make sure that he didn’t ride in with sword drawn for dinner. “Anyway, the damage has been done, so despite the fact the Jewish Hockey Players Association exists and Tyler is involved, they still refuse to admit to being kosher in public.”

“Wait,” he said, “the head of the JHPA is in Briarwood? Do we want to involve them?”

And that went off the rails for a different reason. Which meant she had to put her foot down. “Whoa,” she said. “Once we have athingfor the JHPA to be involved in, we can involve the organization. Which means…”

“Right,” he said, not even letting her finish but if this was what it took to calm his horses down, she’d let it happen. “Not something that we can discuss till after the meeting tomorrow at least.”

“Correct,” she said, not even bothering to hide her sigh of relief before directing the conversation back to where it was supposed to be. “Anyway, bring a parve dessert.”

“I’ll run to a place in Rivertown that has great babka.”

She blinked. Of all places, he’d gothereinstead of a place in Briarwood? “Rivertown has babka?”

“Place is tiny,” he replied. “It just started selling more than meat last year. Their babka is gold.”

And now she got it. “I won’t question the babka. Knowing it’s coming from a meat place, I won’t doubt it’s parve.”

“Good. What time should I be there?”

“Do you want me to pick you up? I know the area and it can get a little twisty at night.”

There was a long silence, and she wondered what was going through his head. Did he want to drive by himself?

“That sounds good,” he finally said. “What time?”

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