One Hot December (Men at Work 3)

With a sigh, she got out of her truck, took her bags and walked to the corner apartment on the first floor. A few people had already started decorating for Christmas. She saw lights in windows, battery-operated candles, a few fake snow scenes. Fake snow? All they had to do was drive thirty miles east and they’d be up to their eyebrows in real snow.

She doubled-checked her grocery bag out of paranoia and knocked on the one door on the row with no Christmas decorations in the windows.

A few seconds later the door opened a crack, the security chain still locked.

“You’re late,” the voice inside the door said.

“Work-related. Sorry.”

“You have the stuff?”

“I have it,” Flash said.

“Two bags?”

“Two bags.”

“Anybody see you come here?” the voice asked, and Flash saw two dark brown eyes darting around in the direction of the parking lot.

“Nobody saw me but someone’s going to if you don’t let me in.”

The door slammed shut and a second later reopened. Flash slipped inside.

“You know this stuff isn’t illegal, right?” Flash said, passing the grocery bag to her downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Leah Scheinberg.

“Illegal or not, I can’t get caught with it,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, digging through the bag with a grin on her face. “I’d never hear the end of it. Here, take a hit. You look like you need this as much as I do.”

Mrs. Scheinberg was eighty-eight years old and had spent World War II working in a munitions factory as a welder—a real live Rosie the Rivet

er. Flash worshiped the ground she walked on, especially since Mrs. Scheinberg had saved one of her blowtorches from back in the day and had given it to her. Now it was Flash’s most prized possession. So when Mrs. Scheinberg offered her a frosted Christmas cookie, Flash took it, because when a woman is as much of a badass at eighty-eight as she was at eighteen, you ate the cookies she gave you and you did it with a smile.

“These are pretty good,” Flash said, eating an iced Christmas tree in one bite. “No wonder you make me smuggle them to you.”

“If my son weren’t such a stick-in-the-mud, I wouldn’t have to have you smuggle them in for me. Sit,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, pointing at her sofa.

Flash sat and munched on the fistful of cookies she’d taken out of the bag. She loved hanging out at Mrs. Scheinberg’s apartment. It was like stepping back in time to the 1930s. She’d inherited all her parents’ furniture and had it cleaned and repaired so that it looked like new, even if the patterns and styles were from another era. She had art deco lamps on her side tables with geometric patterned shades, a square teak coffee table with chrome legs and a leopard print wall-hanging over the back of the two-tone black-and-white sofa. Mrs. Scheinberg herself looked like she belonged in another era. She wore dresses every single day—not skirts, but dresses. When she went out she put on gloves. When she stayed in she always had on a full face of makeup and had her white hair styled every week. She took a seat in the chair across from the sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles, prim as a schoolgirl while she scarfed down frosted Christmas cookies like a starving person.

“Talk,” Mrs. Scheinberg said between bites. “Why were you late? You put in your notice today?”

“I did.”

“How did Mr. Asher take it?” Mrs. Scheinberg paused in her munching long enough to give Flash a pointed look.

“He took it. He wasn’t happy about it but he said he understood.”

Mrs. Scheinberg waved her hand dismissively.

“Not good enough for you,” Mrs. Scheinberg said. “You’re better off without him.”

“I did find something out about him today, though,” Flash said. “Something surprising.”

“Spill it,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, then popped another cookie in her mouth.

“He’s Jewish.”

Mrs. Scheinberg nodded her approval. “I always liked the boy.”

“You just told me he wasn’t good enough for me.”