expected a cook or a maidservant, but excusing himself, Max disappeared into the kitchen, returning momentarily with bowls of creamy mushroom and barley soup. When they’d finished the soup course, there was baked fish with horseradish, knaidlech, and spicy brisket; a meal, commented Shmerl inanely, like a regular Belshazzar’s feast. Other attempts at conversation were just as forced, such as when Shmerl tried in vain to alleviate the tension with a jest—“Feinshmeker, you will make for someone a fine wife”—and heard how blustering and unnatural was Max’s surname on his lips. After that gambit, though food was never for him a priority, Shmerl limited his observations to the tastiness of the meat and roast bulbes. For dessert there was homemade lemon sherbet with macaroons followed by bronfen, the rye whiskey usually reserved for kiddish ceremonies, one sip of which went straight to the inventor’s head.
In the end it was Max who punctured the strained atmosphere, rubbing his palms together expressively as he asked the inventor how he’d enjoyed the sherbet. For just as Shmerl had assumed, his partner wanted to talk about business; he had ideas, born in good part from Jocheved’s nostalgia, for the diversification of the plant: “How about, along with ice, we should manufacture different kinds ice cream?” It was already a popular item throughout the city, the hokey-pokey vans ubiquitous in the ghetto streets during summer. “So why we shouldn’t hop on the band wagon?” He began to discourse excitedly about the molds, caves, and various implements involved in the ice cream – making process, the palette of available flavors from vanilla and pistachio to bergamot orange. Shmerl was himself briefly caught up in the idea, picturing giant mechanized churns containing Ararats of frozen custard—which no sooner materialized than melted in his mind, so abbreviated was his span of attention due to strong drink. He was also a little stunned by the breadth of his friend’s ambition, and had actually to remind himself that whatever made Max happy made him happy as well. But even his less than wholehearted response seemed enough to encourage Max further, who had changed the subject again. He was recalling his recent reading of socialist tracts by the East Side’s own Morris Hillquit, who recommended progressive strategies for success in business: The reconciliation of capital and labor, he contended, could be achieved through profit-sharing alliances that would revolutionize the workplace of the future. What did Shmerl think?—not that Max gave him an opportunity to respond.
With no head for the various isms so dear to the hearts of the citizens of the Lower East Side, Shmerl gave in to a general sinking feeling; he ceased listening and satisfied himself with simply observing his animated friend, his treasured companion whom God help him he wanted desperately to kiss. That’s when the inventor, his cheeks burning, realized he was well on the way to being shikkered. To try and distract himself, he picked up an apple from a bowl on the table and began to peel it with the bone-handled paring knife. The peel, still attached to the naked apple, assumed the shape of a corkscrewing tail like the trajectory of a small planet spinning out of its orbit. Contemplating it until his eyes crossed, Shmerl was aware that Max was also focused on the apple, and had slowed his galloping monologue almost to a standstill—at which point, seized by a spasm of pot-valor, Shmerl interrupted his host to ask with sham devil-may-care: “So, Feinshmeker, do you think you will ever get married?” Replacing the uneaten fruit still trailing its spiral skin, he helped himself to another shot of the ritual whiskey, his throat having gone suddenly dry.
Max, still fixated on the apple, snapped out of his trance to reply, “I like my freedom.”
Shmerl nodded in emphatic agreement; they were on the same page. But in the awkward silence that followed, prey to the creeping mischief the alcohol inspired, the inventor was moved to pose another question. “Was you ever in love?”
The yungerman looked abashed. “Was you?”
“I’m asking first.”
Max’s sloe-black eyes narrowed nearly to reptilian slits. “What kind question is this!” he protested.
Taking his friend’s show of temper for a negative, Shmerl assured him, “Me too never,” giving his head a sharp shake, which set his brain throbbing, his ears aflame, his entire anatomy in revolt against the lie. “That is,” he began again, “I mean…” But what did he mean? That he loved Max Feinshmeker, a man? Of course he loved him, but