Always, the subject of Shuey’s job was taboo. They could talk about anything, but not that

"What’s with you? Why aren’t you pumped?” Boruch Zeldman frowned.

Dovi Korman was playing with a straw, looking straight down into his pepper steak.

“No reason. Maybe just bummed out that bein hazmanim is over, you know?”

Zeldman snorted. “Oh, please, it’s not just today and you know it. On Chol Hamoed, you scowled the whole time at the park, and that was after we had to beg you to come. You were all moody. What’s the deal, Dov Ber?”

Dovi hated when his friend called him that, and Boruch knew it. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t felt the situation warranted it.

“Are you not in the mood for going back to yeshivah? Like, you lost cheishek?” Zeldman asked suddenly, his face colored with concern.

“Ha.” Korman looked around Glatt Bite, the tables crowded with bochurim reveling in the last night of bein hazmanim, and waved his hands. “I guarantee there isn’t a single guy in this room happier to go back to yeshivah than me.”

Zeldman relaxed. “Yeah, Modena is the place, maskim. It’s great. I hope your father bought land next to it, ’cause when it happens, it’s gonna happen.”

He spread his arms apart, as if to show how big the yeshivah would get, and knocked into his can of Dr. Pepper. It tottered dangerously for a moment, then righted itself.

“My father didn’t buy land next to it,” Dovi Korman said, his voice harder than he meant it to be, and Boruch Zeldman understood, suddenly, what was going on.

huey Portman held the restaurant door open for his wife and bowed.

This was the best Shuey, Henny thought, happy and comfortable in his own skin, like in the early years of his career. It had been a long time since she’d seen her husband this way, flushed and playful, even silly.

Believe was the hottest restaurant in Lakewood, (Raising the bar yet again, was their ad) but Shuey knew the manager from his old job (We overlapped in the food industry, he told Henny nonchalantly) and was able to swing a table. He announced this to Henny in the morning, telling her it was sort of a goodbye party, a new zeman was starting and he was back on the road again.

She spent the rest of the day calling sisters, friends, and neighbors to casually drop the fact that she was going to Believe for supper and soliciting suggestions for what to order.

They had gone out over the years, anniversaries and birthdays, different occasions, but always, the subject of Shuey’s job was taboo. They could talk about anything, but not that.