Couldn’t that eternal, all-but-retired CEO find anything else to do besides wander around the office, mixing into everybody’s private affairs?

Yaffa’le looks worried as she tidies up the living room.

She glances at the big computer screen in the corner, and her worry lines grow deeper. She tries draping a beige tablecloth over it. It doesn’t work.

Dudi looks up in surprise. “What’s the matter, Yaffa’le?”

She riffles through the contents of the magazine rack. Hmm, maybe she’d better put it away in the bedroom. She bends over and starts dragging it over.

Dudi stops her. “What’s going on? Are you expecting a visit from the preschool acceptance committee?”

“What? No,” she answers, too preoccupied to enjoy the joke. “I invited Gedalya and Shifra over.”

You. Invited. Gedalya. And Shifra. Here.

He tries to string the words together into a meaningful sentence. Somehow, the syntax feels all wrong.

Yaffa’le stops her schlepping for a second and laughs. “You look like Avital, when she doesn’t understand a hard word.”

“That might be because I actually don’t understand.”

“I got a phone call from Gedalya,” she says. The look on his face is priceless. “Really. I’m not kidding you. He wants to know more about the fundraising campaigns we do at the office. I was busy with Avital and I couldn’t talk then, so I said they could come over in the evening, and I’d tell them all about it.”

Hmm. Now Dudi looks around his home with a critical eye. It’s an open floor plan, with the kitchen visible from the dining room table. Will Gedalya think that’s not chassidish enough? The breakfront is a light maple wood — not the typical dark, heavy look favored by his family. The bookshelves hold a Shas, a few other basic texts, and not much else.

• ••

Not far away, Shifra stands in her kitchen, rolling up crepes for a neighborhood family’s Chanukah party. Twenty are spread with dulce de leche, and twenty with nougat. A white chocolate filling waits in one bowl, chocolate mousse in another. She fills and rolls and can’t understand why Gedalya agreed to this. First of all, there is no way in the world, no way in the entire universe — or even in a parallel universe if there really is such a thing — that their Tovi is going to appear in a fundraising leaflet.

“Not a leaflet,” Gedalya hastens to clarify. “Of course not. There are other ways of soliciting funds. It seems that Dudi’s rebbetzin is the expert on the subject.”

“We can’t do this,” Shifra says decisively. Little faces peek in at the kitchen door. “Tovi!” she calls. “Take the little ones away from here. Help them build something with Duplo.”

“I’m only looking to do something totally discreet,” Gedalya pleads. “There could be a big gvir in Florida, let’s say, who wants to help children with disabilities. We just need access to him. Maybe he even died and left millions in some foundation. If the money doesn’t go to us, it’ll go to some kid from Costa Rica.”

Shifra is skeptical about the existence of this gvir he’s counting on — on this earth, in Gan Eden, or in a parallel universe. But she has more immediate concerns.

“We can’t go to Dudi and Yaffa’le asking for favors,” she says. “Think about it. We keep our children away from them. We won’t send Tovi over to babysit. How can we suddenly show up at their door wanting their help?”

Again, Gedalya finds himself on the defensive. “She offered,” he says.

He’d rather not go into the whole story of how he stumbled upon “Dudi — Rayaso,” when he thought he was calling a stranger named Yafit. Couldn’t that eternal, all-but-retired CEO find anything else to do besides wander around the office, mixing into everybody’s private affairs?