Why did he feel so small?

Baruch raised an eyebrow at his silence; Akiva ignored him.

He looked insanely calm. Annoyingly so.

“Have you done this before?” Akiva asked him.

Baruch smirked. “Been a guarantor? No. Waited for a loan? Yup. How do you think I financed Abrams Architecture?”

It had not occurred to Akiva to wonder how Baruch had financed it. Thoughts on how other people paid for things rarely crossed his mind. Which was embarrassing to realize.

Mordy Levitan finally looked up from his stack of papers. To his credit, he didn’t say a word about the oddity of Akiva Frankel standing in front of him waiting for a loan, even though the Levitans and the Frankels spent Shabbos Chanukah together in Vail every year.

“Akiva, how are you? You brought a guarantor? Baruch, you’re the areiv?”

Baruch nodded.

Mordy raised his eyebrows at that but still said nothing.

“Sign here and here, and then here. Great, Akiva, I’ll be making the transfer before five. Use it well, yeah?”

Akiva nodded his thanks, pretending he didn’t hear Mordy’s insinuation: use it well, unlike what you did with your family’s money.

Baruch was talking a mile a minute; maybe it was the very large latte in his hand. Akiva squinted at the menu.

“Have coffees gone up in price?” he asked.

Baruch stared at him. “Um, yeah, but so has everything else. Inflation, you heard of it?”

Akivs shrugged. Yeah, he’d heard of it. When it came to condominium prices, not in terms of beverages. Maybe because he’d never actually looked at the price before….

He turned to Baruch. “How,” he asked, “were you friends with me? I feel like I was probably—”

“Insufferable,” Baruch supplied. “Clueless to the problems of the everyday man. Living in a bubble.”

“Ha ha, I was going to say oblivious. But sure, I guess those work, too.”

The barista came to take his order. Akiva thought of the huge loan he’d just taken and waved her away. Baruch pushed Akiva’s hand down and firmly ordered another latte.

Oh my gosh, this was rock bottom. Baruch paying for his coffee.

He automatically felt bad for his conceited thought. He really was insufferable.

They drank their coffees in silence until Baruch pointed at the trendy hardwood flooring.

“Rookie mistake,” he said.

Akiva shrugged, still wallowing.

Baruch sat back. “Very common mistake. We had an architect apply last week and he was saying the same thing. People don’t think, they just go with whatever looks cool.

“These floors are totally not practical or sustainable. Hardwood is sensitive to moisture and humidity. In a coffee shop, with people spilling left and right, the wood can warp, swell, rot. Very, very impractical.

“And I was telling Shai…” He started a very long story involving blueprints, building materials, and marketing, but Akiva wasn’t listening anymore.

He was looking at the lattes in their hand and thinking how much Baruch was enjoying the stupid coffee, how much he must have enjoyed being able to buy a coffee for a friend. This is probably what people meant when they said, “Enjoy the small things in life.”

Baruch did that easily, naturally.

And Akiva thought how maybe the freedom of financial ease had hindered him in more ways than he’d ever realized.

Libby took a deeeeep breath in. And then choked on the exhale.

Which pretty much summed up the past few weeks.

As she watched Mali run in circles, shrieking at the top of her lungs, all Libby could do was close her eyes and hope that when she opened them again, peace would be restored.

Deena came in, lip curled in disgust. “She wants you to slice her banana the long way before you cut it into rounds,” she said, her tone testifying just how stupid she thought Libby was. “That’s how Vanessa did it.”

Libby held herself back from the 19 retorts she had and instead smiled tightly and said, “You are welcome to slice her banana, Deena. Thank you.”

Deena’s face turned mutinous. “I should slice her banana? Me? Just because everyone went crazy and now we’re totally poor, I need to slice bananas for people? Why is that fair?”

Libby bit her tongue and walked out of the kitchen. Sitting on the plush carpet of the stairs, she put her face in her hands.

In and out, deep breaths, no choking this time.

She needed Akiva here. Akiva would slice Mali’s banana.

The front door opened. Baruch Hashem, baruch Hashem.

“Akiva—”

“Hey, Libs. Uh, what’s going on?”

She stood up on the stair she was sitting on, so she was suddenly towered over him. “What’s going on is that everyone is acting crazy. And I am going to sleep.”

She headed upstairs, leaving him standing in the entranceway as Mali barreled out of the kitchen shrieking, “Bananas!!!” and Deena stomped over to him, her face thunder.

Akiva looked like he’d been steamrolled.

And she hated the fact that that made her feel good.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 979)