A Settled Account at the Dreidel Table

The seller wrapped the dreidel in brown paper. When they stepped back into the crowd, Natan offered Miriam his arm at an icy crossing. It was a gesture they had practiced for the family: her hand at his elbow, his pace adjusted to hers, a small piece of evidence for anyone inclined to inspect them.

She took it without considering whether someone might be watching.

For several streets, the arrangement felt dangerously easy. His coat was dark beneath her hand; his presence kept the market’s shifting bodies from pressing too near. She told herself it was merely convenience, as she had told herself the bed was furniture and the ticket was bookkeeping.

“Your curator expects the installation finished before New Year’s?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And then Berlin?”

“That was the plan.”

He looked down at her. “You make plans sound like railway timetables.”

“They are more useful than inspiration.”

“Prague may disappoint you, then.”

“Prague is a job.”

“It is also an escape,” she said.

His stride changed. “From what?”

“From the shop closing. From Rebekka. From being the relative everyone expects to remain.”

He gave a short laugh without amusement. “You have known me for three days.”

“Long enough to notice that you avoid every question about January.”

“And you have lived in Berlin long enough to arrange your life at a safe distance from anyone who might ask you to change it.”

Miriam removed her hand from his arm.

“Berlin is my work.”

“Of course it is. It is also where you can keep every attachment temporary, every return date clear, every person at a manageable distance.”

“You do not get to use what I told you last night against me.”

“No,” he said. “I do not.”

“But you have.”

“And you do not get to call my commission an escape because it leaves before you do.”

The market continued around them: shoppers bargaining, bells sounding from a nearby tram, the seller folding paper around another purchase. Miriam took the tram ticket from her coat pocket and wrote beneath the third entry.

4. Escape assigned; safety denied.

Natan read it.

“That is not a fair account,” he said.

“It is accurate enough for the record.”

He paid for the dreidel, and they walked back toward Leopoldstadt without taking each other’s arm again.

Two evenings later, Gitta found them in the shop after closing: Miriam at the counter correcting condition notes, Natan on a ladder repairing the gold leaf on a display sign that would soon have no purpose.

Gitta still wore her crimson Santa cap, though the white beard had been stuffed into her handbag.

“Excellent,” she said. “Two capable adults trapped in a closing stationery shop. I have need of you.”

Natan looked down from the ladder. “That sentence has never led anywhere useful.”

“The department store is holding its executive holiday party upstairs. My registration assistant has developed a fever, my second host has lost his nerve, and a fake girlfriend is more useful than a decorative pinecone.”

Miriam set down her pencil. “Useful for what?”

“For greeting people, directing them toward wine, preventing vice presidents from cornering the string quartet, and making Natan appear less like a man drafted against his will.”

“I am drafted against my will,” Natan said.

“That is why you will be convincing.”

“I have exhibition work,” Miriam said.

“So does every person who has ever attended a party reluctantly. You will be finished by eleven. There will be museum donors, designers, and at least one archivist who thinks paper is a moral category.”

Miriam disliked that the last point gave the proposal shape. Natan descended from the ladder, dusting gold from his hands.

“You need only say no,” he told her.

Gitta looked between them. “Of course they will say no. That is their favorite shared hobby.”

Miriam closed her notebook. “What time?”

Gitta’s approval was immediate. “Eight. Wear something that suggests you have opinions about linen.”

Natan watched Miriam as Gitta disappeared through the shop door. “You do not have to rescue her staffing failure.”

“I am not rescuing her. I am meeting an archivist.”

“An important distinction.”

“Write it down if you wish.”

At eight, the department store’s executive floor had been transformed into an imitation winter garden. Paper stars turned beneath the ceiling lights, and menus stood in folded blue card holders bearing Natan’s professional scrutiny.

“The lettering is badly spaced,” he said.

“It is a party, not a crime scene.”

“Poor lettering is always a small crime.”

Gitta handed them each a list of guests and pointed them toward the lift. “Miriam, make people feel expected. Natan, make people feel important. You have both been practicing for days.”

They played their parts with more ease than Miriam liked to admit. Natan remembered names after hearing them once and introduced older employees with a courtesy that made them straighten slightly. Miriam learned which guests required a quiet table, which ones wanted to be seen near the bar, and which senior manager needed to be prevented from explaining quarterly sales to the musicians.

Whenever someone asked how they knew Gitta, their answers fit together without rehearsal.

“She recruited us,” Miriam said.

“Against our better judgment,” Natan added.

“Then you are ideal for her,” a woman from the buying department replied.

By ten, the party had relaxed into loosened collars, empty dessert plates, and conversations that no longer required Gitta’s intervention. A small orchestra began a waltz near the windows. Gitta appeared at Miriam’s elbow.

“Dance,” she ordered. “Several people have asked whether you are truly together, and I refuse to let a corporate event become an inquiry.”

Natan offered Miriam his hand. “Shall we preserve Gitta’s professional reputation?”

“She appears to have survived worse.”

His hand enclosed hers as they crossed the room. He placed his other hand carefully at her back, as if even now he were asking permission through the precision of the gesture. Miriam knew enough of waltzes to follow, though not enough to enjoy being watched. Yet after the first turn, the room’s attention became less important than the measured movement of his steps and the familiar steadiness of him beside her.

“You are better at this than I expected,” she said.

“You expected badly.”

“I expected a sign restorer.”

“A sign restorer with an aunt who believes dancing prevents moral decline.”

“That explains much about your family.”

When the music ended, someone applauded. Natan did not release her hand as they returned to the entrance, and Miriam did not request its return. They continued greeting late arrivals, collecting abandoned programs, and helping Gitta settle the final list of coats.

The last guests left. The orchestra packed away its music stands. Still their hands remained joined.

Gitta came back from the lift, saw them, and stopped.

“This act is plainly becoming real,” she said.

“It is not,” Miriam and Natan said together.

Gitta considered them with grave satisfaction. “Remarkable. Even your denial has coordination.”

Miriam withdrew her hand then. The absence felt strangely official.

“We were doing what you asked,” Natan said.

“We were hosting,” Miriam added.

“You danced after the guests had finished pretending not to watch. Then you held hands through coat-check accounting. I plan events for a living. I recognize a development.”

“Your conclusion is speculative,” Miriam said.

“And impertinent,” Natan added.

“Perfect,” Gitta said. “Return to your arguments. They are apparently the only honest thing about you.”

When she had gone, Miriam took the tram ticket from her coat pocket and wrote beneath the fourth entry:

5. Hand-holding classified as evidence.

Natan read it over her shoulder. “That is biased accounting.”

“You said it was nothing.”

“I said Gitta was impertinent. Those are separate matters.”

“You are inventing categories to avoid a conclusion.”

“And you are building a case from one dance.”

“One dance,” Miriam said, folding the ticket along its old crease, “and a hand you did not release.”

“You did not release it either.”

“That was because you kept hold.”

Natan looked toward the closed lift doors, then back at her. “There. Argument five.”

Two mornings later, snow began before dawn and went on with a bureaucrat’s patience. By nine, the trams through Leopoldstadt had stopped altogether, their yellow cars stranded somewhere beyond the white blur at the end of the street. Miriam stood at the front window of the flat above Weiss Paper Goods, reading the service notice on her phone for a third time. The museum annex might as well have belonged to another city.

“Your curator can endure one day without you,” Rebekka said. She had converted the dining table into an inventory station: ledgers, labelled cartons, bundles of envelopes, and a disorderly colony of fountain pens. “Those broadsides have waited a century. They will manage until noon.”

“Your optimism about paper is admirable.”

“It is experience. Paper survives people with excellent regularity.”

Natan carried a box of display cards from the corridor to the table. Snow melted on the shoulders of his coat; he had gone downstairs only long enough to inspect the shop shutters. “The street is impassable.”