“Charlotte, there you are. Do you have a moment?” It was the headmistress, cutting off her escape. She drew Miss Levy to one side of the hallway and said, “I was wondering how Miss Altschul handled her first few days of Culinary Science. I know that it was a rather abrupt transition.”
With effort Miss Levy corralled her panicked thoughts into a reasonable answer. “To tell the truth, it hasn’t been quite what I’d expected. Although, as you said, she’s a very smart and determined young woman.”
“She is indeed,” the headmistress said wryly.
“I’m afraid that I haven’t impressed her yet, but I’m hopeful that we can reach an understanding.” Would that be enough for the headmistress? The children had filled the nearby synagogue, and the combined weight of their bored and hungry minds was an unwelcome pressure, like a sick headache.
“I know you’ll do your best, Charlotte. But don’t be surprised if she never warms to you. The girl is bound and determined to spite us all.” The woman sighed, then eyed Miss Levy. “Have you heard how she arrived here?”
“I know that she’s a true orphan,” Miss Levy said cautiously, “and that her father was a rabbi.”
“Yes, in a very traditional mold. She came to us in ’08 when their tenement burned, an awful tragedy. Kreindel herself barely made it out alive. Her father led a congregation on Forsyth, across from their building. I don’t think Kreindel ever left that street for the first eight years of her—Charlotte? Is something the matter?”
“No,” she said faintly, “only a bit of a headache. Well. I’ll try to do my best with the girl.”
“That’s all that any of us can do. Oh—I nearly forgot, I’d like to look over the basement storage room with you next week. As early as possible, considering the state of the place. Would Monday afternoon be suitable, after your classes?”
What ought she to say? What commitments might she have on a Monday afternoon that would keep her from accepting? In the moment, she could think of none. “Yes, that’ll do,” she said.
“Then I’ll put it in the calendar. But for now, if you don’t mind me saying so, you ought to go home and put your feet up. You look a little done in.”
* * *
The jinniyeh watched her lover dress himself.
It wasn’t much in the way of clothing, only the trousers and the leather apron. Fewer garments than the Bedu wore, and certainly fewer than Sophia, with her endless layers—but it still made her uneasy. Why did he wear anything at all?
He noticed her gaze, an obvious question in itself. “Habit, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “The apron pocket comes in han—” He paused. “—is useful, sometimes.”
She smiled, though the answer made her feel no better. For a little while, lust had removed her doubts, but now she felt them creeping back again. Hiding, it was clear, had damaged his spirit; she sensed she must be careful not to ask too many judging questions, or pressure him to change his ways all at once. She remembered how weak she’d grown in her cave, how she’d come alive again once she’d left it behind. The same would happen to him; she only needed patience.
She looked up at the faraway ceiling, the iron that spread outward from the central trunk like a sinister wave.—Those arches, she said. Did they come with the building, like the water tower?
“No, I added them,” he said.
—Oh.
“They hold up the roof, but they’re also meant as decoration. I’m fitting them with glass, but it’s slow going.”
He pointed to an arch in the corner, and she saw the squares of opaque blue glass. It looked as though he’d trapped a portion of the sky and dragged it indoors. She suppressed a shudder.—Is it . . . difficult?
“Extremely. I’ve had poor luck with glass-making. And yesterday, I lost nearly four days of—” He paused, frowning in thought, and then said, “Jinniyeh, did you send me a cable, by chance? A message,” he said to her confused look, “sent over a long distance, and then delivered on a piece of paper.”
She tried to think. Was this something Sophia had done? The woman had told her nothing about a message. And if she said yes, she might become trapped in the lie.—No, jinni. I sent no message, I only came myself.
He nodded, a frown still on his forehead.
—Tell me more about this glass, she said.
He seemed to brighten at her interest. “I have to form it one sheet at a time, in an iron mold—here, I’ll show you.”
She followed him to a corner of the shop, where a large quantity of blue rocks lay heaped beside a large, shallow iron trough. She took human form and picked up one of the rocks, turning it over in her hands while he explained to her where it had come from, using words like smelt and slag and by-product. A distant corner of her mind whispered, This is unnatural. She ignored it. She, too, was unnatural. She would try to understand.
“But it’s difficult to lift the pane from the mold without breaking it,” he was saying. “I need to find some way to convince it to lift free, to float—” He stopped suddenly, his mouth half open.
She peered at him, uncertain. “Jinni?”
“Float it,” he said—and abruptly he turned from her and strode away, toward a row of wooden boxes that sat the corner of the shop, doors hinged to their fronts. He opened them all, rummaged quickly through their contents. “Did I keep any—I could order more—no, all the catalogs are gone—yes, here!”
He extracted a large crate, and set it upon the floor. Inside were stacks of long metal bricks that gleamed a strange silver-white. She reached inside and picked one up—and at once her hand grew unpleasantly slick. She dropped the brick, and frowned at the grayish smears on her fingers.
“It won’t hurt you,” he
