One winter night after closing time at his florist shop, Yankel Kline and his employee, Owen Flannery, stood side-by-side at the counter wrapping the stems of nosegays for little ballerinas and filling the cones for the tussie-mussies preferred by the old ladies—orders which had to be delivered before nine o’clock the next morning. Except for the whisper of their fingers on the flowers and the purring of their adopted cat, coiled on the counter, the shop was silent.
Suddenly a pounding on the door caused the two men to scatter the flowers. “Oy gevalt! Vos tut zikh?”Yankel gasped.The cat yowled and leapt down, and Yankel saw through the front window that the jeweler, Isaac Goldblum, was hammering the door with the urgency of a man pursued by the devil. Yankel, a small dapper man, grabbed the neck of a heavy crystal decanter he kept handy to clock any intruder over the head, and Owen, a burly red-headed Irish immigrant, reached for a baseball bat he kept for the same purpose. Yankel unlocked and opened the door.
The jeweler pushed into the little shop. “Mr. Kline, you’ve got to help me.” He was breathing heavily inside his great black coat, and there was a sheen on his forehead as though he’d run all the way down Germantown Avenue.
“Goodness, Mr. Goldblum. What is it?”
“Rachel’s young man,” the jeweler panted. “He has just asked me for her hand in marriage.”
“Yes?”
“And she wants a big wedding. Oh, Mr. Kline, you know I’ve lost my Freda!” he wailed. “I know nothing about weddings.” The jeweler sank into the only chair in the shop. Owen, always handy, flipped over an empty flower bucket and set it down as a footstool for the jeweler who heaved up one foot at a time, then adjusted his yarmulka and began to press his forehead with his handkerchief.
Yankel had known of the jeweler for years. He had regularly created bouquets for the jeweler’s wife, and when she was struck down by the influenza of 1918,...
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