My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(67)

“Obviously.”

“Two coffees, please.”

After Lorraine left, Sophie looked around. It was an interesting mix of people; farmers in Carhartt, but also people who looked at home in a city, even though the nearest city was more than a hundred miles away. How had they all found out about this place?

“Is this place on Yelp?” Sophie asked.

“Don’t think it has a name, let alone a Yelp listing,” he said.

“How’d you find it?”

“You knock three times on the fourth red barn on your left and someone whispers you directions.”

“Very underground,” Sophie said.

“Yep,” Russell said. “Only for the cool kids.” He gestured to an elderly couple behind them. “The ultimate insiders.”

She laughed at that. Not that she’d ever been an insider, but never less so than in the last three months. “I miss diners.”

“They’ve got good diners in New York,” Russell said.

“They do. There’s this one me and my mom sometimes go to for upside-down dinner, which is—”

“Breakfast for dinner,” Russell interrupted. “Big fan of the upside-down dinner.”

“Me, too. Wait, how’d you know I was from New York?”

Russell didn’t answer. Or let his oozy grin do the answering.

“Oh, I see. It’s obvious. Because I’m so big city.”

“Big city?”

“That’s what they tell me here all the time. Only they don’t mean it as any kind of geographical designation. It’s more of an all-purpose commentary on how strange they think I am. You watch foreign films and are sarcastic, therefore so big city.”

Russell thought about it a minute. “You eat spicy food, therefore so big city.”

“You read the New York Times and not for an assignment, totally big city.”

“You listen to jazz, whoa, big city.”

“You wear black, definitely big city.”

“You are black, definitely big city. Only then they call you urban.”

Sophie laughed. “Sometimes I think big city is code for Jewish, even if people here don’t realize it because they’ve never met a Jew before.”

“Seriously?”

Seriously. When Sophie first got here, she’d been asked about what kind of church she went to. She’d explained that Jews went to temple (not that she did; her family wasn’t that kind of Jewish). She’d been incredulous that people did not know this, but a lot of people didn’t. Her mother had packed her a small menorah for Hanukkah, but it had remained stuffed in the far reaches of her closet. Sophie couldn’t bear the number of explanations that lighting the candles would require.

Sophie was wondering how much of this to tell to Russell, but he was now looking at his phone and then he was waving Lorraine over, and for a small second Sophie feared she’d gone too far (she was always going too far) and if he was asking for the check. But instead he asked Lorraine if they had hash browns. “The patty kind, not the chunky ones.”

“Chunky ones is home fries. Hash browns is the patties. We got both,” Lorraine said, exasperated, though Sophie was beginning to suspect she enjoyed being exasperated by Russell.

“Okay. Hash browns. With a side of apple sauce, and sour cream.” Russell looked at Sophie. “Right?”

“Right,” Sophie managed to say. Barely. Because of the sudden lump in her throat. Hash browns, basically latkes, with applesauce and sour cream? This was Hanukkah food.

“How did you know?” Sophie asked when she’d recovered.

“Genius thing, called a calendar,” he said. “It’s got all kinds of intel.”

“The dates, maybe, but latkes are insider knowledge. Where are you really from?”

His grin was a little bit wicked. “You suggesting a brother from Texas can’t know about latkes?”

“I’ll bet it’s a violation of several state statutes, actually,” Sophie said.

Russell laughed. “Probably right. I used to date a Jewish girl.”

Well then. “So they have Jews in Texas?”

“This wasn’t Texas.”

“Oh.” Now that she thought about it, he didn’t sound like he was from Texas. But she didn’t sound like she was from New York, either. People on campus were surprised by that. She guessed her accent, at least, wasn’t so big city. “So where are you really from then?”

“Really from? Not sure I’m really from anywhere.”

“Now you’re just trying to be mysterious.”

“How’m I doing?”

“You’re James Bond. But even he’s from somewhere.”

His face seemed to flatten out a bit. “Haven’t lived anywhere long enough to be from there.” Then he listed a roster of places he had lived: Dubai, Seoul, Amman, Mexico City, and, stateside, North Dakota, Colorado, and most recently, Houston, Texas. “My father’s in the oil business,” Russell added.

“Oh, I thought…” Sophie began as her brain fully digested yet another thing that should’ve been obvious. Russell was rich. Why had she had thought he was on scholarship, when all evidence pointed to the contrary?