The Matzo Ball Heiress by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

“He’s responsible for his death?”
    “No, no, the test pilot parachutes to safety. Avrum is shattered. His company redesigns the jet, but the same thing happens—the wings break off again. Suicidal, the engineer goes to his synagogue to pray. His rabbi asks him what the matter is. After hearing the sob story, the rabbi tells him, ‘Avrum, all you have to do is drill a row of holes directly above and below where the wing meets the fuselage. If you do this, I absolutely guarantee the wings won’t fall off.’ The engineer mumbles thanks to the rabbi for his advice. But the more he thinks about it, the more Avrum realizes he had nothing to lose. Maybe the rabbi had some holy insight. On the next design of the jet, they drill a row of holes directly above and below where the wings meet the fuselage. The next test flight goes great! Avrum tells his rabbi, ‘Rabbi, how did you know that drilling the holes would prevent the wings from falling off?’ The rabbi says, ‘I’m an old man. I’ve lived for many, many years and I’ve celebrated Passover many, many times. And in all those years, not once— not once —has matzo broken on the perforation!’”
    Steve and I snort in unison. Steve hits an imaginary boom, boom, cha drumroll.
    “Worth stopping for?” Jared asks.
    “No,” Steve says with a smile.
    “Oh c’mon, Steve, it’s a classic.”
    “When Shecky Green told the joke in the Catskills, it was a classic,” Steve says. “When you tell it, it’s just sad.”
    Jared takes the put-down with a good-natured laugh.
    “I don’t get it,” Tonia says.
    “Oy,” Jared says with an old-Jewish-man accent. “No matter how you try, matzos never break on the perforations. So the wing could never break off if it has a stippled matzo pattern.”
    There’s a touch of confusion still in Tonia’s forehead. “Oh, okay.”
    “We ready to continue?” Steve’s tone is impatient.
    I smile at Jared and he winks at me.
    Since breaking it off with Daniel I have spent the last year in the spinster desert; that is except for one laughable date with a guy whose real face and personality didn’t match his online profile, a sparkling profile that certainly didn’t say anything about his halitosis. After a very long, supposedly ironic hour together at the new Manhattan branch of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, this sad sack decided that he had finally found his soul mate, the one who would love to hear the many, many adventures of his cat named Mama over an “ironic” blue-plate special at the Times Square Howard Johnson’s.
    I feel a bit silly getting such a charge from an interview. Flirtation must be all in a day’s work for Steve and Jared. I can only imagine the number of beautiful women these handsome men meet behind the scenes at New York’s trendiest restaurants. Even so, now I have two handsome guys with clean breath winking at me. Both intellectually involved with their careers and charismatic.
    “And this monstrosity over here is the packaging machine,” I say quickly. Am I actually blushing? “Working this thing is probably the worst job in the factory because it’s a repetitive hell. Not to mention that the person who oversees the machine has to have very fast hands.”
    “Does that person know it’s the worst job?” Steve asks.
    “Hopefully, Braulio won’t watch the Food Channel special or he may find out it is.”
    Braulio, a short Dominican with a considerable beer gut, a constant smile and a never-ending repertoire of Sinatra songs, returns from a bathroom break and gives me a bear hug. I haven’t seen him since last high season. His Yankees shirt smells like a mix of flour and Tide that wasn’t completely rinsed out. “You want to be on TV, Braulio?” I ask.
    “We’re from the Food Channel and want to see what you do,” Steve chimes in.
    Braulio nods enthusiastically. He flicks a switch and demonstrates how fast the packages move on the conveyor. “Like Lucy, no?”
    “Lucy?” Steve