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comments, he seemed scholarly and peaceful, like a Renaissance St. Jerome at work in his cave of books. All he needed was a skull on his desk and a lion at his sandaled feet. He wore T-shirts, jeans, rimless reading glasses, sometimes tweed jackets. He had the deep didactic voice of a man who had smoked for years and then suddenly quit and now hated smokers everywhere. He never watched television, and he never tired of telling people so. But the most pretentious thing about him was his long hair. With his chestnut locks threaded gray, he was a fly caught in amber, the product and exemplar of a lost world.
    “I’m working on the money,” Jess told her sister. “Could I just explain?”
    “There’s nothing to explain.” Emily’s voice was tense. “You know what you have to do. Take care of it.”
    Later, waiting for her laundry in the basement, Jess weighed her choices: angering Emily, or asking Richard. Take care of it . Easy for Emily to say. Financially independent Emily got along beautifully with Richard. Ah, Marx was right about so many things—especially the moral superiority money afforded.
    Perched atop a churning washing machine, she heard the clank of metal. Had she left her keys in her jeans pocket? A handful of coins? She wished her grandfather were still alive and she could call him. She had been close to her father’s father.
    Mrs. Gibbs wheeled in her laundry. She pushed it in a little cart with her detergent on top.
    “Good evening.” Mrs. Gibbs produced a change purse segmented with compartments for each kind of coin. Extracting quarters, she began lining them up in the slots of the machine opposite Jess. “How are you?” Mrs. Gibbs inquired as she loaded her whites.
    “I’m okay,” said Jess.
    Mrs. Gibbs shot Jess a penetrating look.
    “I’m fine.”
    “Fine sitting down here all alone?”
    “I was just thinking.”
    “Fine isn’t good,” said Mrs. Gibbs. “Fine isn’t right.”
    “I’m okay. My sister is annoyed with me. I said I’d do something and I can’t.”
    “Breaking a promise,” Mrs. Gibbs intoned.
    “No!”
    “Mmm,” said Mrs. Gibbs and suddenly all the machines around Jess seemed to hum with disapproval.
    “I’ll figure it out.”
    “Mmm.”
    “I’m not depressed or anything,” Jess reassured her neighbor.
    “Have you tried prayer?” Mrs. Gibbs reached up to clasp Jess’s hands in her own.
    “Mrs. Gibbs,” said Jess.
    “Put your hands together.”
    “This is just a small thing,” said Jess. “It’s not a matter of life and death. I’m okay.”
    “Dear Lord,” Mrs. Gibbs prayed, “help Jessamine Bach to keep her promise. Help her and guide her to honesty and truth. Keep her in righteousness and do not allow her to fall. And let us say, ‘Amen.’”
    “Amen,” said Jess. “But I’m not about to fall.”
    “We could all fall at any moment,” Mrs. Gibbs said. “Remember that.”
    “It’s just a little money thing….”
    “There are no little money things,” Mrs. Gibbs said darkly.
    “No, no, let me explain.” Jess told the story of Emily’s IPO and the Friends and Family deadline. Mrs. Gibbs listened in silence. At one point she closed her eyes, and Jess wondered if her neighbor was praying again silently, or simply appalled at how trivial Jess’s conundrum was.
    “I have no money to lend you,” said Mrs. Gibbs at last.
    “Oh, I wasn’t hinting!”
    “But I will speak to my rabbi and see if he knows what to do.”
    Jess hopped off her washer in surprise. “Your rabbi?”
    Mrs. Gibbs gazed at Jess calmly. “Don’t you know, honey, that I am a Jew?”
    “You’re kidding,” Jess blurted out.
    “It’s not the color of your skin, but the feeling in your heart,” Mrs. Gibbs said.
    “You’re right.” Abashed, Jess leaned against a washer. “I’m half Jewish,” she volunteered. “My mother was Jewish.”
    Mrs. Gibbs nodded. “I’m a Jew by choice.”
    “How did you choose?”
    “I didn’t,” said Mrs. Gibbs,