LITMIR.BIZ

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with the hog,” Thomasina said.

      “We can’t,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s no hog in Jewish cooking.”

      “Ain’t no servin’ dairy with meat either. But we got Ruben sandwiches and cheese blintzes on the menu.”

      I sighed. Suddenly Thomasina, who ran her Baptist congregation’s annual bake and craft fair, and led the local chapter of the Women’s Inter-Church Curling League, had also become a certified expert on kosher dietary law. Of course, it was an open secret that Thom had been carrying on with my uncle for over two decades when she wasn’t singing gospel hymns. After spending half her life around the deli as his manager and play pal, she probably knew much more than I did about the technical distinction between strictly kosher cooking and our kosher-style dishes—an expertise I hadn’t needed while ordering at Upper East Side sushi bars or poking through designer apparel collections at Saks Fifth Avenue. Back when I could afford to splurge on such luxuries.

      Still, only her anxious expression convinced me she wasn’t covertly testing my deli acumen. So what if I owned the place? I’d felt on probation with Thom since the day I first set foot in Nashville.

      “Nope, uh-uh, forget it,” I said. “Hog is out. The idea of serving it here would give poor Uncle Murray a heart attack…if one hadn’t already killed him.”

      She stared at me a second. Then her features softened.

      “Your uncle never tired of complainin’ about these catered affairs bein’ more trouble than they were worth,” she said. “But he knew when push was on its way to shove, hon. Better a stuffed pig on the table than a bunch of starved Southern men around it.”

      Hon? What had brought that on? I felt like a fly buzzing around sugary bait. But never mind, she’d gotten me there. Kosher Karaoke night was a tradition at the delicatessen, and we couldn’t blow the first since our grand reopening. Especially with Yakima Motors, the latest Japanese automotive company to move its headquarters to Nashville, having booked a catered dinner to celebrate their new partnership with the area’s leading dealership chain, Sergeant’s Cars and Trucks.

      Somehow, though, I had to make some wiggle room.

      “We’ve got, what, six tables of five for the Yakima affair?”

      Thomasina nodded.

      “And how’s it break down far as orders?” I asked

      “Twenty-one pastrami sandwiches. Twelve corned beef. Plus seven sliced briskets in gravy. Well, make it eight briskets. But one’s yours.”

      I did some quick first-grade math. Minus my dinner plate, that totaled up to the full party of thirty.

      “How long can you stall? Serving the main courses, that is.”

      “I don’t know.” Thomasina scrunched her forehead. “The briskets are being served.”

      “The rest of the dinners then.”

      She expelled a breath. “We wait much longer’n ten minutes, stomachs are gonna rumble—”

      “Stretch it to twenty minutes. Roll out some extra chopped herring and lox platters. With plenty of bagels. And the Fiddler’s Fried chicken wings. More trays of Smoky Mountain potato knishes too…everybody loves those knishes.” I paused. “The airport’s only a fifteen-minute drive from here. Maybe Luke hasn’t called back because he’s on his way. Our partiers can nosh on appetizers to their hearts’ content till he—”

      My binking cell phone interrupted me. I dreaded when it binked rather than sounded a musical ringtone. A bink meant I had an incoming text message, most of which included shortcuts I couldn’t understand.

      Glancing at the display, I saw the message was from Luke and opened it. It read:

      PSTRMI OK. TRFC JM I-40. @DLSON.

      GFN…CYA!

      I stared at the screen in anxious confusion.

      “What’s wrong?” Thomasina said.

      “This.” I showed her the message. “I got the ‘pastrami okay’ part. I think I got the ‘traffic jam on Interstate Forty’ part. You understand the rest?”

      Thomasina shook her head. “I once tried texting my daughter and wound up joinin’ a nudist colony outside Crossville.”

      I frowned, looked around at Newt and Jimmy. They were still squawking about the babka.

      “Hey, guys, c’mon. Give it a rest!” I held up the phone for them. “I got a text from Luke and need a translation. Either of you want to take a shot?”

      They stopped barking at each other long enough to glance at the display. Newt’s round, bearded face was vacant. So was Jimmy’s under his white mushroom of a cook’s cap. After a moment, they went right back to their tiff, not even bothering to answer.

      “Crap,” I said, pivoting toward the kitchen doors.

      “Told you the night was young.”

      Thomasina. I wasn’t in the mood.

      “Crap isn’t a curse word,” I said. “If I wanted to use a curse word, I’d say bullsh—”

      “Where you going?” she interrupted before I could defile her sensitive buttercup ears.

      “Agnes Jean,” I muttered under my breath. “Maybe A.J. can help me.”

      I pushed through the doors into the dining room and found the place hopping, the mingled, mouth-watering scents of knishes, kasha varnishkes, and other delicacies filling the air. They instantly comforted me the way they had when I was a young girl visiting Uncle Murray—before he went off chasing one dream only to find another.

      A.J. was serving beers near the movable karaoke stage, her back to me, her Appalachian forest of blond hair spilling over her shoulders. Tonight, she had on a huggy midriff blouse and low-rider jeans, the bare skin between them displaying most of a colorful tattoo that ran from just above her waist down to parts unknown. It looked sort of like an extraterrestrial serpent with butterfly wings, and undulated lengthwise as she swung her hips to the beat of “Oh Lonesome Me,” which right now was being giddily mauled by one of the Japanese auto executives.

      I went up the aisle to A.J. and tapped her shoulder.

      “Yippee!” she said, turning to face me.

      “Yippee?” I asked.

      She flashed an enormous lipstick smile, her drink tray in hand. “These here folks are having a blast! We’re back in business!”

      I thought worriedly about the absent pastrami and didn’t comment.

      “A.J., can you please read this for me?” I said, showing her the text message on my phone. “It’s from Luke.”

      She studied the backlit display.

      “Done,” she said.

      I looked at her. With A.J., it was best to be specific.

      “Aloud,” I said. “I need you to read it aloud.”

      She smiled at me some more.

      “Sure,” she said. “Luke says the pastrami’s okay.”

      Which I’d already managed to figure out.

      “And that there’s a traffic jam on the interstate.”

      Check again, I thought.

      “Luke’s at Donelson Pike,” A.J. went on.

      “Where’s that?”

      “Right outside the airport. It’s the local road into town…guess he figures to go around the tie-up.”

      I felt my panic subside a bit. Out the corner of my eye, I saw a member of the Sergeant contingent grab the mike onstage. A second later, “Oh Lonesome Me”

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