Would You Light My Menorah?

There is a knock on the loft door. Mark, alone in the loft, lets out a groan of discomfort and gets to his feet (with great difficulty), unwittingly dragging the phone (tucked into one of his belt loops) behind him. When the door is fully pulled open and the individual on the other side gets a load of Mark's get-up, giggles startle the filmmaker, who had expected Roger to be present, having forgotten his keys. Instead, Angel stands before Mark, dressed in full drag from her sparkling wig down to her six-inch heels.

"Hi, Mark," is her first sentence upon entering the loft. She surveys the industrial apartment and, nose wrinkled, informs her companion that "This place is disgusting."

Mark nods somberly. "True, true," he tells her. "But that's not my problem, actually, because I'm leaving in about an hour for Scarsdale. Happy Hanukkah to me – I get to see my parents and sister!" His unwillingness to call them his "family" hangs in the air, and Angel places a hand on Mark's shoulder.

"Aw, Marky," Angel says comfortingly. "That's okay."

Dryly, Mark points out, "No, it isn't. Besides, I probably need to get presents, so look what I came up with." As he digs through a plastic bag that surely cannot hold more than maybe a paper clip, Mark explains, "I got it at the Union Square holiday market, so it's like I'm bringing a piece of New York history into preppy little Scarsdale."

Once Mark has set three transparent bags of presents on the table, Angel inspects them. "Sorry, Mark," she says after a brief moment, "but these are disgusting."

"That, Angel," Mark says delightedly, "is the point." At Angel's horrified expression, he explains, "See, my mom loves these tacky scarves, you know, with yellows and purples all together, hence this bullshit…"

"Watch your mouth," Angel says reflexively, but affectionately.

Ignoring her, Mark continues, "And my dad doesn't get anything 'cause he used to hit me, and – " Here Mark speeds up to prevent confrontation, although Angel gives him a concerned look – "my sister gets tacky earrings and a tacky necklace because I hate her and she never gets good presents from my family anyway because she got knocked up out of wedlock."

Angel snickers. "What's her name again? Sandy?"

"Cindy," Mark drones. "She makes my parents horrified every year when she brings her little twerps – sorry, I mean kids – to dinner, and they eat all the latkes and drink all the wine. And they're, like, two. But the thing is, I want to do that too."

"Crawl on tables and drink everyone's wine?" Angel asks playfully, knowing Mark's real meaning.

"No," Mark says with a sigh. "Horrify my parents."

With an enormous grin, Angel slowly turns to look Mark in the eye. Mark, bewildered for a moment, starts to ask what she means, but after a few moments of silent eye-to-eye communication, his jaw drops. "Could it work?" he wonders, breathless.

"Bet it could," Angel responds.

Mark jumps up. "Come on," he says hurriedly. "Let's go see if we can borrow Joanne's car."

Angel wags her finger in front of Mark's face. "Nuh-uh, babe," she chides. "Six-inch heels. I'll meet you outside in twenty minutes."

Mark laughs and allows Angel to take her time descending the stairs as he grabs the banister and begins sliding down the six stories to the ground.

---

Upon meeting Mark at the foot of the building, Angel cautiously enters the car and sits beside her friend in the passenger seat. "Do you have a license?" she asks, dreading the answer.

"No," Mark responds. "But here's the trick, Ange – if you're wearing a plaid shirt and square glasses and have known how to drive since the age of nine, nobody's gonna know."

With a giggle as the car is pushed into drive, Angel inquires, "Who taught you to drive at nine?"

"Oh, there's a long story," Mark yawns. "Remember April? Well, you never met her, but she was Roger's girlfriend. And my friend since I was just about eight. She was a lot older than me and taught me all this cool shit growing up."

"You must have been devastated when she died."

"Didn't have time to be," Mark replies offhandedly. "Roger was convinced that her death changed more for him than anyone else. All he had with her was sex anyway," he adds bitterly. "He didn't move to the city in April's car, learn to drive with her help, or detatch himself from his family by running off with her. I did."

Angel pats Mark on the shoulder. "Oh, Marky," she says comfortingly. "It's okay." She fidgets impatiently for a moment and then asks, "How long is the drive?"

After a quick scan of his MapQuest directions, printed from Joanne's laptop, Mark answers, "'Bout forty minutes. Thirty if this asshole gets off the road." He makes an obscene but not uncharacteristic gesture at the taxi in front of him. It's odd; taxis usually drive fast, but occasionally there is the new-to-the-city cab driver with a rocky approach at driving and an unwillingness to move faster than sixteen miles per hour. Mark finds this more irritating than most non-car-owners, which is demonstrated in the fact that he performs an illegal driving move by turning into a street meant for cars to move in the opposite direction, reaching over and snapping on Angel's seatbelt as he does so.

With her lack of knowledge about city driving – or driving at all, in fact – it takes Angel a moment to realize that cars are swerving out of their lanes to avoid Mark's idiocy. In fact, many a suit with an avant-garde mobile phone snaps said device to his ear, assumedly calling nine-one-one about the maniac with square glasses and a drag queen in the passenger seat.

It takes Mark a record-breaking eleven minutes to reach the West Side Highway from the East Village, hurtling his (Joanne's) car down Christopher Street and cutting off the cars of West Village residents aware of the fact that Mercedes drivers have the right of way. (Mark feels that Joanne, a lawyer who works for a relatively low-paying lawfirm, ought not to have a Mercedes, but she does and this works to Mark's advantage a considerable amount of time that would otherwise be spent sitting in traffic.)

"Why is there all this traffic?" Angel inquires, voicing and rephrasing Mark's suspicions.

With a chuckle, Mark explains, "Everyone with a B'nai Mitzvah diploma is heading to Westchester for Hanukkah." To prevent Angel's confusion, he adds, "B'nai Mitzvahs are these ceremonies where a thirteen-year-old becomes a 'child of the commandment,' so to speak, and gains the responsibilities of a Jewish adult. It's a joke, see, because – "

Angel, giggling, points out, "Marky, sweetie, I've been to Bat Mitzvahs."

"Really?" Mark asks. "Whose?"

Angel shrugs. "Lots. I grew up in the city, you know, with Mama and Papa and Grandpapa, who was very worldly. His friends were very culturally diverse, so I went to the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of all his friends' grandkids." With a wicked gleam in her eyes, Angel adds, "When I was seventeen, and I became a girl, Grandpapa said that had I had a Bar Mitzvah, he'd've needed to change the certificate for political accuracy."

Mark laughs. "I was never close with my grandparents," he admits. "My paternal ones wanted nothing to do with us, incensed that my father married a poor woman whom he'd knocked up – see? Not every Cohen is like Cindy – at a college party. And my maternal grandmother – well, she was my friend, but she died when I was seven. Until then we were very close, though."

"Interesting," Angel says with a yawn, proving that she is not interested at all. "Marky?"

"Yes?" asks Mark, now merging onto Exit I-87 North.

Angel curls up into a tiny ball, leans her seat back and rests her head about mid-way up the back of the seat. "Can you wake me up when we're ten minutes away? I'm gonna have to exaggerate my make-up and make myself look more like a tramp than my usual poised self, but for now I just want to take a nap."

"Sure," Mark says, not looking away from the road. "Oh, but Angel, one more thing."

"Yes?" she asks sleepily, her eyes already closed.

In one breath, Mark asks, "Why aren't you with Collins?"

"Marky, baby," Angel responds calmly, "I am not attatched to the man. I am perfectly capable of socializing with my other friends as well, yourself included. Feel honored."

As Mark gapes at her in astonishment, Angel laughs and tells him, "He's at a teacher's convention."

---

As planned, Mark awakens Angel from her sleep just as he makes the transition onto the Bronx River Parkway North. "Angel," he says gently, shaking her awake with the tenderness that Collins might use, "you wanted to wake up ten minutes away, so wake up."

Angel's doe eyes flicker open, and she is immediately focused, performing all sorts of absurd acts such as wrinkling and trimming her skirt, tilting her wig at an obvious angle, and pushing up one sleeve and not the other. Her make-up is a different story altogether; by the time Angel is done applying what must be gallons upon gallons of eye powder and lip something-or-other, Mark wonders if he is looking into the face of the ever-dignified Angel, or slightly trampish Maureen. He says as much, and Angel laughs, then says, "Marky, that's horrible. You dated her."

Mark laughs. "Emphasis on the past tense," he says, and pulls into his parents' driveway. "Here we are," he says, and exits the car, then crosses to the passenger side door to allow Angel to exit. "Welcome to the Cohen Household," he says fake-brightly. "Enjoy your stay."

---

A scarlet fingernail applies pressure to the doorbell, and the shrill beginnings of "Oh Hanukkah" echo in Mark's ears. He groans at his mother's uncreative choice and nudges Angel to explain the melody to her. Angel, however, never finds out what it is that Mark intended to say, because the door is thrown open and a bleached-blond young woman stands on the other side. "Hey, Mark," comes the shrill voice of Cindy Cohen – yes, still Cohen, because out-of-wedlock pregnancy adds up to a woman never changing her last name and making a teenager's final act of rebellion.

"Who are you?" Cindy asks somewhat rudely to Angel, of the impression that the drag queen is entirely female – probably due to the fact that Cindy dressed much like a drag queen when she was younger, and continues to do so occasionally. ("A real role model for her kids once they become teenagers," Mark thinks to himself on the rare occasions when he thinks of Cindy, with a shuddering recollection of his most cruel high school tormenters.)

"Angel," Angel replies in her sweetest voice. "I'm Mark's girlfriend."

Mark's jaw drops, but he conceals it by faking a cough and explaining, "Allergies nine months a year," to Cindy. She accepts his answer, mostly because Mark has had allergies since his birth, and although he ceased demonstrating symptoms upon leaving Brown University (so perhaps the allergies were induced by stress), Cindy has seen Mark on maybe two occasions since, so there is absolutely no chance that she would be able to point out that Mark has not chain-sneezed or rubbed red eyes since the age of twenty.

"Oh, well, you two make an adorable couple," mutters Cindy, who is still bitter about having never been able to marry the father of her children, who claimed at the time that he found it impossible to "submit myself to the fuckery of a Jewish bitch who'll only get worse as time passes."

"Fuckery," a word coined by Mark during his adolescent years and spread like wildfire around his circle of friends, school, and community, was thereby forbidden in the Cohen household. However, with the best of intentions, Angel has never heard of the housewide ban on "fuckery," and though she rarely swears, finds her favorite of all swear words to be, yes, "fuckery." So she turns to Cindy with a warm fake-smile and inquires, "Was there all that traffic fuckery when you were driving here?"

Cindy is shocked. In less than a minute and a half, both Mark and his "date" managed to embarrass her to tears, horrify her, and bring up the memory of a romance past. Before any further damage can be done, Cindy announces that she is going to work on the matzoh ball soup – not a traditional Hanukkah dish but certainly popular with the Cohens – and disappears thereafter.

When high heels make their way down the steps, Mark hurriedly declares that he has to go to the bathroom, thus allowing Angel to meet Mrs. Rachel Cohen without Mark's assistance or interference. When he returns, both young ladies are sitting contentedly at the kitchen table, playing a lovely game of Scrabble that already contains seven swear words (not all of which, Mark suspects, were Angel's doing). When he peers over to glance at the letters on Angel's base, he smiles to see the word "Chanuka," an untraditional spelling of the holiday that, this year, will not be as difficult to endure with his family as during years prior.