Of Jews and Gentiles: Chapter 35
Elsa Steiner blinked once, almost in surprise, at the words of the man she knew as Anthony Dinallo, remembering his reaction to her suggesting that they look at the rings last time he was there. Still, she was there to sell jewelry, so she put such thoughts aside and gave him a wide grin. "Congratulations!" she said, as brightly as she could manage.
He chuckled uneasily. "Well, I wouldn't say congratulations are in order yet. I haven't exactly asked anything."
"Well, in my experience, very few men who ask get turned down."
"How do you figure?"
She gave a shrug. "We don't get many returns on engagement rings," she said simply. Her words were met with a smile and uneasy chuckle.
"Yeah, I guess that would be a good indication."
"The diamond rings are over here," she said, guiding him toward a large section near the back of the store, a fact he remembered distinctly from the last time he was there, just because of the visceral reaction that they had caused.
This part was planned out: DiNozzo would study the rings, ask to see a number of them, before deciding that none were really what he was looking for. He had fairly specific ideas in mind, he would say, and these weren't really it; maybe he'd have more luck elsewhere? Hopefully, Elsa would be as good of a salesperson as her records seemed to indicate, at which point she would mention that her father makes custom-designed rings. Then, with any luck, it would be time to meet Saul Steiner, and things would go from there.
"Our platinum solitaires are the most popular these days," Elsa began as DiNozzo stared down into the rows of rings, feeling as lost as he was pretending to be. He shook his head slowly.
"I don't think so," he said. "I've only ever seen Ziva wearing gold jewelry."
"Yellow gold or white gold?"
He blinked at the question, giving her what must be the familiar expression of a man who thought 'gold' meant 'yellow gold'. "Yellow," he finally said. She nodded slightly.
"We don't sell as many of these as we used to," she said, pulling a display of yellow gold solitaires from the display case and setting them on the counter. "Have you given much thought to size?"
"Oh," he said. "I really don't know what her ring size would be."
Elsa smiled politely. "I meant the size of the diamond."
"Oh!" he replied before giving her an embarrassed smile. "Nothing too big." His eyes widened slightly with the realization of how that sounded. "Not that she doesn't deserve something bigger, or I can't afford it—"
"It's more about what the woman would want to wear than what the man can afford," Elsa interrupted. DiNozzo grinned.
"Exactly."
"Well, we have these two here," she said, pointing out two rings. "This one is three-quarters of a carat, and this one is a tiny bit over one carat."
He pretended to study both for several minutes before shaking his head. "They're both nice," he said finally, "but not really what I was thinking. With any luck, she'll have this for the rest of her life. I want it to be just right. Maybe somewhere else—"
"Actually, Mr. Dinallo, my father opened this store as a custom jewelry store almost sixty years ago," Elsa interrupted. "He still does custom orders. You can pick out your stone and the setting yourself. That way, you can be sure to get exactly what you're looking for."
"Really?" DiNozzo asked, brightening. "That sounds perfect."
Elsa gave him another smile/grimace. "I believe my father is back in his workshop right now. If you don't mind waiting here for a moment, I'll ask if it's okay if I send you right back." She returned the pillow of rings to the glass display counter and locked it before walking through a well-concealed door in the back of the store.
She returned a minute later with what he supposed was an encouraging smile. "He said that now is a good time," she informed him. "Come around this way and I'll led you back."
Saul Steiner was wearing almost comically-thick jeweler's glasses as he was sitting at a workbench, a small tray of loose diamonds in front of him. He didn't rise to greet DiNozzo, but wasn't being rude; the wheelchair he sat in was a pretty good indication that he couldn't.
Still, the octogenarian offered a withered yet steady hand to the younger man, who shook it confidently. "Welcome to my workshop, Mr. Dinallo," Steiner rasped. "Please, have a seat. Let's talk." As DiNozzo sat, he removed his jeweler's glasses and replaced them with a pair of bifocals that seemed almost as thick. "So I understand you're in the market for an engagement ring."
"That's right," DiNozzo replied with a nod. "And I understand you're the one to help me."
Steiner guffawed a few times at that. "I like to think so," he replied. "Have you given this much thought?"
"The ring, or getting married?" DiNozzo joked, earning him another round of laughter that left the old man slightly breathless.
"Ah, I hope your future wife appreciates a good sense of humor," he managed after he caught his breath.
"She tolerates it. I think that's as much as I can ask for."
Steiner smiled, his eyes appearing far away. "My wife, Tali, rest her soul, I think was the same way. She used to tell me that she wished she married someone half as funny as I thought I was."
"Tali?" DiNozzo asked, surprised.
"Well, that is what I called her. It's short for Talitha. A good Hebrew name." He frowned slightly. "Is there something wrong with that?"
"No, not at all," DiNozzo said quickly. "It's just, my girlfriend, Ziva, she had a sister named Tali. I've never heard it anywhere else, that's all."
"Ah," Steiner replied. He studied the younger man for a few seconds. "You said she had a sister?"
"She died when she was sixteen. Hamas suicide bomber." He paused, then added, probably unnecessarily, "Ziva's from Israel."
Steiner tsked lightly as he shook his head. "My brother Ephraim, he tried to convince me to join him in Israel—of course, it was still Palestine then—after we left Germany, but I told him my place was in America, and two hours after I stepped off the boat, with only the shirt on my back and the name of a dead jeweler I apprenticed with as a reference, I walked into a jewelry store looking for a job and was greeted by the owner's daughter. Three months later, we were married." He smiled at the memory and leaned back in his wheelchair.
"Tali," DiNozzo said with a smile. Steiner nodded.
"She was also the one who told me that her father's business was failing, and instead of working for him, I should open my own store. Well, I did that, and sure enough, my father-in-law's store went out of business." He leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. "I offered him a job, but the poor schmuck had too much pride to ever consider working for me." He guffawed again before waving a hand dismissively. "But enough about that. You did not come here to hear an old man's stories about a time before you were born. You came about a ring. Let us get started." He slid the tray of loose diamonds he had been studying over to DiNozzo. "These just came last week from Belgium. They have been independently marked and appraised. If I were in the business of selling rouge diamonds, I would have retired to Palm Springs with a woman half my age years ago." He chuckled at his own joke. "Now, if your lady is from Israel, she knows diamonds, so I am only going to show you the very best that we have. If you do not find anything to your liking here, I have a few others I can show you."
DiNozzo stared down into the tray, looking as lost as he felt. "I don't know what I'm looking for," he admitted. Steiner chuckled again.
"Most people don't," he said conspiratorially. "Let's start with size. Despite what the ladies claim, size really does matter." He gave DiNozzo a large wink before using his tweezers to pluck one from the tray. "This is two carats."
"That's a bit large," DiNozzo said, shaking his head. "Ziva doesn't wear anything big and flashy. She's an officer in the IDF, so I want to get her something she could wear even when she's in uniform."
"Ah, okay," Steiner replied, replacing the diamond before glancing up sharply at DiNozzo, pointing at him with the tweezers. "I believe I have seen your Ziva. At the synagogue a few blocks away from here, no? Pretty young thing, dark curly hair?"
"That would be her," DiNozzo confirmed with a grin.
"You are a lucky one, then, Mr. Dinallo. When I saw her a few weeks ago, I turned to my friend Bertie and asked who that gorgeous krasavitse was, and he told me I'd have to be fifty years younger to handle a woman like that." He chuckled before grabbing another gem with his tweezers. "This one, I believe, is one point one carats. This is more of what you are looking for, no?"
"That seems about right," DiNozzo nodded, studying the diamond at the end of Steiner's tweezers and trying to picture it in a ring. When he did that, he found himself picturing it on Ziva's hand, and had to struggled to suppress the urge to shake his head free of the image.
"That is what I figured," Steiner agreed, still examining it. "Now, are you familiar with the grading of color and flaws of a diamond?"
"Slightly," DiNozzo replied. Ziva had given him a lesson in it as they were studying Steiner's records. The old man nodded.
"This one is a G. It isn't quite colorless. It has a bit of a yellowish glint to it, which you have to be in the right light to see."
"I think I want something completely colorless," DiNozzo replied. To his surprise, Steiner shook his head slightly.
"As much as I want to help you take the most expensive stone out of my store, I am going to spare your wallet for a minute to talk about settings. Now, if you want yellow gold, even the most colorless diamond is going to reflect the color from the setting and give it a slight yellowish tint. You can save yourself a few thousand dollars if you go with a G or maybe even as high as an I." He wagged a finger at DiNozzo and shook his head slightly. "Heaven help me, I must be getting soft in my old age, but I like you, young man, and you made me laugh, which is why I am helping you out here."
"And I appreciate it," DiNozzo joked. "As does my wallet." And my director. "Yes, I was thinking about a yellow gold setting."
"That is what I assumed, having seen your lovely lady. Not many women these days seem to like yellow gold engagement rings—everyone wants the white gold or the platinum, but your Ziva looked like a very classy type of woman, the kind of woman who wears real gold jewelry. So, are you going to be getting married in Israel?"
DiNozzo blinked at the non-sequitur before shaking his head slightly. "We haven't talked about it. Well, to be perfectly honest, we haven't talked about anything vaguely resembling marriage yet."
"Ah," Steiner said with understanding. "So you are preparing for the inevitable."
DiNozzo flinched slightly at the word 'inevitable', but Steiner didn't seem to notice. "Something like that," he said with a chuckle. "I think I need to figure out if I'm going to convert before we can make decisions about where we would be married."
"Ah, you are not Jewish then?" Steiner asked with sudden interest. DiNozzo shook his head.
"I'm not much of anything," he admitted, which was true. He vaguely remembered his mother saying something about baptizing him when he was a baby, but with the exception of a few Christmas Eve and Easter masses, he didn't have much of a connection with the Catholic church. "Ziva and I are involved in an adult education class that the Grossmans teach."
"Ah, yes," Steiner said, a trace of sadness in his voice. "My great-niece, Lena—Tali's brother's granddaughter—she was rather seriously dating a Gentile a couple of years ago. They were involved in that class. He was trying to convert so they could get married." He shook his head sadly. "I was going to design her engagement ring, too. It was to be an exquisite piece, one of my best, but Scott—Lena's boyfriend—died of poisoning of all things before it was complete." He clucked his tongue and shook his head again. "Such a shame, such a shame. But that's not important now," he said, brightening again. "Back to your ring for your beautiful lady."