Page 1 of The Hanukkah Hoax
Chapter 1
As far as weapons went, few were more formidable than Marisa Silver’s customer-service smile. Unfortunately, even that had its limits, especially when the guest in front of her opted to employ chemical warfare.
Holy shit. The smell.
Did this guy just?—
Right on cue, the fumes hit her while the corporate dude boxing off her only means of escape slid a third cranberry and brie cheese puff onto his already overflowing dish. The silver-plated serving tray she was holding tipped slightly off kilter before she caught it, narrowly saving her from pitching her ass into the nearby candle display filled with very tall and very real flames.
Marisa teetered back slightly as the bodies around her shifted out of focus. Dark tuxedos and bright taffeta morphed into candy-colored ripples beneath the wellspring of tears that offered whatever meager protection it could to shield her hadn’t-been-20/20-since-2020 vision.
Act cool, Marisa. You’ve had to work through far worse than flatulent banquet guests. Remember the supposed emotional support Pomeranian that peed all over the smoked salmon roses at the Levin Bris?
She cleared her throat, fighting to keep her lip from curling as the sweaty office monkey in too-tight formal wear swiped a clubbed finger through the congealing pool of crimson-tinted grease on his plate. Only one cheese puff remained. The meager vestiges of puffed pastry crumbs dappling his patchy beard were the sole remnants of their fallen brethren.
“Sir, I have some balsamic-marinated mushrooms I’ll be bringing out shortly. They’re quite delicious, if you’d like to save some room.”
Take the fiber, buddy. Eat the goddamn fiber.
The gentleman—in the absolute loosest interpretation of the word—dangled the final cheese puff refugee above his gullet, then dropped it in like a dragon swallowing its prey whole. A single throat bob was all he wrote on the subject before he downed the rest of his champagne, plunked the glass on her very much not empty tray, and waved her off, dismissing both her and her offer of better bowel health.
Well, she had to give him some credit. What the guy lacked in manners and molar usage, he made up for in methane production. On some level, it was probably good to give the cows a break as the sole perpetrators of the planet’s ozone depletion. But did she have to be the one gifted with that kernel of wisdom?
With her luck, of. fucking. course.
Instead of circulating the room as she was supposed to, Marisa took the opportunity to take a wellness break, her self-appointed employee benefit that had yet to be officially sanctioned during a six-hour shift. She ducked behind the canvas privacy partition separating the waitstaff’s entrance from the kitchen into the ballroom. Because God forbid the employees and guests of Mercer, Hoffman, Anders, and Godfrey, Esq., ever learn that the food being served at their annual Christmas party came from an actual kitchen. Just when in the hell did food service become something that needed to be screened off, anyway?
Marisa unloaded her ridiculously opulent tray, tugged at her shirt’s scratchy polyester collar, and tried again to scan the crowd for her target.
If there was one thing she knew to be true, it was that no one—the Big Guy included—labored harder during the holiday season than an interior designer working the corporate Christmas party circuit.
Marisa’s fingers curled around the edge of the screen, which had also been decorated to within an inch of its life. Flocked verdant boughs of evergreens hung in lush bunches over the top of the otherwise cream-colored ballroom-standard partition. Classic white twinkle lights sweetly speckled each cluster of stone pine and balsam fir branches in a subtle elegance that sparkled just enough to impress upon the occasion but not enough to consume one’s gaze.
There was far more available to do that job.
At the center of the room was the grand pooh-bah of Christmas preponderance: a Norway spruce that Marisa had on good authority was sourced by a former head gardener of Rockefeller Center, who just so happened to be a major real estate investor for the venue. Extracted from the cozy and picturesque Berkshires of Massachusetts and carted down to New Jersey like a trussed-up Thanksgiving turkey, the evergreen beauty sat resplendent in tastefully crafted string lights varying in shades of warm and cool daylight. Wrist-wide ivory ribbon hugged the needles’ branches like a silk veil, while wintery pastel orbs crusted with subtly shimmering glitter poked through the barren pockets. Crowning the top of the tree in true regal fashion was a gilded five-pointed star, thick and bulbous in the middle, with long tapered edges that stretched out like a lover’s hand toward different themed catering tables around the room, each abundant in festive culinary offerings.
With the space’s unusual arched ceilings that made way for the chandelier currently dripping its opulence all over the mingling partygoers, Marisa couldn’t help but think of Walt Disney World. The tree, its own form of Cinderella Castle, and each needle point of that golden star urged guests down one spoke or another, promising them all the fanciful joys of the holiday season decked out in different arrays of splendor.
The whole display was a dizzying veneer designed to keep the good cheer flowing while simultaneously patting the titans of the legal industry—and their notable support staff—on the back for another profitable year.
Profitable.
Had there been a word that had consumed Marisa’s thoughts more over the past few years than the very one pulling her lips into an unavoidable pout every time she deigned to utter it, much less wish for it?
“This stollen could moonlight as the bathroom aftermath of what two-thirds of these guests are going to be dealing with twenty-four hours from now. Holy shit, this thing is dense. Good thing I’ve already hit my dental insurance’s deductible for the year. You think they’ll let me off early if I crack a crown on company time?” Eden, Marisa’s best friend and bartender extraordinaire, unpinned her name tag, plopped it into her pants pocket, and got to work wedging her blood-red acrylic pinky nail into the space next to her canine tooth. “Yours is way better, by the way, and before you ask”—she held up her free hand—“yes, I’m on break. Anthony’s covering for me.”
“Good. Because if Mrs. Di Paolo catches you with your hair falling out of your bun one more time, especially around these people, she’s likely to toss you out with the recycling. Here, gimme.”
If being best friends with Eden since they were ten had taught Marisa anything, it was the value of working fast. Before a thought bubble of objection could even be conceived on Eden’s part, Marisa had already yanked the hair tie off Eden’s head, caught up handfuls of the long micro braids, and twisted her wrists with a speed only someone who’d worked in candy making as long as she had could pull off. Soon, every last obsidian strand was wrestled back into place.
“There. Tight and right.” Marisa smiled with no small amount of satisfaction at her handiwork. “And the stuff they serve here isn’t really stollen. It’s pretty much just fruit cake dusted with an embarrassingly small amount of powdered sugar so no one has to worry about getting their gowns messed up. The real stollen is called Dresdner Stollen, and you can’t make it outside of Dresdner, Germany. The EU gave it protected geographical status, and with good reason. So, everything outside of that region is nothing more than a glorified door knocker dressed up to look like something edible.” Then Marisa hung more of her body around the edge of the partition and floated her gaze around the room, looking for a particular anchor that was far heavier than dried-fruit-laden bread. “But thank you,” she acknowledged with a wink. “Mine is pretty damn good.”
“I do love a woman who knows her worth.” Eden smiled, then folded her arms across her chest, her laser gaze aiding in Marisa’s search. “So, you find her yet?”
A wave of aggravation heated Marisa’s cheeks. “No. But she’s got to be here. I heard the chairwoman was a neighbor of one of the partners throwing this shindig. Nothing New Jersey’s upper crust loves more than making sure the people in their immediate vicinity know how shiny they are.”
“You got that right. And this place certainly is shiny.”
