Fred Burton snorted. “Generation-gap nonsense. What the girl needs is discipline and a dose of reality”
Yeruchum Freed had no problem staying occupied on the seven-hour coast-to-coast flight to San Francisco. He kept his eyes firmly on the pages of his small Gemara, ignoring the narishkeit on the movie screen at the front of the plane. Fred Burton, though, was restless. He’d brought a galley of a novel that was being prepared for print, read a few pages, and put it down. He fumbled with his seatbelt, scanned the headlines of the New York Times without much interest, tried watching the movie flickering on the screen, wondered why the airline had picked such a turkey to show its passengers. He ordered a small bottle of whiskey from the stewardess and guzzled it down in less than a minute, picked up the galley again, put it down in disgust.
Finally, after hours of frustrated inaction, he gave his seatmate a slight nudge.
“Rabbi Freed?”
Yeruchum took a swift glance out of his sefer. Thankfully, the screen had gone dark, and he turned his attention to Mr. Burton.
“How are you doing, Mr. Burton?”
“Call me Fred. And I’ll tell you how I’m doing. Lousy.”
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