Sweet Like Sugar Read Online Free PDF Page B

etched in their memories. They were all paying attention. They would not soon forget this seven-year-old boy standing before them, bravely adjusting my wig even as the tears began to stream down my cheeks.
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    Thursday and Friday the rabbi came as usual, knocking on the door around three in the afternoon, when the heat was at its worst, and heading back to the store about an hour later. Mrs. Goldfarb had apparently recused herself permanently and left any further negotiations to the men.
    Rabbi Zuckerman didn’t disturb me at all anymore. He didn’t make any demands or require any attention from me.
    Plus, while I was working on the Paradise campaign, he became my silent muse, keeping me focused on the biblical themes. I surfed online for Jewish websites that might have more images connected to Bible stories. There were many, of course: some with long religious explanations that quickly grew tedious, some with childish rhymes to tell the simple tales. The pictures ranged from classical paintings to downloadable clip art. I spent hours poring over the Jewish sites while the rabbi lay on my couch. I never found anything as compelling as my own picture book.
    I sat in my dimly lit, comfortably cool office, experimenting with fonts and colors, trying one picture and then another, until I was satisfied that I was onto something.
    Using photos I’d found online—on gay sites, not the Jewish ones—I made three prototype advertisements, each bearing the same tag line at the bottom in a bold sans-serif typeface: Paradise: Found.
    â€œLet There Be Light!” the first ad proclaimed. Two men with impeccable pecs stood on the left side of the page, seen from the waist up; they wore only dark sunglasses, staring up at the sun on the right side of the page. In between, the copy read: “The city’s best nightlife—now available during the day. With the only Sunday afternoon beer blast in town, Washington’s newest bar is the hottest spot in creation.”
    â€œSin Is In” read the second ad, which featured a goateed man holding a red pitchfork and wearing nothing but two small red horns and a tail—shot from the side to hide anything too explicit. “Grab some tail at our red-hot weekly party with DJ Damien, every Friday night,” read the text. “At Washington’s newest bar, the only real sin is going anywhere else.”
    The last one drew directly on my childhood picture book. “Give in to Temptation” it said across the top, in tall red letters. The text read: “Get fresh fruits. With two-for-one appletinis every happy hour, Washington’s newest bar is like heaven on earth.” The image was reminiscent of the Adam and Eve drawing in my book, except in my illustration, doctored heavily with Photoshop, the snake was wrapped around a martini glass rather than a tree, the seated Adam was a gym-buffed stud, and Eve had been replaced by a second gym-buffed Adam, standing in front of the glass and holding a strategically placed Red Delicious apple.
    I was printing out the mock-ups on Friday afternoon when the rabbi got up to leave my office. For a moment I considered showing them to him and explaining how he had inspired me. I quickly regained my senses, though, just in time to see him put his yarmulke back on his head, open my door, and walk outside into the heat.

    I put the mock-ups and a cover letter in a manila envelope and brought them to the bar Friday evening. The bartender told me to slip them under the door of the office in the back.
    Phil was sitting at the bar, fingers wrapped around a gin and tonic; I’d phoned him barely an hour earlier and he said he’d meet me at Paradise “for a quickie.”
    â€œCan’t stay long,” he said as I pulled up a stool. “Dinner plans.”
    â€œWow, that’s more than a whole week with the same guy,” I said.
    â€œNo, this is someone new,” he said, chuckling at himself.