Jon
JON COULDN’T STAY in the “renovated” apartment. Not at all. His skin crawled, his heart was beating too quickly. The only alternative was that he had to go. So he headed downstairs, bags in hand. His hands were shaking too much to drive, so he needed a taxi.
The elevator came quickly after he’d stabbed the button, and Rocky looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“What’s wrong Mr. Adelman?”
“I need a cab. And it’s Jon.”
Mercifully, Rocky was good at sniffing out cabs, that or able to call one at a moment’s notice. Either way, it was a huge relief when the bright yellow cab came up to the front door.
“Where are you going?” the driver asked.
`”Brooklyn. St. Marks between Franklin and Classon,” he answered almost reflexively. Then he closed his eyes and sat back in the cab, letting the rhythm of the city put him to sleep. Or at least tried. Because he couldn’t shut off his brain. He was upset, annoyed, out of his own head. So he looked through the window, watching the cars, listening to the noise.
He hoped his sister was home, on one of her few days off. He needed family. And as the cab drove through the traffic filled streets of the city, he realized how desperately he needed it. It didn’t matter that the Brooklyn Bridge was so clogged that it reminded him of a parking lot. All he cared about was that his sister was going to be on the other end.
Finally, they pulled over in front of his sister’s apartment building. He paid the driver, tipping him extra, knowing how much of a pain it had been to drive through horrible traffic created by the two boroughs at rush hour. And then he got out of the car, closed the door, and headed to the building.
“You up there?” he asked as he pressed on his sister’s buzzer.
“Yep.”
The buzzer rang into the darkness, the door opened easily, and the elevator waited. His sister opened her door quickly and wasted no time in dragging him inside.
The surprised expression on her face shocked him more than the annoyed/impatient one he’d expected. “What the hell?” he said.
“What the heck are you doing here now?”
The answer wasn’t an easy one, so he chose an easy question. “You have bourbon?”
He knew his sister all too well and was absolutely certain that she couldn’t exist without a few different varieties of bourbon in her liquor cabinet; if he was being honest with himself, it was part of the reason he came to her instead of anybody else. So he expected her to roll her eyes. “Obviously,” she replied, boredom in her voice. But then she focused on him, widened her eyes and stared. “What’s it to you?”
Wanting some bourbon from his sister’s stash was different from knowing it existed. And when he felt like his world was falling apart, asking for some was difficult. But bourbon was soothing, especially when he was drinking it and spending some quality time with her. So he took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair and looked straight at her. “I would like some.”
His sister sighed, staring at him. He wondered if she could tell his heart was breaking.
“Yep. I’ll give you the good stuff. But you have to tell me what happened.”
OVER TWO GLASSES of strong Kentucky bourbon and some freshly made pecan pie, Jon poured out his story. He finished, and sat back against Naomi’s couch.
“You asshole,” Naomi said, rolling her eyes. “You unbelievable asshole. “
“She—”
“Surprised you?”
“Invaded my privacy.”
“You can’t invade privacy that you didn’t have, Jonny boy. She didn’t steal anything you didn’t give her. She took care of something that was on your to-do list. Did you even look at the place?”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t.”
She put her glass down and ruffled his hair under her fingers. “You stay here tonight, you go away tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Tomorrow.”
“So you go away tomorrow, go back to your apartment and then see it. Then you decide what you need to do. Okay?”
“But she—”
“No. This is a professional woman, not an idiot. You need to see whether she actually stole your privacy or she listened to you.”
And deep down, with the help of the bourbon and the pie, he could admit to himself that his sister was right.
Molly
MOLLY WOULD ADMIT that she was a wreck. Her clients were well-mannered and didn’t mention if they noticed her eyes were a bit redder than they should have been, or if there were tracks of tears along her face or moments where her voice was raspy when it otherwise should have been clear.
She was able to dodge her phone calls. She managed to hide in her apartment until Friday, when Uncle Abe’s booming voice came out of the ancient answering machine she refused to replace.
“Molleleh,” he said. “I need to see you tonight. You come to me and I will make you some good Shabbos dinner.”
She couldn’t refuse a voice like that, not ever, not him. Especially now that she’d taken the time to bring him back into her life again. So she pulled herself together, threw some makeup over the tear tracks, and headed downstairs.
Rocky was on duty in the lobby, and she waved to him.
He smiled at her. “You look beautiful tonight, Miss Baker-Stein. Where are you going?”
Where was she going? Then she remembered; an address that would never change, one that remained fixed in her memory. “To Queens,” she replied. “I need—”
Rocky shook his head, as if he found the idea of a taxi absurd “I’ll call my friend—he has a car. Better, more comfortable than a taxi for tonight. He’ll give you a card, you call him and he’ll pick you up when you’re ready to come back, okay?”
She nodded, but then she saw the sad smile on Rocky’s face. The ever perceptive doorman probably saw beneath her horrible patch job of foundation. “Okay.”
She got into the town car when it arrived, and after she told the driver her destination, relaxed. There was something about the craziness of New York on a Friday night that made her feel at home. Everybody was going places, and tonight so was she.
When she arrived at Uncle Abe’s building, she took the driver’s card, paid, and got out of the car.
“I’m here,” she said after pressing the buzzer.
“Come on up,” Uncle Abe said, his booming voice carrying across the night.
When she got upstairs, the smell of fresh challah overwhelmed her.
“Come, come,” Uncle Abe said as he opened the door. And then he hugged her. “Oy, Molleleh. You are a sight for these sore eyes.”
She sniffed. “Thanks,” she said. “Your invitation came at the perfect time.”
He laughed, a booming laugh that split the room in a way that filled her heart. “Invitation? You don’t need an invitation, my little Molly.” He kissed her forehead. “We will have Shabbos, then we will have dinner, and then you will tell me why you are so upset, kapesh?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
ONCE HER STOMACH was full of challah and kugel and brisket (!!!!) and all of the wonderful things that Uncle Abe had spent hours making, she sat with a cup of coffee and spilled the whole story. She was surprised she managed to make it through the whole thing without sobbing.
“Bah,” Uncle Abe said. “He doesn’t understand your gift, he doesn’t get you.”
And then she lost it. She lost it all over his shirt, sobbing like she was a little girl all over again, crying on her father’s lap. She sniffed and hugged him. “I just . . . he . . . I wish . . .”
The words tried to come, and she tried to explain, but she only had the capacity for tears.
“There, there, Molleleh. It’s okay, Shhh.”
Her uncle let her cry for hours, it seemed, not really doing anything but patting her head, letting his fingers run down her back.
“The only good thing he did, Molleleh,” he said after a while, “was he brought you back to me. That was it. He doesn’t deserve you.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You deserve a prince, Molleleh. You do. You deserve someone who loves you with everything he has and doesn’t let go. Who understands when you give them something more precious than life.”
“But,” she managed, trying not to start crying all over again, “he trusted me, and I—”
“You gave him something he needed, and he was too blind to see it.” He smiled. “If that boy is smart, he’ll realize how stupid he was. The question is what you’re going to do when he tries to get you back.”