Chapter 39
39
“Say hello to GoGo-RoRo’s whole fucking audience,” screams the coatroom guy, who is not actually a coatroom guy.
He’s pointing the cell phone at all of us, scanning the room with the phone’s camera as he clutches it awkwardly in his left hand. The phone is in a shiny silver case with glittery sequins. It’s Rosie’s phone, I realize.
He’s broadcasting live from her TikTok account.
Whatever is about to happen, he wants people to see it. He’s here to make some sort of statement—or worse. My blood turns to ice in my veins. Rosie is trembling, forced to cower and weep in front of her own beloved audience.
This can’t be happening.
“Oh my God, no,” Ana whispers. “No, no, no...”
“Who is he?” I whisper back, subtly trying to fish my phone from my pocket, wondering if you can text 911. “He was in the coatroom, he took my coat, but he—”
“Streaming live from the bullshit ‘wedding’ of your favorite fitness bitch,” barks the sociopath with the gun. “Oh, what’s the matter, RoRo? Surprised? Nah, come on. She shouldn’t be surprised! Y’all know I warned her. I told all of you, didn’t I? And now you’re all going to see what happens when—Fuck, did I just lose signal...?”
“It’s Alt-Might-Oh-Seven,” Ana says, her voice thinned by dread. “That’s gotta be him, but I never thought...”
“Who?” I ask, terror clawing at my throat, barely letting the word escape.
“I don’t... I don’t really know,” she says. “He’s...this troll, obsessed with Rosie... She always told me it was no big deal. She takes a lot of shit online. But I kept flagging his posts because they were freaking me out—I even tried to get a restraining order, but we didn’t know his real name, and of course the platform assholes never got back to us, so we couldn’t get it handled that way but...but I never actually thought—Oh, Jesus...”
Why isn’t anyone calling 911? I wonder, looking around the room with growing panic. Why isn’t anyone filming him, why isn’t anyone—
But then my eyes land on the lacy basket, where dozens of phones are uselessly piled atop one another. I see several other guests eyeing the basket, too. Wondering if they should make a grab for it. It’s risky, though, because it’s positioned near Rosie.
Then the gunman, too, notices the basket, and screams at the top of his lungs.
“Anyone I see with a phone gets shot!”
Everyone freezes.
Swallowing hard, I click my phone off and pocket it. I stare at the gunman, whose face is contorted with purple rage. Veins bulge from his ropy neck. I look around wildly, because if ever I needed a protector, now is the moment.
Where’s my golem? I wonder, my mind screaming for some sort of solution. Did he run off after hurting Ethan, who wasn’t even an actual threat? Now that we really, truly need him, where the hell is he?
The armed ponytailed man swings the phone and the gun around the room, making people gasp and duck.
“I’m the only one with a goddamn phone right now, you hear me? I’m the only one with a goddamn phone, and I’m in charge!” He looks down at his phone once more, and smiles a wolfish smile at the small screen. “Hello, audience, we’re live again. Sorry, sorry, are you only here for GoGo-RoRo? Don’t worry, don’t worry, the flower herself is right here. Come on, Rosie, say hello to your fans.”
He points the camera at Rosie again. She sobs harder.
“Oh, now you’re sad?” The mock pity in his voice makes me feel sick. “Well, a lot of us were sad when you decided to step away from your fitness videos and ‘inspo’ and start putting up all your dyke-kike bullshit instead. You went from health and fitness to something fucking sick. That’s what’s sad. Am I right?”
He’s vacillating wildly between addressing Rosie and addressing the phone screen. I pray that thousands of people really are watching this live stream, and that at least one of them will figure out how to send help our way. If he figured out where the wedding is, other people must have, too, right? Rosie had shown images of the camp more than once.
But they won’t get here soon enough , I think, feeling sick. Even the 911 dispatcher said it would take half an hour for an ambulance to arrive.
“Oh my God,” whispers my mother.
“I told her to stop with the wedding streams,” Ana whispers, hoarse, stiff, and still but unable to stop the words tumbling from her mouth. “That even if she didn’t mention the camp’s name it would be way too easy to find out where we’d be, but I never in a million years thought he’d... Jesus Christ, we have to stop him, we have to...”
“See, Rosie? I told you. I TOLD YOU,” shrieks the man, who’s barely more than a kid. I’d seen his acne up close, and can now see the youthful awkwardness of his movements. He can’t be more than twenty-two, twenty-three.
The thought adds to my terror. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s never felt the weight of consequences, doesn’t know how permanent death would be. He’s just some desperate kid whose misguided beliefs might get someone killed.
“It’s not like I didn’t warn you, and warn you, and warn you ,” he spits at Rosie, waving the gun at her in a way that makes the whole room flinch. “I messaged you. I tagged you. I even called your synagogue last week.”
“Oh God,” my mother whispers again, like these are the only words she has anymore. “Oh my God, oh my God ...”
“Just say the word bomb and everyone freaks out,” he says, shaking his head, like he’s amazed at how easy it is to terrorize people. “But there’s just no getting through to you.”
“Please,” says Rosie. “Please, stop, you don’t have to do this—”
“Oh, I sure as hell have to do this,” snaps her stalker. “You didn’t leave me any other choice, Rosie. I gave you every chance. I gave you every fucking chance. But you just ignored me. Blocked me. That kike-dyke lawyer you’re pretending to marry threatened to get a restraining order on me? Bullshit. Bull. Shit. Does she think I didn’t see her comments, too? I saw everything. Everything. And if she ever tries to come after me, I swear I’ll—”
But the screaming stalker never gets to finish his threat, because there’s a huge crash from the side of the building. Every head in the room swivels toward the sound.
The golem had evidently entered the room holding an armful of metal, dropping it to the ground with a massive clatter. Now, moving faster than humanly possible, he hurls himself at the gunman, knocking him to the ground. The gunman doesn’t even have time to react before he’s pinned to the floor by my avenging angel.
Rosie bolts toward us, not stopping until she’s in Ana’s arms. My mother and I take a defensive position in front of the brides, eyes on the golem and the gunman, waiting to see what will happen.
From somewhere nearby, I dimly hear people digging through the lacy basket, securing cell phones and calling the police. I stand there, my back to my sister and her wife, hands balled into fists, breath coming in short gasps. The threat has been taken down before anyone was seriously hurt. For one long moment, I’m so grateful to the golem for saving us all that I forget that not everyone has made it through the wedding unharmed.
Then I remember Ethan, alone and injured in the bathroom.
Shit.
Do I stay here, do I go back to Ethan, do I check on the golem?
What do I do?
Before I can reach a decision, a commotion at the other end of the room catches my attention. Paul Mudd, still clutching Rosie’s alt-right stalker, is getting up from the floor. There’s a collective gasp as the golem slowly rises.
The fedora has been knocked from his head, and even from across the room I can clearly see the Hebrew letters emblazoned on his brow. They almost seem to glow, like they’re written in angry fire. He has one hand around the white supremacist’s neck; in the other, he holds the gun. He crushes the weapon with his bare hand, then throws it to the ground. He tightens his grip on the gunman’s throat.
“Please,” wheezes the attacker. His face is purpling, eyes bulging. He can’t catch a breath, and barely manages to croak out his plea. “Please...”
“Stop!”
A new voice cuts through the chaos. For the third time that night, everyone’s attention is hijacked by an unexpected arrival. This time, it’s not a gunman, or a golem.
It’s Sasha, and she’s pissed.