Magical Meet Cute

Chapter Two

TWO

“And did you happen to notice anything else unusual?”

Faye returned her gaze to the young police officer now standing in the front entrance of Magic Mud Pottery. “Unusual?” Faye said, trying to recall the precise moment she turned down her block and saw those flyers. “Not that I can remember.”

Her vision drifted back out towards the window, just in time to see another cop car from Woodstock’s finest rolling by her business. She had spent the first two hours after finding those flyers waiting for the police. In that time, she had texted her best friend, Miranda, about what had happened, only to learn from Shulamit that several congregants had also returned home to find their front yards peppered with hate.

Her phone vibrated inside her pocket, causing Faye to jump. Shaking off the surprise, she pulled it out to find a text message waiting from Miranda: They’re holding an emergency meeting at the shul tomorrow to deal with the flyers. 10:00 AM. Can you make it?

Faye didn’t hesitate on a response: I’ll be there.

She returned the phone to her pocket, just in time to see the young officer finishing his note-taking.

“So, what happens next?” Faye asked curiously. “What will you need me to do?”

As a lawyer, she imagined that once the people behind the flyers were caught, she would need to give a deposition. Perhaps even testify in a court of law. Instead, the officer closed his sketch pad and placed it into his front pocket.

“I’m not sure there’s evidence of a crime yet.”

“No evidence of a crime?” Faye was aghast. “It’s hate speech.”

“It’s free speech,” he corrected her, “unfortunately.”

“Well, what about incitement to violence?” Faye shot back. “What about littering?”

“We might be able to get them for littering,” the officer admitted, “but even then, it’s only a misdemeanor. A twenty-five-dollar fine, at most. Probably not even worth the paperwork.”

Goddess give her strength.

Faye was speechless.

Her eyes wandered over to the name tag on his chest. Ashton Collins. Likely not Jewish. Perhaps that was why he didn’t understand. Officer Collins didn’t have generations of intergenerational trauma, comingled with actual life trauma, triggered in his brain. His entire sympathetic system wasn’t now shaking in a stress-induced reaction of flight or fight. Faye took a deep breath and tried to explain.

“Even a littering charge,” she swallowed, “would mean these people don’t get to remain anonymous. It would mean we know who in our community may be a threat to Jews. It would mean that when I open the door to my home, and my business, I know who I’m letting inside. Don’t you think my safety, and the safety of every Jewish person in our community, is worth the paperwork?”

He stared back at her, unblinking.

Clearly, the question was above his pay grade.

“You know what?” Faye said, waving away the entire conversation. “I’ll talk to Eric about it.”

Eric was the chief of police and a close friend. There was no doubt in her mind that he would see the value in pursuing these anti-Semites.

Faye ushered the young officer out before closing and locking the door behind him. With his departure, Magic Mud Pottery retreated into silence. Outside, the only color piercing the darkness was those flyers blowing around in the wind.

Quickly, she reached for her curtains, drawing the blinds closed.

Checking her watch, she realized it was midnight. She knew she should try to get some sleep. She had promised Miranda and Shulamit she would meet them at the shul first thing the next morning. Instead, she found herself straining her ears, listening for creaks and moans in her building, jumping at every sound.

She focused her intention on making herself feel safe.

After checking every door and window three times, she turned on the alarm in her business and made sure her cell phone was charging. She moved all her crystals into a semicircle around the front door—making both a circle for spiritual protection and a booby trap. Until finally, she returned to her bedroom, got into her pajamas, and stared at her bed.

She couldn’t bring herself to get in.

Faye didn’t have many happy memories of her childhood. Her house was chaotic, mainly due to her mother. But as a little girl, there was one respite. Her father.

At night, long past her bedtime, Faye would sneak down to the kitchen, meeting her father for a late-night snack. It was a tradition handed down l’dor v’dor , from generation to generation. She maintained it long after her father had died of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Heading downstairs, she opened the fridge, finding the kosher salami she had spent the last three months aging. Pulling it out, she was pleased to see that it was finally ready to be eaten. The plastic wrapping had gone all crinkly and white. The meat was hard enough to break teeth. It always took all her arm power, and the sharpest of blades, to cut off a piece.

But it was the way her father had always eaten it.

Faye loaded up a plate and took a bite. An explosion of garlic, salt, and fat, paired with the bitterness of stone-ground mustard, erupted in her mouth. It was perfection. It reminded her of a million nights seeking safety.

And yet, she didn’t feel better.

She needed something stronger than salami. She needed magic. She needed drum circles and sacred temple offerings. She needed a coven of Jewitch women, holding hands, chins tilted up to the moon. But it was late, and so she settled on pouring herself a drink.

Faye headed to the coat closet at the front of her store. Opening it, she found the five boxes of kosher wine she had intended to serve for kiddush at her wedding to Stuart. Even though she had plenty of opportunities to drink the wine over the last three years, she could never bring herself to do it. Tonight, however, things felt different.

Stuart wasn’t coming back. It was good wine, worthy of being drunk before turning into vinegar. Plus, it was just sitting there, taking up space in her already cramped building...a constant reminder of all the ways she was unlovable.

What the hell. She tore open the box and, after pulling out a bottle, poured herself an extremely large glass. She drank it all down in three full chugs before refilling again. When the first glorious tingles of a tipsy feeling came over her, an even better idea took hold of her. She was going to make drunk pottery. Grabbing her wine, her glass, and her plate of hard kosher salami, Faye headed to her studio.

Since it was somewhat difficult to eat and sculpt while maneuvering a wheel, she settled on a method of pottery called handcrafting.

It was her favorite way to craft pottery. Ever since she was a small girl, playing with Play-Doh in her kitchen. There was something naturally creative about it. While the wheel, like the etchings and cross-weaving patterns she taught her Magic Mud Mini Warlocks, required a skill set, there was a certain wild and uninhibited freedom that came with sculpting an item by hand.

Gathering her items—clay, X-Acto knives of varying shapes and sizes, water—she sat down at the table. And took another drink of wine. Then, closing her eyes, feeling the clay, holding the weight and heft of it in her hands—trying not think about shvantzes —she let it whisper to her.

It spoke of magic. It told her to go with the flow, allow this to happen, that the universe had her back.

She took another drink.

Pressing her thumbs into the clay, she pinched and pulled on the material to soften it, allowing her mind to wander. To the events of the day and the previous evening. To Stuart. To her father. A wellspring of feeling bubbled up inside of her, pressed against her chest—a flood of anger and love, sadness and hurt. She wanted the world to be better.

She took another drink.

Returning from her thoughts, Faye glanced down at the clay in her hands. Strange. She had thought for certain she was crafting a ring dish. But now, she was surprised to see that it had taken on the shape of a man. Two stubby arms and legs, and one awkwardly shaped oval ball, stared up at her. She was just about to reshape the edges—turn it into yet another ring dish—when a word floated up and stopped her in her tracks.

Golem.

She stared down at the semishaped ball of clay. An energy shifted in her belly. Though she had not meant to craft a clay man this evening, it seemed weirdly fitting. Her fingers stroked his square-shaped body.

Not that she was an expert on golems by any stretch of the imagination, but she knew the basics. Golems were a part of Jewish folklore. They were hulking stone men, created by the rabbis to defend the Jewish community against anti-Semitic attacks. They were heroes for people low on hope...which was all crafting a golem in her studio would be. A form of therapy. A need for catharsis. A physical representation of her most secret desires, in order to heal the much deeper pain she was always carrying.

She gave in to that feeling pressing against her chest... And she wished, from that well of sadness deep within her, that she could find love. True love. Great love. The type of love that made you feel safe, and didn’t abandon you.

The type of love that protected you, too.

She took a drink before returning to her clay man, shaping the ball that would become his head. She worked hard, crafting it into a vehicle for a proper psyche. And while she crafted, her feelings of powerlessness diminished.

She took another drink, then dipped her fingers into her bowl of water, working out his arms and legs. And as she worked, she felt electricity pouring through her body. Waves crashing in an ocean. An entire world taking shape beneath her hands...

She finished that bottle of wine and opened another.

She worked for another two hours, pulling and tugging on his stubs, using a knife to etch out a six-pack, giving him the most commendable-looking shvantz ever...before stumbling over to her craft supplies. She’d had always had a thing for redheads, and so, finding a ball of red yarn, she attached three long strands to the top of his head.

And then, she took another drink. And another. And another. Her clay man began to harden. She analyzed his shape, his form, his perfectly erect penis now pointed her way...and couldn’t help but feel that something was missing.

She could hear the universe calling. Like an old crone was sitting there, right beside her at the table, speaking secrets into her ear. What her clay man was missing were words. Incantations. A spell.

Taking her X-Acto knife, she began etching words into his skin. She wrote down everything she wanted in a man, everything she would expect in her perfect golem— protective, kind, fearless —and then, because she was more than a little buzzed, she leaned into her list. She included all the things she never had with Stuart. A reader. Great with children. Loves Scrabble. Enjoys snowmobiling. She worked frenetically, losing track of time, sweat pouring from her brow, because she could not stop. She would not stop.

As if possessed by some unseen force in the universe, as if she were communicating with the divine feminine itself, she kept building and crafting, electricity coursing through her fingers, energy circulating around the room in wisps and whispers, until every centimeter of her clay man’s skin was covered in a powerful discourse of want and words .

And then, directed by that same unseen force, she closed her eyes. Bringing that golem’s head directly against her forehead, she recited the first six letters of the Hebrew alphabet aloud, three times, as the number three—like seven and nine—was considered especially powerful in Jewitch magic.

“Aleph. Bet. Gimel. Dalet. Hey. Vav,” Faye said.

Truthfully, it was all she remembered from Hebrew school.

Faye took one deep and centering breath in through her nostrils, to the very place where her nefesh , her own soul, had once come to rest, breathing life into her stone effigy, before carefully laying that golem doll back down on her crafting table.

The world seemed to sigh aloud with her in relief. The charge in her belly and throughout the room dissipated. She leaned back in her seat and, blinking with relief, returned from her fugue state. She was soaking wet from sweat. Her back ached from bending over, but her golem was a masterpiece.

Faye washed her hands and, finishing the wine, waited for her clay man to harden.

Strange...the urges that come over a woman in the early hours of morning.

And after two bottles of wine.

Faye threw open the back door to her studio. The yard, with the six-foot wooden fence she had built as a safe space for Hillel and the rose garden against the back, beckoned. It was nearly two in the morning, but Faye didn’t care. She tossed her robe to the ground. And then, because she refused to be afraid, because she wanted to strike back against these feelings of vulnerability, she threw off the lingerie she had been wearing beneath that robe, too.

She was naked, the full moon in the sky above her. Her large breasts swinging proudly over the rolls of her voluptuous belly. Her wide hips swaying along with them. She danced, holding that clay man in one hand, humming some preternatural tune as she weaved her way, recklessly, through the grass.

She gave in to it all. The feeling. The absolute pleasure. The dewy grass tickling the bottom of her feet. The cold breeze of a late September evening caressing her most intimate areas. She had only one fleeting lapse into reality. When she heard a car—or a garbage truck, maybe—rumbling down the street.

But then, she remembered that she had a six-foot fence. And that she lived in Woodstock, a place that brought all manner of characters to settle, and for whom wanton nakedness, even in the middle of the night, wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.

All the rest, however, was less than ideal. The best time to do Jewitch magic was after Havdalah —the ceremony that closed out Shabbat on Saturday night—and before sunrise. Every good Jewitch knew that the daytime light corrupted spells and sent magical beings scurrying. Sprites and anti-Semites, it turned out, had a lot in common this way.

She had also not checked the astrological charts, or created knots to bind the spell to her will and direction. Though it was during the harvest holiday of Sukkot, the moon in the sky was waning, not full. There were a million better times in her Jewitch tradition to cast a spell, but she settled on making do...self-reliance, and all that. Plus, the will was stronger than any tangled thread.

With both hands, she lifted her clay man up to the heavens, an offering...and tripped on the edge of one of her carefully inlaid graphite stepping stones.

Faye landed face-first in the dirt. Her clay man shot forth from her hands.

“No,” Faye cried, and quickly scrambled to save him.

Finding him in the mud, she gently wiped away the dirt from his face. Unnecessary tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She smoothed out the red yarn she had attached to his head. Checked that all her words, and those first six letters of the Hebrew alphabet, were still correctly pressed into his head and belly.

But then, turning her clay man around—horror. Her mouth opened wide, and a guttural expression of pain released from the very depths of her soul. In the fall, her golem had been injured. A large crack now ran up his perfectly crafted back.

Faye ran her finger alongside the fracture—from the top of his perfectly carved ass, all the way to the middle of his left shoulder blade. It made her sad to see her tiny clay hero all sad-looking and broken.

She took him back to her studio and healed the wound with another round of clay...until the break became a raised scar. Finding her balance, she rose to her feet and returned to the backyard. Weaving her way through the grass, trying to be careful not to trip, she came to the row of rosebushes that lined her back fence.

It had been an unseasonably warm summer, and the blooms had come in often, but also late this particular year. The red roses she loved now spread their petals open with full majesty.

She lifted her hand to one of the flowers, feeling its soft petals beneath her fingers, breathing in its fragrant scent...and then, she dropped to her knees and began digging in the dirt with her bare hands. She dug with the ferocity of a wild animal, because she was drunk, and naked, and because when you’re drunk and naked at two in the morning, things like burying a clay man beneath your rosebushes make total sense.

She dug until she went deep enough to find the roots of her rosebush, and felt the first few drops of water seeping through the soil. She grabbed her clay man, placing him gently into the hole. She spread the ground back over his body. And then, when he was safely settled in her womb of earth and mud, she sat back on her knees, taking stock of what she’d done.

She swore that somewhere she heard a lone wolf howling.

But it couldn’t be...

Wolves always traveled in packs.

A moment of sobriety appeared. She looked down at herself, at her fingernails caked in mud, at the mound of dirt disturbed beneath her rosebushes, and laughed. She laughed so loud and hysterically that it quickly became a cackle. But she kept right on laughing, until she nearly broke a rib, and Hillel began barking from the threshold of the back door.

Faye twisted back to Hillel. “Do you hear that?” she said, totally slurring. “That’s the sound of your ancestors calling.”

Hillel seemed unimpressed.

Yes, she was being ridiculous. Sculpting a clay man for protection. Burying him under her rosebushes, and during the waning moon of Sukkot. But being ridiculous, as it turned out, made her feel better.

Faye wobbled to an upright position and, finding her way to her bedroom, finally passed out. Not that she needed a man, or some anthropomorphic creature, to appear out of nowhere and rescue her from her life, crafting her future into something better...but the idea of having her own golem, especially a sexy one , was titillating all the same.

Faye awoke the next morning to her cell phone ringing and a splitting migraine.

“Hold on,” she groaned, blinking her eyes open. “I’m coming.”

Stumbling out of bed, with the absolute worst hangover of her life, she only had a hazy recollection of the events of the previous evening. She recalled not being able to sleep, making a golem doll. She remembered heading outside, the cool air brushing against her— dear God —naked body. She was still naked. But all the rest of the events of the evening were gone. Vanished. Her memory fully dissipating into the haze of what was, most certainly , a wild night.

She longed for death.

And for the phone to stop ringing.

Making her way to the living room, Faye found her cell phone on the coffee table.

“Hello?” she whimpered into the receiver.

Her throat was parched. Her body ached. The sun, streaming through the two windows in her living room, was obnoxiously bright.

“Hey,” Miranda said, her voice chipper. “I was just calling to see where you are?”

“Where am I?” Faye blinked, then glanced over to a clock. It was almost ten o’clock. In the midst of a terrible hangover, she had completely lost track of time.

“Uh.” Miranda was clearly suspicious. “You told me you were coming to the synagogue this morning for the emergency meeting. I was just making sure everything was okay?”

Faye had completely forgotten. “I’m fine.”

“It’s not like you to forget something.”

She needed water. She stumbled back to her bathroom. Finding a cup and filling it at the sink, she chugged back two full glasses. It did little to quench the painful film lingering on her tongue and throat. Almost as quickly as she swallowed, she felt like she was going to throw up.

“You don’t sound fine,” Miranda said, suspiciously.

Faye lifted the toilet seat, just in case. “I overslept. But I’ll be there shortly, okay? Twenty minutes, at most.”

Miranda grumbled. Faye clicked off the phone. The rest happened in a mad dash of trying to get ready.

She knew she was not going to be there in twenty minutes. Honestly, if she made it to Temple Beth Tikvah in forty-five minutes, it would be nothing short of a Sukkot miracle. Still, she did her best to sober up, clean up, and take care of Hillel, who, for once, had done her a solid...by not actually leaving a solid on the floor.

Baruch Hashem and Blessed Be.

Heading to the garage, bypassing the dusty and rarely used vehicle she had purchased upon moving to Woodstock, she found her bicycle. Kicking up the stand, she brought it outside. The sun assaulted her once again. She raised one palm to the level of her eye, shielding her vision. The glare made her head hurt even worse. It was also busier than she’d realized.

The streets teemed with people. Volunteers—people from the community armed with their children and black plastic bags—picked up still circulating flyers. Business owners were working hard to put up signs in their windows. Hate Has No Home Here. We Love Our Jewish Neighbors.

Perhaps even more surprising was now the addition of news vans that dotted their otherwise quiet street. Reporters, armed with their cameras and shift crews, interviewed citizens on the sidewalks. Faye had never seen Woodstock so busy.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice rang out.

Faye twisted to find an older gentleman. Slightly hunched, he was holding a large trash bag in one hand and wearing a fraying flannel shirt paired with a scowl. He kind of reminded her of a troll—some mythical creature, wrinkled and temperamental, who also happened to be blocking her way.

“Your feet,” he said, briskly, before jabbing with one finger towards her legs. “Move!”

Faye glanced down and realized she was standing on a flyer. “Oh,” she said, stepping out of the way. “Of course.”

The man collected the flyer, and took off for the next piece of litter. Her eyes followed the peculiar fellow. Weird. She didn’t recognize him from all her years working downtown in Woodstock, but something about how rude he had been made her feel on edge.

Her cell phone started ringing again.

“Yes, Miranda,” Faye said, picking it up. “I’m coming right now.”

She clicked off her phone and hopped on her bike.

Zigzagging in and out of the crowd, she did her best to avoid the journalists and volunteer street cleaners. The news vans, especially, seemed to have no regard for the laws. It also didn’t help that she was rushing, pedaling at full speed with a splitting headache, and totally hungover.

Faye rounded a corner. The sun brightened. She squinted, her line of vision going dark, before passing yet another news van illegally parked. And then, just as her vision returned, a mirage—a man with stunning red hair flowing down to his shoulders stepped into the street.

She attempted to brake, but it was too late. She and her bike crashed into the handsome stranger before they both went flying.

Faye blinked up at the fluffy clouds lingering in the blue skies above her. For a few breathless seconds, she considered the possibility that she was dead. She wiggled her fingers, her toes...and then, she remembered the man.

“Oh my God.” Faye scrambled to stand up. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even see you.” She knelt down to him, placing her hands upon his chest, a wellspring of panic. “Are you—Oh, oh, oh my.”

She sounded like she was having a damn orgasm.

Faye couldn’t complete her thought. The stranger, blinking up at her with two wet and confused eyes, was magnificent.

He had hair the color of fire burning in a kiln. Eyes that reminded her of the deepest recesses of the forest in winter. She forgot about Stuart completely. She forgot about her hangover, too. The artist in her could feel all the perfectly sculpted lines of his chest, the firmness of his belly...

Though, she recalled from the Krav Maga self-defense class she had taken in college, that could also be from internal bleeding.

“Can you move?” Faye asked, returning her concern to the man. “Or tell me your name?”

His eyes latched onto hers, but otherwise, he said nothing.

She grew concerned. The lack of movement, the blank stare—all of it suggested a much bigger problem. She leaned down closer to him, listening for his heartbeat, trying to see if there was anything erratic happening with his breathing...before realizing she had no idea what she was doing, and that she needed to get him to a hospital.

“Don’t worry,” she said, trying to be a comfort. “I’m calling nine-one-one. Help is on the way.”

She placed one hand on his and used the other to seek out her phone. She was waiting for the dispatcher to pick up when the man sprang to life. Lifting one arm slowly in her direction, he cupped her cheek with his hand. Faye wasn’t sure what he was doing—or why he was doing it—but she ignored the instinct to pull away. She ignored everything, falling into him, giving in to the softness of the creases around those green eyes.

“Ay,” he said, his voice filled with gravel. “You’re beautiful.”

And then, this man—this mystery in the body of a redheaded fire demon—promptly passed out.