Chapter Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
It was impossible.
But it was there, staring back at her in the mirror. Greg had a large scar running down the center of his back. Her mind drifted back to the night she had made that golem doll, and a hazy recollection appeared. She had dropped the clay figure, cracking its back, and had to return to her studio to patch it.
“What?” Greg asked, confused.
“You have...” she stammered “...a scar on your back.”
“I do?” Greg twisted around, trying to see in the mirror. But the way it sat, right in the center of his back, made it difficult. “That’s weird,” he said, shrugging simply, innocently, totally unaware of the storm now raging in her mind. “I wonder how I got it.”
“You don’t remember?” Faye asked.
Her throat felt parched. Her tongue felt unfamiliar inside her own mouth. Of course he didn’t remember... because he was a goddamn golem . Some supernatural creature, summoned from another realm, walking around in a person suit. It was a story that Faye had heard a thousand times, and that the AI chatbot had promised her never ended well for the creator.
Death. Destruction. The golem would run amok... Punishment for having the audacity to believe that she deserved better. Her mother’s voice. Her misshapen pottery. Her own unlovable self. Men, constantly, leaving her.
That’s what Faye saw in the mirror.
“You know what?” she said, trying to act normal. “Could you maybe wait here for a minute?”
Greg blinked, confused. “What?”
She began to button up her dress, followed by inching backwards towards the door. “Just wait here.” She forced a wide and innocent smile. “I promise, I will be right back.”
She made her way towards the stairs, nearly tripping over Hillel in the process. “And if you don’t mind,” she shouted back at him from the top of the stairs, “could you maybe put your shirt back on, too?”
“You want me to get dressed?” he shouted back.
“Yes, please.” Her voice was saccharine sweet.
It took Greg a moment to answer. “Okay.”
Faye turned on her heel and sprinted down the stairs. Racing onto the street, she bolted towards the front door of Second Glance Treasures.
“Nelly?” Faye said, entering the store. “Are you here?”
No answer.
She tried again. “Nelly, please!” she shouted out from between overstuffed racks of women’s clothing. “It’s important. I need to ask a favor.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Nelly finally appeared from a doorway in the back. “Coming into my place of business screaming your head off. I’m eighty years old. You trying to keep me from making eighty-one?”
“I’m sorry,” Faye said, out of breath. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Well, why are you screaming then?” Nelly said, perturbed. “And why do you look like you were just mauled by a bear?”
“What?” Faye squinted.
Nelly waved towards her dress. Faye glanced down. The top of her dress was buttoned up wrong...leaving her bra, and one of her breasts, significantly exposed. “Oh, Haman’s hat ,” Faye said, and quickly turned around to fix herself before facing Nelly again.
“Looks like you had an interesting afternoon,” Nelly said dryly.
“It’s nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nelly smirked. Faye didn’t have to get into this with Nelly. More important, she was desperate. She needed the old woman’s help.
“Listen,” Faye said quickly, “what are you doing right now?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Nelly balked. “It’s five o’clock. I’m closing up the store and getting ready to go home.”
“I need a favor from you.”
Her whole face wrinkled up around her nose. “What type of favor?”
“I need you to take Greg off my hands for a bit,” Faye said, before clarifying, “Actually, not just for a bit...but most of the night. All night, if possible.”
Nelly’s chin dipped back. “All night?”
“There are some things I need to do.” She spat out the words. “And I just, I just can’t do them if Greg is around. I know it’s a huge ask on you, but if you could maybe babysit him, keep him company, keep him out of my hair, for as long as humanly possible... I would be so appreciative.”
Nelly crossed her arms against her chest, obviously ready to drive a hard bargain.
“Dinner,” Nelly said finally.
“What?”
“The thing is,” Nelly explained, “I’ve been having this hankering for buffalo wings. Buffalo wings without blue cheese dressing. Now, normally, I would go and get these buffalo wings myself. But I suppose, since you’re so desperate and all, I can take Greg along with me...providing you pay.”
“Hot wings?” Faye asked, confused. “I mean, okay.”
“So, you’ll pay for it?”
“I’ll pay,” Faye agreed without a fight. “I’m happy to pay for dinner. And anything else you two want to do tonight.”
“Looks like we have a deal.” Nelly beamed. “When do you want me to take him off your hands?”
“Now,” Faye explained, wasting no time heading back towards the door. “Right now.”
Greg wasn’t sure what was going on. But he did as Faye requested. He put his shirt back on, zipped up his pants, and waited in the bedroom for her. He thought about what had happened—what had almost happened—and the way her face contorted, fearful and confused, when she saw that scar on his back.
He didn’t understand it, her interest followed by her reluctance. If he had done something wrong in the way he was touching her...but he couldn’t help but feel that something had shifted, instantaneously and irrevocably, between them. Because it wasn’t just a scar, he realized, most sadly. It was his past. The person he had been before—the person who would eventually leave her—inscribed on the skin of his back.
Of course she stopped him. He should have stopped it himself. How could he kiss her, be intimate with her, when he still didn’t know who he was? He resigned himself to tell her that, explain how he would never kiss her again, touch her again, give in to these simmering and overwhelming feelings...when Nelly appeared at the top of the stairs, Faye trailing behind her.
“Faye wants me to take you to dinner,” Nelly said.
Greg squinted at them. “Now?”
“Yep.”
Faye wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was holding on to Hillel in a sort of death grip, while he fidgeted and struggled.
Greg glanced towards Faye. “Are you coming with?”
“No.”
Both women answered at the same time.
He got the hint.
Still, heading downstairs, slinking past her, he needed to make sure she was okay. “Everything cool between us then?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said quickly. Too quickly.
It was no use. Greg nodded. She was right to be mad at him. He was mad at himself for giving in to his desire, not thinking about the consequences—not thinking about his promise to Faye, most of all. He had not kept her safe. The least he could do now was respect her wishes. Give her time to heal and process what had happened. Maybe do a Jewitch centering ritual. Leaving Faye behind, he followed Nelly out of Magic Mud Pottery—and towards her car.
“What the hell did you do to the woman?” Nelly spat out the words as soon as the doors closed on her vehicle.
“Nothing.” Greg raised his hands in open surrender. “I swear, Nelly. Nothing.”
She fixed him with a cynical gaze. He grew concerned about feeling the brunt of her wrath. Nelly was super protective of her friends, after all...
Instead, she slapped the steering wheel, totally delighted.
“Well, whatever you did—” Nelly beamed “—it worked.”
“It did?”
“Faye raced into my store begging me to take you off her hands. She even agreed to pay for dinner. How on Earth did you manage it?”
Greg slunk in his seat, not at all pleased with her assessment. “To tell you the truth, Nelly,” he said, “I don’t know what I did wrong. Or right. One minute, she was closing the store, and we were laughing, and talking. Next thing I knew, we were kissing. I started unbuttoning her dress. We made it up to her bedroom, and then—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Nelly said, interrupting him. “You and Faye were going to do the old horizontal hora?”
He had never heard it described that way before. “I guess.”
“Ha!” Nelly laughed. “Well, that makes sense then.”
“What makes sense?”
“Like the old Yiddish proverb, ‘No one sees the hump growing on their own back.’” Greg didn’t completely understand. “Anyway,” Nelly said, nodding towards his feet. “We got bigger anti-Semitic fish to fry tonight. Look under your seat, Baby Bird.”
Greg looked under his seat. Feeling around, he pulled out a bag. “What’s this?”
“Supplies,” Nelly said soberly. “Go on. Open it up.”
He did as instructed. Opening the bag, he found a fake ID, five hundred dollars in cash, and a burner phone.
“You know what to do with that stuff, Baby Bird?”
“Believe it or not, Nelly,” he said, putting the items into his pockets, “I know exactly what to do with them.”
“Excellent,” Nelly replied. “Then here’s how this is gonna work. You’re gonna be on your own for most of it. Take cabs, walk, talk to folks, keep your head down.”
“I can handle that.”
She reached into her pocket, pulling out a slip of paper. On it were the names of three bars, followed by addresses.
“My number is programmed into that phone there,” she continued. “You go to each of these locations. Feel ’em out. Make contact. Use your gut. I’ll be monitoring from my war room if you got any questions, any problems. But the minute you find something we can use as evidence...don’t delay. Text me. Understand?”
Greg nodded. “Perfectly.”
“Good.” Nelly grinned, turning the key in the ignition. “Then let’s go hunt us some Nazis.”
With that, they were off to their first location in their shared quest for truth. And to keep the people they cared about safe. Justice, justice, you shall pursue. The words echoed in his brain, a driving force, his one focused intention, and became his new mantra.
That evening, Faye waited. She stood on the second floor, by the upstairs window, to watch Nelly and Greg driving away from Magic Mud Pottery. She waited for nightfall, for her neighbors to close their shops, turning off the lights and heading for home. For the quiet to come, when the only sound was the humming of streetlamps and Hillel snoring—before finally heading downstairs.
She tiptoed out to her back garden. Falling to her knees, she began to dig. Scooping up mounds of dirt with her bare hands, too anxious to care about ruining her nails or the pajamas she was wearing, she uprooted earth, tearing and clawing, before pulling out the golem doll from his grave. He was covered in mud.
Quickly, she cleaned him up, pulling clumps of mud from those three strings of red emanating from his head. Her mind fought with itself, because it was impossible —casting a spell, performing real magic—but as she wiped away dirt, each word she had forgotten reappeared on his clay skin, bringing with it a thousand new memories.
A hero. Greg had saved her from an anti-Semitic attack.
A reader. Greg had read all her books.
Loves Scrabble. They had just started playing.
On and on, the evidence appeared before her—in the yarn, in the language, in the words she had scribbled on its skin, which now existed. A thing she had wanted so bad—a secret so deep she had kept it locked away inside of her—it had bent the universe to her will.
And then, she turned the doll over.
A cry escaped her lips. Abject horror spread throughout her body. Because there, on his back—in the same exact size and shape as Greg’s scar—was the crack that she had patched.
She threw the doll to the side, not wanting to touch it. Screw that. She barely wanted to look at it. But there was no question in her mind now. No sense of uncertainty. All the evidence she had—all the evidence she needed—was there, splayed out in its lifeless clay body upon the grass.
She had done it. Real magic. The type of magic that mortals were always punished for. The type of magic that humans, but especially women, were never meant to possess. The type of magic that the AI chatbot had told her would destroy her. Until every muscle and fiber of her human being was forced to acknowledge the truth. In the wake of an anti-Semitic attack, over the waning moon of Sukkot, Faiga Kaplan had created a golem.
Or, in her case—Faye couldn’t help but think it—a Gregolem .