Chapter Thirty-Four
THIRTY-FOUR
She was all out of tears.
Faye stepped inside Magic Mud Pottery and breathed a sigh of relief. She was home. After the disaster that had been her night— perhaps, also, her entire life —all she wanted was to disappear back into reality, and a world that was familiar. She couldn’t believe she had ever thought that Greg was a golem. But the accusations Greg had lobbed at her that evening, before she both ran away and nearly killed him with her car, sat inside of her. It’s easier to push someone away than admit you have feelings for them. It’s hard to be vulnerable.
Ignoring the giant turd that Hillel had most surely, and deservedly , left by the threshold, she tossed her bag down on the counter before remembering that her cell phone was completely dead. Pulling it out of her bag, she plugged it into a socket on the wall, waiting for it to charge enough to be able to turn on once again.
“Hillel?” she shouted, peering around the store. “I’m home.”
Hillel didn’t respond. No doubt he was snoozing on the windowsill behind the couch upstairs, waiting for Greg to return. Of course, Greg wasn’t coming back. And it was all her fault. Faye had pushed him away. She moved to comfort herself with a snack.
Opening the door to the fridge, she found a brand-new hard kosher salami waiting. Pulling it out, she gathered up all the necessary items—a bread knife, a cutting board—laying them on the counter to begin slicing off pieces, when someone knocked on the door. Eric was standing outside. Leaving her hard kosher salami, she went to open it up.
“Eric,” she said, confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “Do you mind if I come in for a minute?”
She hesitated. She really wasn’t in the mood for visitors.
“I’m sorry,” Eric said apologetically. “I know it’s late, but I was in the neighborhood. I swear, I won’t be that long.”
She looked down to see his foot, and his chest, were already past the threshold. Not wanting to be rude, she let him come in. Eric put his hands on his hips and glanced around her store curiously.
“Where’s Greg?” he asked casually.
“Gone,” Faye said simply.
Eric arched one eyebrow, surprised. “Gone? Like...forever?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t want to explain it more than that.
Eric was silent for a few beats. “Well, that’s an interesting turn of events.”
She didn’t understand his meaning. “Interesting? How?”
“I just mean... I’m glad to see you’ve finally come to your senses.”
She scoffed. No, she had not come to her senses. If anything, Faye had just survived some sort of psychotic break in a cave. She returned to the counter and her hard kosher salami. “Well, now that you’re here,” Faye said politely, “can I offer you a snack?”
“Actually,” Eric said, stepping closer, “I was thinking I would take you out for dinner.”
“Dinner?” She glanced over to the clock. It was almost midnight. “Now?”
“Or maybe a drink?”
She really didn’t feel like a cocktail, either. “I don’t think so.”
“Please,” he said, coming around the counter.
“Eric,” she repeated, “no.”
He grabbed her by the waist, lifting her up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go out together. Let’s have some fun. I promise, you’ll love every second of—”
“Eric!” She pushed his hands away from her. “I told you already. I don’t feel like going out tonight!”
She came to her feet on the floor, dragging her hands down the clothing he had disturbed. When she looked back at him, his face was a mask. A frozen smile had been plastered across his face. Eric was being weird and weirdly persistent. But it was strange the way the universe could offer clues, hint at trouble, whisper danger—because something about the way Eric was acting felt wrong.
She became aware of the tiniest details. Like the way his feet, and chest, were now angled in her direction, trapping her behind the counter. Or his smile—she had never noticed it before, but it lifted all the way up to his eyes, like it was fake. And then, her gaze drifted down the length of his form, to his clothing. He was wearing all black. Black pants. Black shoes. Black shirt.
On instinct, her feet inched back. Her fingers reached towards the phone.
“Actually,” she said, thinking quickly, “I’d love to go out for a drink.”
“Really?”
She twisted back to her phone, turning it on. “Let me just grab my stuff and powder my nose...”
Eric beamed, but still had her cornered. “Come on, now. You don’t need to change anything. You look perfect...just the way you are.”
“Oh, Eric.” She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “You are always such a boon to my self-esteem.”
Thankfully, the phone powered back on. The rest came in a flurry of messages, but the first one—from Greg—was the only one she needed. I didn’t have time to tell you. Chief Eric Myers is the head of The Paper Boys. He is planning something for Magic Mud Pottery tonight. Run if you see him. Do not engage. Do not call the police. Help is on the way.
Her hands froze. Her heartbeat sped up as her breathing slowed. Her eyes shifted back to Eric. The man was still blocking her path. And she knew she was in danger. Real danger. She didn’t know what he was planning, why he had come to her store dressed all in black, but her body began edging into tremors as her mind went into overdrive, searching for an escape.
“You okay, Faye?” Eric asked softly.
“Fine,” she said.
“You seem...nervous.” He glanced down towards the phone. “No one is bothering you, right?”
Quickly she moved to click off the phone. It was too late. He grabbed it instead.
Staring down at the message, he tsked his teeth three times, before a long pause drifted through the room. Faye scanned her space for something to defend herself with. She had a backpack. She had mason jars full of herbs and tea. She had a hard kosher salami and a bread knife. She tried to grab the knife...but Eric pulled it back and tossed it down the hall.
Their eyes met, and her lower lip trembled, because this was Eric. Her friend. The chief of police in Woodstock. A man she had dated. Perseus, wearing a cap of invisibility, coming to her home with the intent to do her harm. Perhaps, like convincing herself that Greg was a golem, she had never been good at seeing people for who they really were.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked him directly.
“The plan?” he said curiously.
“You get me out of my store, my business...” Her eyes drifted down his clothing. “And then what? You kill me? Take me somewhere, do Goddess knows what... Will my friends even find the body?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Faye.”
“You’re a goddamn Nazi, Eric!”
“It’s not personal,” he said, taking one step closer. “Truth be told, I always liked you. Despite my feelings about you people, you were always...one of the good ones.”
“You people?”
“I know it won’t bring you any comfort, all things considered,” he said, “but it was never supposed to get this far. A few flyers. Some graffiti. Make our position known. Stake our claim back in Woodstock, continue to recruit and grow. But then...you had to go and change your window. I warned you. I told you to take it down, but you didn’t listen.”
The picture in her mind grew clearer. “So, what? You were trying to get me out of Magic Mud Pottery, because you were planning to attack my store again?”
“Technically,” he admitted. “We were going to burn it down. I was going to take you out tonight, we were going to have a good time, and then we would come back, Magic Mud Pottery burnt to a crisp. Of course, all the evidence would point to Greg, the homeless vagrant you were stupid enough to let live in your house...”
“You were going to frame him?”
“ Frame is such a strong word,” he mused thoughtfully. “I much prefer thinking of it as helping justice along.”
Faye couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She scoffed, thinking back to Greg. “Justice... You don’t know the meaning of that word.”
“Maybe not,” Eric admitted, inhaling long and hard, trying to take all the air in the room with him. “But unfortunately, the plans changed. As it turned out,” he said, lifting her phone in the air as evidence, “a large redheaded elephant got in the way of things. Apparently, he was pretending to be one of us, trying to infiltrate my little family, my little cell. And now, I have no choice but to keep my family safe.”
He began texting something into her phone.
“What are you doing?” Faye asked.
“I’m telling Greg to come back to Magic Mud Pottery.”
“Why?”
Eric didn’t answer her.
Faye swallowed. She knew that Greg was in the hospital, but obviously the news hadn’t yet reached Eric. She wasn’t sure if Greg would get the message. The last time she had seen him, he was still unconscious. She thought back to the text message. Help is on the way. She just needed to keep him talking. Or—she glanced towards the door—she could try to escape.
She was still debating her options, watching Eric text a message into her phone, when she heard the pitter-patter of tiny paws coming down the stairs. Hillel had awoken. After tapping his way into the kitchen, he took a place directly behind Eric’s ankles, where he waited to get a snack.
Eric glanced down. “Hey there, Hillel.”
He picked the hairless creature up.
“Eric.” Faye stopped him.
He looked up at her with one eye.
“Don’t touch my dog.”
Everything moved in slow motion. All those instincts she had learned throughout her life, all that need for survival, kicked into high gear, and she made a choice. A word laid down on this Scrabble board of her life, because Faye was going to fight. She tightened her grip around the meat, and with all the strength inside that she could muster, whacked Eric directly in the head. He wasn’t expecting the blow.
The dog dropped from his hands, landing like a cat on all four paws.
“Ow,” Eric said, clutching the side of his face. “Goddamn it, Faye!”
She whacked him again...and again...and again...four times in total, all while Hillel circled around the man’s feet and began yapping. Eric fell to the ground on one knee, giving Faye just enough time to jump over him. She was halfway through the foyer, her escape only several feet away, when Eric returned to life.
Grabbing her by the hair, he yanked her back, pulling her neck and her body in his direction. She whacked him with the salami again.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Will you stop doing that!”
She hit him again, and again, and he grabbed her by the waist, attempting to incapacitate her by pulling her down to the ground. Instead, instinct kicked in. Recalling those Krav Maga lessons she had taken in college, she reached for his testicles, twisting and pulling them down as hard she could muster.
He screamed out painfully before releasing her once again.
She was moving on sheer adrenaline now, making her way for the exit. Eric stood up and, lumbering like some scary anti-Semitic monster after her, almost caught her at the door. Instead, Hillel jumped into action. The dog she had always been certain hated her...jumped in to protect her.
Hillel weaved between Eric’s feet, barking loudly. Eric tried to swipe him away, but the creature was too agile for him. Instead, Eric tripped. Falling forward, face-first, he landed straight in a stinky mound of Hillel’s excrement.
Faye exploded through the front door, only glancing back long enough to see Eric, groaning in the threshold, mucky poop covering his ears, eyes, and mouth. She had just made her way to the street, Hillel trailing closely behind her...when she ran straight into Miranda, Shulamit, and Nelly.
“Faye,” Miranda said, catching her. “What is it? What happened?”
“Chief Eric Myers,” Faye cried out. “He tried to...he wanted to hurt me!”
“Oh my Gawd!” Shully said, throwing her arms around her. “Faye!”
“Wait here, ladies,” Nelly said, sidestepping all of them. “I was made for this moment!”
Faye was beginning to explain what had happened when sirens sounded in the distance. The words she had been saying caught inside her throat. Seeing her friends, seeing the arrival of dozens of federal agents, she knew she was safe. The universe had showed up for her.
Also, her dog.
Faye bent down to pick up Hillel and nuzzled her nose into the crook of his hairless, acne-ridden neck. “You are the best boy,” she said, over and over. “You can poop all over my floors...anytime you want, okay? I love you. I love you so much, Hillel.”
“Um, guys.” Shulamit grimaced, interrupting them. “I’m not really sure what’s going on here, but you might want to look through the front window of Magic Mud Pottery.”
Faye twisted back towards her store and found a sight most magical, indeed. Eric was still splayed out on the ground, covered in dog excrement. But now, Nelly was standing over him, gleefully electrocuting him with her stun baton whenever he had the audacity to attempt moving or rising up.
“Take that, you Nazi,” Nelly whooped and hollered, and with another thrust and zap, cackled wildly into the night.