Chapter Three
T he traffic on route nine between Rivertown and Briarwood on Monday morning wasn’t awful, which meant that by nine thirty, Artur was standing in front of the mayor’s door.
It felt…odd. Not like any other assignment he’d done before, not even the moment where he’d offhandedly offered a solution at the inaugural Rivertown latke fry-off a few years before. And that wasn’t even an actual assignment.
Nor was his advice taken seriously then. He hoped it would be now.
The door opened with a creaking noise, revealing…
Her.
Mayor Olivia Nachman.
None of the photos he saw during the hours of research he’d spent the weekend doing came close to demonstrating how captivating she was.
She was gorgeous.
Tall, bright eyes, thick gorgeous hair he wanted to run his fingers through…
But she was his contact, the woman in charge of the situation he’d been sent to fix. She was the one he had to make happy so that his actual bosses were happy.
Which meant he had to keep his interactions with her 100,000 percent professional. And completely forget about the fact he knew what it felt like to have her weight against him.
Because of course she was the woman whose scent had run up his nose and distracted him most of the rest of Sunday.
“Good morning,” he managed.
“Come in, sit down,” she said, beckoning him into the office behind her, moving folders and files off a chair in front of her desk.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much for making time for me this morning.”
“I didn’t do very much,” she said with a laugh that made his insides gooey. “But what I will tell you is that there’s a town meeting happening in the next few days, and you’re expected to be there.”
“Of course,” he said as she dropped a folder full of paper on his lap. More reading material. Right. “I intend to be there. What kind of questions do you need me to address?”
“All of them,” she said. “Every single one of them. They’re coming from people who had a dream, an idea and a hope that the team you’re representing crashed quite publicly.”
“Right,” he said. “An idea very reminiscent of something someone saw on a HeartPix movie.”
“Yep. And unfortunately for you,” she said with a grin, “our story begins at the crisis point of that movie. A Hanukkah celebration turned to shambles because someone didn’t understand what the holiday was or needed, for that matter.”
Interesting.
Olivia Nachman seemed to have a sense of humor. Better and better, and yet so horribly worse all at the same time. “So you expect me to…present like I’m a developer who’s trying to convince the town that they’ll supply the funds to make the town festival better than it’s been in a long time?”
“Right now,” she said, “you’re the understudy for the corporation who made big promises and ended up giving the town residents less than nothing to celebrate.”
Getting a larger picture of the situation and the way Olivia Nachman’s mind worked was an asset he was going to use as best he could. Humor, but this was serious. “So,” he suggested. “I’m going to be a punching bag or sitting on a bench, waiting to be dropped into a dunk tank.”
“Either, both,” she replied in a nonchalant manner that did not suggest she was holding back laughter. “But I’d hope nobody brings tomatoes to this meeting.”
It was his turn to act like there was no laughter in his arsenal. “No flying fruit. Got it. And no transparent linen shirts either.”
There was a bit of a pause between his reply and hers, and he wondered if she was going to get the reference to the famous scene in a literary adaptation.
“Especially considering in this town, sculptures of you would be made in a less…well, comfortable substance than marble,” she said.
“Less permanent I’m thinking, right?” He paused, ran a hand through his hair. Reference nailed. “Is there anybody you think I need to talk to in advance of the meeting? Any central heavy hitters who you think need to be spoken to first?”
“You mean any business owners whose feet you haven’t stepped on already?”
“Uh…”
Which meant he was sitting and trying to figure out what had gone so, so wrong, before he found himself remembering Paul Levitan’s prophetic words.
He was in trouble.
*
Instead of the gorgeous fixer who had walked into her office, the man who she was trying to forget she’d bumped into on Sunday, Liv was now facing a man who had forgotten how to speak. Against all odds, she waited for him to fill it with some…platitude or something.
Nothing.
Which meant she had to take up the agenda. “It seems you don’t know the first thing about Briarwood. Your Sunday travels ring a bell?”
He put his palms out in what seemed to be a gesture of surrender, if not apology, before clasping one hand in the other. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he’d been suddenly reminded of what he’d done. “I tried to do some advance scouting to make the most of my time, and yours, frankly, but it seems I made a mess of things. My apologies.”
Ten points for earnestness, but zero for anything else. Which wasn’t enough, especially for someone who had to come in and clean a pretty big mess.
He needed to be aware of his surroundings and learn quickly . Because this event, this proposal, needed to be successful, without the second individual the Empires had sent having to hold her hand the entire time. “Were you born in a barn or an industrial complex?”
“Excuse me?”
The wording of the question was out of left field, but the subject matter wasn’t. She needed to jolt this man into reality and fast. “What kind of city-slick fixer are you that you can’t understand the implications of the fact that you’re being called in to fix a mess that offended a lot of people?”
He blinked. “My job is to keep things from getting worse.”
“And you thought that randomly wandering into a bunch of places without an introduction, and asking about Hanukkah, was the first step toward making a horrible situation better? As opposed to what you actually did, which was to ruffle a few feathers?”
He didn’t have an answer.
Of course he didn’t. “I’ll repeat myself. What kind city-slick fixer are you?”
“Most important parts of my youth were spent in Rivertown.”
She couldn’t keep her mouth closed even if she’d wanted to. Of all the answers he could have given her, that one was the most shocking, if not surprising. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “’Fraid not. Bar Mitzvah at Rivertown Hebrew, went to Rivertown High, all of that lovely stuff.”
There were no words. None. Anything she wanted to say or could have crashed against each other, spilling random noises and letters just around her tongue. “I just…I don’t…”
“Say it,” he said with a smile. “Go ahead.”
As if she needed his permission.
But for whatever reason, his statement shoved her phrases together, allowing her to find coherence in the space. “You’re from three towns over and you’re a fixer who can’t figure out the mistake of walking into a town and poking a bruise?”
“Only HeartPix movies forget that small towns like Briarwood and Rivertown aren’t cut from the same cloth.”
And now the man who had an answer for everything was back, which was a good thing despite the fact that the response she wanted to give to this phrase was sharp and unprofessional. Instead, she shoved the stampeding letters back down her throat and went with the question that acted like a dagger. “What?!”
“To them,” he began, presumably including her in the group he was separating out, “I mean writers of HeartPix movies and people who wish to see them as real.”
“Okay?”
“To those people,” he said, “small towns are all the same. But growing up in this area, we know that Briarwood isn’t Hollowville or Rivertown or even Crystal Springs. They’re all small towns in arm’s distance of the big city, which is also not evil.”
Aside from having answers for everything, he had words that blew way past any topic she was thinking about discussing. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He blinked, as if she’d taken him by surprise. “Not for nothing,” he finally said, “but you live in Briarwood. You can’t assume that the lessons you learn during your misspent youth in one Westchester town are going to help you understand another three towns over. For all that I knew, I’d run into a town gossip absolutely and utterly willing to tell a stranger about the debacle that was the initial Hanukkah presentation.”
Which, after she thought about it for a bit, did make sense. She’d ask him about the misspent youth part later. “Fine,” she said. “You’re a local bumbler who should know better.”
“So, what kind of meeting am I being dropped into?”
Back to the meeting, of course. “A special session where you get to listen to the residents tell you what’s wrong, and the questions they have will be the sum total of that agenda.”
“Right,” he said. “Okay. So after yesterday, heck during the depths of this conversation, it’s even more obvious that I’m going to need introductions to people, especially the ones whose toes Flaire stepped on the most in the process of creating this festival. And the toes I inadvertently stepped on further by trying to get more information.”
“It’s not a festival,” she said, knowing that it wasn’t the answer to the question he wanted, but something she needed to make clear from the very beginning. “This is not Hollowville. We don’t have festivals here. We’re Briarwood. This is an opening, an installation, showing the beauty of art in Briarwood at Hanukkah time.”
“Noted.”
“So,” she continued, driving the conversation back to his question. “You need introductions from me before you to confront them all at the meeting.”
“I’m not confronting anybody,” he said.
His tone sounded as if he’d been offended by the concept of confrontation. Which was interesting to her. “Really?”
He nodded. “I’m not going in with my sword drawn. I’m prepared to be marinara.”
She blinked; it was all she could manage because she was almost blindsided by his language. Not what he meant , but what he said.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding tired. “If they bring tomatoes, I’m prepared to be hit.”
Which is what she figured; did he sound tired because he was done explaining? So she gave him something. “Falling on a sword instead of going on the attack?”
It was his turn to blink. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Better use of my time and the town’s. Why defend something I know is wrong? Again. Making things better, not worse.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense.”
He smiled, and she wasn’t sure why she liked that smile so much. “I’m glad.”
“If I tell you I’ll help you,” she ventured. “What’s your plan? With the added idea that my schedule is busy as I’m newly juggling two positions.”
“Newly juggling,” he said. “I take it you won an election?”
She nodded. “I’m a member of the County Board of Legislators starting in January.”
“Congratulations,” he said, sounding genuine.
“Thank you,” she replied. “So. Anyway, idea? Time crunch?”
“Nothing too drastic,” he said, the smile blinding her. “Walk around town, visit the game shop, get a knish or something. See what the climate is like.”
“With the added benefit of a public appearance that acts like my endorsement of your mission.”
He nodded. “That’s the goal.”
Of course it was. It was her job after all. And yet all the same, she knew she was going to be stuck. “Prepared to get a latte bath?”
He laughed and for some reason, that laugh unlocked something inside of her glow. “As long as I’m not covered in spoiled milk, I don’t mind.”
She didn’t expect him to get covered in spoiled milk, but as she led him into the hallway, she hoped that she wouldn’t be stuck in something she couldn’t get herself out of.
*
Artur would never stop being astounded at how quickly and completely the mood of a town could change. Small towns were sometimes insular, but sometimes braced against both internal and external forces. Towns like Briarwood, Hollowville and Rivertown, as far as he knew, were towns that were open and accepting. He’d seen it himself in Rivertown.
Now, here he was, watching the chrysalis of Briarwood he’d seen on Sunday turn into the butterfly he knew it could be. All it took was the insertion of one Mayor Livvy Nachman into the equation.
It was beautiful.
This was the Briarwood he needed to learn about, not the one that only the few people who knew his bona fides from outside of Briarwood were willing to share with him the day before.
The mayor stood next to him; her eyes focused. He had to think quickly because she was busy, and he didn’t want to lose her attention. “Talk to me about Briarwood.”
“So,” Mayor Nachman…Liv…replied, “Briarwood has your basic Hudson Valley town structure.”
Subtext: just like Rivertown and Hollowville.
“But the Briarwood business improvement district has influenced a bunch of new businesses to set up shop here in Briarwood in the last few years,” she continued. “Which means a few new faces have joined the familiar ones. And there has also been an influx of people willing and interested in supporting Briarwood and its businesses.”
Which was nice, and probably followed the same pattern Rockliffe Manor had, if he had to guess, considering who now lived here part of the time. However, Artur didn’t want a tourist guide, or a discussion about some of the people he suspected were behind the influx of the town’s cash. Instead, he wanted her invested in what he was doing, and hearing her talk about Briarwood’s future made him think. He wanted to hear more of it. “Do you have a vision?”
He wasn’t sure whether she expected him to ask that question, but all the same she took a while to answer it.
“I did,” she finally said, gesturing widely as if her hands could hold the whole town. “This is better than I expected after five years, except of course, for the problem the Hanukkah event became.”
He smiled. “That’s what I’m here to fix. That aside, talk to me about your favorite parts of Briarwood. What’s your biggest victory?”
Once again, there was a long pause. “I think if you consider all the things that have happened over the last few years,” the mayor continued as if she’d accepted his answer, if not his presence, “I’d say our biggest victory is that Briarwood houses the first branch of Greenblatt’s Knish Shop that’s opened outside of Manhattan, ever.”
Which was impressive. He’d visited the store the day before and he’d had tons of thoughts about its origins and how they’d managed it.
None of which were for public consumption.
But he had to keep it cool. “Greenblatt’s does bring both good history cred and even better foodie cred to Briarwood.”
She nodded. “Yeah. It does.”
And there it was. The smile on her face, the brightness in her eyes; he could sit in that moment of pure unadulterated joy with her forever. He was, in fact, a sucker for people who were ridiculously proud of things they’d done.
But he wasn’t there to enjoy moments; he was there to work. “Is there anything else you want?”
“Before I leave office, you mean?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I want an event that goes off without a hitch. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll make sure it happens,” he said. “I promise.”
He only hoped that he could manage it…without causing more damage than had already been done.
*
Not everybody was Jerry McManus, Liv reminded herself.
But as she told her sister, her life was different because of Jerry. And not just for her, for the people of Briarwood as well. Because Jerry McManus’s behavior had turned her life into a fishbowl.
Even as she did something as notable as stand on the sidewalk in front of town hall with Artur, so many people stopped what they were doing in order to…look at her; there was at least one collision at the center of Main Street. There were also at least three ‘sorrys’ and…at least two people who had to be dragged away from the scene.
But there was one underlying truth: she was cold. She could chalk it up to poor planning, where her fall sweater was not exactly warm enough for the time when fall fought winter’s arrival. She could also chalk it up to the fact that she hadn’t expected to be out here this long with him. Which meant she had to do something.
“Okay,” she said as she shoved her hands into the pockets of the sweater, wishing she’d at least brought her gloves with her. “Let’s take a walk.”
He nodded, following her onto the street, letting her lead the way but standing on the outside.
Like a gentleman.
And if she hadn’t seen the stares or the sorrys as they were in front of town hall, the stares they got as they were walking through Briarwood would have made her angrier than she was.
But she was with him, in the middle of town. And the residents of Briarwood weren’t sure what to make of that. Of course, if she really thought about it, she wasn’t either.
But all the same, whether out of political obligation or duty, she had to say something. “They’re harmless.”
Artur stopped walking, and she wondered what he was thinking. “You’re the mayor,” he finally said. “Walking with me through a town that didn’t want to acknowledge my existence yesterday.”
Which was only partly true.
But as they continued their walk through town, she felt an energy in the air. She felt it most as they walked through the town public gardens. “These are maintained by a bunch of different gardening clubs and other organizations,” she said, once again electing to be professional in the face of unprofessional things.
“I can see they put a lot of work into this.”
The rhododendrons and pines, evergreens and maples, the leaves that decorated the temple sukkah and the boughs that went to at least three churches for wreath making.
She smiled. “They did,” she said. “I wasn’t here at the original planting, but I see the maintenance schedule.”
If she could put a finger on it, she’d say that the energy of the town felt brand new when she was with him. Not just because she was seeing it through his eyes. Being with him reminded her of the town’s history because he might ask questions in his quest to understand.
“Do you know where the sculpture is going to go?”
Shifting gears was easy. Liv had a master’s in it, and so she nodded. Despite everything that had happened, the one central thing that started the conversation between Briarwood and the Empires had stayed the same: the large custom sculpture that was being made of the sticks the Empires were supplying. But that wasn’t all; the sticks had been used by the players through their recent championship run, including the stick used by Briarwood High School Alumnus Tyler Cohen, to score the decisive goal in the final game.
The sculpture, and the sticks, were the reason why Artur Rabinovitch was standing there, right in front of her.
She stopped thinking about trails and ties and all of the things and took his hand. Liv reminded herself she was taking this hand for business purposes, knowing it was easier to make sure he was following her, and more efficient than saying ‘come this way.’
But all the same, she had to brace herself for the impact of his expression. The half confusion, half surprise as his fingers slowly intertwined in hers.
And the warmth of his fingers.
“Come on,” she said. Because she had to say it anyway.
“Hold on,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow, and as she watched him grip the sides of his jacket, she shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Cold’s never been my problem,” he said.
“Still don’t need your jacket, though I appreciate the offer.”
He nodded, and she desperately wanted to take the jacket, but she wasn’t going to wear his jacket on a walk through town. So, she tried to ignore how warm he was, how warm his fingers were when he held her hand again. Because otherwise her resolve would fold like a piece of origami paper wielded by an expert.
Finally, they made it through to the center of the square. “Here,” she said, “for anybody who wants to see it.”
He nodded, looked in the direction she’d been pointing, then let her hand go.
Immediately, without pausing, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweater, knowing it wouldn’t compensate for the loss of the warmth in his hands.
Focus on something else, she scolded herself.
Of course, her traitorous eyes followed Artur himself, as he walked determinedly around the place where she’d envisioned the sculpture being.
When he returned, he met her eyes and she was absolutely not surprised when he offered her his jacket again, holding it out on long fingers. “Not cold,” he said. “You look like an icicle, and it’s not professional of me to permit that.”
This time, she was powerless to resist. “I’m taking it for professional reasons,” she said. “And I accept your offer with a provision to provide you with some kind of warm drink when it’s professionally convenient.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, those eyes twinkling.
She was going to delve into fool territory if she didn’t watch herself.
“Speaking of warm drinks,” he continued, taking her hand back as if it was nothing, her fingers seeking the warmth of his. “Does the town have an outdoor café during the summer?”
That was a memory. And that was a question she could answer. “We do. Last summer, we got all the businesses together and did an outdoor event in the middle of the square. It’s not something we do regularly because the town isn’t built for that, but we’ve been known to do it on special occasions, three-day weekends, holidays.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” he said, “so I don’t know the temperature of the village residents, but what about some kind of outdoor gathering space around the dreidl?”
“I like that,” she said, walking toward the perimeter of the square. “We’d keep about five chess tables but make the dreidl and the square the center of everything.”
“This way you can move the festivities away from the synagogue.”
“An added benefit I hadn’t thought of,” she said, grinning. The wheels were turning in her head, and she couldn’t wait to put everything into fruition. “We can also set up a temporary stage and a covering.”
“Community space down below,” he said. “For community members, community businesses. No outside, not yet. But community businesses and maybe some hot chocolate and…”
“Yes,” she said, running along with the visions, whether it was his, hers, or both of theirs. “This is where you sell the hot chocolate; this is where someone brings latkes and handmade gelt. This is where the sweet bimuelos, soofganiyot by the dozen, and the rest of the traditional foods show up. Getting goose bumps.”
He smiled. “To get to this stage, what do we have to do?”
“Survive Thursday’s meeting.”
“And hope nobody brings a guillotine.”
She snickered. “No. I don’t think it’s going to be that bad. Maybe a Hebrew dictionary.”
“I could absolutely see that happening. But don’t worry,” he said, displaying his free hand and putting one finger over the other as if he’d braided them. “Hebrew and I are like that.”
“Glad to hear,” she said. “But yeah. Thursday.”
“And you’re in the office tomorrow?”
She nodded. “I’ve got a pretty packed schedule for the next two days including one of the transition meetings.”
“Teaching the new mayor?”
She nodded. “Yes. That’s the meeting I have for most of Wednesday. Updating the new mayor on everything and teaching them how Briarwood works—or has for the past five years.”
He looked at her, and she wasn’t sure what he saw in her expression. “Are you ready to leave Briarwood behind?”
“I’m ready to leave the village politics behind, and I’m ready to try and serve my community on a larger scale, but I’m not leaving Briarwood. I still live here.”
He didn’t answer immediately, but she saw the thoughts play across his face. “Which is why all of this is important?”
“One of the reasons,” she said. “I wanted… I want to leave something behind. I want to celebrate here, in Briarwood, one more time before my focus is taken elsewhere.”
He nodded, but he didn’t respond immediately. But she could see the flames that made his eyes glow with something she couldn’t identify. But when he spoke, it was quiet.
“We’ll do this,” he said, as if fixing what had been broken was a foregone conclusion, and nothing and nobody would keep him from bringing her vision of community to Briarwood one last time. And for the first time since Artur walked into her office on Monday morning, Liv believed it.
She’d be happier, however, if she could extricate her hand from his.
And if she could give back his jacket.