Chapter Twenty-Seven
T he night before the event’s opening Liv spend hours in her office checking guest lists. The team, the board of legislators and other county officials, people from Hollowville and Rivertown, the sisterhood and a few other individuals.
The event schedule started in the evening and the sculpture was supposed to arrive the next morning. Of course she had a meeting with Mayor-Elect Fields-Kramer in the morning, the handing over the keys as it were.
Except she should be there when the sculpture arrived. It would feel wrong if she wasn’t, so she should try to move the meeting.
When she made the suggestion to the mayor-elect, Liv was met with resistance.
“Can’t,” Terry Fields-Kramer said. “I had to somehow create time in my schedule to meet with you now.”
And this time, it was the random buzzer she set but never ended up using that heralded the end of this meeting.
It didn’t bode well.
The meeting had run late even though these meets never do, and the sculpture had presumably already arrived. Artur was there and she trusted him…
But she wanted to be there. She should be there.
Liv couldn’t push the new mayor out of her office fast enough, before she grabbed her coat and ran out the door, not even stopping to look at the clock.
Just outside the window on the bottom floor of town hall, she saw Artur, his back to her. Talking to…someone.
Where was the sculpture?
The person he was speaking to gestured as if he was doing some kind of magic, hands all over the place.
What was going on?
She had to get there. Liv burst out the door and headed toward Artur.
*
Artur was dealing with a problem. He’d gotten Naomi’s email at the party the night before, and he’d quickly dashed off a message, explaining the situation and what he needed from her.
He stared out the window, waiting for the sculpture to arrive, before running down to meet the truck, hoping Naomi would do what he needed her to.
Of course, when the sculpture arrived, the situation was as bad as Emily Gould-Smythe feared.
“It’s in pieces,” the sculptor confirmed.
Not wanting to dwell or wait or create a situation where Liv would find herself here before she spoke to Naomi, “We’ll take care of it from here,” he said.
The sculptor headed off, presumably to get as far from the situation as possible, having already been informed by someone else from the Empires public relations team that the sculpture would be fixed without his involvement or input.
“Where is this going?” the driver asked.
Artur pulled out his phone and read off Jacob’s address. “I’ll meet you there and take you to the garage.”
The driver nodded and got into the truck, pulling away into the winter air.
“Let him fix this quickly. Let this be fixable.”
Having stated his hope aloud, he unlocked his car and was about to get in when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Liv.
The one time in the world he didn’t want to see her, she was there.
Timing, luck, bad miracles and all of that.
But timing was timing and whatever was going to happen was going to happen. Pulling himself together, he looked up at her, hoping she’d understand him. “I have to go take care of something right now. I’ll call you later, okay?”
The woman was too perceptive for her own good, looking up at him as if she could decipher something from the expression on his face. Hopefully she couldn’t manage it.
“You have a problem?” she asked. “Can I help?” Liv’s eyes were wide, inquisitive and gorgeous, and what he really wanted was to tell everybody to go to Hades and bring her back to the office for a private meeting. But he couldn’t.
And he couldn’t tell her why either.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got this under control.”
“You have it under control,” she repeated, in that way of hers that revealed she knew more than he was telling her. “This was something you planned for.”
Finding absolutely nothing wrong with her statement, he nodded. “I plan for pretty much all contingencies,” he said. “It’s my job. Speaking of which, I need to go. I’ll call you later?”
“No,” she said, her entire expression and body language a stop sign.
Applesauce.
Dammit.
“What contingency are you fixing?”
He loved how perceptive she was, loved how brilliant and wonderful she was and yet in that moment he hated it.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, as clearly and as slowly as he could. “Call Naomi, or she’s going to call you. Listen to her.” And then he looked at her, hoping she’d understand. “Please?”
She didn’t nod, just looked at him. “Why?” she asked, her voice daggers. “Why won’t you tell me yourself? What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “Trust me. Please?”
“Like you trusted me enough to keep me aware of a possibility that something could go wrong with this situation? And not just an in the air possibility…a possibility that you planned to be an actual thing?”
For just one moment he held his breath, hoping she’d get it. Hoping that she could decipher what he was saying.
She shook her head, and in her expression, every single hope he’d had winked out like a set of bad electric lights. “I think not.”
And as she headed off, the worst thing was that he couldn’t follow her.
Not only was he prevented by the NDA from explaining the situation, but also and more importantly, he couldn’t wait. He had to get to Jacob’s house before the mess arrived, and make the necessary arrangements so that it would become a sculpture. All of this was on his shoulders, and he couldn’t take the time to go make sure she understood how much she meant to him.
His heart pounded.
She was pissed and he couldn’t explain himself.
He couldn’t tell her.
He needed a miracle.
For her, so that he could explain himself and not lose the woman who was becoming more important to him than breathing.
But also for the town and everybody who’d been waiting for this celebration and deserved so much more than a broken dreidl.
*
Liv didn’t watch Artur’s car as he drove away; she’d turned away, and didn’t look for the familiar blue paint job in the distance. But she didn’t move either; she stood on the corner until she was capable of moving, assured that he was gone.
Her heart started to pound against her chest, and of course, that was when the snow started to fall. Of course.
Miracle of miracles.
Not.
She couldn’t cry. Couldn’t break down. Instead, she called Judith.
Judith answered the phone quickly. “Hi, Liv.”
“Good time? Are you in the middle of something?”
“Where are you?” Judith said. “Why are you calling me now? Is everything okay?”
“No,” Liv said. “Nothing is okay. I want ice cream and some of the soofganiyot the Cupcake Stop is making for the food court at the installation and all the things I shouldn’t have. But I can’t have any of those things.”
“You need to calm down,” Judith said. “Can you come to the building?”
The building, where Asher and the Mitzvah Alliance, aka Artur’s friend Jacob, rented space in the business improvement district. Where they’d met only a few weeks before, planning the party they’d had only days before.
Which would mean walking in front of people, past spaces that were preparing for the evening’s festivities and the beginning of Hanukkah. And the legacy of hers that would fall to pieces, leaving her looking ridiculous in front of new colleagues and old friends.
She couldn’t put on a mask, couldn’t look like everything was fine. Not there.
“No,” she replied. “I don’t.”
Of course, Naomi was beeping on the other line. She was the last person Liv wanted to talk to in the mood she was in. Whether it was petty, painful, upset, Liv couldn’t face the fact that Artur seemed to trust her sister with important information when he didn’t trust her.
Which sounded awful, but that was what the situation was.
“I just…”
“Go get chocolate,” Judith said, the reason she’d called her cousin coming clearly into focus. Her cousin was smart and understood enough about her and the situation to give her advice she couldn’t rationalize herself. “Go take a breather and then call me when you’re sitting down and out of the…snow that’s falling outside my window.”
She ended the call, knowing that if she stayed on the phone any longer, she would get comfortable enough to break down. And that was the one thing she couldn’t do. She followed Judith’s advice and headed toward Stars and Icing. If a gelt latte couldn’t help her this Hanukkah, nothing could.
Because after she swallowed down the mix of caffeine and chocolate, she still had a job to do. People to impress.
A life to lead. A legacy to fix.
She’d break down later, in her bedroom with the door closed.
*
Artur called Jacob from the car. “The mess is on its way, and I’m coming with it.”
“I got this,” his friend said. “You just concentrate on getting here and not wrecking in this weather.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I owe you.”
“Nope. You don’t. Just get here safe.”
Of course, Jacob was waiting outside when he got in, directing him up toward the garage he’d parked his cars in. “Good,” Jacob said. “This way.”
Artur followed his friend through the hallway toward the second garage space.
“This should work, right?”
Artur nodded as Jacob opened the door. Tools were all set up on a workbench. The dreidl, or at least the box containing the pieces of the dreidl, was on the center of the floor.
“This will work.” It had to.
But he didn’t think about alternatives now; he began to pace the length of the workbench as he waited for help to arrive.
“I don’t know who you called,” Jacob said, “but they’ll be here.”
“Don’t know what the roads are like,” Artur said. “Westchester County roads are inconsistent, especially on route nine in Rivertown, and I’m not sure how well Abe drives in snow.”
Because Abe had volunteered to pick Isaac up in Hollowville on the way to Briarwood.
That was friendship, Artur knew.
“You want me to go and get him?”
“Uh…”
“I’ve got a thing in the other garage,” Jacob continued, in a tone that meant he was serious. “So, I could.”
“I’m guessing,” Artur replied with a laugh, “that your thing is large and weird and British?”
“You’d be right,” Jacob said. “And horrifying, if I say myself, but it works in snow.”
Artur shook his head. “No. It’s not just Abe who’s coming,” he clarified. “You probably don’t want to drive Isaac in save-the-day mode.”
“Last time I drove him anywhere was to the latke fry-off,” he replied. “Ixnay on the driving period with him after that.”
Artur shuddered. “That must have been an experience. I only caught the arrival. So.”
“What do you mean by ‘save-the-day mode’?”
Right. Artur hadn’t been this loose with his tongue around Jacob before. Which meant he needed to translate. “Isaac is coming to fix the dreidl and Abe is driving him.”
“That I know. But what about Isaac’s being in some kind of…mode?”
“The longer he seems to mull the idea of fixing the dreidl, the more convinced he becomes that it’s fated and that he can make a miracle out of this whole,” he waved his hand, “fakakta disaster.”
Jacob nodded as the translation did what it was supposed to. Because apparently he was only comprehensible in this box of cool collected ass with a sword for Jacob.
Boxes. He hated being put into boxes. Despised it.
And that was exactly what he did to Liv. He could have taken other ways to make this better, but he didn’t.
He threw his head back, sighed, and hoped he could figure out how to fix things with Liv.