Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Y ou’ll know him when you see him.
Her father’s parting words echoed in her head as she hit the rumble strips leading to the rest area. Slow your ride, Gellman . It wasn’t like she was in a hurry to play Six Degrees of Jewish Geography with one of her dad’s students.
“Former” could mean anyone from eight to eighty years old, for all Leah knew. As head Cantor over the years, he had overseen religious school, Hebrew tutoring, conversion classes, Mussar programs –
A sudden flash of memory struck, causing her to brake hard.
Avi Wolfson, crashing her father’s popular Teen Mussar . Swaggering in and arguing vehemently with him on one point or another. The class had taught soul traits like humility, patience, compassion…all things Avi Wolfson lacked.
She threw the Subaru into park in the middle of the empty lot and grabbed her phone. Only one way to find out. With impatient thumbs, she tapped out painted doors tour dates erie pa into her browser app and waited for the result.
Up popped the official date list, and she breathed a sigh of relief. No Pennsylvania on the itinerary anywhere. After Ohio was Buffalo, New York, and that seemed to be the last date on the tour. She almost laughed out loud. How silly of her. Besides, her dad had called him a mensch.
Kismet hadn’t been one of her planned bathroom stops, but she took advantage, hanging an immediate right into the ladies’ room before taking a look around for her passenger. The place was deserted, the fast food counters still darkened and shuttered.
A lone figure was sprawled on the bench of a corner booth in the otherwise empty food court. Arms tight across his chest, head tilted back.
A head of dark hair. Shoulder length. Artfully messy.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Avi Wolfson was sound asleep. No longer built one dimensional on a billboard out of bright lights. No, this version was 3D, all in black. Not fifteen feet tall, but with legs long enough to prop on the seat on the other side of the booth.
He had a stick of beef jerky in one fist. And… was he wearing socks with sandals?
Leah had watched plenty of hidden camera television growing up. In her head, she could practically hear the narrator, asking What would you do if you came upon a sleeping celebrity at a rest stop? Would you wake him up for an autograph? Ask if he needed help?
A guy like this, in a band like that? He didn’t need help from someone like her.
“Hey. Hi?” She gingerly nudged his sock toe with her boot, but he barely stirred.
Well, maybe he hugged his beef jerky a little tighter.
Surely he traveled with an entourage, maybe even a bodyguard? She took a quick look around, but the only person watching them was the cashier in the empty convenience store, chewing on a Twizzler like she was engrossed in a fascinating movie.
“Avi?”
No response.
Was this a drug overdose? Was he drunk and just passed out? Sleeping in public places seemed risky for anyone, let alone a public figure. He could get mugged — or worse.
Leah took the opportunity to peer closer. It was probably the closest she had ever observed Avigdor Wolfson since the day their school bus driver punished him for goofing off in the back row with his friends and forced him to sit up front next to her gawky sixth-grade self.
Her existence hadn’t registered then and probably still wouldn’t now.
His jawline was a sculptor’s dream, like a wire had cut through smooth clay, just a bare hint of stubble beginning to show. With his head thrown back against the padded headrest, her line of sight could trace down his throat, where the shadowy scruff stopped. His Adam’s apple shifted, his broad chest rose and fell under his plain white T. She knew singing came from the diaphragm, not necessarily the voice box, but it was amazing to observe. What could normally draw the attention of thousands at work, now at rest. If she hovered her hand over his chakra there, would she be able to intuit the energy coming from such a powerful place?
A hand clamped her wrist like a vise before she could find out.
Avi was still in the grips of LiquiDoze. He had been having the strangest dream, too. He had sensed he wasn’t alone, shadow and heat hovering nearby. He’d felt a vague poke at his feet like he was a jellyfish washed up on the shore who’d caught someone’s disgusted curiosity.
Minty breath had hovered closer, forcing him to open his eyes on a beautiful stranger reaching for the chain around his neck…or the Monster Meat stick in his fist. Either way, his caveman instinct had broken through his over-the-counter-drug-induced fugue state.
“No touch,” he growled. “Mine.”
Where the fuck am I?
She yelped, raspy and raw as if she hadn’t used her voice much since waking up. Or like those girls outside his hotel, yelling themselves hoarse.
Another fan, helping themselves to what they thought was theirs.
“Avigdor Meir, you let go of me right now!”
Who was she – and why was she using his middle name like he had broken the rules? She had invaded his space in this…
Rest stop. Bus gone. Pay phone. Kismet.
Cantor.
Cantor Joel had always had a great sense of humor. Had he really sent this girl to rescue Avi in place of himself? She was maybe five-three in those big black boots.
And hot damn , that long brown hair.
It whipped his cheek as she thrashed a get-back stare his way.
This girl with the alabaster skin had walked out of an early aughts Jet video in his head, in black and white. Setting off his nerves like a jangly tambourine, his heart knocking between snare and bass drums right before the catchy guitar intro.
Don’t let her get away.
Dude, let go of her!
His brain was misfiring opposing thoughts as he dropped her wrist like the silver bracelets around it had seared his skin. He never put his hands on the fans.
Although he had a feeling this girl was not a fan. Particularly of him. But she might be his only hope of ever making it to the gig on time.
“Sorry, but…Newton’s Law. You put it in motion.”
Her father’s so-called mensch was hot on her heels as she strode toward the exit. What the hell was he even talking about?
“A body at rest –” Infuriatingly, he moved forward to get, and hold, the heavy door for her. “ – stays at rest. Unless an outside force acts on it. Newton’s First Law of Motion,” he added.
“A body at rest,” she echoed, “ at a rest stop ?” Her cheeks flamed hotter once the cold air hit them. “I wasn’t even sure you were alive.”
She didn’t like this awake, chivalrous side of him, getting all Bill Nye the Science Guy with his justifications. Was she supposed to have just sat beside him and waited patiently for his Royal Highness to wake up from his disco nap?
She had places to be and a list of items to cross off.
Avi walked in front of her, hands jammed into his sweatshirt pockets and shoulders hunched. He turned so the wind was at his back. Perhaps he had been mugged after all. Why he had no coat – or close-toed shoes – were questions she was not going to ask.
Not her circus, and definitely not her monkey.
Yet somehow, this creature had gotten out of his pen, escaped from his keepers at the rock-n-roll zoo, and had called her father.
And now she was in charge of getting him to Erie.
Still walking backward, he snapped his thumb and ring finger, all the while pointing at her. “You’re…the older one.” He squinted. “Lizzie?”
“Nope.”
Hard nope . She was not going to help him beyond the two hundred and thirty-eight miles it took to get rid of him, and then she was going to put another four hundred miles between them. And hopefully another ten years or more before she even had to think of him again. The sooner, the better.
“Bertha’s parked over there.”
He brightened. “So Cantor decided to come after all? I can’t believe he still has that beast! I hope he’s keeping her warm.”
Leah’s steps slowed. It was evident this guy knew nothing of the last ten years of her family dynamics. Starting with her name. And the fact that her father hadn’t been able to drive in quite a while. Yet Avi must’ve clearly been remembering the first incarnation of Bertha, her dad’s 1979 Buick LeSabre.
Much to Lucas’ embarrassment and Lizbet’s horror, their father never once drove a new car off the lot, always content to be about two decades behind the times. Leah never minded the various land boats her father had a fondness for nicknaming ‘Big Bertha.’ Especially that LeSabre and all its associated memories. It had been the mode of transportation to countless dance classes, ball games, ice cream runs, temple youth trips, and visits to congregation members throughout Jacobsdale for various reasons.
It hadn’t occurred to her that Avi Wolfson had been harboring his own memories of it as well.
She beeped the key fob for the Subaru and watched his face fall. “No, this is Bertha 3.0 – we’ve at least made it into the new millennium now.”
“You are one of the Gellman twins, though?”
Avi seemed determined to figure it out before getting in the car. He’d already ruled out Lizbet…and if he was implying she was the twin with the mustache, she was gonna knock him on his ass into that slush-filled pothole.
Or at least not tell him he was about to walk backward right into it.
A yowl and a string of curses emanated from his mouth as the icy water sloshed up to his ankle. Leah immediately felt terrible.
This was not who she was, wishing ill – and hyperthermia – on anybody. Even if that anybody was a larger-than-life somebody like Avi Wolfson.
“I’m Leah.”
His furrowed brow rumpled into a blank look, prompting her to add, “Gellman. The youngest? Not a twin.”
“Not ringing a bell.”
Okay, now she wished a pothole would open up in front of her …or a portal to another dimension where this humiliation didn’t exist.
He hobbled to the car and yanked open the passenger door.
“Why does it smell like the inside of a Five Guys in here?”
The wave of stale latke grease hit her when she got in, too. “I deliver Meals on Wheels some days. And had a few dozen latkes to deliver for a party to a senior complex yesterday.”
Both truths. But worded so it didn’t sound like her entire social life revolved around a 55+ community.
She cranked the key in the ignition, snorting. “And like you’ve eaten at a Five Guys. Hardly kosher.”
“I live on the road two hundred days a year,” Avi informed her, peeling off his sock and wringing it out before closing the car door. Gross. Leah wondered if there was a Law of Motion for pulling a wet sock back onto an equally wet foot. “I do what I have to do.”
Interesting .
“Hey, wait. Your oil light’s on.”
Leah waved his concern away. “Been like that for ages. Must be a light malfunction.”
“Pop the hood, and I’ll check the oil.” He ignored her diagnosis. “When’s the last time you changed it?”
“Within a hundred miles of when the sticker told me to.” Why why why were they still in the parking lot? And why did the sight of Avi Wolfson pulling tissues from the box in the center console make her feel strangely guilty and relieved at the same time? She was not a damsel in distress. “Seriously,” she called after him as he was out the door once more. “Car runs like a champ!”
Through the windshield, she watched him lean in and do all the oil-checking things with care and precision. If the man was touring half the year, whose oil was he changing to keep him so practiced? That feeling of relief glimmered again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have company on the road, someone who knew what they were doing. Although why did that someone have to be Avi Wolfson?
He left the hood up and jogged (in sandals and a sock and a half) back into the building. From her vantage point, she could see him sweet-talking the cashier in the mini-mart about something. Like candy from a baby , she murmured to herself. Out he popped once again, a quart of oil in his hand. And a twisted rope of red licorice in between his teeth.
Unbelievable.
That candy had better keep him for a while since she hadn’t planned for a food stop – or paying for a meal for two – any time soon.
“I just topped ‘er off.” He leaned across the console to check the light as he buckled himself in. “Damn.”
“Told you.”
“So we are just gonna go with the whole Hanukkah miracle thing?”
He was still leaning– did this guy not understand personal space?
“It’s worked okay for two thousand years already,” she grumbled. “Can’t we just move on?”
With an exaggerated inhale, he fell back into his bucket seat. “Your hair smells like –”
“Yes, a stale french fry. I’ve been made aware.”
Says the guy who just brushed his teeth with a Twizzler.
“No, your hair…it’s something…sweet.” The snap of his fingers now was like a lightbulb moment. “We sat next to each other on the middle school bus once, right?”
“Yes. Quit sniffing me.”
“Just trying to place the scent. It’s…like a memory of something.”
Leah avoided looking at him as she accelerated out of the lot. She had a feeling whatever it was, he was determined to figure it out before they hit the next mile marker.
“So, what do you do when you aren’t picking up random guys from rest stops?”
Do not tell the guy with a Grammy and a high school diploma that you are a barista with sixty thousand dollars in student loans.
She rolled her eyes. “You are hardly random, Avigdor.”
“You know I’m in a band now?” He was back to billboard size, fifteen feet of ego in the hundred cubic feet that made up the interior of her dad’s Subaru. “Maybe you’ve heard of us. Painted Doors?”
Do not engage. But the words slipped out anyway.
“Not ringing a bell.”
He laughed, loud and easy, stretching his legs out. “That’s petty, Letty.”
So he did remember her after all. Down to her childhood nickname. Still. She shot him a glare. “Don’t call me that. You barely know me.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh? So we’re strangers now?”
“Practically.” She took the on-ramp a little too fast, the tires squealing slightly. “Technically.”
“Are you always this hostile to strangers?” he shot back, but there was a teasing edge to his voice that only irritated her more.
Leah clenched her teeth, replaying their humiliating encounter at the truck stop—a meet-ugly she’d rather forget.
“Maybe we need a road trip soundtrack.” His gaze fell on her phone. “May I?”
Three and a half hours of Avi Wolfson, all up in my playlists? It felt as intimate as letting him rummage through her underwear drawer. Would he make fun of her girl power songs or all her breakup ballads? Find the regrettable mixes she made as an angry teen that she never deleted?
He would for sure find her total impulse download last night: Painted Door’s latest album.
“Absolutely not.”
She slapped the hand that was hovering a bit too close to her phone for comfort.
“I was going to turn up the heat. If it even works in here.” He leaned in, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Unless you’re hiding something, Leah?”
Talk about turning up the heat.
“Of course not.”
Just say it, Leah. Tell him he ruined everything.