Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
H is Aunt Miri had once told him, when someone who has passed away visits you in a dream, don’t expect them to speak. If they do, you are just having a dream. If they don’t, it’s a visitation.
Avi dreamed of walking with Miri through Sataf forest, near Jerusalem.
No talking.
She smiled, and he heard it all in a rush.
In his ears, in his own head, in his voice.
Let go of this anger toward your father. Let go of the guilt about your mother. Let go of the fear of the unknown, because the known can be so much scarier.
Sylvie. The song. Even the band, if it comes to that.
It’s okay to let go…
Avi burst to the surface, drawing in cool, sharp breath and letting it out in a ragged rush. His gasp woke up Leah beside him. She was snuggled against his chest, her damp hair now in wild curls as his fingers tangled through it.
He reached for Leah, but she was sliding out of his grasp, out of the bed.
“Oh my God. No alarm. We overslept!” Her fingers were frantic on her phone. “My phone died.”
The bedside digital clock read 3:18.
His stomach lurched. His idea of a little detour this morning, now a huge problem. They were still two hours away from Manhattan as the crow flies.
Crows didn’t have to deal with Friday traffic, bridges or parking. Or getting dressed and making beds and resetting burglar alarms.
“Go, go, go!” She shooed him up so she could smooth the bedding as he yanked on those teen jeans they had been laughing about earlier and his new T. He balled up the pants and hoodie he had been wearing, wishing he could just burn them out back. Leah grabbed them out of his hands and stashed them into her crossbody bag. He raced down the stairs with her on his heels, hitting light switches as he went.
They shoved feet into shoes and grabbed coats. “Let me drive,” he said, as he armed the door and put the house key back where he’d found it. Leah handed over Bertha’s keys without a word.
“We’ll be okay,” he repeated, like a mantra.
But when he turned on the car, fresh panic zipped through him. How on earth was it already 3:47? He tried not to glance down at Bertha’s dashboard every ten seconds, with her precarious oil light and clock telling him they had less than fifteen minutes of slack on either side of their two-hour commute to make the ship’s six o’clock launch.
Being left behind by the tour bus had been bad enough. He refused to be “diesel-spotted” in the middle of New York Harbor.
Leah was counting on him.
Sylvie was waiting to talk to him.
And Jay was going to murder him.
It’s not like his friend could hold up the boat and three hundred people on board just because Avi was getting laid.
Things had gotten way more complicated than a lift to Erie. But his brain couldn’t even mull that over now as he rocketed down Route 17 toward the Palisades Parkway.
“Do you need me to set the GPS?”
“Not yet, I know the way.”
Next to him, for the first time in the trip, Leah was miles away.
Leah knew the way too; because it was the route she had carefully mapped out in advance. Tuesday night, while her midnight batch of rugelach had been cooling, she’d memorized the directions. Nervous for so many unknowns on her trip, but confident in knowing that at least the path there was a given.
As her father would say, man plans and God laughs .
She plugged her dead phone in. Texts rose to the surface like bubbles.
Jasmine
WTF where are you?
Please tell me you are about to board the boat.
And don’t have a crisis of confidence – your art is good, people will want this!
Don’t throw it all away because of some guy.
Are you even serious about this anymore?!?!
She didn’t know which to answer first.
4:36 pm. If Avi had set his alarm for sundown, it was currently going off somewhere.
He hoped it was on the boat. And that someone would silence it.
He couldn’t imagine how many texts, missed calls, and voicemails were waiting for him. Including that text waiting from Sylvie. That night on the bus felt as far away as Vegas now did. So did his fight with Paul, and the snowy rest area.
But nothing felt farther away than Pier 83.
Traffic had been moving at a good clip, but he knew the closer they were to the Tappan Zee/Cuomo bridge, there could be hell to pay. Sure enough, brake lights began shining along Route 287, well before the landmark bridge was even in sight.
Leah sat up, straight as an arrow. “Take the New Jersey exit.” She pointed persistently to the green sign ahead.
“You want me to leave the state? This is a straight shot into Manhattan.”
“ That exit takes us to Fort Lee, which was supposed to be my home base for three days. And to the George Washington Bridge. Trust me when I say I mapped out, everything around there, from the closest coffee shop to the route to the boat.”
The girl who’d said she had spent most of her life land-locked, suddenly had a sixth sense of the waterways surrounding New York’s most populous island borough? The tour bus had gotten Avi into the city his way a dozen times. Then again, the tour bus had left him behind this time.
While the girl sitting shotgun had not.
“It’s quicker through Jersey.” She touched his arm. “Do you trust me?”
It was a sea of traffic lights ahead, and the exit was coming up quick – a clear shot off the highway, if he could make it over in time. He cut over three lanes, silently thanking his Mario Andretti skills, and took it.
He took her hand, too. “I trust you, Letty. And I’m not going to let you miss your first Baller.”
Leah gave a silent prayer of thanks as she saw signs for Fort Lee and the George Washington bridge. And a wave to Jaz’s cousin, who she never got to meet and thank for her hospitality.
She turned to look at Avi, his profile channeling focus and determination as he navigated them toward the bridge. But he glanced at her from behind the wheel, and the smile that broke across his face was infectious. “What?”
“I can’t believe you were keeping those curls from me this whole time.” His attention was back on the road, but the air in the car had shifted.
“I can’t believe you called me a Mahjong Muse.”
“Calling it like I see it.”
“No royalties if we use the name.”
“Only if you want to do an officially-licensed Painted Doors edition.”
Leah snorted. “For our overlapping fanbase.” She sighed. “Jaz is riding me, and I wish I had something to tell her to set her mind at ease.”
“You can tell her you’ll get a product sample to Eli Gold.”
Leah’s mouth went dry. Had she even mentioned his name to Avi? Or that she had been hoping to grab a minute of his time on the Matzo Baller?
“We don’t even know if we’ll make it to the boat in time, Avi.”
“Oh, he’s not going to be on the Baller this year. But he’s been in your phone contacts since an hour into your trip.”
Good thing Leah hadn’t been driving – she would’ve run Bertha right into a ditch.
“Let me guess – he was your one jail phone call?” This made her laugh, despite the nervousness that ticked up with every mile.
“Always. No guarantees, although he’ll at least listen. But let me make the introductions first. You can at least tell Jaz that.”
In the process of setting up a call with ELI GOLD
Also – Mahjong Muses…yay or nay?
The glittering city was ahead, just eight miles away, according to the sign. But you didn’t have to be a New Yorker to know that time mattered more than the distance.
Avi expertly navigated Bertha off the bridge toward 12 th Avenue, every maneuver and prayer jockeying them closer but the minutes were ticking by.
“Can you put the GPS on?” Avi hated to even ask, because the GPS in his head said that even with her genius Jersey shortcut, they were never going to make it. They needed more time.
He glanced over at Leah, and the words echoed in a brief flash.
More time.
Even if they didn’t make the boat. He wanted more time with her.
Leah took a deep breath beside him. From the corner of his eye, he saw her reach for the phone in her lap, but not before giving a rub to the lucky dice and dragon trinket hanging from the mirror. She let out a gasp.
“I forgot about Chai time!”
He glanced over. She was rubbing her finger over the Hebrew charm dangling from it and laughing, shaking her head. “Avi, I can’t believe I didn’t mention this!”
She held up her phone. “Bertha’s clock is exactly eighteen minutes fast.”
Avi whooped, punching the padded ceiling in victory. He could actually see the familiar hulking shape of the USS Intrepid Museum at Pier 86 now coming into view.
“It’s been that way forever, no matter how many times I try to fix it.” She giggled, a memory sparking in her eyes. “I even yelled at my dad for making me do math first thing in the morning when he asked me if I could stop in Kismet.”
He couldn’t believe it. They actually had time to make it the last few blocks, hand over the keys to the VIP valet, and board the ship.
“Forget the miracle of the oil light,” he laughed. “We’ve moved on!”