Chapter 27
27
Three hours later, thanks to the tireless muscles of Paul Mudd and my mad packing skills, all of Rosie and Ana’s flowers and wine bottles have been carefully loaded into my sky-blue Subaru. The hatchback trunk looks like a little greenhouse, crowded with gorgeous snow-white roses ( of course Rosie would have all the flowers at her wedding be roses) and the back seat is packed with neat rows of boxes full of wine. Bottles of red on the seats, bottles of white on the floorboards, everything so tightly positioned they don’t even rattle when I drive over a pothole.
Turns out if you have someone to help you with some of the heavy lifting, running wedding errands isn’t so bad. I thought my whole day would be eaten up meeting my sister’s various demands, but it’s barely noon and we’ve made it all the way through her to-do list. Looking at the clock, I realize I could technically make it to the salon in time for mani-pedis. All the rest of the bridal party will be there, and as maid of honor, I should probably at least make an appearance.
But I said I wasn’t going. And it’s not like I actually want to go, or they actually want me to be there.
Besides, there’s still another item on my to-do list.
“All right,” I say, looking up at the golem as I turn the car into the parking lot of the Men’s Wearhouse in Skokie. “Time to get you a suit.”
I didn’t feel like dealing with downtown traffic on a Friday, so I’d aimed for a nearby suburb instead. It’s often easier to go from my corner of the city to a northern burb full of parking lots than fight traffic and hunt for parking closer to the Loop. Besides, the burbs are best for generic box stores anyway. I was pretty sure Men’s Wearhouse was home of the hundred-dollar suit or something like that. One more question I would’ve asked my father, if I could.
Hey, where do you get a cheap suit? I’d ask.
Are you asking me because my suits look cheap? he’d say.
You said it, not me. I’d wink, and we’d both laugh.
Thankfully, even without being able to verify the information with the man I trusted most, this place does turn out to have affordable suits. It also has incredibly hokey holiday decor, including a sad fake Christmas tree weighed down with Chicago sports team ornaments. The pathetic little tree makes me smile, though. This is exactly the sort of place my father would have bought his suits. Maybe even this very location, fifteen minutes from my childhood home.
The home Mom is about to sell , I think, and my smile fades.
A team of salesmen descend upon us like hungry wolves when we enter, but wisely back off when Paul Mudd snarls at them. On our own, we find a plain charcoal suit that fits the golem like it was made for him. As I fuss over it in front of the mirrors outside the dressing room, a reluctant salesman approaches us. They’ve all avoided us ever since the growling. But someone’s got to get the commission, and I guess this guy drew the short straw.
The salesman aims his timid wave at me, making no sudden moves. He has lips so dry they’re flaking, a nametag that reads Fred, and either a really bad dishwater-blond toupee or a truly horrible barber. He could be fifty or eighty. The hair makes it hard to tell.
“How’s it going?” Fred asks deferentially. “I see you two have good taste.”
The golem curls his lip, but I put a reassuring hand on his arm.
“We’ll take this one,” I say, since the suit Paul is wearing seems perfect.
“We can have it tailored,” Fred says, since it’s his job to say things like that. Even when it’s obvious that the suit fits the snappish customer like a glove. “We send out for alteration, but we can usually turn it round in just a couple days—”
“It fits fine, and we need it for tomorrow,” I say, handing him my credit card as another thought occurs to me. “Um, one other thing. Do you have any, like...dress hats?”
Cutting a dashing figure in the suit, Paul Mudd is also still wearing the Cubs hat. He looks like a frat boy forced to attend a formal dance. But we can’t have his Hebrew-tattooed forehead on display at the wedding. Especially since some of the guests at a Jewish lifecycle event might actually be able to read it. Not that they would ever assume he was an actual golem, since that would be insane. But seeing the Hebrew word for truth on Paul’s forehead would understandably raise questions like whether or not he’s some fundamentalist cult weirdo.
“Dress hats?” the beleaguered salesman asks, chewing at his chapped lips.
“Yeah, like, I don’t know, like a...a...”
For some reason, a top hat is the only fancy hat coming to mind. And a top hat is obviously one hundred percent out of the question. I don’t want it to look like I’m so pathetic that I hired a magician to be my date to Rosie’s wedding.
“A fedora?” Fred suggests.
“Yes!” I say. “A fedora!”
“I’ll go look in the back,” Fred says, bewildered.
Apparently, no one has requested a fedora since the days of Al Capone.
The golem wears the suit and fedora out of the store, and I smugly notice several women in the parking lot openly gawking at him as we walk toward my car. They’re probably wondering if he’s some sort of celebrity, since no mere mortal could pull off the midday suit-and-fedora look with this much unironic ease.
We make it back to my place in twenty minutes. When we park in the lot behind my building and get out of the car, the golem immediately opens the door and begins removing a box of wine bottles.
“No, wait,” I say, and he freezes. “Those are for the wedding. We’re just here to get ready, then we’re going to take those with us—put it back in the car. Please.”
Slowly, the golem puts the box back in the car. Then he turns to me and lowers his head.
“Sah-ree,” he says, rumbling an apology.
“What? No, you don’t have to apologize!” I say quickly, moved by his sweet chagrin. “You didn’t know. It’s fine. Come on, let’s...let’s go get ready.”
There’s nothing he needs to do to get ready. He’s already in his sharp new charcoal suit and the matching fedora Sad Salesman Fred managed to dig out of a time capsule. So he just stands in front of my door while I retreat into the bedroom to get gussied up.
Entering my room, I see my computer and groan inwardly. Shit. I still haven’t written the headlines Amy asked for, nor have I written the speech I’m supposed to deliver at the wedding tomorrow night.
I grab my laptop off my bed and open the document with the paragraph I’d written at the office about breaking the glass in the Jewish wedding ceremony. I stare at it for three full minutes and have no idea where to take it next. Even though they’re constantly on my mind, I have no idea how to put into words what my father and my grandmother meant to me. To Rosie. To my mother.
I close that document and open up a new file. I stare at the screen for a long moment, paralyzed by the pressure of writing these particular headlines. I read the brief, but it doesn’t feel like I have enough to go on yet. Java-Lo isn’t my client. I don’t know their culture, don’t know their quirks. What I do know is that if we don’t keep them happy in these next few days, we might lose their business. Just the threat of them pulling out has already cost Bryan his job. The idea of shirking on this task and having it cost someone their job—Sasha, someone from our art department, even freaking Nancy—turns my stomach.
The computer screen blurs before my eyes. And then I remember Paul Mudd in the Parisian coffee shop, accepting a second cup from the Frenchwoman’s sleek Java-Lo home model. There was something so inherently charming about a big, strong guy sipping the delicate brew. Something that busted through any stereotypes of Java-Lo only being for big businesses or corporate-type environments. I quickly reread the creative brief, and pop over to the Java-Lo website to confirm what models they sell.
Sure enough, when I scroll all the way down, they have an entire line of home and “small shop” coffeemakers with dual grind-and-froth action. It’s ridiculous that this is at the bottom of the pile—and based on the copy, mostly aimed at the European market. Why didn’t these products become front and center during lockdown? And even now, with so many folks working from home, seeking flex schedules...why wouldn’t this coffee contraption behemoth be raising their public profile, and trying to sell directly to consumers instead of only to the still-struggling hotels, conference centers, and massive catering operations?
Something clicks, and I bang out a half-dozen headlines:
Daily Grind. Favorite Find.
Escape the Daily Grind.
Hi, Lo.
Java-Lo: To Stay or To-Go
Work from Home. Drink from Heaven.
Make Home-Work Taste Better.
I’m on a roll, and I swiftly write up a tight rationale for the headlines. Some of them won’t make sense on their own; a few are admittedly hacky. But with the right rationale and supporting art, some of these could really sing.
So I don’t just write up the headlines. Instead, I draft a new document to attach with it, and suggest updating the whole creative brief. I make a case for Java-Lo showcasing their industrial coffeemaking products and home versions at the same time, giving them the opportunity to create real brand loyalty so that people come to crave that same fine-ground experience at home, work, and in their favorite local coffee shops. I even throw in an internal logo proof of concept, with the three threads of stylized steam above the letters JL each assigned a market sector: home, retail, corporate.
When I’m done with the flurry of activity, I blink at all the neat little files on-screen. I never generate whole-campaign overhauls like this, let alone for a client that isn’t even mine. It’s not what Amy asked for, but it’s good. I know it with a certainty I rarely feel. It might even be good enough for us to win back Java-Lo’s affections before they break up with us for good.
Or maybe it’s all crap , I think, stomach churning as my confidence slips.
“Eeeeve?” the golem calls from the other room.
Fuck it , I think, and hit Send.
After the email is on its way to Amy, I exhale a sigh of relief. Then it occurs to me that I also still need to write the damn wedding toast. But I’m out of steam for the moment. I have things to say about coffee, but nothing to say about love.
So be it. I might be a terrible maid of honor, but at least I’m still a decent copywriter with a graduate degree in marketing. I used to work at a small shop where I had to do all this shit, and I was good at it. It feels nice to flex this muscle, and show my boss that maybe the Mercer cobbling together a creature with clay and desperation. The legend of a powerful protector of our people, conjured to safeguard Jews when the whole world had turned on us. When she considered building one, the Nazis were coming for her. These were all stories where the stakes were literal life and death.
Summoning the power and protection of a golem so I’d have a wedding date feels pathetic in comparison.
I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself when I made him. In spite of all the shit going on in the world, when push came to shove, I didn’t create a protector like the golem of Prague. I built myself a pseudo-boyfriend, my own personal bodyguard and companion. I was applying ancient wisdom like a cheap Band-Aid.
But is it wrong to want someone to care about me?
And isn’t Bubbe the one who told me to make...something?
Some thing , but probably not some one ...
My stomach rumbles.
I want to eat something, to take the edge off. But for the first time, it occurs to me that maybe I’m not even actually hungry. It’s just habit. Something to want when I can’t have what I really want. A way to fill the rapidly expanding black hole of loss, questions, fears, and doubts constantly metastasizing within me.
I lift a tube of lipstick to my mouth with trembling hands. In the distance, a siren wails outside. I barely notice the sound, since my apartment is around the corner from a hospital and sirens are constantly cutting through the air around here. But a second after the siren, there are three loud thuds in my hallway, which I barely have time to identify as heavy running footfalls before the golem bursts through my bedroom door. He wraps his arms around me, cradling my head in his hands, and takes us both down to the floor.
“What the hell!”
“Eve safe,” says the golem.
The pity party I was just throwing ends abruptly. Instead of staring in the mirror and spiraling into despair, my perspective has quite literally shifted. I’m flat on my back on the bedroom floor, the golem covering my entire body with his. My hair is probably ruined, and I’m definitely going to need to redo the lipstick I was applying when he tackled me. But instead of feeling irritated, I feel relieved. Knocked off course from reality once more, held tightly by someone hell-bent on taking care of me.
“Eve safe,” the golem repeats, looking up as the siren wails once more in the distance.
“It’s just a siren,” I tell him, trying to reassure the ever-vigilant Paul Mudd that there was no actual threat he needed to worry about in this moment. “No danger—not for us, anyway. Someone else might be in trouble, or something, but...but I’m fine. I’m safe.”
And then, because he’s right there, I kiss him.
He doesn’t kiss me back. He’s still on alert. But the siren is fading in the distance now, and whatever danger he assumed was heading our way appears indeed to have passed. He blinks, slowly.
“Hey,” I say, and kiss him again.
This time he kisses me back.
“This is what makes me feel safe,” I say, stroking his arm, his chest, then shifting beneath him, pressing my lower body against his. I realize the truth of my words as I say them. Being close to him, having someone I can trust with my body, and maybe even with my heart, makes me feel safer in the midst of this unstable world. “I want to feel safe. Please.”
He moves against me in response, and my whole body thrums with anticipation and relief. His rough mouth finds my neck, and I close my eyes, slipping my hands beneath his starched white shirt and letting everything else fall away.