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By two o’clock on Saturday, David was wondering if he could convince his daughter she needed a nap, so he had an excuse to take one himself. He didn’t regret the hours spent on the phone with Shoshana Goldman. In fact, he enjoyed the conversation more than he thought he would when he initially asked for her number. It was why he spent the wee hours of the night ignoring the digital clock on his bedside table. And that had been fine, because Shoshana herself seemed to be just as engaged as he was.
It wasn’t until David heard Dani’s princess alarm clock going off that he realized they talked all the way through till morning, and it was time to start moving because he had morning services to lead in three hours. Shoshana had seemed embarrassed when she realized what time it was, and he hoped she wouldn’t use it as an excuse not to talk to him again.
But he wasn’t twenty, and the all-nighter was catching up with him.
He helped Dani into the SUV and took a moment to close his eyes as she buckled herself into her seat. The morning service had been great, the conversation around the Torah portion engaging, spirited even. Though he was viewing the active participation a little differently today than he had yesterday thanks to Shoshana’s revelation.
Rabbi-Sexy-Pants, indeed. He wondered if people would still call him that if they knew he spent part of the morning coaxing his offspring into eating corn flakes by liberally sprinkling sugar over them like his mother used to do because Dani’s box of Lucky Charms was empty and he couldn’t handle a meltdown before the morning service.
“Tateh,” Dani said from the back seat, her little head dipping forward to catch his eye in the rear view mirror. David made himself open his eyes, hopefully she wouldn’t pick up on his exhaustion.
“Yeah, baby?” he said, starting the engine and waving to Mrs. Merkowsky as she waddled carefully to her Hyundai. If he remembered correctly, Mrs. Merkowsky’s hip surgery was only a few months gone, she was still working with a physical therapist for full mobility. He sat in the parking space until she was safely inside her vehicle, the gravel sidewalk could be tricky business with a cane.
“Can we go to the store with the mice today? Yousaid--”
“You’re right, I did say,” David said, distracted as he pulled out of the parking space, Mrs. Merkowsky safely in her own car.
The rabbi got his own parking space right in front of the synagogue, and that was great for parking, but the lot itself meandered around the property and he had to concentrate to stay on the winding gravel drive.
“And you were very good today. So, we could if you--”
Dani squealed in delight and David winced.
“Baby, inside voices, right?”
“Right. Inside voices for inside,” Dani said, making a show of putting her finger to her mouth and whispering the word around it.
“We can go to the store with the mice, but I think it’s a place to buy furniture. Like for houses and stuff. I don’t want you to be disappointed if there’s nothing for kids there.” There was a shop downtown with a window display that involved taxidermy mice dressed in Victorian fashions and posed on adult sized furniture as though it was perfectly normal and they lived there doing mouse things. Dani was enchanted by it.
And David had to admit he was intrigued himself. The mice were posed differently every few days, as though they really were attending to their own business.
“I could be disappointed,” Dani said, nodding as though she was considering this point. “But if we got ice cream after I wouldn’t be.”
“That is solid logic. I’m impressed, small one. You set that up nicely,” David said. The ice cream shop was directly across the street from the furniture store.
“I know stuff, tateh,” Dani pointed out, wiping her curly hair out of her face. “You shouldn’t mess with me.”
“I’ll remember that.”
David turned onto the road, making a mental note to follow up with Abi when he saw her on Sunday for Hebrew school. She’d said something about organizing some playdates for Dani with the other kids or getting her into a rotating play-date-kiddie-coffee-klatch or something. He needed to make that happen because left to her own devices, his kid was going to turn evil genius.
“So you know at some point we should probably stop for lunch, right? Do you want to do that before or after the mice?”
She squealed again, but this time she made a show of doing it in a whisper. He laughed because he couldn’t help it. It was a gorgeous day, his daughter was excited about her new home, and he might be exhausted, but at least it was exhaustion at the hand of a beautiful woman. He wondered how Shoshana was faring with the day, hoping she at least had been able to get some real sleep, then decided he’d give it a few hours and send her a text to check in.
Best not to look too eager.
Eight
“Shoshana. You’re going to need to come and see this. Now. Like, right now.” Baxter’s voice had the tone he only used in the direst of emergencies. Like that time a pipe burst, and she lost about five thousand dollars’ worth of custom furniture.
“Bax? What’s happening?” Shoshana straightened from behind the beat-up sofa she’d been leveraging into place on the raised dais. She wiped her forehead, she wasn’t sweating, but only because the big industrial fan was going full blast. Derek looked up from his equipment to consider Baxter, then looked at Shoshana and shrugged to say it was cool if she needed to step away. Derek was great because he was so chill.
“There is this… child. She’s--I mean, its--” Baxter looked like he wanted to say more but wasn’t sure how to verbalize the horror.
“Use your words, man,” Derek said, wiping one of his lenses with a cloth.
