“True Love For Now” would no longer be the encore, or anywhere on the setlist, after this tour. The rest of the band had accepted it, some more begrudgingly than others.
Paul grabbed a water bottle from the minibar and chugged it, eyes on Avi from where he sat across from him. “He probablyjust wants to be one state closer toSylvie.” His two hyenas laughed on either side of him.
“Enough, Pauly.” Vic leaned forward from where he had been silent on Avi’s other side. “Avi, don’t.” His tone held a warning.
“You weren’t complaining when they handed you a Grammy.”
“Exactly. You don’t try to marry your muse, dude. That’s the kiss of death.”
“Your feuding asses need to kiss and make up before you take the stage in thirty,” Buck warned.
“Yeah, yeah,” Avi muttered, trying to get in the right head space.
“Sorry, bro.” Paul’s gaze shifted somewhere past Avi’s shoulder. “Forgive and forget?”
Again, forgiving came in time. It was the forgetting that was a real bitch.
“Letty, I can’t find my menorah. Where’d you put it?”
Leah gripped the steering wheel, cursing the day she gave her number to the Kibbitz & Kong Mahjong group at Bramblewood Senior Living. Also, the standstill traffic threatening to make her late for her own going-away party.
Technically, it was a combo going away/Hanukkah party – Bramblewood loved rolling one festivity with another. Birthdays into retirements into golden anniversaries, mixed with various holidays the senior apartment complex loved to celebrate. And somehow, Leah had gotten rolled right in.
More likeropedright into making three dozen latkes right before her road trip.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes, Mrs. Ackerman. I’ll help you find it.”
Optimistic, given the standstill traffic downtown. The earlier surprise snow had already been cleared from the road down to the pavement. So why the holdup, what the hell was ever going on here on a Tuesday night?
“Where’s thatfarkaktehthing?” The old woman muttered, followed by a loud crash. “By the time I find it, Hanukkah will be over. Letty!”
Mrs. Ackerman was challenging under normal circumstances. But Mrs. Ackerman on a tear, the day before a Jewish holiday?Oy.
One horn honked, then another joined in. Pretty soon, a whole chorus was serenading the tirade that was the misplaced menorah.
Meanwhile, the latkes sitting shotgun were getting soggier by the minute. She could practicallyfeelthe oil permeating her hair. She had taken over an hour to straighten it today, specifically so she wouldn’t have to monkey with her usual unruly curls before her early departure tomorrow. It still had the porosity just perfect for soaking up the scent of onions and grease.
Great.
“Why don’t you head to the social hall, and I’ll meet you in twenty minutes.”
“First ten, now twenty?” A sharp slam of a landline receiver followed.
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
They didn’t make them quite like Tilly Ackerman anymore, either.
And thiswasthe president of Bramblewood’s Kibbitz & Kong group these days: sharp yet frazzled, with a memory like a dropped stitch in one of her knitting projects.
Magically, beyond the intersection, traffic began to thin out, cars speeding up and scattering like roaches after a light was flicked on.
Finally.
Leah cocked her head and peered out the windshield.So that’s what the fuss was all about.A digital billboard draining the city’s electric grid to advertise the band headlining the Champion Center Arena. Tonight, apparently – as the letters flashed in ten-foot, red megawatts.
“Painted Doors can kiss my ass,” Leah grumbled, inching her dad’s ancient SUV forward. The guy in the center of the billboard could, too. Smiling smugly, dark hair artfully messy. Making her late for her party.
It wouldn’t be the first time Avi Wolfson had ruined her plans.
