“I don’t know her,” Jonah admitted. “But I did meet her once.”
The night came to him in flashes, like it always did.
Last year.
On the Matzo Baller.
His roaming improv gig on the boat for charity.
Too many shots, going down too easy. And inevitably, going down for the count – faceplanting on the back deck of the ship. No cartoon birds circling his head like in the old Looney Tunes clips. Just blackness, pain, faraway voices.
Then, gentle hands.
Velvet and glitter. Kindness.
And the throaty laugh of Kara Koff.
The actress whom he had seen on the Baller from afar, year after year, but had never gotten up the nerve to approach. She was big now – all grown up, yes, but much bigger than her character Rosie Bloom and that old sitcom. She was superhero-cinematic-universe-big now.
In his drunken stupor that night, he had called her an angel. To her beautiful, glittery face. A Jewish angel, coming to his rescue.
“JoJo! You met Kara Koff? You never told me that!”
“See what you miss by refusing to try Dramamine?”
Somehow, he was the only one out of four siblings who’d grown sea legs. As kids, Julie, Jess and Jillian couldn’t even walk past The Flying Wave at Six Flags Great Adventure without turning green and threatening to barf.
Jonah ignored his sister’s thirst for the tea. No way was he going to spill that to Jules. Or to any of his sisters. They would tease him mercilessly.
He turned to Sophie with a smile. “Rosie Bloom is a great hero to have.”
The grin the girl gave him back told him he’d said just the right thing.
“Paging…Zip…zippo…zipporama…”
The loudspeaker at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport barely registered, as its static-filled mumbling stumbled so epically over her name.
“Will Passenger…Sokofluff…please report to Gate B24 for important flight information. Tapioca Sokofluff, please report to Gate B-two-four.”
“Tapioca” was a new one. Or was it the Georgia accent?
Tzipi rolled her eyes, glancing up at the gate number she had just blown by on her desperate beeline to a bathroom. Her flight from LAX had been so delayed, it had shrunk what was supposed to be a leisurely two-hour layover down to a hectic twenty minute hustle until boarding.
“A5, great.” She still had a concourse and two dozen gates to suffer through her name being mangled.
But first, a ladies’ room. At least there was no line there.
“Attention, Passenger…Tzatziki Sololoft!”
“That’s a sauce, not a name!” Her voice echoed off the metal doors of the bathroom stall. “And Tzipora is Hebrew, not Greek!”
Was it really that hard? They were in an international airport, for crying out loud. Surely they dealt with many more names beyond Harry and Sally every day?
“It’s a beautiful name.”
A woman in uniform was washing her hands, and she smiled in the mirror as Tzipi banged out of the stall.
“Thank you.”
