Jerusalem Stone

by Susan Sofayov

  “Boo,” I whispered into his ear.

  He turned. “I didn’t see you when I walked out of the sanctuary. I was afraid you changed your mind.”

  “I did change my mind.”

  “But you're here.”

  “I came early and sat on the women’s side for the entire service.” I smiled and shrugged.

  His face lit up. “How was it?”

  “I’m not sure--still processing the whole experience.”

  “That’s not the ‘whole experience.’ Now I get to introduce you to my best friend and his family.”

  We maneuvered our way between the rows of tables. The primary language of the room was Hebrew. Each man we passed greeted Avi with a handshake. He replied to all them but didn’t stop to engage in conversation. I was unable to understand anything he said, except for the “Shabbat Shalom.”

  An older woman, dripping with gold chains and hair extensions, approached us with her hands held up wide. “Avi!” she gushed before planting a red lipstick stain on his cheek. The level of thrill she exhibited struck me as a bit odd, especially when he barely reacted in return, but I kept my mouth shut. We continued weaving our way through the aisles. It was impossible to ignore the hungry looks a few of the younger women directed at him, and a few major scowls aimed at me.

  The rabbi stood behind his chair, surveying the room. When he spotted Avi, a smile broke through the long beard that covered the bottom half of his face.

  Avi placed his hand on the small of my back. The contact surprised me. I didn’t expect him to touch me in front of his friend, who followed the orthodox prohibition against touching women. “Sam, this is Julie. Julie, meet Sam, who around here is referred to as Rabbi Shmuel.”

  I knew better than to extend my hand. Instead, I did a little wave. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. I owe you a big thank you.” His eyes twinkled mischievously. “Thanks for keeping him entertained for the last few days. He’s been here for a month, and I’m sure you’ve noticed how much he likes to talk. My head appreciates the silence.”

  “No problem. When my head starts hurting, I’ll send him back.”

  “Shut up, Sam,” Avi said in English, appearing completely okay with saying ‘shut up’ to a rabbi. “As if you’re the silent type.” His face bloomed with joy as he spoke the words and grabbed my hand.

  Before the rabbi could speak, a woman, who appeared to be my age, stepped forward. Her light brown wig, cut into a long bob, framed her pretty face. She held a baby with one arm and clamped the tiny hand of a toddler in the other.

  “Hi,” she said, meeting my gaze with her warm brown eyes. “I’d shake your hand, or give you a hug, but--” She looked from baby to toddler. “--no more arms.”

  “No problem.” I smiled. “I’m Julie.”

  “I’m Gitte.”

  Gitte spoke with an unmistakable Brooklyn accent. The rabbi’s accent was more difficult to place. “Are you both Americans?” I asked.

  “I’m from Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Sam’s from Washington, DC,” she replied.

  I turned to Avi. “So that’s the connection. I thought you were friends from Israel.”

  “Nope, his dad was the rabbi of the closest synagogue to our house in DC. Every Saturday I was forced to pretend that I actually liked him.”

  “Yeah, and every Saturday morning I cried to my mother. ‘Make him leave me alone.’”

  This kind of chiding went back and forth between the two men throughout the evening. “Are they always like this?” I asked Gitte between the fish course and the main meal.

  “Yeah, when they’re together, it’s worse than ten-year old boys, unless they’re arguing some obscure Talmud point. Then, they’re like Roman gladiators fighting to the death. Honestly, it’s hard being around them sometimes. Everything they say flies right over my head.”

  I glanced at the side of Avi’s face. She was right. For the last few days, I had been fixated on how mind-bogglingly sexy, handsome, and sweet Avi was. But now that she’d pointed it out, I had to acknowledge that he was probably the most intelligent person I had ever met. Google without a computer.

  Contrary to how I believed the evening would progress, I enjoyed every minute. Gitte let me hold her cherubic baby, Levi, until he fell asleep. Then, the toddler, Mushkie, sat quietly in my lap playing with a spoon. Later in the evening, I learned there was an older child upstairs in their third-floor apartment, who was sick and under the watch of a babysitter. Three children and she couldn’t have been more than twenty-six years old. I couldn’t imagine myself with one, let alone three.

  As the staff removed the dinner plates, Rabbi Sam, as I came to call him after a glass of sweet kiddush wine, stood and gave a brief dvar Torah, in Hebrew. The congregation put down their forks and drinks. As he spoke his first sentences, all the focus in the room was directed at him. Unable to understand a word of his speech, I scanned the room, noticing the expressions on peoples’ faces. Many remained rapt in his words, while others appeared to disengage, making it easy to identify the people there to feed their soul, and the ones who were there to feed their belly.

  As he ended, I watched Gitte soothe the baby to sleep. Mushkie now sat in Avi’s lap, snuggled into his chest, her dark hair stark against his white T-shirt. “Julie, I have to excuse myself and put these little ones in their beds. But I hope to see you back here in the morning.”

  Awkward. As welcoming as she and Sam were, I really didn’t want to attend two synagogue services. But I didn’t want her to know that. “Maybe,” was all I could manage to say before she headed toward the stairs.

  As people began leaving in groups and individually, Rabbi Sam picked up the bencher and began praying the Grace After Meals. Unable to follow along in the small book, I sat listening, impressed that Avi seemed to have the entire prayer memorized. By ten o’clock, all that remained were mounds of dirty dishes, the Thai cleanup crew, and the rabbi.

  A half a bottle of kosher Moscato remained on the table. Avi picked it up. “We’re going to finish this.”

  “L’chaim,” Rabbi Sam said. “I’ll see you in the morning. You’re doing the Torah reading, so don’t even think about wandering in late.”

  “Thanks for the advanced warning. There goes my sleep for the night,” Avi replied.

  “I warned you on Wednesday night. It’s not my fault if you’ve been too distracted to study.” The rabbi smiled at me.

  “Fine, but if I make mistakes, it’s actually your fault for not reminding me.”

  “Ha, since when am I your mother?” The lanky rabbi leaned back into the chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Enough, both of you. You sound like middle school kids.” I shook my finger, doing my best imitation of a stern school teacher, but stifling my smile was impossible. They were a funny team.

  “And since you’ve developed dementia, let me remind you that we’re still scheduled to fly to Bangkok early on Tuesday morning,” Rabbi Sam said.

  “I haven’t forgotten.” Avi’s gazed shifted from Sam’s face to mine, and for a moment, his expression flipped from bright and smiling to tight lipped and sullen.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Julie.” Rabbi Sam rose from the chair, nodded to me, and walked to the stairs leading to his apartment.

  Avi grabbed the bottle. “Where shall we go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s a lounge upstairs, we could sit there. Or go to the beach.”

  “Aren’t they going to lock-up for the night?” I asked.

  “I have a key. Let’s go upstairs and save the beach for tomorrow night.”

  We settled on a couch near a bookshelf packed with religious books in what appeared to be every language spoken by Jews throughout history.

  “Tonight,” I said. “It’s my turn to ask questions. You talk a lot, but it’s never about yourself. So, drop the obscure facts about Asia, no more discussion around tropical reefs and marine life. I need facts and information ab
out you.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  “I’m boring,” he replied, suddenly appearing interested in a hole in the arm of the sofa.

  “Questions number one and two, where in Israel do you live, and do you live with anyone special?” I had to ask. It had been nagging the hell out of me. How could a man this amazing not be in a relationship?

  “Jerusalem is home, and I do live with someone special.”

  I dropped my head, closed my eyes, and exhaled.

  He laughed. “Brutus, my dog, a boxer with identity issues. He thinks he’s a tiny lap dog and will sprawl across anyone who sits on my sofa. And he suffers from extreme halitosis.” He leaned over and bumped me with his shoulder. “And you thought I had some woman at home, waiting for me.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Do I seem like a scummy character that would be here with you if I had a wife or girlfriend back home? I’m hurt that you would even think such things.” He feigned this wounded look that made me laugh.

  “No girlfriend, just a dog. Siblings? Parents?”

  “Two sisters, one brother-in-law, one niece, one nephew, one mother, in New York, and one father, also in New York. My dad’s job is there.”

  “Are you close to your sisters?”

  He reached over and clasped my hand. “Very. It was so painful watching you cry about your brother because I couldn’t imagine losing either of them. As kids, we arrived in DC friendless and unable to speak English. All we had was each other. We became a club of three. The thought of living without one of them paralyzes me.”

  Damn. I felt the tears forming and did my best to push them away. “Next subject. What subject do you teach, and do you work with little kids or older kids?”

  He started laughing. “I teach science to older kids, who usually act younger than Mushkie.”

  “What did you study at Carnegie Mellon?”

  “Computer Engineering and Robotics.”

  My eyebrows furrowed. Not the majors I expected from a school teacher. “Really?”

  “Yep, really. This talking stuff is getting old. I have a much better idea.” He pulled me close and before I could ask any more questions, his lips pressed against mine. Then he moved from my lips to my neck, kissing that spot behind my ear that transformed me into liquid human, erasing all questions from my thoughts.

  At eleven-thirty, the wine bottle stood empty. “I do have to study the Torah portion, so I don’t screw it up in the morning. I’ll walk you back to the hostel.”

  The Friday night Patong Beach chaos spilled out of the bars and into the streets. The music, car horns, motorbikes, people talking and laughing created a wall of sound that our voices couldn’t breach. We walked quietly, hand in hand.

  As we got closer to the hostel, I felt the bliss born out of this lovely evening draining from me. I wanted more time with him.

  Young people crowded the front of the hostel, laughing and partying. He pulled my hand, led me to the side of the building, and wrapped me in his arms.

  “Will I see you in the morning?” he whispered in my ear between kisses.

  I pulled back. “Rabbi Sam and Gitte are lovely people, but I’m not ready for full Shabbat morning service.”

  His expression dripped with disappointment. “Come for Kiddush.”

  “That feels so wrong. If I don’t attend the service, I’d feel uncomfortable walking in just for lunch.”

  “It’s no big deal, lots of people do it,” he replied.

  I shook my head. “Not me. How about we meet up later in the afternoon?”

  “After lunch, I study Talmud for a couple hours with Sam. It’s our thing. I can’t skip out on him.”

  “Dinner?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He looked downcast.

  “I’m sorry, really. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’d feel like a fake, attending.”

  “Well.” He ran his hand down the side of my face. “I’ll miss you.”

  Chapter 6

  The sounds of the cleaning crew banging mops against the sides of metal buckets and chattering in Thai woke me from a dreamless sleep on Saturday morning. They clattered through the hallway oblivious to the people sleeping behind the closed doors. I stretched my arms over my head and stared at a stain creeping across the ceiling. Avi--all I wanted was to see him.

  The service at Chabad started at ten o’clock. The time on my watch read eight-thirty. Plenty of time to shower, dress, and walk over. I shook my head. As much as I wanted to see him, I couldn’t bring myself to sit through more prayers chanted in Hebrew. I pulled on my sneakers, stuffed some cash in my pocket, and headed to Starbucks.

  With Avi paying for my meals over the last few days, my spending was under budget. I paid for the coffee and walked toward the beach. It was too early for vendors, and most of the shops opened after eleven. I pulled off my sneakers and stepped off the sidewalk into the sand.

  Even at this early hour, the sand felt warm against the bottoms of my feet. I crunched my toes, enjoying the silky sensation. If I had a camera, it would have been a perfect time to shoot pictures. A couple of surfers sat side-by-side waiting to catch the perfect wave, and only a handful of people meandered along the surf’s edge.

  In the distance, a few preteens scuttled around the shoreline, scooping up objects and brandishing them for their friends to see. Every summer, when Jack and I were kids, our parents packed up our old station wagon and drove eight hours to spend a week in Ocean City, New Jersey. The New Jersey weather didn’t always match our vacation dreams, but this didn’t matter to Jack. If no lightning lit the sky, he’d plunge into the water and body surf. I preferred a more sedate activity, combing the beach in search of the treasures the ocean deposited on the sand.

  At the end of the day, we walked with our parents to one of the local family-style restaurants. Restaurants in this beach town didn’t take reservations, so we always had to wait for seating. As we stood in line, Jack would prattle and use body motions to describe his conquest of the “ginormous waves.” My fear of dropping my dream-evoking treasures onto the sidewalk made me wait until we were inside the restaurant and seated before pulling them from my pocket and presenting them like a major archeological find. If I could have traveled back to a time in my life, it would have been those days in the sun. I swiped at the tears flooding my eyes and marched to the surf.

  After walking for miles along the water’s edge, I noticed the shops opposite the beach were beginning to open their doors. I decided to take the retail route home. The smell of incense accosted my nose when I entered the first store. Its wares, gold Buddhas of all sizes, hand-carved wooden elephants, and screen-printed T-shirts, featuring the word Thailand splashed across the front, appeared to be carbon copies of the souvenirs sold in Chiang Mai and Bangkok.

  The window of a tiny shop next to the souvenir superstore displayed jewelry made from polished stones. I walked inside. A Thai woman with a sweet smile and long black hair greeted me at the door. She escorted me around the shop, lifting exotic stone and silver necklaces and bracelets from glass cases. She spoke no English, but using arm gestures, she signaled for me to follow her to a small work area. There she demonstrated how she used a rock tumbler to polish the stones. I picked up a necklace made from small green and black stones that was lying on her work table and using the best sign language I could come up with, I told her that I wanted to buy it. She stood on her toes and hooked it around my neck. “Two hundred Baht.”

  After I paid her, I placed my hands together in front of my heart and bowed.

  My final stop before returning to my room was the 7-Eleven to find Lek a Saturday morning treat.

  ***

  I walked over to the Chabad House at seven o’clock, just as the sun began to set over the beach. Orrie, the burly guard, buzzed me in. I didn’t see Avi anywhere, but Gitte sat at a corner table, holding the baby, watching her other two children run around the room. We sat together and chatted about Thailand, kids, and the homesickness she sometimes
felt. While we spoke, she let me hold Levi. She was explaining to me that her older son’s only playmates were the tourist children who passed through, when Avi appeared in the doorway, once again, dressed in skinny jeans and a white T-shirt.

  “Hi,” he said, planting a kiss on my cheek, again surprising me that he would kiss me in front of Gitte.

  “The Havdalah service is starting in ten minutes. Can you stay?” Gitte asked.

  Avi looked at me, expecting me to respond to her request. “Sure, we’ll stay.”

  The Havdalah service marked the end of the Sabbath. It was lovely and short. By eight o’clock, Avi and I were wandering the streets of Patong. “Hungry?” he asked.

  “A little. Do you want to go back to Chabad and eat?”

  “What I really want is a pizza and a beer.”

  I nodded rapidly. “Awesome. Except for the beer. I’ll stick to wine.”

  He recommended a restaurant owned by a couple of Israelis who learned to make pizza in New York. When we entered the restaurant, the owner rushed to greet Avi, hugging him like a long-lost brother. “Julie, this is the Patong Beach pizza master, Yossi.”

  Yossi clasped both my hands. “A friend of Avi’s is a friend of mine.” He released my hands and crooked his finger. “Follow me, pretty lady.” Avi trailed behind as he led us to a table in the back corner. “Cozy and quiet.” He pulled out my chair and using an arm flourish, he indicated for me to sit.

  “Thank you.” I sat down. He flipped open the paper napkin, placed it on my lap, and pushed in my chair. “B’tayavon.” He turned and began gesturing and shouting in Hebrew, at the waitress.