by Dan Sofer
Wikipedia corroborated Ben’s account of the treasure scroll.
Then Dave found the mother lode: a full English translation. The first paragraph made his inner pirate drool:
At the ruin in the Valley of Akhor,
Under the steps, forty paces eastward:
A chest of silver and vessels. Seventeen talents.
Dave ran another search. In ancient Israel, a talent measured thirty kilograms. His heart rate doubled. He was ready to grab a sword and a barrel of rum and set sail.
He read on.
In the tomb of Ben Rabba the Third:
One hundred gold ingots.
The list rolled on. Dave lost count of the deposits of silver and gold, each with precise locations. None of the landmarks in the scroll rang a bell. According to Wikipedia, all attempts to date at discovering the hoard had failed.
The last item on the list caught Dave’s eye, although it mentioned neither silver nor gold.
A copy of the scroll,
The meanings and omissions,
And each…
The text ended abruptly.
Dave heard a desk chair swivel.
Alt-Tab.
The screen switched back to page thirty-two.
Silence in the cubicle.
According to Ben, the scroll jars might hold the key to the treasure. Had the jars once contained scrolls? The copy of the scroll mentioned at the end of the list?
A finger tapped Dave on the shoulder and he jumped.
“See what I’m talking about?” Avi said in his Kermit voice. “That’s focus. That’s what it means to be caught in the hunt.”
Alex stood beside the team leader and rolled his eyes.
“You coming?” Avi asked Dave. “Sushi day.”
“Nah,” Dave said. “I want to finish this Use Case. I’ll catch you up later.”
Avi nodded his head with admiration. “Look and learn, Alex,” he said. “Look and learn.” The two traipsed off.
Dave had no appetite for food.
Did Mandy feel the same? Had she checked and rechecked her phone all morning? Did she think he was just not into her?
A cold shiver shook his torso. He slapped his forehead. Why had he ever listened to Ben? Dave’s First Pairing had slipped away. Now he stood to lose his second and final chance.
Dave peeked over the cubicle divider. The coast was clear. He seized his phone.
To hell with Ben and his games.
Dave had to trust his instincts. He had to show Mandy how he felt.
He dialed Mandy’s number.
“Hi. This is Mandy’s phone…”
He exhaled, relieved. Of course. She was at She’arim, probably in the middle of a lecture. Don’t leave a message. Hang up before—
Beep!
Dave cut the call a half-second too late.
Oh, crap!
Crap, crap, crap!
Dave had called and not left a message. No message meant breakup. To call and leave a second message would scream desperation. Crowding. Creepiness.
Dave was not a creep. Dave was sincere. Sensitive. Romantic.
The ballpoint pen in Dave’s hands snapped in two. He didn’t remember picking it up. He had to lay his cards on the table. Face his destiny like a man.
He opened a fresh browser window and reached for his wallet.
Three minutes and a few mouse clicks later, he’d ruined his life.
***
“Roooochaaaaaammmmaaaaaaaa…”
The moan came from the living room. The sa’lon, Mandy corrected herself. Mandy sat on her bed with her MacBook and finished an account of her first week in Israel for a few of her girlfriends. Her second day at sem had gone smoother. She had warmed to the lecturers and to Ester, her chevrusa. It was great to be a student again.
“Roooochaaaaaammmmaaaaaaaa…”
“I’m not hearing!”
Ruchama’s irate voice echoed down the hallway.
Shani and Ruchama reminded Mandy of an elderly couple after fifty years of dysfunctional marriage.
Silence reigned for five pregnant seconds.
“Maaaannnnnndeeeee…”
Mandy hit send and closed the laptop.
“Don’t listen to her,” Ruchama’s voice warned but Mandy had already stepped into the living room.
Shani sprawled over the couch, clad only in her lingerie. Her Marylyn Monroe hair pooled over the cushions and spilled to the floor. Her arms stretched past her head in a display of exhaustion or ecstasy. Mandy paused to admire Shani Weis, the living advert for Victoria’s Secret.
A pencil lay on the floor a few centimeters beyond Shani’s fingers. Mandy scooped it up and placed it in her flatmate’s hand.
“Mands, you’re an angel,” Shani said, in her sultry, breathless, Angelina Jolie voice. “A life saver.”
“You’re welcome,” Mandy said and dropped onto the armchair.
Shani, still flat on her back, gripped the pencil and scribbled in a large black ledger, and Mandy’s curiosity as to her flatmate’s line of work pricked up its ears.
Shani closed the notebook, held it to her ample bosom, and peered out the French window of the balcony.
“Ruchama,” she yelled. “Your boyfriend’s home.”
Mandy turned to look. In the third-floor apartment across the street, a man sat on a couch. He wore leather sandals, blue jeans, a white undershirt, and a domed knitted yarmulke in primary colors. A sparse beard dusted his jaw and curled sideburns fell past his nose. He leaned over a guitar and adjusted the tuning pegs.
Mandy heard the thump of Ruchama’s feet down the hallway. She shoved Shani’s legs aside and took her place on the sofa.
“How long has he been there?”
“Is he a Chassid?” Mandy asked.
“Breslover,” Shani said. “Chassidim on speed. They smile like crazy and spray-paint mantras on turnpikes. At red lights, don’t be surprised if they get out and dance around the car. I swear to God.”
The man across the street strummed his guitar, oblivious to his three spectators. He seemed harmless enough.
Mandy said, “Go for it, Ruchama.”
Shani snorted.
“Go on,” Mandy continued. “Invite him to a meal.”
“That,” Shani said, “would require guts.”
Ruchama frowned. “I don’t know how they call him. On the mailbox it’s written Yitzi, Dani, and Ben. I think he is Yitzi. And maybe he has a girlfriend?”
Mandy said, “There’s one way to find out.”
Ruchama rested her jowls on her knuckles and sighed.
“I should have moved into Mandy’s room.”
“What? Why?”
Mandy’s room was the smallest of the three bedrooms and had only one window.
Shani coughed. “Your room is the segula room.”
“Segula room?”
“You know. A lucky charm. Like praying at the tomb in Amuka. Reading Psalms at the Kotel for forty days. Holding the havdala candle at the desired height of your future husband. They are all supposed to get you married within the month.”
Ruchama’s cheeks became two large tomatoes. “Our last three flatmates all got married and they stayed in your room.”
Mandy didn’t believe in lucky charms, for good or bad.
“Ruchama,” she said, not without compassion, “the only segula that will get you married is dating.”
“That reminds me,” Shani said. “How did it go last night?”
The question caught Mandy off guard. The date with David Schwarz had slipped her mind. She had even left him out of her email.
Dave was well mannered, intelligent, and funny, on the phone and in person. And, unlike many of the New Yorkers she had dated, Dave wasn’t trying to worm his way into her jeans skirt.
But…
But that first impression stuck.
“Nu?” Shani prodded.
“Um.”
Mandy hated first impressions. They sat in the back row of her mind and sn
ickered as their predictions came true. And they always did.
She had hoped for a spark on their first date, but that first impression, formed at Rabbi Levi’s shiur, still smelled of stagnation and desperation.
“I don’t know,” Mandy said. She wrinkled her nose. “He hasn’t called. Maybe it’s just as well.”
Unless that mysterious blank message this morning was Dave. Mandy had not jotted down the number. Unlikely. Guys never called that soon.
A phone rang in Mandy’s bedroom.
“Talk of the devil,” Shani said.
She walked to her room. Dave didn’t have her home number. Or did he? She picked up the phone.
“Mandy!”
Mandy sat on her bed. “Hi, Mom.”
She glanced at her watch and made a quick calculation. Eight in the morning, Houston time. Her mom had called yesterday as well. Mandy summed up the last twenty-four hours in a few brief sentences.
“I miss you, Mands.”
“I left home years ago, Mom. We’re still just a phone call away.”
“I know. You haven’t taken any buses, have you?”
“No, Mom. Just cabs.” The last suicide bomber had struck over three years ago, thanks, according to Shani, to the new security fence, but a deal was a deal. “I promise, Mom, I’ll be careful.”
The doorbell rang. Ruchama’s footfalls plodded across the living room.
“Remember what your dad used to say.”
“I remember, Mom, heroes are dead.” It was his standard warning whenever Mandy climbed a tree or slid down a banister.
“Heroes are dead,” her mom repeated, her voice tearing up.
Ruchama knocked on the door. “Mandy,” she hissed, her eyes wide. “It’s for you.”
“Gotta go, Mom,” Mandy said. “I love you.”
Mandy put down the phone and hurried to the front door.
Nothing had prepared her for what waited there.
***
Dave parked his car in the makeshift lot opposite the City of David Institute and turned off the headlights. The City of David was a stony wedge of land shaped by two valleys and the southern wall of the Old City. Over the millennia, the proud walls had crumbled, the Western valley filled in with rubble and dirt. Across the Kidron Valley to the east, ancient tombs dotted the hillside and, more recently, the hostile Arab neighborhood of Silwan.
By nightfall, the tourist bustle had subsided and a dark silence descended on the stone ruins.
The Old City walls towered above him, bathed in regal floodlight.
Immense. Imposing. Impenetrable.
The adrenaline high of that morning had worn off toward the afternoon. By the time Dave realized what he had done, it was too late.
He got out of the car and crossed the street. Neat stone arches topped with jasmine marked the entrance of the Institute. A large inverted omega in bronze adorned the gate; a David’s harp, the symbol of the City of David.
The security guard had left for the day. Dave pushed through the unlocked gate. A staircase led to the rooftop observatory. The ticket booths and snack shop stood eerily empty in the glow of nightlights. A hole in the floor, hedged in by a railing, provided glimpses of the ancient citadel foundations. At night, the hole became a gaping black abyss.
Dave followed the footpath that led to Hezekiah’s aqueduct and Warren’s Shaft, then veered right toward an administrative building. Dave opened a door labeled Staff Only. The lights were on. He made for the third office down the hallway.
Ben looked up from his desk and shoved piles of schedules and itineraries aside. He reached for the two volumes of Gemara on a shelf.
Dave and Ben had studied Talmud together every Monday night for the past six years. They had covered tractates dealing with Jewish festivals, the return of lost items, and compensation for injured livestock.
The bookmark pointed to a discussion of the Shma Yisra’el prayer, the twice-daily reaffirmation of faith.
Ben read the text in the familiar singsong of Yeshiva learning halls and translated as necessary.
“From what time can the Shma be recited in the evening?”
Dave’s head sank to his book on the desk.
First Shira. Now Mandy.
If Shira had been his First Soul Mate, then Mandy was his Second. He had squandered both. Dave had reached the end of the road.
Ben’s book clapped shut.
“I thought you said last night went well.”
“That was yesterday.”
“Want to tell me what happened?”
“I screwed it up.”
It took a moment for the penny to drop.
“You didn’t,” Ben said, incredulous. “Tell me you didn’t call her, Dave. Not the next day. It’s a Golden Rule.”
“Call her?” Dave laughed. “I wish I’d just called her.”
“No,” Ben said, still in denial.
Dave raised his head from the table and prepared to face his shame like a man.
Ben raised his eyebrows. “Chocolates?”
Dave shook his head.
“Flowers?”
“Roses. Five pink roses. White box. Ribbon. Bow. The full monty.”
“Pink?” said Ben, brightening. “Pink isn’t too bad.”
“And a poem.”
Ben hid his face in his hands. “Dear God.”
Dave felt his mind detach from his body, to watch his train wreck from a safe distance.
“‘The Rose Family’ by Robert Frost. ‘You, of course, are a rose; But were always a rose.’ I always liked that one.”
“Why?” Ben asked. “Do you do it on purpose? Every time a great girl comes along you lose it. You self-destruct. This is exactly what happened with the other one, what’s-her-name. The Cohen girl.”
“Shira.” Dave’s voice belonged to a ghost.
“Right. Shira Cohen. She was a real catch.”
“Yes.”
“You could have married Shira Cohen.”
“I know.”
Ben threw up his hands. “Arggh!”
“You’re right,” Dave whispered. He needed to blow his nose. He searched his pocket for a tissue.
The office door swung open.
Erez Lazarus hovered in the doorway, a wiry, forty-year-old buzzard.
“Benjamin,” he said. Erez enjoyed ruffling Ben’s feathers. “I need those brochures first thing tomorrow. Can’t keep the Crusaders waiting. What’s with him?” He indicated Dave with a toss of his beak.
“Woman trouble.”
“Ah.” His empathy lasted a split second. “Don’t stay too late,” he warned Ben and grinned. “Remember what happened the last time you worked late.” He mimed a baseball swing at Ben’s head and then disappeared out the door.
“Idiot,” Ben muttered.
Dave grunted in agreement. His suspicions regarding Erez and the break-in dissolved. No one that annoying could do any harm.
“Crusaders?” Dave asked.
“Evangelist nutters. They schedule private tours at odd hours. Erez indulges them. Big donors, probably.” Ben sighed. “Anyway. How did Mandy take it?”
Dave handed over his mobile phone.
Ben read the text message aloud. “Thanks for the lovely gesture. Mandy. Hmmm. Formal. Measured. I like her already. Pity you blew it, Dave. Time to move on. Plenty of fish and all that.”
Dave’s future stretched out ahead, an endless corridor of locked doors.
Then the heavens opened. Sunbeams of revelation warmed his mind. A choir of cherubs gave forth. Years of angst slipped from his shoulders.
How had he not thought of it before?
He said, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. No more. Game over. The end. I give up.”
“You can’t just give up.”
“Why not? Some people marry; some don’t. I can still lead a happy life, can’t I?”
Dave chuckled. Every so often, Dave dreamt that he was sitting an O-Level exam but had
forgotten to study. When he awoke, he realized that it didn’t matter; he had graduated long ago. He felt that same sense of joyous relief now.
The dark side of the coin spun into view. Poor old Dave, people would say. Loveless. Childless. A virgin to the bitter end.
That hurt, but after a few seconds, the sting faded. This was Dave’s de facto reality. Now he had tenure.
“Seven years,” Dave said. He shook his head in awe. “I wasted seven of the best years of my life on dating. I could have traveled. Studied half day. Read more. Written a novel. Lived! I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Dave,” Ben said. “You’re depressed. You’ll get over it. I was there too, remember? Don’t lose hope.”
“This is hope. Can’t you see?”
The shackles fell to the ground. He rubbed his chafed wrists and savored the weightless freedom.
First, a safari in Kenya. Then, the month in New Zealand. He had saved money for his honeymoon and future kids. No need for nest eggs now. Mike may be interested. Worst case, Dave would go it alone.
Ben slammed his fist on the table.
“How badly do you want her?” he asked.
Veins swelled over Ben’s forehead. He had taken this harder than Dave.
Dave said, “It’s OK, Ben. It’s over. And thanks for your help over the years. Really. You did your best.”
“Listen to me,” Ben almost shouted. Something dark and violent within him strained at the leash, like a werewolf at full moon. His breath came in fitful bouts. “Is Mandy the one you want?”
“What?”
Dave felt confused. Frightened.
Ben jumped to his feet, knocking his chair against the wall. He hurried to the office door, opened it, and scanned the corridor. Satisfied that they were alone, he returned to his seat. A trail of sweat glistened down his cheek.
“Is she The One?” he asked again.
“I suppose. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Listen,” said Ben. “There’s one last thing you can do. And this time, it’s guaranteed to work.”
Dave didn’t like the sound of this.
“I’m not going to slip things into her drink, Ben, if that’s what you have in mind.”
Ben swatted Dave’s words with his hand. “No. Nothing like that. But if you do this, she’s yours. Forever.”