The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter two

LOS ANGELES

SPRING 2012

The brunette puzzled Jacob.

First off, his memory of last night — a stunted memory, admittedly — featured a blonde. Now, in the light of morning, sitting at his kitchenette table, she was clearly dark-haired.

Second, while he could recall some frantic groping in a sticky vinyl booth, he was pretty sure he had gone home alone. And if he hadn’t, he couldn’t remember it, and that was a bad sign, a sign that the time had come to cut back.

Third, she was museum-quality gorgeous. As a rule he gravitated more toward average. It went beyond low standards: all that need and vulnerability and mutual comfort could turn the act more than physical. Two people agreeing to make the world a kinder place.

Looking at her, so far above his pay grade, he decided he could make an exception.

The fourth thing was that she was wearing his tallis.

The fifth thing was that she wasn’t wearing anything else.

He smelled fresh coffee.

He said, “I’m sorry I don’t know your name.”

She placed a hand on her throat. “I’m wounded.”

“Please try to be forgiving. I can’t remember much.”

“There isn’t much to remember. You were absolutely coherent and then you put your head down and it was lights-out.”

“Sounds about right,” he said.

He slid past her to fetch down a pair of handmade mugs, along with a lidded jar.

“Those’re pretty,” she said.

“Thanks. Milk? Sugar?”

“Nothing for me, thanks. You go on ahead.”

He put the jar and one mug back, pouring himself a half cup, sipping it black. “Let’s try this again. I’m Jacob.”

“I know,” she said. The tallis slipped a few inches, exposing smooth shoulder, delicate collarbone, a side swell of breast. She didn’t put it back. “You can call me Mai. With an i.”

“Top of the morning to you, Mai.”

“Likewise, Jacob Lev.”

Jacob eyed the prayer shawl. He hadn’t taken it out in years, let alone put it on. At one point in his life, the idea of covering a nude body with it would have smacked of sacrilege. Now it was just a sheet of wool.

All the same, he found her choice of covering profoundly weird. He kept the tallis in the bottom drawer of his bureau, along with his disused tefillin and a retired corps of sweaters, acquired in Boston and never shown the light of an L.A. day. If she’d wanted to borrow clothes, she would’ve had to dig through a host of better options first.

He said, “Remind me how we got here?”

“In your car.” She pointed to his wallet and keys on the counter. “I drove.”

“Wise,” he said. He finished his coffee, poured another half cup. “Are you a cop?”

“Me? No. Why?”

“Two types of people at 187. Cops and cop groupies.”

“Jacob Lev, your manners.” Her eyes brightened: an iridescent brown, shot through with green. “I’m just a nice young lady who came down for some fun.”

“Down from?”

“Up,” she said. “That’s where you come down from.”

He sat opposite her, careful not to get too close. No telling what this one was about.

“How’d you get me into the car?” he asked.

“Interestingly, you were able to walk on your own and follow my instructions. It was strange. Like having my own personal robot, or an automaton. Is that how you always are?”

“How’s that?”

“Obedient.”

“Not the word that springs to mind.”

“I thought not. I enjoyed it while it lasted, though. A nice change for me. Actually, I had a selfish motivation. I was stranded. My friend — she is a cop groupie — she left with some meathead. In her car. So now I’ve spent three hours chatting you up, I’ve got no ride, the place is closing, and I don’t want to give anyone any ideas. Nor do I relish forking over money for a cab.” Her smile brought her into brilliant focus. “Abracadabra, here I am.”

She’d chatted him up? “Here we are.”

Long languid fingers stroked the soft white wool of the tallis. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I got cold in the middle of the night.”

“You could’ve put on some clothes,” he said, and then he thought: moron, because that was the last thing he wanted her to do.

She rubbed the braided fringes against her cheek. “It feels old,” she said.

“It belonged to my grandfather. His grandfather, if you believe family stories.”

“I do,” she said. “Of course I do. What else do we have, besides our stories?”

She stood up and removed the tallis, exposing her body, a masterwork, shining and limber as satin.

Jacob instinctively averted his eyes. He wished like hell he could remember what had happened — any part of it. It would provide fuel for fantasies for months on end. The ease with which she stripped bare felt somehow less seductive than childlike. She sure enough didn’t appear ashamed to show herself; why should he be ashamed to look? He might as well take her in while he had the chance.

He watched her reduce the tallis to the size of a placemat with three precise folds. She squared it over a chairback, kissing her fingertips when she was done — a Hebrew school habit.

“Jewish,” he said.

Her eyes took on more green. “Just another shiksa.”

“Shiksas don’t call themselves shiksas,” he said.

She regarded his straining boxer shorts with amusement. “Have you brushed your teeth?”

“First thing I do when I wake up.”

“What’s the second?”

“Pee.”

“What’s the third?”

“I guess that’s up to you,” he said.

“Did you wash?”

“My face.”

“Hands?”

The question threw him. “I will if you want.”

She stretched lazily, elongating her form, unbridled perfection.

“You’re a nice-looking man, Jacob Lev. Go take a shower.”

He was under the spray before it had warmed, vigorously scrubbing pebbled skin, emerging rosy and alert and ready.

She wasn’t in the bedroom.

Not in the kitchen, either.

Two-room apartment, you don’t need a search party.

His tallis was gone, too.

A klepto with a fetish for religious paraphernalia?

He should have known. Girl like that, something had to be off. The laws of the universe, the balance of justice, demanded it.

His head throbbed. He poured more coffee and was reaching into the cabinet for bourbon when he decided that it was, no question, time to cut back. He uncapped the bottle and let it glug into the sink, then returned to the bedroom to check the sweater drawer.

She’d replaced the tallis, snugging it neatly between a blue cableknit and the thread-worn velvet tefillin bag. As a gesture, it seemed either an act of kindness or a kind of rebuke.

He thought about it for a while, settled on the latter. After all, she’d voted with her feet.

Welcome to the club.