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Chapter One
Off the campaign trail and back to work.
Newly elected member of the County Board of Legislators Olivia Nachman wouldn’t have it any other way. She had a spring in her step, a fantastic mix of pumpkin, milk, and java from the Cupcake Stop, and all of her materials prepped and ready as she returned to her seat in the room in town hall where the Briarwood village government held their special committee meetings.
“Welcome back, Liv!”
“Welcome back, Mayor!”
“Congratulations, Mayor Nachman!”
When a group of people used her name and her title interchangeably, Liv knew that she was home. Which, she noted, she was, considering she’d known a large number of people in the room since her childhood.
But more importantly, this particular special committee, which included representatives from the Briarwood Temple Sisterhood, the Interfaith Clergy Council, and the Briarwood Chamber of Commerce, had gathered together for a very important moment; one she’d been looking forward to.
“Thank you, everybody,” she said. “What’s our agenda for tonight?”
The question, of course, was a formality—always asked by the sitting mayor right before the beginning of the meeting.
“Presentation to the special committee by Flaire Hutton of the New York Empires,” said Mark, the longtime Briarwood cameraperson. The man responsible for making these committee meetings accessible to the entire town. “A proposal for the ceremonies and events surrounding the installation of the dreidl sculpture.”
“Is Ms. Hutton here?”
A hand was raised, revealing nails that were a blend of red and green and an Empires crest. The young woman wearing the distinctive colors was pale, with straight blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a tiny nose. “Present, your honor,” she said. “Uh…honored mayor…”
“Thank you, Ms. Hutton,” Liv said, smiling. “I think we’re ready.” After going through the formalities required of the committee at the beginning of the meeting, it was time. And because she decided to take pity on the young woman, she altered a policy. “Let’s save questions for the end.”
The young woman nodded, walking to the front of the room, wearing a bright red and green suit and a smile.
“The holiday season is important to the Empires,” the young woman began as she settled her materials on the lectern. “And with our donation of a collection of hockey sticks from our recent Men’s Hockey League Championship season and their use to create a dray-dell, it is very clear that team is quite interested in celebrating the season with Briarwood.”
As the laptop came to life, a schedule was posted on the ancient pulldown screen. Noises Liv could only explain as gasps of horror emanated from some of the participants. She caught some eyes and lowered her hand in the universal gesture for ‘quiet.’
“We would begin with a kickoff event on the Friday evening,” Flaire continued, whether she was oblivious to the noises or too excited about the presentation to notice, Liv wasn’t sure. “We will have a beautiful party, music, and excitement on the grounds of the Briarwood Temple. On Saturday morning, the children of the village will be invited to join the festivities with a beautiful gelt hunt, fun and prizes and festivities on the grounds of the temple. We would continue festivities through the day, continuing with a beautiful, quiet religious ceremony on Sunday, maybe with the pastor or a reverend leading the service with the children from the choir singing, and the dreedell being unveiled after the service, where it will be blessed by all of the clergy from the council.”
Flaire paused, as if she was expecting questions before she pressed the laptop again, revealing…a list of food regulations. Another part of the room gasped in horror.
Now it was time for her to say something. “Quiet down,” Liv interjected. “I want to remind everybody that there will be time for questions at the end.”
“Thank you, Mayor.” Flaire continued, “Part two is the food. Because everybody wants food at a holiday celebration. There would be food everywhere, celebrating the spirit of the season. Healthy baked food, with beautiful symbolic cookies including festive jelly-filled triangle cookies and buttery ma-taza crackers with salt water and honey with apples to celebrate the miracle of this season.”
Once again there was a pause, and more horror came across the screen, as the next group of people reacted to the regulations.
“We would also like to see decorations, of silver and green and red, as well as a blue that matches the Empires color palette; that is the only color that will need to be checked to specifications of course. No non-Empires blue allowed. Flags and beautiful noisemakers should be used on shop windows, in celebration of your festive season and the dreedell.”
Liv tamped down her own emotions, looking at the members of this special committee. “Are there any questions?”
There were, as expected, many hands raised.
“Okay. We’re going to take these questions topic by topic, to make things a bit more orderly if that’s possible?”
There were approving noises from the room, which relieved Liv just a little bit.
And then the questions started.
Reverend Kennedy, the representative from the town’s interfaith council, was the first to raise his hand. “Why would you have events on the grounds of the synagogue while there are services going on? There are so many other locations where events could occur.”
“Synagogue…services?” Flaire replied with a smile. “Aren’t services on Sundays?”
Which begged the question, as far as Liv was concerned, why would a religious service conducted when Flaire thought the Jewish population would be having services, exclude the Jewish residents, considering the holiday being commemorated was a uniquely Jewish one? But the noise in the room disrupted her thoughts, and reminded her of where she was, and more importantly who she was. Which meant she needed to focus on the next hand raised.
Which of course, belonged to Jennifer Cohen. Jennifer was President of the Briarwood Synagogue’s Sisterhood, as well as the mother of the Empires player who had initiated all of this.
“I had a brief question, Flaire. I wanted to thank you for organizing all of this,” Jennifer Cohen said, looking to Liv as if she was holding back a great deal of stronger emotions. “But exactly where did you come up with the…gelt hunt?”
“Oh, Mrs. Cohen,” said Flaire, seemingly oblivious to the fact that if looks could kill, Jennifer Cohen would be murdering her at this exact moment. “Thank you so much for connecting the team with this beautiful town. Hunting for eggs and other sorts of scavenger hunts is one of my favorite things from childhood, and children love finding things, so I thought it would be a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday and have kids finding chocolate.”
The expressions on some of the other committee members’ faces were even angrier. “I’m going to table this section and move on,” Liv said, feeling the sudden rise of temperature in the room “Questions about the food section?”
Of course it was Frank Maricelli who raised his hand. Maricelli, owner of the Pasta Station, was deeply involved in the Chamber of Commerce’s restaurant committee. “Where’s the oil? My buddy from Rivertown was telling me about the Hanukkah food and that it needs oil?”
“Oil isn’t healthy,” Flaire replied. “Apples and honey are so much better, as well as the m…a…taza crackers.”
The next hand raised belonged to Paul Levitan, the owner of Levitan’s Deli. Liv settled in for the comment.
“My wife,” Paul began, “makes a whole bunch of cookies for Jewish holidays and I’ve never heard of jelly-filled triangle cookies before. Can you talk about them?”
Flaire nodded, her eyes wide, and Liv was nervous; Paul Levitan’s wife owned the county favorite Caf and Nosh in Hollowville. “They’re called something else but they’re triangles with filling. They’re a very Jewish cookie, and they’d be perfect now.”
And as the anger roiled in the group, Liv knew it was time to cut everything off. “Okay. I think we’ve covered everything that we can cover now. Flaire, come to my office tomorrow morning and we’ll talk further.”
Of course the end of the meeting preceded phone calls and emails from citizens who noticed anything from the horrible graphics of the presentation with the inconsistent lettering on the dreidls, to the contents each of the commenters had picked up.
Liv had made her own decisions, but there were times when she, as mayor, needed to make decisions based on the citizens she represented. And luckily, there were times when the citizenship agreed with her. This was one of them.
“So,” Liv said after Flaire had settled in. “The committee has decided to not only reject the proposal but declared that it’s unfixable.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Flaire, before she left the office, and probably the town, at 9:50 for the final time.
As the door closed behind Flaire, Liv moved on, picking up the office phone and started to dial her contact within the Empires organization, the man directly in charge of the junior rep he sent.
Three rings.
“Hello, this is John Stevens.”
“John,” she said. “Livvy Nachman calling.”
“Livvy. Mayor Nachman. Hi,” he said. “How are things in Briarwood?”
“Things have gotten out of control and need to be fixed,” she said.
“What do you mean? Flaire said she’s been enjoying herself in the village.” He paused. “She said it’s like she’s in a HeartPix movie.”
“Glad to hear she’s been enjoying herself,” Livvy said, holding back the snort that desperately wanted to erupt from her nose. “The entire town, including Jennifer and Peter Cohen, feel she’s in a HeartPix movie, but not necessarily one that would, say, end up with the joyful presentation of a dreidl made out of hockey sticks.”
There was a long pause before Stevens started to speak. She wasn’t sure what rendered him speechless, but she’d bet money it was the fact she’d name-dropped Jennifer and Peter Cohen. After all, Jennifer and her husband Peter were the ones Stevens had to impress.
“What’s she done now?”
Liv sighed and launched into an explanation of the committee meeting and the fact that the committee had concluded the proposal was not only unacceptable, but also unfixable. “Basically,” Liv continued, “the proposal she created, and the way she answered questions about it, displayed a complete lack of knowledge about Judaism and a total disregard for Jewish customs in general, the celebration that we’re creating, and the town.”
As the silence extended, Liv had a mental image of a drawing sitting in front of Stevens’s desk, with a bull’s-eye over an image of her face.
In red.
She wondered if the man had simply dropped dead, sitting there holding the phone. And yet, erupting out of nowhere, there was a deep, angry noise. “What would you like me to do, Mayor Nachman?”
This was easy. “Remove Flaire Hutton from this assignment in Briarwood permanently and fix this. You made this mistake; it’s your responsibility to smooth the ruffled feathers, not the least of which belong to Jennifer and Peter Cohen.”
There wasn’t an ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ or a ‘we’ll see’ or any other sort of equivocation. It was, “Yes, Mayor. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have a solution in hand.”
While Livvy didn’t like the lack of definite timing, she liked the certainty in Stevens’s voice. She could tie it to the fact that the Cohens were involved, or she could just chalk it up to her insistence. It didn’t matter; it was going to be done.
And the cause of the Hanukkah failure was going to be out of Briarwood. For good.
Artur Rabinovitch had been back in the States for a month. The outreach program he’d run with the Mitzvah Alliance in Eastern Europe was set up and running well without him.
“You can come back and help later,” Jacob, his friend and erstwhile partner on this project, had told him. “Door’s open.”
Meddling friends. He had a bunch of them. Five years before, Abe and Leo had yelled at him about how he’d been working too hard, then encouraged him to run with the idea he and Jacob had come up with: on-the-ground resources for people who needed them. It had brought him back to life, stress directed toward something that could make a difference on a global scale.
But now, five years later, he was back in New York. Problems related to his next job and settling back into life were shoved into a box to be dealt with much later.
Now?
He had a fourteen-ounce tube of sour cream in a custom fridge, waiting for him. The garage was cool, and on his knees he could watch the cleanser work on the black spokes of the wheels of his sports car. The cleanser wasn’t going to turn purple, like if the wheels of the car were silver, but he was hoping to see…something.
And he had nothing else to do.
Except, of course, pick up the dessert he was bringing to Abe’s.
But that wasn’t for a while.
Artur hadn’t had a day like this in a long time, and he’d planned to enjoy every bit of it. He took a deep breath, looked at the wheels and waited. The timer he’d set was about to go off when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Is this Artur Rabinovitch?”
“Yes,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“John Stevens. VP, public relations for the New York Empires. How are you?”
He stood up, moved himself and the rag away from the car. There was no way he’d be able to have this conversation while buffing the car.
Empires. Empires.
Artur had intertwined his career with the Empires a few times, the last a brief conversation before he headed off to work for the Mitzvah Alliance. Now that he was back in New York, and only the day before he’d responded to an email that had been burning a hole in his inbox, from someone on John Stevens’s staff, setting a meeting for Monday.
Which meant something was fishy. Because nobody randomly asked him how he was, and nobody who wasn’t already in a crisis jumped over an already scheduled meeting.
But it wasn’t up to him to determine what Stevens wanted. His role at this point was only to listen. So, he did. “I’m fine,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“We’ve got a situation on our hands,” the other man said. “And I know you have a meeting on Monday with HR, but this is…well.”
Stevens sounded nervous.
This wasn’t just fishy, it was herring.
He wasn’t going to make Monday’s meeting; that calendar date was going to be dust. But all he said was. “Yes?”
“Can you come in? I know it’s a lot to ask but…”
And even though he wasn’t sure what was going on, he knew he didn’t have another alternative if this man was going to be his boss. “Sure,” he said. “It’s fine.”
When he ended the call, he went through the process of rinsing off and then drying off the wheels before heading upstairs, swallowing down some sour cream and trying to figure out what the hell he was about to get into.
End of Excerpt
