Night Owls: Chapters 19-21

She could be coerced into attending a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, but otherwise her Shabbat was a big dinner.

But being active, upstanding members of the congregation mattered to his mother’s family.

He knew every major and minor detail in Boaz’s life, from his particularly harrowing ghost encounters to his latest film obsession.

Allan Gindi had died weeks ago from a bad bout of pneumonia.

In life Allan Gindi was always inserting himself into things that categorically weren’t his business.

It was how he had wound up adding himself to the number of Gravesend Jews who knew that Aunt Hila wasn’t just a good actress when it came to her chats with the dead and Boaz wasn’t just the fucked-up day school kid with a habit of squandering potential.

The idea of Allan Gindi or any of the ghosts being able to see through his clothes was too terrible to contemplate.

“And given the way you’ve all decided to bombard me...on Shabbat, no less...”

A bunch of dead busybodies who knew nothing about him and what he could handle, what he handled every day without complaint.

The king needed to build a great temple for his people, a place in which the ark and sacred covenant made between his people and the Most Holy, Blessed Be He, would be honored.

After countless hours, countless plans attempted and abandoned, the task had been deemed impossible.

Such a concept should not exist among his people, who had survived in exile, in slavery, in the wilderness, who had crossed the sea on foot and vanquished foes far greater and more numerous than they.

The young king expected this and did not let his apprehension show.

“I have come to you because I need your help. I need you to show me the stones by which I might build the temple, those that might be cut and honed without tools and yet stand as a monument still.”

Days became weeks, until at last they ran out of food and water and were in barren lands where no amount of foraging might satiate their appetites.

So above the ravings and protests of the distraught Prince of Demons, the king’s men removed the bonds from the king and wrapped them twice round the imposter.

When she made her way down, the lobby was empty except for Boaz, who was swiveling in endless circles on his stool.

Boaz was doubled over, clutching his stomach, while an assailant with a sweatshirt hood pulled low over his face lobbed punches at him.

He tried pushing himself to his feet but wobbled so dangerously that she swooped to his side to catch him.

Boaz’s face had begun to throb in earnest, and he could only kind of breathe out of his nose.

“Fine, Old French, maybe Latin or something,” she said, flustered.

“I met Theda Bara in her prime, for your information, and she was a riot, and the movie was fabulous. It’s a shame about the fire.”

Clara was definitely a monster. And she was definitely the coolest girl he’d ever met. Trying to reconcile both just made the throbbing in his forehead worse.

“The long-term plan is to digitize them properly, but we can’t just release our giant collection of films without inviting questions, now, can we? If we did, people would want to interview us. The interviews would get posted online. People would want to take a closer look at the theater. And we’d have to come up with some convoluted story to explain how two eighteen-year-olds just happen to have Hitchcock’s The Mountain Eagle—”

Her face alight with laughter and movies.