Back in the hotel lobby, Yossi was taking his first, second, third and fourth look at Shoshana Beis. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what he found interesting about her – her round wire glasses, the old-fashioned Nikon she wore round her neck or that massive trunk on legs that sat by her side with a look of menace in what he presumed would be its eyes had it had any. She looked back up at him.
“So, your surname, Rachatzruach is it? Interesting, never really heard of it before. Where does it come from?”
Yossi breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been down this route many times before. It was time for “the shpiel”; he gave it to every girl and it was true. Most of it anyway. Or some of it. Well, bits of it had seen the truth from a distance at some point and that’s all that really counted.
“My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a ger, you see. Greek. Ancient Greek actually, you know toga, sandals, Zeus-fan – that kind of thing. Name was Lavaeolus or some such and there aren’t many of his descendants left anymore. My family are basically the last ones left. I’ve got a cousin of some variety who’s a Rosh Yeshiva in some place down in Australia, and I think my dad has a cousin somewhere who’s an accountant but we don’t talk about him. Apart from them, it’s just us.”
Shoshana appeared to be interested, but that didn’t really mean a thing. His last 49 dates had also appeared interested but they all said “no” to a second date, so hey. He decided to try a different track.
“You read the newspapers?” He asked.
Shoshana nodded, reached into the psychotic truck and pulled out a copy of what looked like The Times.
“Mostly for the typos,” she said sheepishly, passing it across to him and pointing to the banner at the top of the front page. He read it.
“The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret”.
He looked back up and saw her staring over his shoulder. Turning, he saw a middle-aged man in full Catholic clerical garb standing by the door.
“Don’t worry about him,” he told Shoshana, “that’s just Father O’Flagherty. He’s the priest who’ll discover that’s he’s Jewish shortly before the end of the story. We still have to get past the Baal Teshuva who has a deep, spiritual experience in Tzfas, the one who has a deep, spiritual experience going to mikva, the one who sees the simcha in the deep, spiritual experience of a frum wedding and the secular American, probably a very succesful one, with a generic name who suddenly realises that he’s missing something in his life and then sees a picture of a made-up Chassidishe Rebbe and has a deep, spiritual experience before we get to the priest.”
Shoshana groaned. “One of those stories is it?”
“‘Fraid so.”
“And so you’re probably going to go to kollel and then somehow get caught up in a web of intrigue involving the CIA, possibly the now-defunct KGB, MI5, Mossad, some Arab terrorists and one or two Neo-Nazis, and yet somehow, without any training or experience outwit all the highly trained operatives from all these various organisations, save the day and when offered a huge reward you’ll turn it down saying that all that matters to you is your Torah.”
“Yup. Looks like it…” said Yossi.
“Bother,” said Shoshana.
“And the author will probably use long words that they don’t really know the meaning of, and those that they kind of know the mean of they’ll use out of context. I expect we’ll end up getting married in a ‘sumptuously decorated’ hall and I can’t imagine we’ll be able to just say anything anymore, we’ll have to state it,” stated Yossi.
“Look, a statement is declarative expression that is either true or false. It is one sided and does not usually come about during two-way conversation,” declared Yossi.
“And a declaration is pretty much the same thing,” he pontificated.
“Well, a pontification is an expression of personal opinion or a declaration from the Pope. I was giving definitions,” he genuflected.
Yossi jumped out of his seat waving his fist in the air,
“Genuflection isn’t a type of speech at all you stupid author! It’s a way of showing respect by bowing on one knee!” he ranted.
Shoshana looked him up and down. And down and up. Slowly, he sat back down in his seat, breathing heavily. Shoshana looked him in the eye and, with great solemnity, exclaimed “Baruch Hashem!”
He boggled a bit.
“Y’what?!”
“Well,” dictated Shoshana, (“dictation is the laying down of authority, pinhead!”)”If it’s going to be one of those stories then I have to randomly say ‘Baruch Hashem’ every now and then. It’s the law, I think.”
There was a small cough from next to them. It came from a small man. He was a rather grubby looking small man in an over-sized trench-coat who held a tray of goods, or more accurately – possibly adequates, in front of him.
“Latke in a bun?” he asked, proffering a small, greasy item in a small, greasy bun in his small, greasy hand. “Only $1, and that’s payin’-me-own-taxes…”