Leora felt herself turning red; she wanted to leave Random Accessories as soon as possible. It had all been a mistake. “They’re—tefillin. Like, uh—”

“Filling? Filling for what?”

Leora wanted to go bang her head against the wall. “Forget it,” she said. And she left.

LEORA WALKED back to her apartment, a walk that seemed much longer than its seven blocks. The city had grown dark. All around her, lights began to flicker on in the apartment buildings lining the deep streets, illuminating the rooms inside them like little slide panels of distant lands. Her own building seemed empty and gray. Inside the grimy, empty apartment vestibule, dirt collected as usual between the bathroomlike tiles on the floors and walls in front of the broken elevator. She was heading for the stairs, thanking the Laurens and Melanies of days gone by for choosing a second-floor apartment, when she realized that she hadn’t checked the mail that morning. Leora, Lauren, and Melanie shared an oversized mailbox in the building’s vestibule, and it had become Leora’s job to bring in the mail, much as Lauren had fallen into bathroom-cleaning. (Melanie did next to nothing, but Leora didn’t care enough to complain.)

Leora turned the key in the mailbox lock, and the door burst open as usual under a tidal wave of envelopes. She scooped the pile out, letting the three glossy catalogues slip to the floor. Credit card bills, mostly. A few promotional letters; piles of coupons; something from the SUNY Binghamton Alumni Association. Leora discovered that she May Already Have Won Ten Million Dollars, or perhaps Lauren or Melanie Had Already Won, since they had all been blessed with copies of the same letter. And then, a thick padded overnight mail envelope, bulging. For her.

Leora dropped the rest of the mail, littering the vestibule with a blizzard of notices with their Important Information Enclosed and ripped open the overstuffed envelope, forgetting entirely to check the return address. Inside were wads of plastic bubble wrap, alongside of which she found an index card. She took it out and read its unfamiliar flattened handwriting:

Leora, I’m sorry I can’t make it today. Hope this makes up for it—Jake.

P.S. The Mouse House was out of my price range.

Below that was a line written in smooth Hebrew script:

Ezekiel, Chapter 37, verses 13–14:

. . . as I opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of them, I shall put my spirit in you and you shall live . . .

Inside the bubble wrap, she found the tefillin.

Chapter 5 Go Bang Your Head Against the Wall

CHAPTER 5

GO BANG YOUR HEAD
AGAINST THE WALL