Page 35 of Breakout Year
He took his best guess as to which drawer held Cosmos gear, picked a hoodie that was more midnight blue than screaming yellow, and fled with a sweatshirt and the better part of his self-respect.
He ended up breathless in the hallway, laughing at himself, holding a hoodie with Eitan’s last name written across the back. Maybe he should have picked something else. He pulled the hoodie on. The inside had clearly been pre-treated to be soft. Each letter of Eitan’s decaled name sat like a hand between his shoulder blades.
Well, all right then.
12
Akiva
Akiva’s house looked the same as when he’d left it last night, dustier after the professionally maintained cleanliness of Eitan’s apartment. Don’t get used to that, Akiva thought as he attended to his plants. His spider plant, healthy as ever, and his philodendron, which had gone yellow from too much sun. “I’ve only been gone for a day,” he groused. Its leaves wilted as if they resented his neglect.
His air plant was even worse off, leaves practically brittle. The instructions said to spray it with water every few months, a direction Akiva interpreted as waiting until it had browned and then going oh, shit and trying to remember where he’d left the spray bottle. It perked up as he applied water. What must it be like to live like that—in perpetual anticipation?
That’s melodramatic, even for you. He finished with his plants, showered, then started his laundry, momentarily grateful to be renting a house with a washer-dryer unit so he didn’t have to haul his stuff to the laundromat.
He needed to work, so he cleaned his counters, scrounged food from his cupboards, ran a few laps around the neighborhood, took another shower.
Finally, when he’d exhausted all his other options, he began to write Sue’s book.
Miss Malcha Hopkins was a liar, a con artist, a forger, and, currently, very late…
He stared at the sentence. No, that wouldn’t work. Liar, con artist, and forger all meant relatively the same thing. Would Malcha, a person who hadn’t existed before he wrote her down, be the type to admit to her many crimes except under duress? Should the reader be left to determine which of these was true?
Were women commonly named Malcha in…eighteen-something-or-other, whenever the book was set? Was it too Jewish for Sue’s readers to give a character a Hebrew name? Perhaps a Moira would be more digestible. Matilda. Mary.
He could ask Eitan. Eitan, who’d liked Akiva’s book enough to read it, enough to mention it with the same enthusiasm with which he treated snack foods or playing third base or dancing. He shouldn’t bother Eitan before the game. Shouldn’t really be texting him at all. Don’t be a distraction—easy. Don’t let Eitan distract you—harder.
Akiva opened his texts, found his last message to Sue. What do you think of this? Then pasted his inadequate opening line.
Afternoon rolled in. Akiva got up from his desk, stretched, ignored the pop in his spine that he couldn’t afford to see a doctor about and the way his fingers brushed the low ceiling of his living-slash-dining room. It didn’t matter; it was almost time. He showered—three was the number of showers per day that went from enthusiastic to ballplayer—and changed into synagogue clothes. Checked his phone to make sure the money was still in his cash app account.
He’d been wearing his dark blue kippah for the last few days. He tossed it into the drawer of them and considered his options: The satin ones stamped with dates from various b’nai mitzvot, the more practical leather and knit ones. A rainbow one he’d bought after he’d come out to his parents, but before he’d quit playing. Before they’d agreed that his moving out on his own would be best for everyone involved.
He clipped the kippah on, then walked fifteen minutes to his synagogue. Shabbat wouldn’t start for another few hours—at which point he wouldn’t drive his car except in case of emergency—but the walk always helped him leave the cares of his week behind. He ducked in the low side entrance that was the only door they kept open on weekdays for a fifteen-minute service in which he and nine other congregants davened. He prayed the silent Amidah wrapped in his tallis, clutching the ends of the shawl in reassurance, thinking about nothing and everything and silence.
The silence didn’t last, not when Mark came over right as the afternoon service was concluding. “Look who decided to show up.” He nudged Rachel, who was packing up her own tallis next to where Akiva was standing.
“It’s only been two weeks,” Akiva protested.
“Two weeks”—now Rachel was in on it—“you don’t call, you don’t write.” She wrung her hands faux seriously in an uncomfortably close impression of Akiva’s great-aunts. “The children miss you.”
Mark and Rachel’s children chose that moment to make an appearance, a streak of Uncle Akiva like a blur before he scooped them up. “The children miss climbing me like a tree.”
“Yes, exactly.” Rachel took the older one, Noah, but left Anna, the toddler, who smacked a sticky hand against Akiva’s glasses. She smelled like a kid—like jam and playground mulch—and she couldn’t say his name but kept trying. Two weeks had been too long.
“Great, that’s decided,” Mark said. “You’re coming for dinner.”
“I didn’t bring anything.”
A snort from Rachel. She and Mark had been together since freshman year at Rutgers, when they’d looked at each other across a table at Friday night dinner and gone yes, that one. “You brought yourself. Barely. Do you even eat?”
“Not you too,” Akiva said.
“Who else is giving you trouble for not eating?” Rachel said it with a knowing glint.
“No one.” Akiva shifted Anna until she was sitting more comfortably on his hip. She yawned. Considering he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night, he concurred. “Really, I didn’t bring anything.”
“Come eat or else Rachel will worry that no one’s feeding you and that’s all I’ll hear about,” Mark said, and Akiva knew when he’d been outflanked, so he laughed and said, “Okay.”
