Rabbi Gabrielle's Defiance (2 page)

Gabby was uncertain she wanted to emulate the
Asian's greeting, yet she conceded to good manners and waved back
unenthusiastically. Meanwhile, Cindy scampered along the road,
eventually returning to her master.

"I hurt you," the Asian declared.

"My hip feels like it was hit with a pile
driver, but I don't think anything's broken. Bruises in several
places. I won't know the full catastrophe until I get my clothes
off. I'd be surprised if I'm not black-and-blue, you know
where."

He stood a head taller than she, with dark
eyes examining her. "Yep. Looks like I also gave you a neat gouge
on the cheek. Also banged your nose. If I had more time to think, I
probably would have devised something less drastic. My fault
entirely."

She wrestled with confusion about what had
happened. "I don't know whether to thank or vilify you. But I'm
still here and not on some marble slab in a morgue or strapped over
the hood of a pickup truck like a deer carcass – so I guess you
deserve my gratitude." She thrust out her wounded hand to shake.
"This is the last thing I'd expect to do with a man who just
tackled me."

"Name's Kye Naah," his grin was long and
infectious as he reached forward. His cheeks were puffy, rounding
his head like a basketball.

"Gabrielle Lewyn," she replied, aware that
his name possessed a familiar ring. How many Kye Naahs did she
know? Her memory for faces was excellent but the rim of the
baseball cap obscured a good portion of his. "I'll think of you
next Halloween when I wear my deer costume."

He stripped off a glove to place a cold hand
near the abrasion on her cheek, then, with a finger, whisked away a
small pebble lodged in the wound. "Staying at the hotel?"

"Yeah. I'm conducting a religious ceremony at
the DNC meeting tonight. I'll probably look like a villain in an
Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Are you with the DNC, too?"

"They've got me scheduled for a show-and-tell
at today's lunch."

"On politics?"

"Isn't everything politics with the DNC? But
I'm no politician, if that's what you're thinking. I'm a tech-guy
and run a political website. Unfortunately, my work has given
Democratic candidates a rough time. I help non-affiliated,
independent candidates get elected, so I'm persona non-grata with
both Democrats and Republicans, who believe I'm responsible for
stealing their voters… which is exactly what I do. They call me the
son of Mephistopheles. I came running this morning to see my last
sunrise before crucifixion at noon."

Mention of a website jogged her memory. Of
course, she knew Kye Naah, the flamboyant owner of the most
controversial political website on the Internet, and currently
under investigation by the Department of Justice for multiple
campaign violations. She recalled a TV commentator in a piece about
Kye Naah quoting Cicero, ancient Rome's senior political referee
who once remarked of Augustus Caesar, "Now here is a man with many
enemies, but also with much honor."

"I wouldn't advise jogging further in those
clothes, Gabrielle. If you're not in a mood to decapitate me, I'll
take you back to the hotel where the only hunting they do is
head-hunting for website developers."

She tested her legs and immediately
determined that her jogging was over for the day. "Have I an
alternative? It would be helpful if you would go slow and give me
support," she said. A sharp pain pounded her right hip. He took her
arm to relieve weight from the wounded paw.

"If we sing," he said, "we'll scare the deer
away. Hunters won't stick around when they hear my voice."

"
Babba lou
," she
belted out, feeling more comfortable with him, but stopping
immediately to ease the pain in her hip. "If the truth be known, I
was trying to put distance between us. I couldn't have kept that
pace much longer."

He laughed. "I was trying to keep up with
you; a couple hundred yards more and you would have left me in the
dust."

The road to the hotel snaked through thickly
forested lowlands flanking a stream that meandered through a
thirty-six-hole golf course on the valley floor. At a footbridge
spanning it, he said, "I'm really sorry. I'll be happy to cover
your medical expenses. That's the least I can do. The DNC knows my
email address."

"You must get a lot of email."

"If you include electronic hate mail, then
you're right. In cyberspace, my enemies don't have to invest in a
postage stamp. Fortunately, the beauty of the Net is you don't have
to read the insults."

"I'll try to be less combative, but I'll need
a plausible explanation for this tonight when I make my debut
before the public. Maybe I'll tell people I had a collision with a
beagle and leave it at that."

"Blame it on me. There had to be a better way
than knocking you down."

***

In a city where
who
you know is more important than
what
you
know, Washingtonians prefer association with successful people and
Gabby's fame bordered on celebrity status. It was no mystery why
membership at Ohav Shalom increased annually. Her father often
remarked how success breeds success and failure, failure. The more
members, the more revenue from memberships. The more revenue from
membership subscriptions, the more programs. The more programs, the
more people served. The more service rendered, the more members.
Many attributed the congregation's popularity to Gabby, but she
continuously reminded everyone that the dedicated and talented
staff played the most significant role. Two California and two
Texas congregations attempted to recruit her by offering outrageous
salaries. But she enjoyed her community of friends and associations
in the nation's capital. She calculated her modest financial needs
and declared herself to be satisfied. If she had wanted wealth, she
would have chosen medicine or the law or business, not the
rabbinate. Changing jobs for more compensation, even a substantial
sum, had little appeal.

Now in her fourth year as senior rabbi at
Congregation Ohav Shalom, she had settled into a professional
routine. She knew what to expect from the congregation's members
and, generally, they understood where she was coming from. The
Jewish calendar, marked by an inexorable cycle of obligatory
worship services, dictated the schedule of both her private and her
professional lives – and they were different. Between these public
events it was necessary to be available for counseling, teaching
and communal work. Her phone rang continuously with members and
non-members asking to promote a cause or assist in a personal
problem. She often jested that being a rabbi in a large
metropolitan city was analogous to operating a restaurant. Serve
breakfast, then clean up and prepare for lunch. The moment lunch is
over, clean up and get ready for dinner. And after dinner, clean up
again and set up for breakfast. No way to get off this
merry-go-round without closing the doors and going out of business.
Fortunately, her latest associate, Rabbi Asa Folkman, willingly
shared the daily burden, and on occasion provided her with time to
re-charge her batteries at beautiful places like the Greenbrier
Hotel.

It was upon his shoulders she intended to
rely when taking a nine-month sabbatical, scheduled for the spring.
After eleven years of service to Ohav Shalom (seven as associate to
Rabbi Seth Greer and four as Senior Rabbi), the Board acknowledged
an obligation to provide her with an extended respite – personal
time for reflection and study unavailable while on active duty. But
pledging and fulfilling this obligation were different animals. On
two previous occasions emergencies at the synagogue forced
postponements.

At 38 and facing the prospect of slipping
through the prime mating years without a husband or children, Gabby
could not afford to be casual about social contacts. Three
significant romances and a half-dozen less serious but nonetheless
time-consuming relationships sharpened her impatience to find a
lifetime mate. Her figure, though three pounds heavier since she
had retired from playing tournament tennis, remained that of a
dedicated athlete. No red meats or excess fats, chocolates or
ice-cream in her diet. To avoid snatching one or two cookies off
the buffet table at a synagogue reception required supreme control,
especially when she was anxious or in need of a psychic reward.
Earlier in life, she believed that by denying herself sweets her
taste buds would eventually lose their desire. This she learned to
be dead wrong, for in spite of her self-control, the craving
continued.

Short brunette hair cut close to her scalp
accentuated what an enamored but rejected suitor once called
dancing eyes
and a rounded nose that
dropped off at the tip in a cute, school-girlish manner. Dimples
remained her dominate feature. They produced deep, alluring
cavities to highlight the warmth of her smile. One would suspect
her to be bombarded with dates, but the reality was quite
different. Men just didn't know how to telephone a female rabbi and
invite her for dinner or a basketball game. Moreover, they
conjectured that the queue of suitors was far longer than it was.
When occasionally seen in public with a date, rumors circulated. To
avoid such speculation, she found it expedient to socialize outside
Washington's Jewish community, in remote locations, such as White
Sulfur Springs, West Virginia.

An interest in politics crept up on her. In
earlier years, the endless scheming, pontificating, and hypocrisy
of politicians in Washington seemed anything but admirable. An
endless series of political campaigns, filled with stump speeches
designed to sway rather than inform voters was annoying. But after
her associate, Rabbi Dov Shellenberg, left Ohav Shalom to become a
White House Fellow and launch a career in government, her harsh
attitude toward the business of public service softened. She began
attending meetings with Young Democrats and discovered a latent
fascination not only with public policy but also with the process
of getting officials elected to office.

After assessing multiple bruises and contusions,
Gabby showered and applied topical antibiotics to abrasions on her
face, wrists and ankles. Blood that earlier drained from her
nostril dried. She was surveying the damages in the bathroom mirror
when the phone rang. Stacy Donatello, secretary to DNC Director,
Daniel Lyle Carberri, introduced herself with an apology for the
early morning call. Democratic Senator Cynthia Melody Childs from
Gabby's newly adopted home state of Maryland – where she had
purchased a townhouse near the Potomac River in the Palisades
District, a half-mile from the District of Columbia line – and Mr.
Carberri were planning a breakfast meeting in the Director's suite
in forty-five minutes and both had requested her attendance.

"Why?" Gabby asked, revealing bewilderment
for coming onto the radar screen of such powerful people.

Donatello replied that she was just a
messenger and not privy to her boss's thinking.

The invitation, however mysterious, was hard
to refuse. You just don't say no to a United States Senator and the
Director of the Democratic National Committee. Besides, her morning
adventure had stimulated an appetite and dining with two of the
most important participants at the conference was better than
eating alone in the hotel coffee shop – despite the uncomplimentary
sight she would present.

Forty minutes later, the DNC director greeted Gabby
in the corridor outside his suite and immediately remarked about
her facial wounds while ignoring her hip. "I hope nobody took a
punch at you, Raaab-i," he ribbed in an easy Southern drawl while
squiring her into a suite of rooms where breakfast was already
arranged at two round tables.

"Had a little fall this morning while
jogging. Nothing serious," she fibbed, not wishing to go into the
unflattering details.

Four members of Maryland's Democratic
Committee stepped forward to meet her, coffee cups in hand, making
conversation about how they enjoyed Greenbrier's celebrated
kitchen. Senator Cynthia Melody Childs showed up fourteen minutes
later, following a Washington custom that senators were always the
last to arrive at a function, as befitting the importance of their
office and the scarcity of their valuable time. She was no stranger
to Gabby, but it would have stretched the truth to say that they
were anything but occasional acquaintances. Once all were seated
for breakfast and introductory banter over, conversation focused on
Maryland's eighth Congressional District, at the time represented
by Toby Ryles, an extremely talented, very liberal Republican who
had been re-elected seven times in a solidly Democratic district.
But at a terrible political price. For a Republican to serve a blue
district where the overwhelming sentiment was Democratic, she had
no alternative but to vote as an old-fashioned New-Deal-Democrat.
Great for the Democrats, but this made her a pariah among her
Republican cohorts who denied her senior committee appointments.
Despite fourteen years in office, no legislation bore her name. In
all her years, she was boycotted by the Republican Caucus and
remained as isolated as any non-affiliated freshman congressman.
She possessed neither the authority to initiate new bills nor to
promote ones reflecting the views of her constituents. Her long
tenure was spent catering to her Democratic constituents to
guarantee re-election. In the past, the Democratic Party had been
complacent if not ambivalent about challenging her seat because at
the end of the day, they could always rely on her liberal vote. But
that didn't mean Toby Ryles wasn't a caw in the Democratic
throat.

Carberri surveyed his guests and lifted his
eyes above Gabby's head as if gathering wisdom from the Almighty.
"Raab-bi," he drew out her title as though opening an accordion,
“we're determined that the time has come to replace Representative
Ryles with a real Democrat. You probably know that Maryland
Democrats have selected State Senator Barbara Abt to carry our
standard into Congress. We thought we had a dynamite candidate, but
things have changed radically this week. She hasn't faced the press
yet so what I'm about to tell you must remain confidential. Call it
clergy privilege
, and we're sure you will
exercise this often. Barb's husband of twenty-four years has run
off with a younger chicken. That's hardly newsworthy these days in
Washington, but you can imagine the difficulty it causes for a
candidate. Barbara has told us she anticipates a nasty divorce with
perhaps years of litigation. To put her family troubles before the
public at this delicate time would be undesirable, from a political
as well as personal point of view. We at the DNC concur. Toby Ryles
is going to be tough to beat under the most desirable conditions.
The long and short of it is that we need a replacement to pull the
election out of the bag – ideally, we believe, a highly visible
woman who can appeal to the District's predominance of registered
Democratic voters, the majority female. It's got to be someone to
shake them from a fourteen-year pattern of returning Toby Ryles to
office. Historic lethargies aren't easy to turn. We need someone
with verve, visibility, and brains."