Rabbi Gabrielle's Defiance (26 page)

She continued to rub his fingers, massaging
coarse skill around the knuckles. "But you
will
continue, won't you?"

"Absolutely. Only now we must target our
resources better. More than ever, we need a success to show
Washington our potential. If you beat Toby Ryles, the Republicans
can't sit on their hands. They'll have to come aboard, too."

"Can you have two competing patrons?" she
asked.

"We're a for-profit commercial venture.
Democrats want us to help them garner Republican votes and
Republicans, Democratic votes. If we become partisan we're of no
value to either party."

She removed serving bowls from a shelf. The
cartons were marked with a black felt marker in
han'gu'l,
the traditional 16th century Korean
alphabet. "What did you bring?" she asked, innocently sniffing the
aroma of garlic and unrecognized spices.

"I didn't know whether you eat non-kosher
meat, so I played it safe and ordered all vegetarian. My favorite
buckwheat noodles, some shredded radishes, cucumbers in
koch'ujang
, red pepper sauce. I hope it
isn't too spicy for you."

"The fact is I can eat anything I want and
occasionally cross over the line to taste small morsels of even the
forbidden foods. I know that might sound like heresy, but there's a
purpose to this madness. There's nothing intrinsically harmful in
these things. That makes abstinence a bit more meaningful. Does
that sound crazy?"

"Moi? I'm skeptical about religious decrees
written thousands of years ago. On the other hand, if they're
entirely voluntarily, then perhaps they're okay."

At Gabby's dining table, they sat opposite
one another. For easy serving, she deposited the food between them.
Kye sipped a Diet cola and Gabby, her favorite porter beer brewed
in Frederick, Maryland. After a long interval in which nothing was
said, she lifted her eyes to find his plate still empty but his
eyes upon her.

"I want you to know," he said, "how wonderful
I felt sitting beside you in your chapel on New Year's Eve. The
city around us was frolicking, but in the chapel you could almost
hear the quiet. I don't know when I've felt more comfortable. You
have a calming manner, Gabby. In Korean, we call that state
que nyan que rae
. Sometimes I yearn for a
monastic life to balance out what I do for a living. Technology is
addictive. It's a treadmill you can't get off. The more you have
the more you need. In my field, if you're not on top, you get
buried below. So I find myself chasing all the time. It's
exhausting."

Her dimples deepened as she said, "I'm just
an actor, Kye. Inside, I'm as unsettled as you. I may look
composed, but my stomach seldom is. I medicate myself with prayers
and meditation. I'm not sure they're effective. Pepto-Bismol works
better. Until now, fortunately I've been able to stay away from
drugs stronger than that. To slow down sometimes I just stop and
sit, letting my mind wander wherever it wants. Then the phone rings
and I'm off again to the races."

"It goes in wonderful places."

"I'm flattered," she said, picking up a set
of chopsticks and pointing at the food getting cold. "I admire you,
too. We live in different worlds, but I like what I see of yours.
I've always believed that it takes different types of people to
make this world function."

He reached with his chopsticks to snatch a
dollop of pickled radish. "You may not have such a high opinion
when you understand how I've let my people down. They were counting
on me to make Politics a financial success. I promised more than I
delivered. And as things stand at this moment, I'm committed to
making my creditors whole, but I'm not sure I can. In the old days
they used to put debtors into prison."

"No one can blame you for an act of
sabotage."

"The papers hint that I engineered the back
surge to avoid paying my debts. I can't prove I didn't."

"Of course you can't prove a negative."

"Until the police find out who's responsible
I'm toast. The movies make heroes out of detectives and police
inspectors. But I can't name a single law-enforcement officer,
other than the Director of the FBI and the Attorney General. People
who go into law enforcement haven't the expertise to track down the
thugs who crippled me."

"I still don't believe people will blame you
for what happened. But they do admire the way you're fighting
back."

His eyes again fell upon her as he gently
laid down his chopsticks. "When you showed up on New Year's Day, I
was cold, lonely, and terribly frightened. Your hug warmed me
inside. As soon as you left, I went back to work. Twenty-five
minutes later, we stumbled on the key that helped restore part of
our data. Shortly before you arrived, I was about to give up. If I
failed to say it before, thanks for coming. It made a
difference."

The smallness of her contribution embarrassed
her. To hide this she said, "Better start eating before this stuff
tastes like yesterday's leftovers. I don't know about Korean
cuisine, but Chinese food has a short shelf life. Day one, it's
great. Day two, it tastes like warmed over shoe leather."

He offered, "Cooked by friends from my church
who own two small Korean restaurants. One in Silver Spring, the
other in the District on twelfth street."

After dinner she assembled wood and kindling
for a fire in the living room fireplace. Two attempts to ignite the
kindling failed. Eventually, he knelt beside her to introduce fresh
newspaper and reshape the kindling into a miniature log cabin.

"You seem quite confident with your
concoction," she pointed to the pyre.

"It's a question of air flow and heat
convection. Prepare for both and you've got a winner. I'll wager
that once you ignite the paper below, the fire will burn."

"Testing to see if I can actually strike a
match this time?"

"You told me why you had trouble at the
Greenbrier. This is different."

"What's the wager?"

"That if this fire burns you'll answer a
question I've wanted to ask since New Year's Eve."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then you ask of me whatever you want?"

A mischievous grin grew on her cheeks. An
instant later, she put a match to tailings of newspaper and watched
the dancing flames. Fire transferred easily from the newspaper to
nearby small twigs. It looked as if the blaze would consume the
twigs, but suddenly, they retreated leaving large branches lightly
scarred but unburned. In a corner a small pocket of fire simmered,
then a few minutes later flared where branches intersected

"That's where the heat is," he declared.

They sat on the floor beside each other
watching what Kye claimed to be a victory. She believed his
optimism to be premature, but the hot spot continue to burn,
eventually transferring to nearby branches.

"You won the bet," she conceded defeat. "So,
what's your question?"

His head bent slightly toward her as he
whispered. "On New Year's, you said you were in the sanctuary to
remember someone, a friend by the name of Joel. Tell me about
him."

This took her unprepared. "Why do you want to
know about Joel?"

His teeth glistened in the firelight. Dark
eyes fell over his lap. "He obviously meant a lot to you. Since
that night, I keep asking myself if I knew more about Joel I'd know
what kind of a man captured your heart."

Her immediate response was to protect the
privacy she enjoyed with Joel. But an instant later her perspective
changed. What Kye asked, though personal, was nevertheless
forthright. No one had ever inquired of that. "He was a wonderful
man. A dentist by profession. Dedicated to young people. Absolutely
honest. Not particularly handsome. A bit overweight and balding up
front. Unlike many of my friends, he was utterly at peace with
himself."

"Know him for a long time?"

She shook her head, "No. Not long at all. But
there was still wonderful sharing between us. He was shot dead
while trying to save my life. Without him, I wouldn't be here at
this very moment. Every time this thought comes to my mind, I get
teary-eyed. How can one person owe so much to another? I hold
myself partially responsible for his death. Had I not bulled my way
into something that wasn't my business, Joel would be alive
today."

"He must have loved you very much."

She nodded. "Yes, I suppose that's true.
Beware, Kye Naah, I'm dangerous."

Kye's breath was heavy. "I'm sorry, Gabby.
This must be a burden for you."

"Yes. In some ways. But in others, it
provides me with perspective. I feel sometimes I live for Joel
and
myself. And that adds a dimension to
everything, as though I live not one but two lives. Does that make
any sense?"

Their eyes remained fixed on the tips of
flames jumping from branch to branch and marrying one another.
After a long silence, he asked, "Do you think Joel would resent me
in your life?"

Her head jogged sharply to the left to let
her eyes rest on him for an instant before returning to the flames.
"He wasn't that kind of man. He would want me to have a good
friend."

"And how do you feel about a Korean-American
getting close?"

"As a woman or a rabbi?"

"Both."

"I admire you, Kye. You have qualities I
lack. That's Gabby talking. But as Rabbi Lewyn, I can't afford to
get involved with a wild technology geek of Korean decent and a
member of the Protestant community. You know that, don't you?"
His
lips touched her cheek and remained close to her ear. "No, I don't,
friend. At least I don't want to know it. I want to believe that
this is America where everything is possible, where intelligent
folks see through ethnic differences. Perhaps I'm a dreamer."

She took his hand in hers, holding it firmly.
"I'm a dreamer, too, Kye. But my dreams have cost me dearly. Let's
be friends."

"That's not my first choice, Gabb. But I
learned long ago it take two to tango and you don't dance. If
friendship is all I can get, what alternative have I? But don't
close me out of your life."

She deflected. "As I told you, I've got to
read the material Lyle sent me. Otherwise, I won't get a single
vote."

Still holding his hand she climbed to her
feet, dragging him after her.

"I've got my laptop in the car," he said.
"Can I bring it in and work here while you're reading?"

That was exactly what she wanted. "Do you
need to go online?"

"It would be helpful. We're streamlining code
for sorting what's left of our data."

After settling Kye at the kitchen counter in
a good wi-fi location, Gabby gathered her volumes of DNC papers and
returned to the fireplace. Whenever possible, she liked to sit on
her thick Berber carpet with her legs scissored beneath and read.
With a pair of narrow reading glasses low over the bridge of her
nose, she turned her attention to Volume One, Page One – the
beginning of what looked like a long, boring journey. Should she
read sequentially or skip around? Underline or annotate? Many pages
were printed in different scripts, some double-spaced, others
single-spaced, giving the impression that an editor had employed
the CUT and PASTE functions of his software. The majority of papers
in Volume One dealt with Social Security, a subject about which
admittedly she knew little but had strong convictions. The summary
suffered from too many words plastered together with too many comas
and semi-colons. After a half-dozen pages she found herself
glancing through the hallway at Kye, whose eyes appeared intently
glued to his computer, his fingers hunt-and-pecking over the
keyboard. His intensity filled her with envy. However much she
attempted to duplicate this mental focus, her mind worked
differently, by nature rambling from one subject to another.
Consolation for this shortcoming came in the form of a rabbinical
adage, asserting that God created people different,
elu v'elu…
in order to promote diversity among his
creatures.

The ring of the kitchen phone near Kye
interrupted her reverie. For a moment, she considered ignoring it,
but habit forced her to answer nearly all calls. Legs that fallen
asleep under her torso felt like cotton and she barely manage to
hobble to the kitchen, feeling particularly clumsy when she noticed
Kye watching her.

On the other end of the line, she heard,
"Gabby, it's Asa here."

She could usually tell by the crispness of a
voice if a speaker was in trouble. In the synagogue, conversations
with Asa were frequent, but generally not after hours, unless there
was an emergency.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm okay. I'm with Anina at Georgetown
University Hospital and there's something I'd like you to see."

Asa normally avoided hospitals and this
puzzled her.

"Anina's partner went to a treatment planning
session for Tybee Morgenstern. Anina brought me here so I could get
a first-hand understanding of what's in store for Tybee."

"Isn't that a bit irregular?" Gabby expressed
her astonishment at Anina's willingness to breach a wall of medical
privacy.

"You bet. But she knows I'm not going to
misuse what I learn. If you're available, Gabby, I'd like you to
see the CT scans and X-rays, along with two life-size models of her
face and a set of treatment masks. Any possibility you can come
here now? Anina will explain it to you."

Gabby expelled air through her teeth, then
inhaled heavily. This was not how she planned to spend the evening.
Being around sick adults never bothered her, but suffering children
was another matter. The thought of their living long lives with
severe disabilities filled her with horror. Still, she had no
desire to avoid Tybee Morgenstern's disfigurement – or to deflect
it upon Asa. Such dreadfulness needed to be shared. "Where are you
exactly, Asa?"