Join us on May 14 at 12:30 p.m. ET on Zoom for Paper Brigade Presents: A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Short Sto­ry with Barak Kas­sar, Basia Wino­grad, and Josh Rolnick!

I am not the only gig work­er in the Palms. Prob­a­bly a third of the ten­ants dri­ve for Lyft, Uber, Door­Dash. Me, I am a mezuzah scribe. In Hebrew, the word is sofer. Same as the word for author. Weird, giv­en that authors cre­ate and I just grind. Six days a week, I copy words on small squares of parch­ment. With a goose quill. Medieval. 

Today the Palms — offi­cial­ly it’s called The Roman Palms — feels like it could melt into a sick mix of sweat and cur­tains, wall-to-wall car­pet­ing, and clumps of hair in the drains. And then evap­o­rate into some­thing like the rusty smog suf­fo­cat­ing Los Angeles. 

The last day I remem­ber being this hot was in Tzfat. When my dad called with the news. The nar­row street out­side the insti­tute looked oily with heat. The sky was a pale orange just like it is today, and the air smelled of gaso­line. I was eigh­teen. Haleli had just left for the army. 

But back to here. Every day, over and over, I write out the same hun­dred and sev­en­ty words. When I have cre­at­ed enough scrolls to fill an enve­lope, I FedEx them to my employer. 

They will even­tu­al­ly be placed in small cas­es and sold to Jews to attach to the door­posts of their homes. They’re tame echoes of the blood of sac­ri­fi­cial lambs Jews once paint­ed on their doors so God would pass over them — spar­ing their chil­dren while send­ing death through the door­ways of their Egypt­ian enslavers. Why God need­ed a sign — why God didn’t just know which homes were inhab­it­ed by his sup­pos­ed­ly cho­sen peo­ple — I have nev­er under­stood. Any­way, I have to fol­low a mil­lion rules: Wear tzitz­it and a kip­pah. Dav­en three times a day. The mezuzah scrolls must be writ­ten on parch­ment made from the skin of a kosher ani­mal. The space between each line of text must be the same height as a line of text, and the space between words must equal the space of a sin­gle let­ter. I learned all of this at Haleli’s father’s insti­tute in Tzfat. We stud­ied Sun­day through Thurs­day, sev­en or eight hours a day. Even though my mom’s sis­ter lived in Israel, I’d nev­er left South­ern Cal­i­for­nia before. The build­ing was old­er than any­thing I’d seen, with intri­cate­ly pat­terned tiled floors. We sat togeth­er at long tables. Lessons. Meals. Prayers. All in the main room. The air inside was cool and smelled a bit of ani­mals — the parchment. 

If I’m real­ly in a groove, I can fin­ish three and a half scrolls a day. Jose gives me a tough time about the quill and ink. He calls me The Amish Jew. If I could afford a vehi­cle to keep in the Palms’ garage, he says, it would be a horse-and-bug­gy. I like his rib­bing. I do sort of look like some­one from anoth­er world. My clothes are west­ern, total­ly LA. But I wear a kip­pah and tziz­it — and I have side­locks, which I began to grow five years ago in Tzfat. And today they real­ly flow. Haleli must have had a vision of what they would look like. She named the right one Has­bani and the left Banias — after the rivers around Tzfat where we used to camp together. 

My rou­tine starts each morn­ing when I wake up. I pour water from a tin cup over each hand three times, let­ting it run into a bowl on my night­stand. When I first learned this rit­u­al, Haleli explained that the water wash­es away any evil spir­it that might have tak­en res­i­dence in me overnight and cleans­es my fin­gers for the holy work of the day ahead. That work, it would become clear, includ­ed both the cal­li­graph­ic skills her dad was teach­ing me and the skills she was — in a field on the out­skirts of town near the blue ceme­tery where the famous Kab­bal­ists are buried. 

This morn­ing, I’m far from any groove. It’s been three hours. My chair at the desk in my bed­room is unyield­ing. My back is taut. Sit­ting can nau­se­ate me. I imag­ine my spine like a mas­sive quill from a human-sized goose about to be killed by an under­paid rit­u­al slaugh­ter­er — also a gig worker. 

Plus, there’s this heat. No air con­di­tion­er in my unit. Sweat drips onto the parch­ment, mak­ing it smell like a butcher’s shop. And the quill slides around in my hand. I have already ruined three let­ters — a shin (ש(, a hay (ה(, and an adorned nun (נ(. Each time I had to wait for the ink to dry, scrape the let­ter off with a razor blade, and try again. I am nowhere near com­plet­ing a scroll and once again the nib slips. Fuck. There’s no point in con­tin­u­ing like this. I stand, leave the apart­ment, and walk along the sec­ond-floor breeze­way over­look­ing the pool and pic­nic area. Jose says a job should not have so many require­ments. But I tell him it’s no dif­fer­ent than need­ing a driver’s license for Uber. A back­ground check. Each day, I need to recite Shachar­it, Min­cha, Maariv, and every prayer in between. If I don’t, my scrolls will not be kosher. 

He rolls his eyes.“Meir … why are you so obsesi­vo com­pul­si­vo about this job, my young friend who doesn’t even believe in God any­more and prob­a­bly nev­er did?”

_________

Nor­mal­ly the toi­let seat is cold when I wake up. The floor, too, since my mom took the bath­mat with her when she moved out. That cool­ness would be nice now; I could lie down for a moment and be refreshed by the tiles. But today, the tiles were hot even at 5:00 in the morn­ing. After I was done, I said the prayer I’ve said every time I’ve used the bath­room since Tzfat. 

Blessed are you who has cre­at­ed with­in us numer­ous ori­fices and cav­i­ties. If but one were to be blocked, or one of them were to be opened, it would be impos­si­ble to exist even for a short while. 

I learned that prayer, among many oth­ers, upon arriv­ing at the insti­tute when I was sev­en­teen. The words actu­al­ly reg­is­tered months lat­er when my father called. He’d been diag­nosed with col­orec­tal can­cer. Blocked ori­fices. I imme­di­ate­ly left Israel and returned to Cal­i­for­nia. Haleli was away at her army base. I didn’t get to say a prop­er good­bye. And I didn’t get to fin­ish the year­long scribe course. 

The fact that holes so small are so impor­tant in my tra­di­tion mat­tered to me, once. But most days now, I just say it. Flat­ly, like I say every oth­er prayer. With­out kavanah—what the Kab­bal­ists in Tzfat call intention. 

I used to imag­ine the first let­ter of the scroll, the shin, as a three-head­ed beast. I draw the right head first, then the cen­ter, then the left. Per the rules. Then the necks. I add tiny dec­o­ra­tive crowns atop each head. I used to have names for my three-head­ed beasts. And back­sto­ries. I bare­ly remem­ber those sto­ries now.

It’s the same way with food. Take the break­fast I’d eat­en that morn­ing. Toast, but­ter, jam, and milky black tea. The gen­tle bur­ble of the ket­tle, the tiny bub­bles that con­densed under the toast on the side plate, the way the jam and but­ter sort of mixed and stuck briefly to my teeth — at one time, it all felt like a meditation. 

I used to make the tea and toast for my mom and myself. It didn’t last long. Now, with both my par­ents gone — my dad dead and my mom liv­ing with her sis­ter — I pre­pare food and eat on autopi­lot. I sweep the crumbs from the counter, includ­ing the few that some­times end up behind the pho­tos of my par­ents that I keep there. 

__________

Nor­mal­ly, I don’t take my first walk until I fin­ish my first scroll — which I com­plete after Shachar­it, the morn­ing prayer. And then I walk around the build­ing. Return home. Start my sec­ond scroll. Make lunch. Fin­ish the sec­ond scroll. Walk. Eat my lunch, either with Jose in the lob­by or with a book on the roof. Com­plete my third scroll. Say Min­cha. Then take my third and last walk of the day in the evening. Final­ly I recite Maariv. 

The Palms is like hun­dreds of apart­ment com­plex­es around here. The fake rock is dirty. So is the beige paint job. An ane­mic palm tree stands like a tired sen­try out­side the lob­by. The flat roof is noth­ing spe­cial. Grav­el. Sheet met­al con­trap­tions that make a build­ing work. But I like it there. 

The evening walk is the busiest. I often go to the pool for a smoke. I stand by the fence and watch the peo­ple and the sky. Peo­ple in small groups drink and talk. Chips and sal­sa, take­out, or meals cooked in their apart­ments. The twin boys from 222 are usu­al­ly jump­ing in and out of the pool. Their par­ents hold hands and watch them. The moon ris­es and the palm trees beyond the fence make me feel lone­ly as they become sil­hou­et­ted against the night sky. I used to imag­ine the first let­ter of the scroll, the shin, as a three-head­ed beast. I used to have names for my three-head­ed beasts. And back­sto­ries. I bare­ly remem­ber those sto­ries now.

I go home. Say Maariv. Read and go to sleep. 

The walks keep me sane. They coun­ter­act the crum­bling of my spine. And my spir­it. Scroll. Walk. Scroll. Walk. Or, as Jose says, ​“Scroll, stroll.” Hah. 

He’s the best part of the walks, the one per­son I talk to for real. But I like see­ing the oth­er ten­ants, too. I like the waves, the nods — what Jose calls my ​“lit­tle talk” with them. 

Mrs. Careyes in 214 a few doors down from me waves from a patio chair out­side her unit on my morn­ing walk. She’s kind of ele­gant for the Palms. And her dog, a regal Chi­huahua — Jose calls him ​“Very Lit­tle Prince” — yips and then is qui­et as soon as he rec­og­nizes me. I bend and pat him on the head, smil­ing up at Mrs. Careyes. She is get­ting frail­er and has missed a few waves in recent days. Her grand­daugh­ter Ara recent­ly moved in to help her. She dri­ves for Uber. Jose told me this. I have not spo­ken with Ara — we just nod. She reminds me of Haleli, with her dark hair and eyes. 

There’s a med stu­dent in 227. She’s sel­dom around but we say hi some­times. There’s a guy on the ground floor in 117 with an online T‑shirt busi­ness. The boy and girl from 222 with their par­ents who love the pool — he’s a Lyft dri­ver and she’s in cod­ing school. Such a warm fam­i­ly. There are three trav­el­ing nurs­es in 332. 

__________

The web­site of my employ­er — Modi & Ani, Inc., owned by an Israeli and an Indi­an — fea­tures a soft­ly lit pro­mo­tion­al video. It begins in close-up. A man’s hand dip­ping a quill in slow motion into rich ink, flat­ten­ing a small piece of parch­ment on an angled, wood­en sur­face and writ­ing the first let­ters of the words: She­ma Yis­rael, Adon­ai Elo­heinu, Adon­ai Echad—Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One. Vio­lin music plays. Clas­si­cal, with a hint of klezmer. The video cuts to shots of fan­cy homes and zooms in on the door­posts. Words appear on the screen: Come Home to Modi & Ani. The Qual­i­ty Mezuzah for the Dis­cern­ing Jew­ish Homeowner. 

These images are not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­gru­ent with real­i­ty for Modi & Ani scribes. About one hun­dred and fifty of us, judg­ing by the size of our infor­mal What­sApp group, work in homes not at all like those in the video, mak­ing piece­work scrolls for $25 each.

__________

I do not like that my dad was cor­rect when he said (over and over) that a job writ­ing scrolls would be poor­ly paid, hell on my body, and lone­some, repet­i­tive work. Jose says peo­ple can be cor­rect but not right and that makes me feel better.

I was drawn to the cama­raderie of the oth­er novice scribes dur­ing what was meant to be my gap year at the insti­tute in Tzfat. The med­i­ta­tive nature of the work and the spir­i­tu­al rou­tines calmed me. It was so dif­fer­ent from my home in Simi Val­ley, where my father would yell across the expan­sive house and my moth­er would rage back silently. 

“I bring an impor­tant client to din­ner. Would it kill you to smile? Maybe ask a ques­tion or two?” my father would shout from the bar in the liv­ing room. 

My moth­er would sto­ical­ly chop veg­eta­bles in the kitchen.

“Noth­ing? You’ve got noth­ing to say? Great!” It was always that. Over and over. 

I got pret­ty good at scrib­ing. And Haleli’s dad — the mas­ter — wel­comed me into his fam­i­ly. My dad sent a small donation. 

But in ret­ro­spect, LOL. It’s not like any of my fel­low novices actu­al­ly became scribes. I mean, we were all tak­ing a gap year, or a fuck year, or an STI year, or a what­ev­er year. I guess I just got sucked into it more. Took it more seri­ous­ly. Took it over the top? I have no idea what my for­mer col­leagues are up to now. They are prob­a­bly lawyers and busi­ness­peo­ple. Not a side­lock among them, I’m guess­ing. I did go on Face­book once to see what Haleli was up to, and she’s in New Jer­sey now with some big-look­ing job and some big-look­ing guy and two kids and I got the sense that she wouldn’t remem­ber me.

__________

Not too long after my dad was diag­nosed — in fact, dur­ing his chemother­a­py, when he was bald and his head was cold and he was nau­seous and the neu­ropa­thy made his fin­ger­tips and toes lose feel­ing — he was arrest­ed and charged, and soon pled guilty to finan­cial crimes he’d com­mit­ted in his book­keep­ing business. 

My father going off about the val­ue of col­lege over a shit­ty prison phone — specif­i­cal­ly a BA in account­ing, fol­lowed by an MBA with a finance con­cen­tra­tion — was too much for me. 

I nev­er checked the email account I had used to apply to col­leges from the inter­net café where Haleli had giv­en me ideas for appli­ca­tion essays as we drank Turk­ish cof­fee and smoked. And laughed a lot. I nev­er went back to check the account. I do not know if or where I was admitted. 

__________

My dad died soon after his sen­tence began, and my mom and I began to speak more. Some­thing about my dad’s dying seemed to open some­thing new and good between us. I enjoyed our con­ver­sa­tions. Life was strange­ly pleas­ant. Calm. Yeah, we had no mon­ey. And we got none from any of my grand­par­ents, even though the ones on my dad’s side seemed to have some. ​“Swindlers,” Jose had called them not long after my moth­er and I took the small apart­ment togeth­er in the Palms. ​“You know what they say: ​‘Apples don’t fall far from the tree.’ And some­times they get bruised when they hit the ground.”

__________

I always hear Jose before I see him, and his boom­ing voice and laugh make me hap­py. He spends much of his day in the lob­by on the first floor, using his phone or mak­ing the build­ing run, and talk­ing to peo­ple as they walk by. Like, say, ear­li­er this week. Jose was giv­ing instruc­tions to a guy who was head­ed to an apart­ment to repair a ceiling. 

“Fuck­ing 331. I told him, ​‘Do your Tik­Toks out­side,’ but no. Idiot sprayed bright pur­ple soda all over the ceil­ing stuc­co. Dis­gust­ing. And I’ve seen a lot of dis­gust­ing in this building.” 

“Can you imag­ine how dif­fer­ent the world would be if the ceil­ing guy did his job like I do mine?” I said, after the ceil­ing guy had walked away. ​“Apply­ing stuc­co like I write my scrolls? One dot at a time. Maybe our world would be more peaceful.” 

“Our world would be more pen­de­jo, Meir,” Jose said. ​“Come on, ​‘One dot at a time!’ Speed it up, man. Make more mon­ey. Nobody cares how you do it.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Why not? You know those oth­er scribe dudes in India or where­ver­the­fuck are prob­a­bly bang­ing out like ten or fif­teen a day. And those boss­es of yours don’t give a shit. They won’t spring for qual­i­ty assur­ance, and here you are eat­ing ramen and liv­ing in the Palms.” 

“I wan­na do it right. It’s impor­tant to me. I can do three a day.” 

“Do you think peo­ple would have any idea if you didn’t say all those prayers all day long?” 

“Prob­a­bly not. But I would care.” 

“Por que, mi Judi­to Meir?” 

It’s like, What if there real­ly is a God? And let’s say a vin­dic­tive God. Like a not-super-under­stand­ing God. I can’t be the one who puts some­thing wrong, some­thing not kosher in their lives. I can’t put them at risk. That’s what my dad did with people’s money.

__________

Strange. Jose is not in the lob­by on my first walk of the day. I get a book from the lit­tle library he runs in his office and return the one I fin­ished yesterday. 

On the roof, I find a bit of shade beside a large air vent. I bend over to loosen my body, reduce the tight­ness in my low­er back, and push away the nau­seous­ness. After a few stretch­es, the pain eas­es. Instead of open­ing the book, I lie on my back and watch the sky. In the clouds, I’ve seen almost every Hebrew let­ter that I write in the scrolls. A con­trail of a plane leav­ing LAX inter­sect­ing with a nar­row, extend­ed cloud makes a daled (ד (that is the final let­ter of the first line: Adon­ai Echad, God is One. 

I had thought that one day I’d actu­al­ly mourn for my father, that a feel­ing would blow through me like one of the click­baity-named weath­er events on the news my moth­er watched after sup­per. But it’s been three years and nope. Instead, my spir­it mut­ed. The only time I real­ly break through is talk­ing to Jose. 

“How can you wear your hair like this?” Jose once asked, tak­ing my side­locks in his hands. ​“And cov­er your head and have your holy writer job and not believe?” 

“I don’t not believe, Jose,” I said. ​“I do believe. I don’t know. I guess I believe in the beau­ty of not know­ing an unknow­able truth. And if there is no God, okay, what’s the prob­lem in think­ing this way? Plus, they’re cool, I think.” I reached up and touched the side of my face. ​“Like Jew­ish dreads.” 

It remind­ed me of a sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tion I once had with Haleli. ​“I do believe in this,” I’d said as I kissed her through her poplin skirt. 

“This, my Amer­i­can friend, is the most unknow­able of all,” she had replied, and nudged me to keep going.

__________

Ear­ly morn­ings, I used to fill a ket­tle and boil it for my sleep­ing moth­er. The water would cool by the time she woke up, but would boil more quick­ly when she reheat­ed it to make tea. But after six months liv­ing togeth­er in LA, she moved to her sister’s in Be’er She­va, to help with her nieces and nephews, my reli­gious cousins. Appar­ent­ly she need­ed her bath mat too, WTF. The move was tem­po­rary, she told me, but that was three years ago. Nei­ther of us seems to be into What­sAp­ping. So now I make break­fast for myself alone, and my life is padded once again by silence. 

Jose is six­ty or sev­en­ty. It’s hard to tell. He’s large and all mus­cle. He wears kha­ki trousers and but­ton-down shirts, the short sleeves tight around his biceps. On the inside of his right wrist, the words ¿Quien vive? Who lives? On his left, the answer: Cristo. 

I feel phys­i­cal­ly tiny next to Jose. Tiny, but alive. 

“Tell me a new Hebrew word,” Jose likes to ask. The snip­pets of Hebrew are cur­ren­cy with his church friends. Once he asked me while he was skim­ming leaves from the pool. 

I replied, ​“You know what gema­tria is?” 

Jose placed the net down along­side the pool, took a ball­point pen and a small note­book from his pocket.

“It’s like a kind of numerol­o­gy. Every let­ter has a cor­re­spond­ing num­ber and so you add up the let­ters in a word and the word has a num­ber. So, for instance, in Eng­lish, ​“a” would be 1, ​“b” would be 2, and so on.”

Jose raised his eye­brows above his read­ing glass­es. His ball­point pen hov­ered above his note­book. ​“So tell me a word already. I don’t need a gram­mar les­son or what­ev­er it is you are giv­ing me right now.” 

“Write this one down. T’shuvah.” I spelled it for him in Eng­lish. ​“It means repen­tance. Its val­ue is 713 and there are 713 let­ters in each scroll I write.” 

Jose returned the note­book and pen to his pock­et and looked direct­ly into my eyes. 

“Jesus, Meir. What are you repent­ing for? You didn’t do your dad’s crimes. You didn’t send him away. Your mom left on her own accord. You don’t need to so-called repent by turn­ing your spine and wrists and shoul­ders and eyes to noth­ing­ness before you turn thirty.” 

“I’m the bruised apple. I’m try­ing to roll away from the tree.” 

“Yes, you are. We all are. So was your pops, rest his fucked-up soul. And his par­ents. And their par­ents. Every­body back to Adam and Eve. Inter­gen­er­a­tional shit trans­fer, Meir.” 

__________

Mid­way through my third scroll, I go for my walk. Again, Jose isn’t in the lobby. 

On my way back, Mrs. Careyes’s Chi­huahua, Lit­tle Prince, is mak­ing a lot of noise. Strange. The door to 214 is open. Two sweaty men in ill-fit­ting black suits emerge with a body on a gurney. 

Mrs. Careyes. She was old. It must be her. I feel a rush of sad­ness. The man back­ing down the walk­way turns toward me. I squeeze against the fake rock wall and hold my breath. 

A moment lat­er, Ara emerges from the apart­ment, fol­low­ing the gur­ney. I don’t know what to say. As we pass one anoth­er, we nod and our shoul­ders brush together. 

I see Jose inside the apart­ment, fend­ing off the Chi­huahua with his foot as it angles for the open door. This makes me sad­der. I’ve nev­er seen the dog this stressed. I get on my knees and pet her. She becomes calm. 

“Meir. I need your help.”

“What do you need?” 

“Some­body kind to stay here and keep the Chi­huahua chilled out while Ara takes care of her grandmother.” 

“I’m real­ly behi — ” 

“Meir! Take a break from your scrolls for an hour or two. Out of respect for Ara’s abueli­ta.” 

__________

I walk in. It’s a dark apart­ment, cool. I hear the hum of an air con­di­tion­er. I stand still and give my eyes time to adjust. One wall of the liv­ing room is cov­ered with pic­tures of Jesus in del­i­cate sil­ver frames. Jesus in what looks like a court­room. Jesus try­ing to car­ry a large cross. Jesus with a woman. Each has beau­ti­ful cal­lig­ra­phy in Span­ish. I walk to the wall and pull my phone from my pock­et. With Google Trans­late and Wikipedia, I under­stand that I am look­ing at the Sta­tions of the Cross. I read one. Every­thing is writ­ten in crisp black ink, except for the word cora­zones—I learn this means ​“hearts” — in oxblood red. 

Se miraron mutu­a­mente Jesús y María, y sus miradas fueron otras tan­tas fle­chas que traspasaron sus amantes cora­zones. 

I’m look­ing at Mary, Jesus’s moth­er, with Jesus. The ink is cracked in parts. But the col­or is not diminished. 

I read all the sta­tions under my breath, enjoy­ing the sounds the let­ters make on my tongue. My upper body sways freely back and forth, as it once did while pray­ing. The dog is fast asleep on the sofa. 

When I first returned from the Galilee, I felt like I was one of the few peo­ple in LA attuned to the rhythms of the earth. Me and the gar­den­ers. I would like that feel­ing back.

I say Min­cha slow­ly in Ara’s liv­ing room, con­sid­er­ing each word as I once did in Tzfat. 

Hap­py are those who dwell in your house. 

Fin­ish­ing the prayer, I notice cal­lig­ra­phy tools on the kitchen table. I walk over to look at them. Next to the pen and ink and a pile of paper is a very small piece of cal­lig­ra­phy paper. 

To deny the night horse. 

To look her in the mouth.

To awak­en with yesterday’s heaviness.

Is to reject her uncon­di­tion­al love. 

—are­celi careyes 

Above the words is a del­i­cate draw­ing of a rid­er­less horse in the night sky. It has what seems like incred­i­ble, but gen­tle, power. 

I walk to the win­dow over­look­ing the pool. Place my hand on the glass pane. It feels like it is cool­ing down out­side. The sun is about to set. I face east again and recite Maariv. 

Blessed are You 

who speaks the evening into being, 

skill­ful­ly opens the gates, 

thought­ful­ly alters the time and changes the seasons, 

and arranges the stars in their heav­en­ly cours­es accord­ing to plan.

__________

Just after 9:00 in the evening, Ara comes in. Lit­tle Prince runs to her and jumps as high as he can get, a bounce of joy. She looks at me.

“Jose asked me to keep the pup happy.” 

“Oh right. Sor­ry. Yeah, he told me. It’s all a blur. Thank you.” 

I want to talk to her, but I don’t know if I should. I start to walk out.

“Will you sit with me a bit?” I turn, nod­ding. I sit on the couch, Ara on the floor. ​“My name’s Meir, but I guess you know that already.” 

She smiles. We sit for a while. Ara starts to cry a lit­tle. I stay qui­et. There is a cof­fee table in front of us with a turquoise-and-sil­ver bot­tle open­er, some books, and what looks like a stack of her grandmother’s bills. 

“I looked at the art on your wall,” I say, final­ly. ​“I hope you don’t mind.” 

She nods, look­ing up at the wall. ​“Some my grand­ma made. Some my grand­pa col­lect­ed. They had a gallery togeth­er a long time ago, in Mexico.” 

“Did you make the one on the table? That looks like it’s your signature.” 

“I drew it for my grand­moth­er. But I didn’t fin­ish in time. She nev­er saw it.” 

“She would have loved it, I think,” I say. ​“It gives me a calm feel­ing. It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you, Meir.” 

“What hap­pened to the art gallery?” 

“Want a beer?” I nod, and Ara stands, cross­es the liv­ing room into the kitchen, and returns with a large Coro­na Famil­iar and two glass­es stacked one inside the oth­er. She cracks open the bot­tle and pours for each of us. Holds her glass up to mine. We clink. 

“How many times have we nod­ded to one anoth­er in pass­ing?” I ask her.

“Our silent ver­sion of lit­tle talk?” 

“Hah, yeah.” 

“Some,” she says. 

I say nothing. 

“You walk a lot,” she says. ​“You talk to a lot of peo­ple in the building?”

“Most­ly Jose. With every­one else, it real­ly is just chitchat. ​‘Yo, Moroc­co.’ ​‘Yo, Meir.’ ​‘Anoth­er day, anoth­er dollar.’” 

She nods again, sip­ping her beer. 

“What’s weird is that the lit­tle talk means more to me now than the words I write all day long. They’re sup­pos­ed­ly the most impor­tant words in my entire tra­di­tion, words ancient Jew­ish mar­tyrs said out loud as their skin was peeled off or as they were burned alive. And they mean noth­ing to me any­more. Same with the prayers I say every day. It’s like I don’t even know I’m say­ing them.” 

Ara refills my glass. 

“That’s kind of a mind­fuck. What with your hair and those strings hang­ing out under your shirt and every­thing … I nev­er would’ve thought you felt that way about your job.” 

“All I do is copy shit.” 

Ara smiles. ​“You want some food? My grand­ma made some amaz­ing veg­gie enchi­ladas I can heat up.” 

“You sure you want to eat her enchi­ladas with me?” 

“I am sure. I haven’t eat­en since this morn­ing.” She stands, head­ing for the kitchen. I sip my beer. After a moment, I hear the microwave whir. 

Tech­ni­cal­ly I shouldn’t eat these. They’re veg­e­tar­i­an, though. I’m going for it. Jose would be proud. 

Ara returns hold­ing two plates with steam­ing enchi­ladas, places them down on the cof­fee table, then goes back to the kitchen for anoth­er Famil­iar. We eat, me on the couch, Ara cross-legged on the floor, fill­ing each other’s glass­es as needed. 

After fin­ish­ing, Ara lies on her back on the liv­ing room car­pet. ​“I don’t like these ceilings.” 

I rest my head on the back of the couch. 

“Same,” I say, ​“but in my apart­ment, I some­times see pat­terns in the pop­corn-cot­tage-cheese-acoustic-what­ev­er-you-call-it ceiling.” 

“Do you see any here?” 

“Not yet.” 

Her eyes trace the ceil­ing, then: ​“What’s your favorite let­ter to write?” 

“Well, none of them right now. But I used to be into the shin.” 

“Shin?” 

“Yeah, like on a leg. They have three heads, kin­da.” I draw one in the air. 

Ara draws one, too. I smile. 

“For a while I was real­ly into the tiny extra hats or crowns you add to the top of some let­ters. Sup­pos­ed­ly they are filled with mean­ings we won’t under­stand until after the Mes­si­ah comes. One thing I liked is you’re sup­posed to draw one side of each crown taller than the oth­er. The side that sym­bol­izes God’s mer­cy is meant to be taller than the side that sym­bol­izes God’s jus­tice because that’s a stronger trait.” 

“Have you ever drawn it the oth­er way? With jus­tice taller?” 

“I can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“Peo­ple expect it a cer­tain way.” 

She nods again, press­ing her lips togeth­er. ​“It’s real­ly love­ly, what you do.”

Before I can answer, Ara exhales and says, ​“Have you ever been on the roof at night?”

“No.” 

“Bring the glasses.” 

She stands and grabs the beer and a blan­ket from the couch. Then, she leads me out of the apart­ment to the stair­well, and I fol­low her up the two flights. Very Lit­tle Prince fol­lows, too. 

We lie on our backs on the blan­ket, look­ing at the stars, the grav­el beneath us still warm from the sun. 

“Is this where you got the idea for the night horse?” 

“Tell me about your hair.” she says abrupt­ly, rolling on her side and touch­ing my side­locks. ​“It’s beau­ti­ful, the long locks.” 

“It’s com­pli­cat­ed.” 

She exhales, rolling away onto her back. ​“Look, Meir, a shoot­ing star.” 

“Shit, I missed it.”

After a pause, I ask, ​“Where did you go with your grandma?” 

“The funer­al home. I had to do paper­work and make plans for her cre­ma­tion. But real­ly I just didn’t want to say good­bye. They let me stay with her body a long time. More than I think they were sup­posed to.” 

“You only just moved in with her, right?” 

“A few weeks ago,” she says. ​“I wish I’d moved in sooner.”

“I didn’t see my dad’s body when he died. I would have liked to. Jews have a thing about guard­ing bod­ies until bur­ial. Sort of like you sit­ting with your grandma.” 

More silence. I like it.

“Jose told me some­thing the oth­er day about how you nev­er found out if you got into col­lege,” she says. 

“Man, what else did he tell you about me?” 

“Hah! I was being nosy. But, then, you did read my poetry.” 

I smile back at her. 

“He thinks you should go to school or at least stop doing these scrolls.” 

“I know. It’s nice that he wants things for me.” 

More silence. A late-night plane heads toward LAX.

“I did imag­ine the night horse while lying out here.” Ara says final­ly, her voice slow­er, softer.

I sit up and split the last of the Famil­iar between our glasses. 

“Can you tell me about the horse? What does it mean?”

“Just a sil­ly poem,” she says, ​“for my grandma.” 

“You seem tired, Ara.” 

“I am, but I had a real­ly nice night. Thank you for tak­ing my mind off my stuff.” 

“I’m gonna miss your grand­ma. She always waved at me when I walked by.” 

It’s hard to say how much longer we stay there, look­ing at the stars. After a time, she shiv­ers, tells me we should go. We head back down the stair­well and walk to her grandmother’s door. ​“Thank you, Meir,” she says. 

“Glad I could be here to help,” I say. 

Ara smiles at me as she enters the apart­ment, shut­ting the door behind her. 

__________

I head down the breeze­way, back to my apart­ment. I need to make up for lost time. I take out a parch­ment, ink, and a quill, and begin to write. I scratch off a bad kuf and redo it. Before long, the scroll is finished. 

You should love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might, I read. These words should be in your heart. 

I lean my head back and yell up at the ceiling: 

“All. All. All. All all all all my heart and all all all my soul.” 

I lay out anoth­er parch­ment and begin to sway. I write. Not the She­ma but lines from prayers I learned in Tzfat. 

Hap­py are those who dwell in your house. 

“What a beau­ti­ful thing to have inside a mezuzah,” I say out loud as if to Ara, as if she were sit­ting there, and add the piece of parch­ment to my pile. I write the same line on anoth­er sheet and repeat it, over and over again, until the page is filled. Add it to the pile. 

Anoth­er sheet. Only this time, I leave a space in the mid­dle and draw a house float­ing in the air. 

And anoth­er: There is none like you among the gods and none like your cre­ation. 

I write the words of Ara’s night horse. I draw a horse. It is not as beau­ti­ful as hers, but, still, I like it. This goes on the pile for Modi & Ani, too. What if I actu­al­ly send them? I imag­ine the pack­age with the scrolls arriv­ing in their shit­ty lit­tle ware­house in the Inland Empire. Would any­one there even look at them? What if they did — what would hap­pen to me then? Maybe they would fire me. Maybe that’s what I need. But prob­a­bly nobody will look at all. My scrolls will enter the sup­ply chain and soon be insert­ed into cas­es and attached to the doors of Dis­cern­ing Jew­ish Home­own­ers. The thought makes me smile. True spir­it, ener­gy, life, a bit of me, even a bit of Ara in each mezuzah. 

Late that night, I climb into bed and whis­per the She­ma. The words sound new to me, spa­cious. I feel small against the few stars I can glimpse through the window.