“Is he talented?”
“I guess the photos were executed well, but it’s hard to take note of talent when your Dad’s penis is framed ten times around the room.”
Vondra giggles loudly in horror and delight. “That’s what the exhibit was? I came so close to taking my mother!”
“Well then, it’s a really good thing you didn’t come. I would have told you, but I just wanted to see your face when you walked in.”
Vondra is still laughing when the phone rings. “Can you pick it up?” Vondra asks, wiping some mascara from her laughter tears.
“Heather, it’s Roswell.”
“Hi,” I say wearily. How many times is he going to apologize for jeopardizing the seder broadcast? It’s been almost a year already.
“I’m just calling you to apologize again.”
“It’s yesterday’s news. It’s over with. So you learned one big thing, don’t smoke weed on a shoot.”
“Yeah, I’m going to make that a law on my film.”
“What film?”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to call you about. I wanted to thank you for kicking my ass.”
“When did I ever do that?”
“Remember that conversation you had with me in the car to your cousin’s house? You told me if I ever want to make a film I should start with what I know best. I had a long discussion with my parents about it, and I decided to follow Abdullah’s struggle to stay in America. It’s unbelievable the crap he’s still going through.”
“You know, that’s a terrific idea. There are some great teen-filmmaking festivals I’ve heard of. I could probably give you some leads—”
“I don’t think so.”
I raise my eyes to the ceiling. Same old Roswell. “So what’s your plan then?”
“You know Cecelia Neville over at HBO?”
Where is this going? “Very well.”
“That’s what I thought. My dad said to be aggressive because that’s how he got ahead in the audio/video duplication business. So I used your name—”
“What!”
“I got right through to Cecelia, and pitched a film about Abdullah’s problems with the Immigration Office.”
“Shit, Roswell. You can’t use people’s names without checking with them first.”
“No? My dad thought it would be all right with you. That you would be proud of me.”
“Tell your dad he missed the class on corporate etiquette. I’m sure Cecelia was royally pissed off when she realized she was talking to an eighteen-year-old.”
“Well, uh, not really. She said she was looking for the right project for the youth audience, and check this shit out—Yo, Are You a Terrorist? just got the highest advance ever for a first-time documentariat.”
“Documentarian—or documentary maker.”
“Whatever. Pretty cool, huh? I don’t need to go back to my freshman year at Hampshire College anymore, man.”
“Vondra,” I say when I hang up the phone. “And just when you recovered, this will set you off—”
She has her back to me, and swivels around with a finger pointing to her cell phone. I can tell by her tone of voice that she is talking with Mahmoud. She must be still trying to work out some travel glitches for my trip to Cairo, where Mahmoud and Vondra’s wedding will take place.
Vondra smiles at me when she’s hung up the phone.
“Wait until you hear about what Roswell’s done—” I start.
“No, wait until you hear about what Mahmoud’s done. Forget about your other hotel. He made one phone call to the head of Oberoi, a luxury hotel chain in India, who called the manager of the Oberoi at the Pyramids, the Giza Mena House Oberoi. Everyone from Winston Churchill to Britney Spears has stayed there. You have the suite with the most stunning view of the Pyramids.”
I smile. “Well done.”
“Can we go over our arrangements for Israel now? Mahmoud’s doubtful we’re going to be able to go.”
“You’re both going to be fine.”
“How can you say that? How is he going to get a visa? Even if he’s a high-level diplomat, he’s an Arab traveling from Egypt to Israel.”
“It’s not a problem. Jared and I took care of it.” I should have left it at that, but I can’t resist: “Jared called President Bush.”
Vondra looks at me with a curious expression and says, “Jared knows Bush? Does his family know him? The president? I’m not even sure Mahmoud knows Bush.”
“Of course.”
I can’t take the pained look from my one-upmanship. “I’m kidding.” That was a bit cruel of me.
“Why would you joke like that? What did I do to you today?”
“Nothing. But honestly—you go on and on and on about Mahmoud and who he knows. Concentrate on your own considerable talents and achievements. You’d be a bit more fun to be around.”
“You don’t like him?” she says in an angry voice. And then after a visible pause, she adds, “You were no picnic last year, I’ll have you know.”
“I know that. I’m really sorry I just said that. But I need to get this off my chest. You used to be very, well, more yourself, and less Mahmoud’s fiancée.”
She glares at me.
I rise and give her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry. I adore Mahmoud. And I love you. Look, it was so important to me that both of you could come to Jerusalem that Jared and I spent an hour strategizing how to get Mahmoud the visa. It took a lot of wangling.”
“Okay, so how did you do it for real?” she asks softly.
“Luckily the man at the Israeli visa office said, ‘Greenblotz like the matzo?’ And I took that as a cue to proceed. I’d come prepared, and let’s say, it’s lucky Mahmoud knew Sadat.”
I have Vondra’s interest again. “He’s been dead for what, twenty years now? How did Sadat help you?”
“I’d clipped the articles about Sadat’s staff at the library. I showed him Mahmoud’s picture. And I emphasized that one of the highest-ranking individuals with the U.N. would hardly be a problem. I’m just going to have to bring you two in to the Israeli visa office and ask for this guy. He’s going to type in clearance on the computer system.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Well, if Mahmoud had to have known one Arab for him get the clearance for Israel, Sadat was the one. But I should warn you that we’re all going to have to fly back to Europe to enter Jerusalem. There’s no direct flights to Israel from Egypt. And you should allow for a massive layover time for getting onto El Al.”
“Are they that tough?”
“They strip-searched my grandma Lainie once when she went to a spa near the Dead Sea for her seventy-fifth birthday. She was so upset she nearly collapsed at the airport. And that’s before all this chaos we’ve got going now.”
“Did your grandmother have to take her bra off?”
“And her briefs. A woman checked, of course. My father thought they should change their slogan to EL AL: So safe, we’ll strip-search your grandmother.”
Vondra laughs, if a bit reluctantly. I guess my earlier outburst is forgiven. I should have approached her still-chronic Mahmoud-worship more diplomatically.
“I was just thinking, Heather, will Amy Hitler have problems getting through Israeli customs with her last name? Or did she get married to Greg already?”
I shake my head no. “I didn’t tell you this? She’s not with him anymore. Greg’s bringing his new girlfriend to Israel. Sukie from the seder.”
“That Valley Girl he drove in as a favor to you? Isn’t she about twenty years old?”
“She’s twenty-six. Remember, she told Jared when he was figuring out who to ask the Four Questions?”
“Like, Ohmi-gawd, those pigtails confused me.”
I shake my head no. “Don’t typecast her like that. She’s way smarter than you think and very sweet. Greg slipped her his number when he dropped her off, and the next thing I knew she was visiting him in Miami. She’s closing Upsy Daisy because it isn’t tur
ning a profit in this recession. And apparently she got obsessed with the idea that her last name means she’s from the priest class. She’s found her religious roots. She’s kosher now, and she’s converting next month and applying to a progressive rabbinical school in Florida.”
“Why does she have to convert if she’s already half-Jewish?”
“Jared explained this to me. Judaism is a matrilineal religion. You can only truly prove birthright by the mother. If we didn’t have that regulation we could claim Harrison Ford and Sean Penn as truly our own.”
Vondra laughs, and closes the clear plastic lid on her Flatiron Sushi order.
I eye it ravenously as I down my second of two iced coffees I ordered at the deli downstairs—I have to keep alert with so much work on my wedding and new documentary arrangements. “You ate the cooked egg and you’re leaving a crab roll, are you crazy? Give that to me this second!”
“I thought you’d gone kosher. Didn’t you tell me shellfish wasn’t kosher?”
“Yes, but I also told you that, in the house I’m going to be kosher. That’s the agreement. Outside the house, I do things my way. Do you listen to a word I say, bitch?”
“Occasionally,” she says, and with a big grin, adds, “Bitch.”
I grab the crab roll and grin right back at her.
“So tell me this. How is it you can make up your own rules like that?”
“Jared’s not too happy about it, but he agreed.”
“How did you convince him to cut you a break?”
“We negotiated. We live in America, I told him, and like it or not, that’s the way Americans do things. We improvise.”
As I sneeze loudly from my spring allergies, Vondra gasps. “Holy mackerel! Have you read this?”
“What is it? Read it to me.”
You better sit down. “It’s in the New York Observer under the headline ‘Next Year in Jerusalem.’”
“It’s not about—”
“‘We heard it on good authority that the two dames behind Emmy-winning production company Two Dames will be celebrating two unusual unions soon. First up is Vondra Adams, tying the knot with Egypt’s magnetic United Nation’s spokesman Mahmoud Habib in front of the Pyramids. And if that isn’t Power Wedding enough, the team will then travel to Israel for what some are dubbing the Jewish Wedding of the Century.’”
“What?” I scream from my seat.
“‘Last Passover brought the Food Channel some of its highest ratings when the Greenblotz family’s Passover seder was broadcast nationally. It wasn’t just the nation who was watching: the cameraman who shot the seder, Jared Silver, the quietly dashing heir to—Can you believe it?—Silver’s Horseradish, will be married to cutie beauty Heather Greenblotz in Jerusalem shortly after a joint family seder. Among the special guests of both the seder and the wedding will be a bevy of award-winning filmmakers and representatives of every major kosher-food company in New York.’”
Vondra laughs uneasily when she is finished. “What is going on? Who is their authority? Is it one of your friends?”
“Couldn’t be. Although that was scarily detailed.”
“Could your mother have sent it in? You’ve been closer to her these days.”
“Not a chance.” And then it hits me. “The words cutie beauty have the scent of my therapist. This has to be a clip for her success-story file. Bettina has important clients in media that could have placed that for her.”
“That bitchy English lady? I thought you stopped going to her.”
“She’s Australian. And I called her last week just to give her an update. I thought I owed her that after our sales report and my engagement.”
I have to hand it to Bettina. Her methodology worked. I get along pretty damn well with my folks these days, and of course there’s Jared in my life. And Marcy and Rebecca are withdrawing their knee-jerk lawsuit over the Greenblotz name at the seder without their permission. They’re seeing more money in their silk-lined pockets because there was a sales increase of twenty-five percent in our family business immediately after the broadcast—nothing like hard cash to soothe hurt feelings. After all the figures from this year’s busy season are in, Jake expects to announce an even greater boost at the next board meeting.
With HBO and Cecilia Neville’s industry muscle behind us, Vondra and I garnered two more Emmy nominations for The Grand Ladies of Sex. We lost out to a former fast-food worker’s scathing exposé on the industry’s evils: the exploitation of children through advertising, cruelty to animals, anti-union low wages and deception of the public when greasy burgers and milk shakes are promoted as nutritious. But this loss was good for me and Vondra. After the Emmy ceremony was over, we agreed that The Grand Ladies of Sex didn’t really have as much bite as the winner’s project, or our own Riker’s Island film for that matter.
I hate to bark at Bettina again, but she can’t keep meddling in people’s lives this much. I’m flattered by the article, but the spilling of news about Mahmoud’s trip to Israel is a worry. We were keeping that quiet for security reasons. Doesn’t Bettina believe in running anything past her clients? Even if I’m not officially her client anymore.
I call her number, which I find most unexpectedly is disconnected. Her beeper also gets no response. Where is she? I just spoke to her last week. I call the phone company. There’s no forwarding info. I even call Oprah’s production company and ask to speak to a booker.
“Sorry,” says the show’s booking intern. “My boss has the same number you have.”
Maybe if I took a cab to Bettina’s office I could ask her why she did this. Somehow in my gut though, I know she’s gone. Did the weathercock point east as it did for Mary Poppins, a signal for this odd bird to vanish?
“No luck?” Vondra asks.
“This is bizarre. I can’t find her anywhere.”
Could Bettina have gone back to Australia, or maybe to another city where the very wealthy congregate?
I’d never know. But like Jane Banks after hard-ass Mary left with the wind, I knew I’d be fine without her.
THE MATZO BALL HEIRESS
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN 978-1-55254-423-5
© 2004 by Laurie Gwen Shapiro.
All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Red Dress Ink, Editorial Office, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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The Matzo Ball Heiress Page 27
