The band played a style I’d heard before, when one of my cousins married a Jewish musician. At their wedding reception, a klezmer band played, which Langston told me was like a kind of Jewish punk-jazz fusion. The music at this club was like if you mixed the horah dance with Green Day playing a Mardi Gras parade? The guitar and bass provided the sound’s foundation, while the horns ri ed with the violins, and the band members’ voices laughed and wept and sang all at once.

It was clown insane. I loved it. My arms removed themselves from protecting my chest. I needed to move! I danced my tuchus o , not caring what anyone thought. I twirled in the middle of the mosh, thrashed my hair around, and jumped like I was on a pogo stick. I tapped my boot taps on the floor like I was part of the music, too, not caring what anyone thought.

Apparently, the wildly dancing hipsters thought the same as me about the music, dancing around me like we were in a punk horah dance.

Maybe klezmer music was a universal language, like soccer. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed myself.

I realized that Snarl had given me what I asked for as a Christmas present. Hope and belief. I’d always hoped but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it had happened. The notebook had made it so.

I was sad when the band’s set ended, but also glad. My heart rate needed to come down. And it needed to find its next message.

While the opening band left the stage, I went to the bathroom, as instructed.

May I just say, if I ever have to return to that bathroom in my lifetime, I’m bringing a bot le of Clorox.

I took a paper towel from the sink and placed it on the toilet to sit down on; no way would I use that toilet. There was writing all over the stal wall —trails of gra ti and quotes, messages to lovers and friends, to exes and enemies. It was almost like a wailing wall —the punked-out place to puke out your heart. If it wasn’t so lthy and smelly, it could almost have doubled as a museum art instal ation—so many words and feelings, so many diverse styles of scribbling, with messages writ en in Magic Marker, di erent-colored pens, eyeliner, nail polish, glit er pens, and Sharpies.

I related most to this scrawled line:

BECAUSE I’M SO UNCOOL AND SO AFRAID

I thought, Good for you, Uncool and So Afraid. You made it here anyway. Maybe that’s half the bat le?

I wondered what happened to that person. I wondered if I could leave him or her a red notebook to find out.

My favorite scrawl was writ en in black Magic Marker. It said:

The Cure. For the Exes. I’m sorry, Nick. Will you kiss me again?

Because suddenly, on the night-(horah-)mare after Christmas, as I sat on a lthy toilet in a stinky bathroom, dripping in sweat from dancing, I really really wanted that certain someone to kiss. In a way I’d never wished for in my life. It wasn’t about the fantasy. That was now replaced with hope and belief that it could happen, for real.

(I’ve never kissed anyone for real, in a romantic way, before. I hadn’t lied to the drag-on lady. I don’t think my pillow counts.

(Should I confess this to Snarl in the notebook? Full disclosure, so he had a fair chance to run?

(Nah.)

There were so many messages on the bathroom wall that I might never have found his, except I recognized his handwriting. The message was a few lines down from the Cure kiss message. He’d painted a strip of white paint as background, then alternated the words in blue and black Magic Marker—a nice Hanukkah-themed message, I guessed. So Snarl was secretly a sentimentalist. Or maybe part Jewish?

The message said:

Please return the notebook to the handsome gumshoe wearing the fedora hat.

Well, just dreidel me verklempt.

Was Snarl here?

Or was I going to meet a kid named Boomer again?

I stepped back out into the club. In all the black jeans and black T-shirts and bad lighting, I nally identi ed two men in a corner by the bar wearing fedora hats, although one had a yarmulke pinned over it. Both guys wore sunglasses. I noticed the one not wearing the yarmulke bar wearing fedora hats, although one had a yarmulke pinned over it. Both guys wore sunglasses. I noticed the one not wearing the yarmulke lean down and scrape a piece of gum from his shoe with a paper clip. (I think he used a paper clip. Gosh, I hope he didn’t use his ngernail

—gross.)

In the club’s darkness, it was impossible to make out their faces.

I pulled out the notebook, then changed my mind and put it in my purse for safekeeping, in case I had the wrong guys. If they were the right guys, shouldn’t they be saying something to me like, Hey, we’re here for the notebook?

They shot me their glazed, punky hipster glares instead.

I was struck mute, panic-af licted.

I ran out of the club as fast as I could.

Mortifyingly, I ran right out of one of my boots. Really. I’d neglected to wear socks over my tights so the too-big boots would t properly, and like a Shrilly Cinderel a at the indie-gayjewfire ball, I slipped right out of one of my boots.

No way was I going back for it.

Only when the cab dropped me of at home and I took out my wall et to pay the driver did I realize: I’d left the gumshoe a boot and no notebook.

The notebook was still in my purse.

I’d given Snarl no clues how to find me back.

nine

–Dash–

December 26th

I was woken up at eight in the morning by a banging on the door. I stumbled into the front hallway, squinted into the peephole, and found Dov and Yohnny peering back at me, fedoras askew.