The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(37)

“I can’t let her eat those,” Boomer said. “She might get sick. Or angry.”

“They’re not to eat. They’re to read.” I arranged them in order on the bottom of the Tupperware.

“?‘WAM MA’AM THANK YOU BAM!’?” Boomer read. Then he added, “Shouldn’t the ‘wam’ have an h, like ‘where’ or ‘what’ or ‘wherewolf’?”

“I burned the h beyond recognition, okay? Meanwhile, do you remember your line?”

“?‘Lily, do you need some clarification?’?”

“No—‘clarafication.’?”

“?‘Clarification.’?”

“?‘Clar-A-fication.’?”

“?‘Clar-A-fication.’?”

“Perfect. And if she says yes?”

“I say, ‘I’d like to crack that one in the nuts!’?”

“No. ‘That’s a hard nut to crack!’?”

“?‘You crack me up with your nuts!’?”

“?‘That’s a hard nut to crack.’?”

“?‘Your nuts are so hard right now!’?”

“Boomer. You are not to say ‘Your nuts are so hard right now!’ to Lily. Do you understand?”

“Maybe you should write it down and I can just hand it over?”

“Good idea.”

As I was writing it down on the back of a receipt from Blick, my phone buzzed.

The Boy Band is Dead, Mark wrote. Long Live the Boy Band.

What do U mean? I typed back.

That’s Bieber, not Boy Band, Mark replied.

Enough pop semantics, Langston interrupted, since this was a group message. Is Joey on the move?

He’s hanging tough with our girl, Mark answered. And they’ve got a red Moleskine to read.

I was amazed at how relieved I felt. Something was happening. Lily and I needed something to happen, and now something was happening.

“Okay, Boomer, I gotta go,” I said.

“Aw, jeez, Dash, I’m sorry—we don’t have a bathroom.”

“Not that kind of ‘gotta go.’ This is more the ‘I have to be somewhere else’ kind.”

“Well, I hope they have a bathroom there!”

“They do,” I assured him. “They have a few.”

—

I knew there was no way for me to follow Lily’s path, not if I wanted to end up where I needed to be.

There were three clues between the Strand and Boomer, and Lily picked them off one by one.

Go to the 92 to see the 10th and 11th candles.

(Our unorthodox Orthodox Jewish friends Dov and Yohnny were next to the big menorah in the lobby of the 92nd Street Y, holding up candles and a clue.) It’s time for the other boot to fall…in the same place you lost the first one.

(Sofia had sweet-talked the owner of a popular club to let Lily in during the day. Mrs. Basil E. had loaned me a boot of hers to place in the restroom stall where I’d left a message for Lily a year ago. That message had said Please return the notebook to the handsome gumshoe wearing the fedora hat. Now Sofia had traced my handwriting to write, The Little Foxes want you to know this isn’t a dead end. The children’s hour may be over, but there’s still time for frozen hot chocolate.) (That would lead to Serendipity—because everyone in New York knows there’s only one place in Manhattan to get frozen hot chocolate. There, Lily’s grandfather would be waiting at a table—Sofia would text him to get the frozen hot chocolate ready. He was instructed not to talk about the red notebook with Lily, but to talk about anything else she wanted to talk about. Then, when the bill came, the waiter would have written the next clue on the back of the receipt—If a tree falls in the forest, who’s most likely to go over to it to see if it’s okay?)

That would lead to Boomer.

And Boomer would lead to Brooklyn.

—

Boomer texted me as I got off the subway.

The good news is she’s on her way. She didn’t even ask for clarAfication.

I waited for the bad news.

And waited.

Finally, I typed, What’s the bad news?

Oh yeah! The bad news is that even though I warned her hard against it, she tried one of the cookies.

I didn’t have time to worry about this—baking prowess had never been the basis of our relationship, so I hadn’t really compromised much by showing her the limits of my flouring. Instead, I headed over to the Brooklyn Academy of Music—BAM, for short—and prepared for Lily’s arrival.

The current production at BAM was the Mark Morris Dance Group’s production of The Nutcracker, called The Hard Nut. It took the familiar Nutcracker story and moved it to a wacky suburban house in the 1970s. One of the big scenes was a swingin’ holiday party that went tipsily awry. Another involved Marie, the Clara of this Nutcracker, holding her own against the Rat King with only a flashlight to defend herself.

The stage looked like a cartoon version of a 1970s sitcom home—everything a little larger than life. But there was a tree, and under the tree were presents.

One of them was for Lily.

This was the most elaborate part of the plan. Luckily, Mrs. Basil E. had an in with BAM. (“I’ve supported the arts for so long, it’s only natural that I should call on the arts to support me,” she explained.) Lauren, the dancer who played Marie, let me into the theater. When Lily arrived, she would find David, the dancer who was the Nutcracker Prince, waiting to guide her to the stage. Then he’d disappear, and everyone else would wait in the wings. This was a run-through that wasn’t usually open to the public, and they were adding an extra character for a short time.