In the chap­ter titled “A Bad Sign,” the nar­ra­tive begins forty-sev­en years pri­or to the dis­cov­ery of a skele­ton on Chick­en Hill with Moshe Lud­low, a Jew­ish the­ater man­ag­er in Pottstown, Penn­syl­va­nia. One Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary, Moshe reflects on his remark­able expe­ri­ences in his small All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater, par­tic­u­lar­ly a mem­o­rable con­cert fea­tur­ing Mick­ey Katz, a famous klezmer musi­cian. Despite harsh weath­er con­di­tions, he suc­cess­ful­ly drew an enthu­si­as­tic crowd.

The chap­ter sketch­es Moshe’s efforts to enter­tain his diverse audi­ence, includ­ing a mix of Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties from var­i­ous back­grounds, as they gath­ered for Katz’s per­for­mance. The excite­ment sur­round­ing the event is pal­pa­ble, yet rife with com­pli­ca­tions. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions with con­gre­ga­tions and poor­ly trans­lat­ed fly­ers result in chaos regard­ing tick­et sales, leav­ing Moshe finan­cial­ly strapped as he endeav­ors to save his fail­ing the­ater.

Amidst his trou­bles, Moshe finds solace in a friend­ship with Chona, the daugh­ter of a local rab­bi who is phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged. Chona inspires Moshe, and through their shared stud­ies of Hebrew texts, a bond forms, lead­ing to Moshe propos­ing mar­riage. Their union rep­re­sents a turn­ing point in Moshe’s life.

After the wed­ding, moti­vat­ed by love and renewed hope, Moshe suc­cess­ful­ly redis­cov­ers his foot­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. With prop­er mar­ket­ing this time, Katz’s con­cert exceeds expec­ta­tions, trans­form­ing into a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of Jew­ish cul­ture filled with music and laugh­ter. The event cul­mi­nates in the the­ater being packed to capac­i­ty, gen­er­at­ing excite­ment and rev­enue, there­by res­cu­ing Moshe’s finan­cial woes.

As the fes­tiv­i­ties wind down, Moshe encoun­ters the mys­te­ri­ous Hasidic dancer from the con­cert, who quick­ly departs with­out reveal­ing his name. In the last moments, a sud­den explo­sion from Chick­en Hill rais­es alarm, sig­nal­ing poten­tial trou­ble ahead, leav­ing Moshe pon­der­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of this “bad sign.” This chap­ter inter­twines themes of resilience, cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion, and the unpre­dictable nature of fate.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

F
2
A Bad Sign
orty-sev­en years before con­struc­tion work­ers dis­cov­ered the skele­ton
in the old farmer’s well on Chick­en Hill, a Jew­ish the­ater man­ag­er in
Pottstown, Penn­syl­va­nia, named Moshe Lud­low had a vision about Moses.
Moshe had this vision on a Mon­day morn­ing in Feb­ru­ary as he was
clean­ing out the rem­nants of a Chick Webb one-night stand at his tiny All-
Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater on Main Street. Webb and his roar­ing
twelve-piece band was the great­est musi­cal event Moshe had ever
wit­nessed in his life, except for the week­end he man­aged to lure Mick­ey
Katz, the bril­liant but tem­pera­men­tal Yid­dish genius of klezmer music, out
of Cleve­land to play a full week­end of fam­i­ly fun and Yid­dish frol­ic at
Moshe’s All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater two months before. Now
that was some­thing. Katz, the kid wiz­ard of clar­inet, and his new­ly formed
sev­en-piece ensem­ble braved a furi­ous Decem­ber snow­storm that dropped
four­teen inch­es in the east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia moun­tains to make it to the gig,
and thanks to blessed G‑d, they had, because Moshe count­ed 249 Jew­ish
shoe sales­men, shop own­ers, tai­lors, black­smiths, rail­road painters, deli
own­ers, and their wives from five dif­fer­ent states, includ­ing Upstate New
York and Maine, who came to the event. There were even four cou­ples from
Ten­nessee who drove through the Blue Ridge Moun­tains for three days,
eat­ing cheese and eggs, unable to keep kosher on the Sab­bath, just to be
with their fel­low Yids—and right before Hanukkah, for which they all
should be at home light­ing can­dles for eight days. Not to men­tion one of the
hus­bands was a fanat­ic and believed that the fast of Tisha B’Av, nor­mal­ly
cel­e­brat­ed in July or August, should be cel­e­brat­ed twice a year instead of
once, which meant stay­ing home every Decem­ber and starv­ing and
pep­per­ing the walls with pic­tures of flow­ers for three weeks straight as a
show of thanks to the Cre­ator for His gen­eros­i­ty in help­ing the Jew­ish
peo­ple of East­ern Europe escape the pogroms for the rel­a­tive peace and
pros­per­i­ty of America’s Promised Land. Thanks to him and the weath­er, all
four cou­ples were in a foul mood once they arrived, hav­ing squeezed into
two ancient Packards—one of which had no heat—and dri­ven through the
sav­age snow­storm. They announced plans to leave imme­di­ate­ly when they
heard talk of more snow, but Moshe talked them out of it. That was his gift.
Moshe could talk the horns off the devil’s head. “How many times in life
does one get to hear a young genius?” he said to them. “It will be the
great­est event of your life.” He led them to his pock­et-sized room in a
board­ing­house on Chick­en Hill, a tiny area of ram­shackle hous­es and dirt
roads where the town’s blacks, Jews, and immi­grant whites who couldn’t
afford any bet­ter lived, set them before his warm wood­stove, filled them
with warm iced tea and gefilte fish, and amused them with the sto­ry of his
Roman­ian grand­moth­er who jumped out a win­dow to avoid mar­ry­ing a
Haskalah Jew, only to land atop a Hasidic rab­bi from Aus­tria.
“She knocked him to the mud,” he exclaimed. “When he looked up, she
was read­ing his palm. So they got mar­ried.”
That brought smirks and chuck­les to their faces, because every­one knew
the Roma­ni­ans were crazy. With their laugh­ter ring­ing in his ears, he rushed
back to the crowd who wait­ed anx­ious­ly in the snow for the the­ater doors to
open.
As Moshe made his way down the mud­dy roads of Chick­en Hill to his
the­ater on Main Street, his heart sank. The makeshift line that had formed
an hour before had explod­ed into a mob of close to three hun­dred.
More­over, he was informed that the tem­pera­men­tal genius Katz had arrived
but was inside the the­ater in a foul mood, hav­ing braved the ter­ri­ble storm,
and was now threat­en­ing to leave. Moshe raced inside and found to his
relief that his always-depend­able helper, an old col­ored man named Nate
Tim­blin, had set­tled Katz and his band back­stage before the warm
wood­stove, serv­ing them hot tea in water glass­es, fresh kosher eggs, gefilte
fish, and chal­lah bread, all neat­ly laid out buf­fet-style. The young Katz
seemed pleased and announced that he and his band would set up as soon as
they fin­ished eat­ing. From there, Moshe went back out­side to stall the
wait­ing crowd.
When he saw that more peo­ple were coming—stragglers rush­ing from
the train sta­tion car­ry­ing satchels and suitcases—he grabbed a steplad­der
and climbed atop it to address them all. He had nev­er seen so many Jews in
one place in Amer­i­ca in his life. The reform snobs from Philadel­phia were
there in but­ton-down shirts, stand­ing next to iron­work­ers from Pitts­burgh,
who crowd­ed against social­ist rail­road men from Read­ing wear­ing caps
bear­ing the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road logo, who stood shoul­der to shoul­der
with coal min­ers with dark­ened faces from Union­town and Spring City.
Some were with wives. Oth­ers were with women who, giv­en their fur coats,
leather boots, and daz­zling hair­dos, were not wives at all. One fel­low was
accom­pa­nied by a blonde goy six inch­es taller than him, clad in gay Irish
green, com­plete with a hat that looked like a cross between a clover leaf and
the spikes on the Stat­ue of Liberty’s crown. Some yam­mered in Ger­man,
oth­ers chat­ted in Yid­dish. Some yelled in a Bavar­i­an dialect, oth­ers spoke
Pol­ish. When Moshe announced there would be a short delay, the crowd
grew more rest­less.
A hand­some young Hasid in a caf­tan and fur hat, bear­ing a gun­ny sack,
his curly hair jammed into the hat he wore cocked to the side as if it were a
fedo­ra, announced he had come all the way from Pitts­burgh and would not
dance with a woman at all, which caused laugh­ter and a few harsh words,
some of them in Ger­man, about Pol­ish morons dress­ing like green­horns.
Moshe was flum­moxed. “Why come to a dance if you’re not going to
dance with a woman?” he asked the man.
“I’m not look­ing for a dancer,” the hand­some Hasid said terse­ly. “I’m
look­ing for a wife.”
The crowd laughed again. Lat­er, under the spell of Katz’s gor­geous
musi­cal wiz­ardry, Moshe watched in won­der as the man danced like a
demon all night. He frol­icked through every dance step that Moshe had ever
seen, and Moshe, who had spent his child­hood as a fusgeyer—a wan­der­ing
Jew—in Roma­nia, had seen a few: horas, bul­gars, khosidls, freylekhs,
Russ­ian march­es, Cos­sack high-steps. The Hasid was a won­der of twist­ed
elbows, a rhyth­mic gyro­scope of elas­tic grace and wild dex­ter­i­ty. He danced
with any woman who came close, and there were plen­ty. Moshe lat­er
decid­ed the guy must be some kind of wiz­ard.
The next four nights were the most extra­or­di­nary gath­er­ing of joy­ful
Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tion that Moshe had ever seen. He con­sid­ered it a mir­a­cle, in
part because the whole busi­ness had near­ly fall­en apart before it even got
off the ground, thanks to a series of fly­er notices he’d sent out weeks before
to drum up advance tick­et sales. Using a Jew­ish cross direc­to­ry that list­ed
syn­a­gogues and pri­vate homes where trav­el­ing Jews could stay, Moshe sent
fly­ers to every coun­try Jew­ish syn­a­gogue, board­ing­house, and hos­tel
between North Car­oli­na and Maine. The fly­ers, proud­ly pro­claim­ing that
the great Mick­ey Katz Road Show of Win­ter Yid­dish Fun and Fam­i­ly
Mem­o­ries from the Old Coun­try was com­ing to the All-Amer­i­can Dance
Hall and The­ater in Pottstown, Pa., on Decem­ber 15, were print­ed in four
lan­guages: Ger­man, Yid­dish, Hebrew, and Eng­lish. But Moshe had bad­ly
over­es­ti­mat­ed the orga­ni­za­tion­al pow­er of coun­try Jew­ish rab­bis, and most
of the notices were lost in the ongo­ing rush of death notices, bar mitz­vah
com­mit­ments, once-in-a-life­time sales, kosher cow-slaugh­ter­ing requests,
tal­lit-mak­ing ser­vices, busi­ness-dis­pute ref­er­ee­ing, mohel (cir­cum­ci­sion)
mix-ups, and mar­riage-arrange­ment sna­fus that were the dai­ly bread and
but­ter of a coun­try rabbi’s life. The few souls who had the pres­ence of mind
to open Moshe’s let­ters con­tain­ing the fly­ers only added to the con­fu­sion,
for many were fresh immi­grants from East­ern Europe who didn’t speak
Eng­lish. They con­sid­ered any let­ter that bore a typed address some kind of
gov­ern­ment notice that meant imme­di­ate ship­ment of you, your fam­i­ly,
your dog, and your green stamps back to the old coun­try, where the Russ­ian
sol­diers await­ed with a spe­cial gift for your part in the mur­der of the czar’s
son, who, of course, the Rus­sians had killed them­selves and poked his eyes
out to boot, but who’s ask­ing? So the fly­ers were tossed.
More­over, Moshe sent the wrong fly­ers to the wrong con­gre­ga­tions. The
Yid­dish fly­ers went to Ger­man-speak­ing con­gre­ga­tions. The Ger­man fly­ers
were sent to Yid­dish shuls who despised the Ger­man-lov­ing snobs. The
Hebrew ads went to Hun­gar­i­ans who every­body knew pre­tend­ed they
couldn’t read Eng­lish unless it referred to Jews as “Amer­i­can Israelites”—
in Hebrew. Two Eng­lish ads went to a Pol­ish con­gre­ga­tion in Maine that
had van­ished, the green­horns up there like­ly hav­ing frozen their tuchus­es
off and dropped into the ice some­where. One Bal­ti­more mer­chant even
acci­den­tal­ly for­ward­ed his Yid­dish fly­er to the adver­tis­ing depart­ment of
the Bal­ti­more Sun, which caused a ruckus, the adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive being
under the impres­sion that the Jew­ish cloth­ing-store mer­chant from East
Baltimore’s Jew­town who reg­u­lar­ly adver­tised in the Sun intend­ed it for
Yid­dish-speak­ing cus­tomers only. In actu­al­i­ty, the kind mer­chant was
trans­lat­ing the fly­er from Yid­dish to Eng­lish in the back of his store when
an argu­ment between two cus­tomers broke out in the front of the store.
When he stepped out to quell the fuss, his Yid­dish-speak­ing wife wan­dered
into the back store­room, rec­og­nized the words “Bal­ti­more Sun” among the
papers on her husband’s crowd­ed desk, stuffed the half-trans­lat­ed fly­er into
an enve­lope along with their week­ly adver­tis­ing check, and mailed it to the
paper. The ad exec­u­tive who received it was too dumb to know the
dif­fer­ence between adver­tis­ing and edi­to­r­i­al, and for­ward­ed it to the city
desk with a note say­ing, “Run this tomor­row because the Jew always pays,”
where­upon the night city edi­tor, a devout well-mean­ing Catholic, hand­ed it
to a new nine­teen-year-old Hun­gar­i­an copy clerk—hired, in part, because
he claimed he could speak Yid­dish. The kid sent the whole bad­ly trans­lat­ed
mess back to adver­tis­ing with a note say­ing, “This is an ad.” The
adver­tis­ing depart­ment placed it in a large font on page B‑4 on a Sat­ur­day
on the last day of Sukkot, the Jew­ish hol­i­day that cel­e­brates the gath­er­ing of
the har­vest and the mirac­u­lous pro­tec­tion the Lord pro­vid­ed for the chil­dren
of Israel. The result was a dis­as­ter. Moshe’s orig­i­nal fly­er read, in Yid­dish:
“Come see the great Mick­ey Katz. Once-in-a-life­time event. Fam­i­ly fun
and Jew­ish mem­o­ries. Red-hot klezmer like you’ve nev­er heard before.”
The trans­lat­ed ad read, in Eng­lish:
“Mick­ey Katz is com­ing. Once a life, always a life. Watch the Jews burn
and dance and have fun.”
The ad caused pan­ic and fury in East Baltimore’s Jew­town, as many of
its res­i­dents still remem­bered how the town’s first rab­bi, David Ein­horn,
spoke out against slav­ery dur­ing the Civ­il War and was run out of town, his
house burned to the ground. They demand­ed that the mer­chant close his
store and quit the city.
Moshe near­ly faint­ed when he got word of the dis­as­ter. He sped to
Bal­ti­more and spent four hun­dred dol­lars straight­en­ing out mat­ters with the
good-natured mer­chant, who kind­ly helped him write a sec­ond, bet­ter ad.
But it was too late. The first ad was too much for Baltimore’s Jews. It was
sim­ply too good to be true. A klezmer dance? With the great Mick­ey Katz?
Why would a star like Katz play for poor sales­men and tai­lors in the
freez­ing hills of east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia? In an Amer­i­can the­ater? Owned by a
fus­gey­er, a Roman­ian? Fus­gey­ers don’t own the­aters! They wan­der around
and sing songs and get the crap beat out of them by the czar’s sol­diers.
Where is Pottstown any­way? Were there any Jews there at all? Impos­si­ble!
It was a trap!
The result was that only four Jew­ish cou­ples from Bal­ti­more bought
advance tick­ets to see the great Katz, and Moshe had been count­ing on
Baltimore’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in big num­bers.
Five weeks before the con­cert, $1,700 in the hole to his cousin Isaac in
Philadel­phia, from whom he bor­rowed the the­ater rental and deposit mon­ey,
and feel­ing low­er than he felt when his father died, Moshe dropped to his
knees, prayed to G‑d for spir­i­tu­al renew­al, felt none, and found him­self
mop­ing around the back store­room of the Heav­en & Earth Gro­cery Store,
the sole Jew­ish gro­cery in Chick­en Hill. The own­er, a rab­bi named Yakov
Flohr, felt sor­ry for the young Roman­ian and offered to let Moshe study
Hebrew from his Tal­mud, which he kept in the same store­room where his
youngest daugh­ter Chona toiled. She was crip­pled from polio, with one leg
short­er than the oth­er, requir­ing her to wear a boot with a sole four inch­es
thick. Chona spent her days sort­ing veg­eta­bles and mak­ing but­ter by stir­ring
yel­low dye into creamed milk stored in bar­rels.
Know­ing he was up to his balls in hock and need­ing G‑d, Moshe took
the rab­bi up on the offer and spent sev­er­al after­noons glum­ly por­ing
through the text, think­ing of his late father and peek­ing at Chona, whom he
dim­ly remem­bered as a qui­et, mousey young thing as a child but who now,
at age sev­en­teen, had devel­oped into quite a pack­age. Despite her foot and
limp, she was a qui­et beau­ty, with a gor­geous nose and sweet lips, ample
breasts, a siz­able der­riere that poked against the drab, loose-fit­ting woolen
skirt, and eyes that shone with gai­ety and mirth. Moshe, at twen­ty-one, in
full bloom him­self, found him­self look­ing up sev­er­al times from his
Hebrew stud­ies to gawk at Chona’s rear end as she stirred the but­ter on
those cold Penn­syl­va­nia nights, the swish of her hips mov­ing with the
promise of the coal stove in the far cor­ner that heat­ed only half the room.
She turned out to be a spir­it­ed soul, full of wry humor and glad to have
com­pa­ny, and after a few days of easy con­ver­sa­tion, regal­ing him with
warm jokes and smil­ing with her bright gay eyes, young Moshe final­ly
con­fessed his prob­lem: the upcom­ing con­cert, the mas­sive debts, the mon­ey
already spent, the wrong ads, the demands of a dif­fi­cult star. “I’m going to
lose every­thing,” he said.
It was there, in the back of the rabbi’s store, stand­ing over the but­ter
bar­rel, a churn in her hand, that Chona remind­ed him of the sto­ry of Moses
and the burn­ing coals.
She put down her churn, glanced at the door to make sure no one was
watch­ing, went to the desk where he sat, lift­ed her father’s dusty, weath­ered
Talmud—which they both knew she was for­bid­den to touch—grasped the
Midrash Rab­bah beneath it, and placed the Tal­mud back down. Then she
opened the Midrash Rab­bah, which con­tained the five books of Moses, and
flipped to the sto­ry of Moses and the burn­ing coals. She was a stu­dent of
reli­gion, she con­fid­ed, and the sto­ry of Moses always brought her solace.
It was there—the col­lapse of his the­ater immi­nent, peer­ing at the holy
Midrash Rab­bah with one eye and the love­ly hand of the beau­ty Chona with
the oth­er, his heart throb­bing from the first flush of love—that Moshe first
came upon the sto­ry of Moses and the burn­ing coals, which Chona read to
him in Hebrew, of which he under­stood every fourth word.
Pharaoh placed a plate of burn­ing coals on one side of the infant Moses
and a plate of sparkling coins and jew­el­ry on the oth­er. If the infant was
intel­li­gent, he would be attract­ed to the sparkling gold and jew­el­ry, and
would be killed as a threat to the pharaoh’s heir. If he touched the black
coals, he would be per­ceived as too stu­pid to be a threat and allowed to live.
Moses start­ed to reach for the coins, but as he did, an angel appeared and
deft­ly moved his hand to the hot coals, burn­ing his fin­gers. The child put
his fin­gers in his mouth, sting­ing his tongue and giv­ing him a life-long
speech imped­i­ment. Moses spoke with a defect for the rest of his life, but
the life of the leader and most impor­tant teacher of the Jew­ish peo­ple was
saved.
Moshe lis­tened in rap­tur­ous silence, and when she was done, he found
him­self bathed in the light of love only heav­en can deliv­er. He returned to
the store­room for sev­er­al days, fill­ing him­self with words of the Midrash
Rab­bah, about which he had been pre­vi­ous­ly ambiva­lent, and the young
flower who led him to words of holy pur­pose. At the end of the third week
of Midrash Rab­bah lessons, Moshe asked Chona to mar­ry him, and to his
amaze­ment, she agreed.
The next week Moshe deposit­ed $140 in Yakov’s bank account as a gift,
then approached Yakov and his wife with his mar­riage pro­pos­al for their
daugh­ter. The par­ents, both Bul­gar­i­an, were so over­joyed that some­one
oth­er than a cyclops was will­ing to mar­ry their dis­abled daughter—so what
if he was Romanian?—they read­i­ly agreed. “Why not next week?” Moshe
asked. “Why not?” they said. The mod­est wed­ding was held at Aha­vat
Achim, the tiny shul that ser­viced Pottstown’s sev­en­teen Jew­ish fam­i­lies. It
was attend­ed by Moshe’s cousin Isaac from Philadel­phia, Chona’s
deliri­ous­ly hap­py par­ents, and a few local Yids Yakov had drummed up to
cre­ate the nec­es­sary minyan of ten Jews to say the sev­en wed­ding bless­ings.
Two of them were Pol­ish work­ers from the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road train
yard who had hus­tled up to Chick­en Hill to grab a kosher bite. The two
agreed to attend the wed­ding but demand­ed four dol­lars apiece for cab fare
to Read­ing, where they were expect­ed to report to work the next morn­ing.
Yakov refused, but Moshe was hap­py to pay. It was a small price for
mar­ry­ing the woman who brought him more hap­pi­ness than he ever
dreamed pos­si­ble.
So inspired was he by his new love that he for­got all about the $1,700
he’d spent. He sold his car for $350, bor­rowed anoth­er $1,200 from Isaac,
and spent the mon­ey on ads, this time prop­er­ly placed, then watched in
amaze­ment as tick­et sales zoomed. More than four hun­dred tick­ets were
sold.
For four nights Mick­ey Katz and his mag­i­cal musi­cians poured forth the
most rous­ing, glo­ri­ous klezmer music that east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia had ever
heard. Four nights of wild, low-down, dance-till-you-can’t Jew­ish rev­el­ry.
Moshe sold out of everything—drinks, food, eggs, fish. He even put up
twen­ty exhaust­ed New York­ers in his theater’s sec­ond-floor bal­cony,
nor­mal­ly reserved for Negroes. The four cou­ples from Ten­nessee who had
threat­ened to leave stayed the entire week­end, as did the Hasid dancer who
swore he would dance with no woman. It was a rous­ing suc­cess.
The morn­ing after the fes­tiv­i­ties end­ed, Moshe was sweep­ing the
side­walk in front of his the­ater when he saw the danc­ing Hasid hur­ry­ing
toward the train sta­tion.
Gone was the fur hat. In its place was a fedo­ra. The caf­tan had been cut
into a sport­coat-length jack­et. Moshe bare­ly rec­og­nized him. As the young
man approached, Moshe spoke out. “Where are you from?” he asked. But
the man was fast and silent and already mov­ing down the side­walk past
him. Moshe called to his back, “Wher­ev­er you live, it’s home to the great­est
dancer in the world, that’s for sure.”
That did it. The Hasid stopped, reached into his gun­ny sack, and with­out
a word, walked sev­er­al steps back to Moshe, hand­ed him a bot­tle of
slivovitz (plum brandy), then turned and con­tin­ued down the side­walk
mov­ing fast.
Moshe called out cheer­ful­ly to his back, “Did you find a wife?”
“I don’t need a wife,” he said, wav­ing a hand with­out look­ing back. “I’m
a twart of love.”
“A what?”