I didn’t have time to wait for a reply. I’d pushed over the first domino—now I had to hope that the others would be in the right place to fall.
My next stop was Boomer. He was, perhaps, the riskiest domino of all, as far as a tendency to walk off the path.
The ranks of Oscar’s comrades had thinned considerably, so the streetside forest Boomer had manned a few days ago was now a sub-arbor. Still, his spirit remained undiminished.
“I still have three days to find them all homes!” Boomer whispered to me, as if he were operating a log shelter.
I took a square Tupperware container out of my bag and opened it to show Boomer its contents.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Scented woodchips.”
I stared at him for a second.
“Are they not woodchips? Are they petrified reindeer doo?”
I gulped.
“It’s funny, because they look like they’re in the shape of letters!”
“Yes,” I said. “They are in the shape of letters. They’re a clue.”
“But why would you spell a clue out in reindeer poo?”
“It’s not reindeer poo! I made cookies.”
Now Boomer started to crack up. Not a snide snicker. Not an amateur tee-hee-hee. No, Boomer started laughing from his diaphragm, then threw his whole body into it.
“Cookies!” he said when he had enough breath to talk. “Those are…the ugliest cookies…I’ve ever seen!”
“They’re lebkuchen!” I cried out. “Or at least they’re lebkuchenesque! It’s a recipe from Nuremberg! I mean, Nuremberg by way of the Martha Stewart website! According to Martha’s minions, they date back to the fourteenth century!”
Boomer calmed down and took another look inside the Tupperware, this time as if it were a reliquary. “Oh…that explains it,” he said solemnly. “They’re from the fourteenth century!”
“Not these specific cookies!” I looked at them again—and had to concede (to myself, not to Boomer) that they had a Gothic air about them. In my haste to make them the previous night, I’d had to substitute some ingredients (because, unlike Martha, I didn’t happen to have four Medjool dates sitting around in my kitchen), and I could see how the results looked like a bread lover’s idea of what gluten-free is.
“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.