Tel Aviv Noir

by Etgar Keret

  We went to sleep that night without having sex. The air in the room felt heavy. She pretended to sleep. I pretended to sleep. When I thought she was actually asleep I got up and went to the living room for a cigarette.

  Two minutes later she appeared at the doorway, in underwear and a tank top. She scratched one leg with the toes of the other and looked at me, wide-eyed. What’s going to happen to us? she asked. I can’t stand people touching me anymore. I can only think of you. Even with Victor.

  I didn’t know if she really felt it or if that was her way of telling me she knew what I was going through. That I was losing sleep over it. Because I couldn’t stand people touching her. Maybe that’s what she was trying to tell me: That it was only temporary. That I shouldn’t worry. That she was mine. Thoughts ran through my head, but I didn’t want to tell her anything. I only said we’d get through it, it was only for a while.

  * * *

  I put her in touch with Silvie. What a character, that one. Sitting at the hotel like a tourist. A fifty-year-old woman, her hair blown out, in an updo, all sprayed. Nice jewelry, French accent. You’d think she was a wealthy French woman waiting for her millionaire husband to come down from their hotel suite. She lectured her girls on manners, as if you needed a degree from the Silvie Academy of Hotel Management to be a prostitute. Shiri got along with her. She got along with everyone. And the money was better than we thought. She got big tips. The tips made me itch. I had to stop myself from asking, and when I did ask, I acted nonchalant. Fake nonchalant. What were those tips for? For her personal touch. For her charm. She didn’t just spread her legs, she gave them magic. She made them laugh, she surprised them, she made them feel it was different with them. She kissed them, licked their ears, drove them mad, talking about fantasies, maybe. It was part of the job. It was how you made good money. But it was like acid dripping on my skin, that money. Slowly. Maddeningly. I began taking sleeping pills before she left for work. I didn’t want to lie awake and imagine her working some tourist at the Sheraton for a tip double the price she charged.

  * * *

  I felt we wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. It clawed inside me. One morning I went to the Yarkon Precinct, to Benny’s office. I told him, Listen, forget about the paper. You win. That’s over. But let me help you with something else. He half-smiled at me, like I was some loser off the street who came begging. You don’t understand, I said. I can help you. There’s this loan shark, and he’s extorting somebody I know. I can convince her to wear a wire. I’ll hand him to you. You’ll bring in the case, you’ll do good, and as an added bonus, you’ll get this scumbag off my friend’s back. I don’t want anything in return. I’m just here to do my friend a favor. He sat back in his chair and said, Look, I’m glad to help a friend out if I can—yeah, right, some friend—but the loan-sharking market, he said, is not about random targets. Those operations are structured like pyramids. There might be an investigation about somebody at a higher level. He might just be a cog in a big machine and it would be better for us to go for the boss. If you want, you can go to National Headquarters, but take my advice, he said, drop it. You don’t just pull these things off like a local sheriff.

  It was bullshit. Who would even listen to me at National Headquarters? I kept my eyes on him as I said thank you. I lingered long enough to make him know I wasn’t really thanking him.

  * * *

  Some nights, I couldn’t sleep even with the pills. Those thoughts: Where was Shiri now, who was she laughing with, who was tickling her or licking her neck? It drove me mad. One night, when she was working, I called a girl over. Netta. She used to advertise in my paper, until she accumulated a few rich regulars and stopped buying ads. She was a Yemenite with a hoarse voice, smooth dark skin, and large, natural breasts. Her gravelly laugh was her best asset. We used to spend lots of nights together and do lots of coke. It was all right, but my head wasn’t there. She could feel it, I saw she could. But she didn’t ask. When she left she said, Keep in touch.

  I took a shower. I could feel myself about to do what I shouldn’t: go peek into the Sheraton lobby. Seeing Shiri sitting there in the cocktail dress Silvie made her wear.

  My self-restraint had drained out. I was walking over to the Sheraton when I noticed a stack of Nightlife issues on the sidewalk not far from the hotel entrance. I thought maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was a stack of old copies. I took a look. No, it wasn’t one of my old issues. It was new, from this month. I picked one up, flipped through it. Same ads, all for massage, all saying, No Sex. My graphic design. My ads. My girls.

  I called Nataly, who’d been buying a whole page from me for the past two years. I got her voice mail. Her voice said she was busy with somebody who was having a great time, and she’ll call back when she’s done.

  I called Naama. She was Russian, but had almost no accent and thought she’d do better with an Israeli name. She’d been buying a half-page ad for a while. She was surprised I called. I asked who she paid for this month’s ad. She said she got a call from a guy who said he bought Nightlife and wanted to know if she wanted to keep advertising. Same price, same terms. She didn’t know who he was, just a first name, an address, and a number. She paid him cash. Hold on, she said. I’ll text you the contact info. We hung up.

  So I didn’t go into the hotel. I had other things to think about. I walked back home. When I entered the building my phone beeped. She sent me the number and address.

  Shiri got back at three in the morning. I woke up when she got into bed, her hair wet from the shower. Two thousand dollars. This one guy gave her a huge tip. He wanted her to pee on him, so she gave him a high price. She thought it was funny. He lay down in the bathtub, naked, and she stood over him. Some pee drops splattered on her legs. It was gross, she said. I kissed her. I stuck my tongue in her mouth. I fucked her as if I could hurt that guy through her. She felt it. She hugged me after I came, holding my head hard against her neck. Suddenly everything just came out. I cried into her hug. I’m scared for us, she said. She held me tight.

  * * *

  I didn’t tell her about Nightlife, but the next day I went to the paper’s new office. It was closed, so I waited in the stairwell. An hour and a half and four cigarettes later, the guy showed up. He was just a guy, nobody I knew. Forty-something. He had a paunch that made him look not exactly fat, but big. Short, thick, straight hair, like a hedgehog. I thought of asking him how he got my paper, but I dropped it. I kept sitting on the stairs.

  He looked at me. I looked back. He said nothing, walked into the office, and locked it from inside.

  I couldn’t figure it out. They shut me down but they let this guy keep it going?

  I went to the bank, withdrew 40,000 shekels from the money we’d saved to pay back the debt, and hired a private investigator to track this new guy down. Someone I met in court. He was okay, relatively speaking. At least he was hard working. I said, Take this 40,000, all-inclusive. I don’t care about expenses, overtime, equipment. This is the sum. Take it or leave it.

  He delivered after two weeks. That asshole who was publishing my paper was paying Benny off. Suddenly everything made sense. The police couldn’t care less about the law against prostitution ads. And all Benny cared about was hitching a ride on the law’s back to get the paper out of my hands. He couldn’t print it himself, so he was a silent partner. Like protection, but from the wrong side.

  Long story short, the PI gave me a picture of Benny meeting the guy at a café, and the guy giving him an envelope. Judging by the size of the envelope, it was quite a wad. So the paper wasn’t shut down because now it was Benny’s livelihood.

  And that wasn’t all. I got a great return for my money. My PI still had connections in the police. He found out the entire business plan was covered through paperwork. According to the paperwork, the business wasn’t shut down because the owner was an informant. I don’t know what kind of information he delivered, or made up, but that was the dirt’s clean exterior. That guy, as it turned
out, had been an informant for a while. First he sold cathinone under the counter at a kiosk, back when it was half-legal, and the police let him do it because he was snitching for them. Now that the drug was completely illegal, he got the paper. They still called him an informant, but really he was just the front man for Benny’s business.

  Those pictures were worth the 40,000. I went to Benny’s office again, and this time I acted the way he did when he came in to shut me down. Super polite. I put the photos on his desk. I didn’t have to say a word about them. I talked like I was giving him advice. The advice was to get Shiri to wear a wire next time she went to see the Orthodox loan shark, so that they could get him out of our lives.

  I liked seeing his facade break down, that smile he wore when I came in, like he was big and I was just some loser off the street. I liked seeing sweat break on his scalp through his thin hair. I left him an old business card, my defense attorney’s card. I wanted him to remember I was no sucker.

  * * *

  Shiri still had no idea, but now I had to tell her. She was part of the plan. It was she who would have to wear the wire. There was no problem convincing her. I knew there wouldn’t be. She’d take any chance she could get for an adventure. She had no fear, and no limits. But it wasn’t just that. She stared at me, and something I thought we’d lost was in her eyes again. Like I was no longer just the guy who lost sleep while she fucked tourists. That look alone gave me a few nights of sound sleep. I leaned on the door frame while she put her makeup on, preparing for work. I told myself it wasn’t going to be much longer, this ceremony, getting dolled up for them. She was focused on her face and I watched her. Then she paused and met my eyes through the mirror. Let’s go away somewhere this Saturday, she said. I don’t feel like working this weekend.

  Benny called. All right, he said, I’ll make it happen. He needed the guy’s name and his place of business, and he wanted to know who the girl wearing the wire would be. Why not use a cop? he asked. I told him she’d been paying him for a long time, and that if they didn’t want a civilian doing it, she and I were going to go ahead without their help and just deliver the tape, and it would be his responsibility if anything happened to her. I still have the pictures, I told him, so if anything happens to her, it’s going to be your ass. She has nerves of steel, I said. Don’t worry.

  He said he’d check and get back to me.

  I told him to take a couple days, but that if I didn’t hear back from him after that I would do it myself.

  I did an online search. You can get recording devices so small nowadays that anyone could do it. I was still sitting at my computer when the front door opened. It was eleven at night, earlier than Shiri normally came home. I went out to the hallway and saw her coming in, with another girl in tow. I said Shiri’s name, but she didn’t even turn her head. I followed them into the living room. Hot girl. I didn’t get it until she said it: it was her sister Ruti.

  I didn’t need any further explanation. Yellow hot pants, shiny red high heels, a white tank top that showed off her breasts, fake nails. This was not a going-out outfit, these were work clothes. It was nothing like Shiri’s elegant look. It was like a neon sign that read: Prostitute. But her face was that of a scared little girl.

  Ruti sat there, her face blank. She peered up at Shiri, as if waiting to be slapped. Shiri paced the room in her black heels. The slap never came. Shiri was pale, her jaw was tight.

  I found her in the hotel lobby, Shiri said. She was talking to me, but her words were meant for Ruti. I’m sitting there, and suddenly she comes in with a client. She turned to face Ruti. You whore! she yelled at her. I don’t know what I’m going to do to you!

  Ruti had tears in her eyes. She shuddered when Shiri yelled, as if she had actually hit her. Her fingers were shaking. She was still waiting for it to come.

  * * *

  Shiri didn’t leave the house for two days. She wouldn’t let Ruti return to the army, or go anywhere else.

  It was their dad, that son of a bitch. He pulled the same stunt again, this time using checks from Ruti’s private account. He actually talked to Ruti. He was crying. He said loan sharks were after him, that they were going to kill him. He made her promise not to tell Shiri. He said they had to do something. He kept weeping.

  Two days later, when Shiri calmed down a little, she released Ruti from her house arrest. It was the same loan shark, the Orthodox guy, and he was also the one who got Ruti the gig. She came to beg for her father and he offered her work. He put her in touch with an escort service, told her the owner was his friend. My head felt hot. We were able to deal with Victor, and now this little shit was coming back to ruin our lives? I’d get him, with or without Benny’s help. I told Shiri I would. She looked at me as I got dressed. Expressionless. I tied my shoelaces and left without shaving. I went to see Benny to tell him we were going to do it earlier than planned. Friday morning. He had three days to prepare.

  When I got home Shiri and Ruti were gone. So were Shiri’s things. There was nothing. As if she’d never even been there. No clothes in the closet, no toothbrush, no shopping bags, no gum wrappers. Nothing. I called her cell phone. Voice mail. Voice mail on her work phone too, the one only Victor called now. I went to the cell phone store. Nothing. The guy who worked there had no idea, but the store was still open. Where did she think she was going?

  I climbed the walls. I texted her, left more voice mails. I said I just wanted her to tell me what happened. I wasn’t angry, I just needed to know. Nothing. She never called back.

  I began staking the store. Still nothing. Ten days went by. I left a letter with the guy who worked there. He said he had no idea how to reach her. Shiri had given him an overseas number where he could reach her brother, said he’d take care of everything. Maybe she went abroad too. He wasn’t sure but wouldn’t give me her brother’s number. I asked him to read the letter to her brother over the phone, to tell him I wanted to talk to her. Just talk. Whenever she wanted. Whenever she could. But nothing. Benny called me a few times, but I didn’t pick up. He was probably relieved.

  I finally gave up. I knew her. Once she made up her mind about something, that was that. I thought about her every night. Every day. Every moment. If I couldn’t be with her, I at least needed to know that she was all right. At least that.

  * * *

  Then, three months later I got a phone call one morning at ten a.m. A blocked number. She sounded nervous. I told her I loved her. But she had no time for such things. Listen, she said, we can’t talk like this. We have to meet. Not at my place, not at a hotel, not at a café, nowhere public. There’s a store on HaMedina Square. A clothing store. She gave me the name. The shopgirl was Nina, who used to work with Silvie at the Sheraton. She trusted her. She’d know what I was coming for. We set a time.

  The moment I introduced myself to Nina she became all business. She’d been briefed and she gave me specific instructions. She put me in a changing room and drew the curtain. She told me not to leave, no matter what.

  Her face was serious. No smiles. I sat on the small bench in the changing room and watched the store window and the street through a crack in the curtain.

  Twenty minutes later Shiri arrived in a white Mercedes SUV. A driver opened the door for her. She was wearing expensive clothes and her hair was cut in a way that made her look like a woman, rather than a girl. She walked into the store and rifled through the dresses. The driver waited outside in the car. I’m coming, she said loudly, so I could hear her. She talked at the dresses, never glancing in my direction. Don’t come out, she said. She chose a dress and walked into the changing room. I wanted to kiss her but she pushed me back. No! she said. Her lips were trembling. I’m scared, she said. I’m sorry.

  I heard a quiver in her voice. I sat back down.

  My heart is pounding like you wouldn’t believe, she said. She put her purse on the bench and hung the dress on the hook. She turned back to face me and unzipped her own dress. She was all business. I could tell she’
d rehearsed this in her head. She was going to pull off her dress, but then she paused and the determination in her face vanished for a moment. She shuddered, then she pulled herself together. The familiar smell of her body lotion. Her perfume. She pulled the dress off over her head. My heart almost stopped when I saw her in her panties and bra.

  She told me the story while she changed. The Reader’s Digest version. She went to see Victor and told him she needed a favor. She’d take the apartment he wanted her to have and do whatever he said if he could help her out. She asked him to make sure her father had hell to pay. She wanted him beaten up. How badly beaten up? Victor asked her. She said he should stay alive. So they broke his spine and put him in a wheelchair. Now I give him a monthly allowance, she said. So that he can buy food. I don’t ask what he does with it. If he wants to gamble it away, that’s his business. I rented an apartment for him in Holon. Ground floor. And he can’t go anywhere near my store. Wait here, she said. She left the changing room with the new dress on. She looked at herself in the mirror. It was convincing, that serious look girls get when they check themselves out in the mirror, trying on a new outfit. As sharp as a laser beam. I stayed inside, paced around the small changing room. The driver stood next to the car with his hands in his pockets, watching. She turned to him and showed him the dress, like in a fashion show. She twirled around, smiling, flipping her hair. She made faces. The whole shebang. Like how she used to get her tips. That was her act. He gave her a thumbs-up from outside the store window. The changing room still smelled of her perfume.