Tel Aviv Noir

by Etgar Keret

  They can’t feel it, but at this very moment water begins gushing with force through the subterranean steel pipes, and in exactly thirty seconds it will burst out of the fountain, into the air, and then land in the pool, for the entertainment of passersby.

  “Hey, excuse me, can we bum a cigarette?” Essy stands barefoot on the sidewalk, smiling at a guy walking by. He’s around thirty years old, she figures. His jeans are nice, almost fitted, the sneakers are good too. But what really captivates her is his white shirt. Button-down, pressed, sleeves folded one inch above the elbow. Is he handsome? Not a hottie, she decides, but not bad either. Suddenly he stumbles. She grabs him and helps him sit down beside them.

  “Sorry. I’ve been drinking since seven. I think I polished off a whole bottle of whiskey.” He pulls a pack of Marlboro reds from his pocket and gives each a cigarette. “Damn,” he whispers.

  “I’ll go get a lighter,” Danielle says as she slips on her ballerinas. She would never let her feet touch the filthy sidewalk.

  At the kiosk, Danielle examines the stacks of cigarette packs. Towers of them, one on top of the other. If she could somehow steal one for Essy—but no way. The cigarettes are behind the counter and the clerk is guarding them with his body, like some Roman soldier.

  Sometimes she likes to pretend that things belong to her, things that aren’t hers and things that will never be hers. All the candy in the kiosk, the books at the library, and the clothes at Zara. She walks around the kiosk with a hungry gaze, scanning the gum, the chocolate, the bottles of booze on the top shelf, and the cigarettes. Essy likes Marlboro Lights, Parliament Lights, and Winston Lights.

  “Give me two packs of Noblesse, please,” a man says.

  The Marlboro is stuck between Danielle’s lips and she lights it with the lighter attached to the cash register with a piece of string and electrical tape.

  “And also—” The man turns around. Now it’s his turn to scan the store as if it all belongs to him. “Do you have any Pringles?” he asks, but looks at Danielle. The clerk walks over to get the Pringles from the shelf.

  Danielle moves forward, examines the expiration date on a pack of Mentos, and then quietly picks up a pack of Noblesse from the counter and exits. She doesn’t run. Thinking, I’m sorry, you must have only given him one pack. What do you want from me? You think I smoke those cheap cigarettes? I don’t even smoke, maybe one cigarette here or there, and definitely not Noblesse.

  She imagines how pleased Essy will be.

  As she approaches, she sees Essy and the guy still sitting on the side of the fountain. Essy is swinging her feet in the water, splashing a little. She can hear her friend giggle all the way from there. Essy tucks her hair behind her ear, maybe bites her lower lip, Danielle isn’t sure. The guy moves closer, maybe he’s trying to kiss her. Maybe they’ll kiss in a second.

  Great, now I’ll have to go home alone while she makes out with this guy, stupid bitch.

  Then, boom, the guy slaps Essy. Danielle blinks quickly, making sure she didn’t imagine it. Essy is in shock. The guy gets up and leaves, just walks away as if nothing happened. Danielle runs and catches up with him on the corner of Nahalat Binyamin and Yehuda HaLevi.

  “Hey, hang on a second!” she calls out. “Wait, are you scared? I just want to ask you something.” She passes her hand along the side of the building.

  “What do you want?” He turns to face her. His eyes are bloodshot.

  “You just slapped my friend.” Danielle is afraid. She can barely hide it. This is the bravest thing she’s ever done.

  “So?” he sneers.

  “Why did you do that?” Danielle is impressed with her own apparent coolness.

  “I’ll tell you why. Because I was going to kiss her, gently, friendly-like, and she said no. And this was after she gave me the look, laughing, saying I’m cute, nice shirt, all that shit. So I say, You’re a fucking tease, and next time, don’t ask a guy on the street for a cigarette, okay?”

  Danielle raises her hand, and for a moment it seems like she’s going to slap him now. Instinctively, he covers his face, but he’s also ready to take it. She comes closer and wipes her dirty hand across his chest. It looks like somebody ran over his white shirt. What a loser.

  “Essy, wait up!” Danielle hurries over to her. “I got you a pack of cigarettes.”

  “Noblesse? Gross.” Essy sighs but grabs the pack anyway. She lights one, using the remainder of Danielle’s lit cigarette.

  “He slapped me.”

  “I saw. But why?”

  “Why? Are you serious? What, are you stupid?” Essy keeps walking away.

  Danielle drags behind, stepping on her heels, staining the backs of her shoes.

  “What did you say to him? Why did you run after him?”

  “I asked him why he did it.”

  “Oh great, an anthropological study.” She seems like she might cry.

  Danielle wants to ask her lots of questions, but she doesn’t have the courage. She feels bad for Essy, someone so pretty and cute getting slapped, just like that, in broad daylight. Somehow that kind of thing always happens to Essy. There’s something about her. Even Danielle feels it sometimes—the desire to hurt her, to hit her so that she can then console her.

  Essy walks quickly up Rothschild Boulevard. Her shoes are uncomfortable, you can tell with each step. She isn’t trying to walk gracefully anymore. She’s too tired, she has no patience left for this silly act. She stops, leans against a bench, and takes off her yellowish platforms with the bow. Then she throws one shoe at a car driving down Allenby Street. It hits the windshield.

  “Bitch!” the driver yells, but she doesn’t even look at him. She keeps walking. She feels like throwing the other shoe too, but there are no other cars around, only a homeless guy sleeping on a bench, wrapped in a hospital blanket. He doesn’t even flinch when the shoe hits him.

  “Essy, stop it, what are you doing?”

  Essy bursts into tears, and Danielle can’t help but hug her.

  “That son of a bitch. I mean, where does this fucking loser get off, hitting me? Bitch-slapped me in broad daylight, can you believe it? So fucking humiliating, and it’s even worse that I couldn’t do anything, I was so shocked. I didn’t say a word. And he just got up and left like nothing happened.” Essy sniffles.

  There’s nothing Danielle can do to help. “Essy, he’s just a drunk, a loser stoner. People do this kind of shit all the time.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Next time, if anyone even gets close to me, he’ll get much more than spit in the face.”

  Danielle walks Essy to her place on Ahad Ha’am Street. When Essy turns to say goodbye, Danielle sees that her nose is bleeding. She can’t decide whether or not to tell her. Maybe it’s better if she finds it on her own and cleans it in her bathroom. That way it’ll feel as if nothing ever happened.

  Suburban Beauty

  Danielle walks home alone. She lives with her parents on Brenner Street. Just she and her parents in a pretty nice apartment, in a pretty nice building—not one of those crappy old ones. Suddenly her phone rings. She’s sure it’s her dad. It’s kind of her thing—whenever she thinks of someone or something, they appear. This time it isn’t her dad, but rather the alarm she set so she could wake up in time for her morning run. Three times a week, ten miles. She listens to Rihanna when she runs, even though she doesn’t really like her. She totally doesn’t appreciate how she let Chris Brown beat her up that way. She thinks of poor Essy and imagines her cuddling in bed with her cat, crying, feeling sorry for herself, knowing it’ll never end. Essy cursing the whole world and swearing to hate everybody forever. And then, exhausted from repetitive thoughts, falling asleep.

  Danielle enters her building. There’s an envelope in her family’s mailbox, but she doesn’t bother to pull it out. Inside, her mother sits at the kitchen table, wearing a bathrobe and drinking green tea. It’s the only thing her mother ever drinks.

  She feels like telling her mom what happened.
“Someone hit Essy,” she says, placing her bag on the sofa.

  “What do you mean?” Her mother glances up at her without letting go of her tea.

  “This guy she doesn’t even know slapped her on the street.” The sound of her mother sipping her tea is making Danielle nauseous.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Are you serious? What, are you stupid?” She grabs her bag off the sofa and runs to her bedroom. The door slams behind her, a teenage slam. It embarrasses her. She’s a bit too old for that.

  But seriously, why ask why? Why? It’s so ridiculous. You’re almost fifty. You’re supposed to have some sort of life experience. Jeez.

  She lies down on the bed, kicks off her ballerinas. She pulls off her skinny black jeans and her thin, loose-knit top. It’s a shame she doesn’t have a little kitten she could cuddle with. But her mother doesn’t like pets. Danielle is filled with self-loathing. She falls asleep.

  She wakes up at two in the afternoon. Her phone won’t stop ringing. It’s Essy, of course. She answers. Essy’s in a good mood, almost elated.

  “I have a brilliant idea,” Essy declares.

  Usually she loves it, those firm declarations. Usually it excites Danielle, but she hates herself now even more than when she went to sleep and she just feels like killing somebody, anybody, even Essy. “What now?”

  “Listen, we’re super sick of Tel Aviv, right? And everything here is just so gross, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So I say, tonight let’s go out someplace different.”

  “What do you mean, different? Like northern Tel Aviv, with all the douches?” Danielle chuckles. Essy sounds like an overexcited teenager.

  “No.” Essy ignores her friend’s sarcasm. “I mean a different city, outside of Tel Aviv. Brilliant, right?” She hasn’t left the city in months. Every so often she goes to see her parents in Ramat Gan, just across the Yarkon River, but that doesn’t really count.

  “What different city, Essy? Jerusalem?”

  Essy’s dream is to study art at the Bezalel Academy. She says Jerusalem is the most European city in Israel. If she moved there, she could make video art and hang out with other artists and smoke hand-rolled cigarettes in the cold. “Actually, I was thinking of Zikhron Ya’akov,” she says. “I went there once and it’s really pretty. There’s that pedestrian walkway, you know it? And I met this guy from Zikhron awhile ago and he said it’s really fun to go out there, there’s bars and stuff.”

  “And how do we get there, exactly? Isn’t it, like, far?” Danielle is surprised by how easily Essy has convinced her.

  “Can you ask your mom for the car?”

  “Essy, you’re pissing me off, and my mom’s a bitch.” Danielle stands up, disgusted with herself. It’s two in the afternoon, her greasy hair smells of Noblesse, and her spine aches from restless sleep.

  “Okay, but can you ask her anyway and text me?”

  Danielle agrees and hangs up. Then the phone beeps again. This time it’s her battery, but she can’t be bothered to charge it. She throws the phone on the bed and it rolls off to the floor. She sighs. Everything now seems to her like a sign of despair and failure.

  In the shower, she thinks that maybe she should suck up to her mother if she wants to borrow the car tonight. Then she thinks, Fuck it, I’m an only child and my mom’s a bitch and she has no choice but to give me anything I want. She inspects herself in the mirror. At least she’s hot. She’s tall and fit. She has that curvy waist. And her breasts, with that perfect slit in the middle, not too small and not too heavy, and most importantly, perfectly upright. Yes, pretty perfect. Like Sophie Marceau’s. Danielle studied film in high school, and she learned about the French new wave, German expressionism, and Italian neorealism, so she has a rich world of references. She tries to remember which movie showed Sophie Marceau’s nude body.

  “Mom, can I borrow the car tonight?” she asks her mother as she makes herself a cup of green tea.

  “What for?” While Danielle was asleep, her mother went grocery shopping, had lunch with a friend, bought flowers, took a skirt to be fitted, and made a delicious low-fat broccoli quiche for dinner.

  “Essy and I want to go out of town.”

  “Let me guess, this is Essy’s idea.”

  “No, it’s my idea, Mom.”

  “Fine, take the car. But drive safely and take good care of it.”

  “You don’t want to know where we’re going?” Danielle turns to face her mother, leans back against the counter, and sips her tea.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Jerusalem.”

  * * *

  When she pulls over on the corner of Ahad Ha’am and Ben Zion Avenue, Essy is already waiting outside, looking amazing in her white silk minidress. Danielle knows it isn’t really silk, it’s satin, but it’s the good kind. The sleeves are short and round, the fabric is loose, floating around her and only sporadically clinging to her body when the wind blows. When Essy gets in the car Danielle sees that the back of her dress is cut in the shape of a flower. Damn, that’s nice. Danielle is jealous. Essy’s red lipstick is also nice, and so is her thin black hair and her pale skin and her perky nose. Everything about her is pretty—pretty and annoying. Danielle only ever wears her black clothes and the same pair of ballerinas.

  “Are you always a bitch or is today special?” Danielle says, lowering the hand brake.

  “Why, babe? What did I do?”

  “Well, for instance, right now, calling me babe.”

  They both burst out laughing.

  Essy is in charge of navigation; Danielle focuses on driving. On the way they stop at a gas station for coffee. Essy gets a pack of long Parliament Lights. They stand outside, smoking and drinking their coffee.

  “How pathetic is it that lattes are like my favorite thing in the world?” Essy asks Danielle in utter seriousness.

  “Pretty pathetic.”

  They laugh. They’re such good friends. They know each other so well. All the little nuances and jokes. They both think how great it is that they have each other. Nobody understands them better than the other.

  Around two a.m. they’re sitting at the Mushroom Bar in Zikhron Ya’akov with three drunk twenty-six-year-old guys. At first they huddle around Essy, asking her questions, trying to make her laugh. The first to leave the game is the ugliest, a guy named Benny who works as a cook at a high-end restaurant across the street and only rarely leaves Zikhron. He quickly realizes he doesn’t have the slightest chance with Essy and splits. His friends barely say goodbye. They are leaning over their beers, their bodies pulled toward Essy’s without them even noticing. But Danielle can see it. She can see everything. She also knows that poor, ugly Benny will go home now, hating himself and his friends. And after smoking a joint, he’ll lie in bed and imagine taking off Essy’s soft white dress. It’ll feel so alive in his head that he’ll even hear the sound of it unzipping. He’ll imagine the fabric against his cheek, running his finger down Essy’s back. Her skin will feel like silk. He’ll jerk off and fall asleep and wake up at eight a.m. to go to work. Saturday is a busy day in the restaurant. By the time his shift ends tomorrow, he won’t even remember ever meeting a girl named Essy.

  The two guys who stick around look pretty good, one better than the other. One is called Yoni, which Essy likes because she used to have a crush on a guy with that name. The other is Daniel.

  “You know that my best friend is named Danielle?” Essy asks him, nodding toward her.

  “Well, it’s pretty much the most common name in the world, after Muhammad, isn’t it?”

  Everyone laughs except for Danielle. She feels like Essy dragged her all the way to Zikhron only to do some teasing and flirting with these pathetic townies, who are all excited because they’ve never seen a girl as pretty as her. But in Tel Aviv you can’t spit without hitting a pretty girl, and Essy knows this.

  It’s getting chilly, and Daniel figures that the best thing that could happen to him tonight is if
Essy’s nipples get hard. He already noticed, looking at the cut of her dress, that she isn’t wearing a bra.

  “So how does it feel, sharing a name with such a large segment of the population?” he asks Danielle.

  “Feels like shit,” she answers honestly.

  He finds this extremely funny. “Really? Why?”

  “No reason, I don’t know. How do you feel about it?”

  “The truth is, I don’t really care.” He begins rolling a cigarette and offers one to Danielle.

  “Want to go outside? It’s kind of stuffy in here,” she says. Essy and her guy are getting heated and she doesn’t feel like watching. Daniel agrees and they go out to Zikhron’s main drag, the beautiful avenue with the Parisian streetlamps and the white cobblestone.

  “What do you do for a living?” he asks her. In the light of the avenue she notices his smooth hair, pink lips, and narrow nose. A suburban beauty.

  “I work at a bookstore called Bookworm, on Maze Street. You know it?”

  “Not really. Isn’t it boring? I mean, what do you do there all day?”

  “I read books, or I go on Facebook or IM. But it’s fun to read all day long. I like it.”

  Daniel nods, pulls on his cigarette. His cheeks stick to the inside of his mouth. He isn’t into books. “I make music,” he announces.

  “Really? What kind?” Danielle asks excitedly.

  “Electronic music, on my computer. I mix tracks and make them my own. A friend of mine who deejays at the Mushroom sometimes plays my music. But mainly I want to work with musicians, be like a sound editor.” He tells her more about himself and his career plans. He mentions the names of deejays, musicians, styles, and beats that Danielle isn’t familiar with.

  “Are you thinking of moving to Tel Aviv? That’s where the whole music scene is, right?” For a moment she imagines him moving there and becoming her boyfriend.

  He sighs. “I don’t like Tel Aviv. I don’t get how anyone could live there. It’s so dirty, god. Besides, I’m in the process of building a home studio. I’m working really hard and saving money because I want to get the best equipment. Musicians will come all the way from Tel Aviv to record in my studio.”