by Yael Hedaya
He wanted to say, Nothing, actually, but he said, “I’ll have a coffee.”
“That’s it? Don’t you want anything else?”
“That’s it.”
She worked in a bookstore and knew his name. She had read both his books and had loved them and was waiting for the next one. He said he was too. She told him she was recently divorced, no children, and that in the meantime she was partying.
“Partying?”
“All the time.”
“What do you mean, partying?”
“Partying! Don’t you know what partying is?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
“You mean going to parties and bars?”
She laughed and sipped her coffee and tore off a tiny piece of the croissant she had ordered; her fingers were long and her nails were painted with silver nail polish. She put the piece in her mouth and said, “That too.”
Although he knew exactly what she meant, he kept interrogating her, because he refused to believe she was really hitting on him in this way that seemed both disgusting and exciting and because there had never been ease in his life, and this seemed to be his opportunity to finally experience it.
She said, “I go out all the time. Blind dates and that sort of thing. And sometimes I sit at a bar, just for fun.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
“And don’t people hit on you the whole time?”
“They do; that’s why I go.”
Yonatan, who had never picked up a woman in a bar, suddenly felt his life to be terribly lacking, and asked, “How do people hit on you? What tactics do they use?”
Idit laughed. “Oh, there are all kinds. Do you really want to know?”
He nodded and lit a cigarette. He offered her one and she took it with the same delicacy with which she had torn off pieces of croissant, and told him about the pickup methods of men in bars, and Yonatan again felt that combination of aversion and excitement.
“I’m thirty-three,” she said, when he asked how old she was. “I’m supposed to be in my prime, aren’t I?”
Yonatan imagined her sleeping with a different guy every night and asked what her ex-husband did.
“He’s an electrical engineer.”
“Interesting job.”
“Not at all.”
“At least it’s a job.” He tried to picture himself in bed with her but couldn’t.
“What about you? Are you married?”
“My wife died.” The words sounded sterile; their sound reminded him of the way the lawn chairs and the stripy umbrella looked, and the whole mall.
“How did she pass away?”
Yonatan had never thought of Ilana as someone who had passed away, but rather as someone who had died, and he said, “Motor accident.” Idit was quiet and he added, “I have a six-year-old girl,” because he urgently needed to transmit all the relevant information about his life to Idit, and he did not know why or what, in fact, was relevant to this occasion or what this occasion even was.
When she got up to go to the bathroom, he followed her behind again, which was now an independent entity, uninterested in this conversation and unaffected by Yonatan’s dilemmas, because he really could not imagine himself sleeping with her, not with someone like that, not so soon after losing his wife. Although, on the other hand, maybe it had to be with someone like her, because it would have no meaning from the get-go. But Yonatan knew he had never been able to enjoy the advantages of meaninglessness—on the contrary, it was meaninglessness that always took on a double meaning for him—and the behind moved farther and farther away and Yonatan briefly recalled the little erection he had had fifteen minutes ago on the escalator, and pictured Idit peeing in the bathroom, and thought, That was the first erection since Ilana died. For four months he had been unable to think about sex. He hadn’t even been able to masturbate, although he had tried, one afternoon in the shower, more out of desperation than horniness, but he couldn’t concentrate, even though Dana was out.
He had stood in the stream of water and thought, It’s all right, you’re allowed; Dana’s over at Nira’s. But that knowledge only intensified the girl’s presence and her mother’s absence, and although he was able to arouse himself, he was overcome with lethargy as he soaped his penis and started rubbing it with an automatic, almost bored motion. He stood that way for a few moments until the lethargy was replaced by anger, and he tried urgently to call up a fantasy, the one he especially liked: a replay of his sexual encounter with a woman who had gone to school with him during his BA, a kibbutznik named Hagar. She was particularly wild in bed, and the memory of their sex was always wonderful fantasy material. He had run into her on the street not long ago. She had found religion in the interim and was wearing a long dress and a head covering, and her eyes escaped his look to the sidewalk. When he told her his wife had died, she clucked her tongue, the same tongue that had once scampered over his body, and said, “Hashem gives, Hashem takes.” He had felt like slapping her but had said, “Yes, I suppose so.” That day in the shower, he started the replay, but suddenly, as if the reel had been torn in the projector, the picture was cut off and he couldn’t see anything. He kept standing like that with his eyes closed, his rubbing turning to desperate little tugs, until he let go and washed off the soap and got out of the shower.
When Idit came back, he decided he would sleep with her. He imagined them leaving the café and going down the escalator and standing in the parking lot, embarrassed by the anticipated parting. Idit would start to give him her phone number, but he would stand close to her and put an unequivocal hand on her shoulder and ask if she was busy right now. Maybe they could go and have lunch somewhere? Idit might be disappointed for a moment, because she had hoped for a nighttime encounter, but she would realize that late morning was when Yonatan operated and would say she was free—why not?—and would suggest that they go over to her place and she’d make something to eat. Yonatan would say, If it’s not too much bother. And she would say, It’s no bother at all. And he would say, Then I’ll follow you. He tried to guess what kind of car she drove and thought it was probably something compact, a Subaru like his car, or even a Ford Fiesta. He would follow her car the whole way, as he had followed her backside, and she would drive slowly so she wouldn’t lose him, and it would be a kind of foreplay on the road.
When Idit sat down across from him again and put the last piece of croissant in her mouth, he wondered if she would look so made up when she was naked. When he tried to picture himself naked, the notion was not frightening so much as it was impossible, and he consoled himself with the thought that he didn’t have to undress or undress her; on the contrary, this was a quickie, a onetime exchange between two strangers who had nothing to say to each other, so there was no point in pretending and undressing. The idea encouraged him, and he thought about fucking her fully clothed, standing up, in her kitchen, and his sleeping erection stirred, and Idit asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. My mind was just wandering for a minute.”
He asked if he should get the check, and she said she felt like some more coffee and called the waitress. She said she’d never met an author in person. She really liked reading, she said. “I love books. I devour everything, in huge quantities.”
“Yes, I like to read too.”
She told him she read interviews with authors and watched them on TV and always tried to find a connection between what they wrote and the way they looked and spoke. She said she was always surprised to discover that there was no connection and that the authors, when compared to their books, were disappointing.
Yonatan asked, “So are you disappointed?”
“Goodness, no! Goodness, no! I saw you on TV a long time ago, and I read the interview you gave, that time, when your second book came out.”
“In Ha’aretz?”
“Yes. And I’m not disappointed at all. Quite the opposite!”
“So
you knew what I looked like. It wasn’t a coincidence that you followed me in the store?”
“No. Actually, yes, it was a coincidence. A sort of coincidence. I mean, I recognized you, yes. It’s embarrassing.”
Yonatan was momentarily flooded with a sense of power he had never known: not when his first book was a success, not when the second gained a respectable position on the bestseller list—not first place, which still saddened him a little; like a stubborn koala bear, Silence had stuck in sixth place for weeks until it dropped off—he had never felt as powerful as he did at that moment, sitting opposite this woman with her heavy makeup and long fingernails and jet-black hair that suddenly looked dyed, this woman who had hunted him down in the store and chased him with her cart to fulfill the fantasy of meeting a writer and sleeping with him.
“I don’t want you to think…” she said.
“Think what?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.” But he did. This woman—who had surprised him by saying she read a highbrow newspaper like Ha’aretz, and he hated himself for the prejudice but was still surprised—had seen him wandering around the home-improvement store and realized this was her big chance. The fact that she was so excited at this prospect seemed sad to Yonatan, and he pitied her, and she seemed pathetic, as she had for a second when he had seen the lines her panties made in her slacks, and he suddenly felt cheated, and the sense of power gave way to insult, and he tried to reassure himself with the knowledge that she was the kind of woman who hunted down men in bars, that she had liked him anyway, regardless of the fact that he was an almost-famous author, but he didn’t believe it, and he felt it wasn’t him that she wanted but the fleeting, relative fame that sleeping with him could offer, and he felt pathetic himself, for being the object of a fantasy for someone like this, and the ease he had wanted to experience turned finally into depression.
“Are you okay?” Idit asked, and used her fingernails to tear off the corners of two packs of sugar.
“I’m fine,” he said, but he could no longer look at her and he turned aside, to the escalator.
“Yoo-hoo!” She waved at him. “I’m over here!”
“I’m sorry. I was just looking at something.” He waited impatiently for her to finish her coffee.
“Were your thoughts wandering again?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
“Where?” she asked cloyingly, and leaned her chin on her hand.
But the magic was gone—it had never been there, he realized—and her voice sounded demanding, and he glanced at his watch and said, “Listen, I have to run, but you drink your coffee. I just noticed the time.”
Idit sat up straight and said, “I see. That’s a pity.”
“Yes, I think so too, but I have to pick my daughter up from school.”
“Already? It’s only eleven.”
“Yes, I forgot they’re finishing early today, the teachers have some seminar or something.”
“Oh, a seminar.”
“They’re always having seminars, those teachers; you would think they’d all turned into professors.”
“My sister’s a teacher.”
“Really?” He called the waitress.
“I have to go too, actually.”
During the minutes that passed until the waitress came with the check, he politely asked her about her sister the teacher; then he paid the check and Idit did not object, and he said to himself, At least she can tell people that an author bought her a cup of coffee, and he hated her and himself, and they got up and went down the escalator. This time she stood behind him, and he turned to face her but her eyes were focused on the stores passing them by.
When they got to the parking lot, he said, “It’s been a real pleasure.”
“For me too,” she replied, and hesitated briefly.
He was planning how he would refuse when she offered him her phone number, and he said, “Where are you parked?”
“Here, just nearby. I got lucky.”
“I didn’t; I’m over there on the other side.” He took his key chain out of his pants pocket and said, “It’s pretty hot today.”
“That’s it, winter’s over.”
“Yes. But at least we had a winter this year, for a change.”
“I hate winter.”
“I like it.”
“Really?”
Yonatan thought he detected a hint of hope in her voice—perhaps a conversation about the weather would take them back to the starting point?—and he said, “Yes, my daughter likes winter too.”
“Okay. You should really get going.” She held out her hand to be shaken.
He shook it feebly, and her hand felt nice, and he said, “Bye, then,” and turned away and started walking to his car. When he felt he was far enough away, he turned back and saw Idit getting into a white Fiat Uno.
( 2 )
Shira walked home with quick, disappointed steps, wishing she could go back to the beginning of the evening, to the time when she could have acted differently—could have been more friendly and flirted more, or at least more unequivocally; could have worn something else, something sexy instead of corduroy pants that made her look fat—because she felt she had looked old and bitter tonight. She could have smiled more and asked him about himself when they sat at the table on their own—Rona and the girls were washing the dishes, Arik and Ruti sat watching TV, and the two of them found themselves again within a circle of silence—but they were both quiet. She wanted to go back to that time she had tried to kill, the endless moments in the park, the slow walking, that time now seemed precious and so wasted, the time before she fell in love with him.
Or perhaps she hadn’t fallen in love with him. But it didn’t make any difference. The sense of falling in love, the air it brought with it, suddenly became an internal conversation, something to talk about with herself, familiar and yet very new. It was emptying and filling and exhausting, she thought, as she climbed up the stairs to her third-floor apartment. So exhausting, she said to herself, and lay down on the couch, but in such a refreshing way.
When she saw Yonatan gobbling his food, heaping more and more of the veal and potatoes onto his plate and finishing off the asparagus practically single-handedly, she felt close to him, in the same way that people can feel close to themselves, but with more compassion, but she knew there was something in him that rejected closeness, something that awakened compassion and at the same time disdained anyone who pitied him.
She picked up the newspaper off the floor, looked at the cryptic crossword, but couldn’t concentrate. Why him? she asked herself. You could feel compassion for anyone, and closeness too. She got up and went to the kitchen, distractedly opened and closed the fridge, then took a cigarette out from the pack on the table and thought, Because he looks unattainable. Even his body looks fortified.
She remembered the first time she had slept with Idan, after many months of watching him in the cafeteria on campus, convinced he didn’t know, long months during which he tipped the scales in his favor without even realizing it, or so she thought, because he later confessed that he had purposely ignored her because she seemed too enthusiastic and a little scary. She remembered the sense of challenge that accompanied their first sex like background music.
The pub they had gone to, on Allenby, was a tourists’ pub. She had encouraged him to get drunk. Only later did she realize that he always got drunk before sex—not so he could perform but so he could be raped, which was the only thing he knew how to do. As she stroked his fingers, which gripped his glass of beer, and looked at him giggling like a girl and turning aside—far away from her, far from her passion, far from any passion—she believed that, the minute she managed somehow to penetrate him, he would penetrate her back, and the insult of his ignoring her would be erased, along with the insult of the drunkenness he needed so he could be with her. In the car, when she drove him drunk to his apartment, she imagined the moment when he would lunge for her, but the lunge never came, and
she slept with him for five years without his truly wanting her even for a minute.
And then there was Eitan, who was all lunge. After the first time with him, she was stunned by the way he loved her body, which over the years, especially the years with Idan, had become a cynical lump of desire. She walked around naked in front of Eitan on their very first night, something she had never done with anyone, and she didn’t like to do it even alone. She had got out of bed and gone to the bathroom and then to the kitchen to get them both some cold water, and had come back to the bedroom, then to the living room for cigarettes and an ashtray; her breasts and stomach and ass and hips hung around his apartment with an ease that practically bordered on reproach, and everywhere they went they found Eitan waiting for them, missing them, lunging at them.
For a moment, when Yonatan got up and went to the bathroom an image flashed through her mind, flicking back and forth, of Yonatan naked. She pictured narrow, boyish hips and a broad torso, and his nakedness was hairy, without Idan’s eel-like slipperiness or Eitan’s yearning bearness; Yonatan’s nakedness, unlike any other because she had not yet seen it, aroused intense attraction, but mainly compassion. When he came back from the bathroom, she saw that he was thinner than she had thought, that his sweatshirt and the T-shirt he wore beneath it made him look bulkier but the jeans gave him away, and she knew that the compassion he aroused was misleading because it was so sexy.
Now she told herself that her attraction to him, like the falling in love, was also fake, and that even if it was real it was circumstantial. She knew it wasn’t his body language, lazy and supple, or his body, which she saw as being split in two, or his face, which radiated soft cynicism—although you couldn’t say that cynicism radiated, in his case it did—or his tone of voice, which held a mixture of seduction and indifference. It was Dana, because there was something in him that clearly said, I’m lonely but not completely. That was his strength, she decided, and his power over her. I’m lonely, he told her wordlessly, but you are far lonelier.