At fifty-eight, Hassil apparently had only two interests in life besides working for the cause, eating and selling his antiques. His small apartment was crowded with his collection. Even though he had a shop in the Village, he did a lot of buying and storing outside the shop. Customers often came up to his apartment to look over something “extra special.” He laughed about the fact that he had no sexual interests.
“I once had a prostitute come up to visit me,” he told Nessim and Clea one night, “but when she finally discovered my prick hidden under all this fat”—he shook his lower stomach with his hands—“she found I had already had an orgasm.” He laughed—small convulsions of soundless facial movement, his jowls shaking. “Even I have trouble finding it sometimes, so when I urinate, I sit down like a woman; just to play it safe.” He laughed again.
Because of his obese form, he spoke in a low, whizzing sound, breathing heavy all the time. He was always sweating and wiping his face with a gray handkerchief. When he spoke over the phone, it sounded like a man trying to disguise his voice. If anyone had tapped his phone, he would surely think he was on the right track.
“Have you seen this news item in today’s paper about the murder of a JDL member last night? It wasn’t far from your apartment,” he said when Nessim called that morning.
Nessim knew he was testing and seeking information. He leaned on his elbow and wiped his eyes. Clea was apparently still asleep beside him. He thought for a moment, recalling the scene between him and Yusuf in the bathroom.
“I know about it. Let’s talk later.”
“Have you looked in the classifieds today?” Hassil said.
“No.”
“Do that. There are some interesting items.”
“I will.”
“We’ll talk again,” Hassil said and hung up.
Nessim held the receiver for a moment, thinking. Hassil would report that Nessim had something to do with the murder of the JDL boy. There would be problems. Clea turned on her back, and he hung up the phone. He studied her face for a moment.
He loved her dark eyes and the way her small chin turned up, revealing the smooth lines of her neck. She moved her lips together and twitched her nose. It made him smile. There had always been something refreshing about waking up beside her. Her black hair, longer than shoulder length now, ran along both sides of her body. He stroked it first and she looked at him—still wearing that look of morning grogginess. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the forehead. She smiled and reached up to run her fingers along his lips.
“Who called?”
“Hassil.”
“Another meeting?”
“We’ll be busy today.”
“Should I go to work?”
“Yes, definitely.”
She stared at him for a few moments, as if she was considering whether or not to ask the next question.
“Was there something wrong with Yusuf last night?”
“His nightmares.”
She nodded and turned away. “I can understand.” She closed her eyes hard as if to chase away memories. He leaned over and kissed her shoulder.
“We must keep each other from suffering,” he said.
She smiled and reached up to stroke back the strands of hair that had fallen over Nessim’s forehead. He had thick, dark brown hair, and although he kept it well groomed during the day, it was always wild in the morning. She laughed about it and pressed her pelvis against his leg.
“I know how we can do that,” she said coquettishly.
“Wait,” he said.
He got up and went into Yusuf’s room. Yusuf lay on his back, breathing through his opened mouth. Nessim was instantly reminded of their father lying dead on the road, still and crumpled, his arms twisted around, his legs on their sides, and his mouth opened as if he were about to shout. The memory sent a chill through his body, and he felt suddenly very cold standing naked. He shook the bed, a little more vigorously than was required. Yusuf woke with a start, sitting up quickly.
“What is it?”
“Hassil just called. It’s in the paper already. Your deed for the cause.”
Yusuf wiped his face and stared at Nessim, looking for some clue in his expression, but as always Nessim was neutral, unemotional.
“And?”
“We’ll see about that later. Couldn’t talk on the phone. But the message is in today’s classified section. Get dressed and go get a paper.”
“Right away,” Yusuf said. He got out of bed quickly and started to put his pants on. “What will you tell Hassil later?”
“We’ll tell the truth. I told you.”
“He’s a worm. He won’t support us. He’ll …”
Nessim reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Yusuf stood still. One look into Nessim’s eyes silenced him. Nessim turned and left the room to go back to Clea. She was lying with her arms behind her head. He winked at her and she smiled. He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. Yusuf came out, hopping on one foot as he struggled to put the other shoe on. Clea laughed.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Don’t hurry,” Nessim replied. Yusuf stopped and checked his brother’s expression. This time he knew the look and nodded slightly, without revealing his understanding to Clea. Then he left the apartment.
Nessim turned toward Clea. She had dropped the cover, exposing her firm breasts, only a shade or two lighter than the rest of her body. He always found that interesting. Her nipples were as dark as the nipples of a black woman. The French blood in her was responsible for her facial features, but the color of her skin and the color of her hair was Arabic. She had a funny little clipped accent, too.
He remembered the first time he had seen her, standing near the railing of an open-air café looking out at the port in Athens. The breeze played with strands of her hair. She wore a brightly colored dress that was tapered to her hips. She struck him as being statuesque, someone caught in time. There was a great stillness in her face. The sight of her touched him deeply. He had been yearning for something soft and peaceful. A string of violent memories had followed him out of Palestine. Only a week before, he had successfully blown two Israeli border guards to kingdom come. Their bodies had heaved into the air like cloth puppets.
Clea turned and her breasts moved together, forming a cleavage. He ran his fingers gently between them, separating them and then stroking her nipple with his thumb. She smiled and put her hand between his thighs. Instantly, a warmth traveled down to his loins. He felt his penis nudge against his thigh as the blood rushed into it. It climbed away from his body and he smiled to himself, thinking of an artillery piece being tilted upward for trajectory. My military experience invades everything, he thought.
She brought his head closer to hers and they kissed, her tongue forcing its way between his lips and pushing his back. Her hands ran down the sides of his body, grasping his buttocks and pulling them forward, pushing him into place. She was a natural lovemaker—someone who appeared to have the instincts for exquisite sensations. Every one of her movements, every touch, was designed to carry him slowly into the pitch of excitement. There was no rushing, no mad, wild passion but a careful, controlled manipulation of bodies for mutual satisfaction. At times, he thought her to be a fine artist, molding their bodies. She played upon him as one would play upon a musical instrument, and he loved it.
Their lovemaking gave him a zest for living that sometimes conflicted with his fanaticism and devotion to the cause. He had always believed himself dedicated and ready to lay down his life when the time came. And he had never questioned or doubted the fact that the time would come, could come at any moment. It might have even started today, in the message hidden among the classified advertisements. When he was with her, though, he wanted to live, to go on forever. Despite the cause, he wanted life and that made him feel weak. He had been warned. Sardin,
his immediate superior, had told him in Greece.
“She’ll weigh you down. She’ll make you hesitate. If you care that much about her, you’ll think of her at the wrong moments. We who sacrifice for the cause must not think of our lives in the present, but only what our actions will do for the future. We live in the future.”
“Nevertheless, we have needs now, for the time being. You’re sending me to America to be hidden among them. I must not wear the face of a fanatic. I must look like someone struggling for everyday happiness. She’ll make that possible,” he argued. Sardin saw some merit in that. “I have never failed the cause,” Nessim added. In the end, Sardin relented.
And now, here they were, making love again, like millions of Americans, at peace in their beds.
“Don’t worry, Yusuf won’t hurry back,” he said.
“I know.”
He moved into her slowly and then they began a careful, quiet rhythm, building it into climax after climax and returning to a slow movement that had the makings of a ballet. She threw her arms over her head to indicate that she was reaching a great climax, and he grew excited by the power he had to make her feel such ecstasy. It drove him into a frenzy, and he worked his body deeper and deeper into her until she moaned and bit her lower lip. Then he exploded inside her, the heat of him pouring out. She savored it, grinding slowly to a halt, turning her head from side to side, her breathing slowing down, and her breasts relaxing. They lay there, still entwined for a few quiet moments. She kissed his neck and he rolled over. Only then did they hear the sounds of the city outside their window.
“We’re good together,” she said. “We always will be.”
Whenever she suggested the future, he felt an anger build inside himself. It made him turn off, and he grew deeply silent. The future was a promise he could only dream of making. Perhaps Sardin was right. He should have never taken her with him. He was on his way to oblivion and he had stopped to enjoy life. What a fool. Someday he’d pay for this; it would hurt his effort. He was sure of it, but he couldn’t turn her away.
“What’s the matter? You look like a man being threatened, not a man being loved.”
“There’s something very big about to happen,” he said. She touched his arm; he recognized the gesture as one of great fear. “You always knew it would come. I never fooled you about it.”
“That doesn’t make me any less afraid.”
“Nevertheless, we knew it was to happen.”
“When?”
“It starts today.”
She got up and pulled a T-shirt over herself. Then she slipped into the jeans that were draped over a chair.
“I’ll make some coffee and get breakfast going,” she said.
He didn’t reply. He lay back and waited for Yusuf to come with the paper.
4
Toby Marcus stepped out of Fitness Delight and sucked in the roundness her stomach still possessed. She could wear a panty girdle and hide it as far as the public was concerned, but she wasn’t concerned with the public. She had to work it away for private encounters—especially one in particular that was coming up shortly. They were going to the Catskills again, and she’d have a chance to spend some time with Bruno. Just thinking about him drove her silly with excitement. He had come into the city twice this year, and they had met at the West End Hotel. Despite the fact that she saw him so rarely, he was sure of what she would do when he came into town and called. He didn’t even pretend to court her anymore.
If he got her on the phone, it was, “I’m here. You wanna make it?”
Very crude with animal directness—that was Bruno, but that was also what she wanted. She hated herself for being so easy, but what the hell? She got just as much out of it as he did. Maybe more. Oh, let it not be more, she thought. If it came to that, he wouldn’t call at all and he wouldn’t pay any attention to her when they went up to the New Prospect.
So she acted like his sex slave, ready to jump at his beck and call. So what?
The main thing was to keep in decent shape. She had hit forty this year, and there were parts of her body that wanted to retire, slip back, sag, and drift into jellylike texture. Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen, not now, maybe not ever. She dreamed of being ravishing at sixty years of age. Look at Maggie Levy—sixty-four years old with the figure of a thirty-five-year-old woman. She’d had her face lifted four times and had even had corrective cosmetic surgery done on her breasts. Why, Bill often remarked about her attractive figure, and no one who didn’t know her believed that she was in her sixties. Sure it was possible. Toby could have the same things done. Maybe she wouldn’t look exactly like she did when she was in her twenties, but she’d be a damn good piece of ass if she could help it.
It had gotten to the point where she had grown jealous of her daughter’s trim, buxom figure. Dorothy was nearly fifteen, but she looked like a fully grown mature woman. She had a thirty-six bust, for Christ sakes. All of Bill’s friends looked at her lustfully when they came to the house. It was getting so that few ever noticed her anymore if the kid was in the same room.
And she didn’t like the way Dorothy returned those stares. Was it always just accidental or coincidental that she stretched and nearly popped her blouse buttons when Bill’s friends were around? Just how innocent was she—if she was at all? She never came to her for any advice about sex or asked her questions about her body. She seemed to know everything she had to know. Toby mentioned that once to Bill, but he said it must be because the school ran health and sex courses nowadays. He was so oblivious. Kids today were more sophisticated in some ways, but that didn’t mean they were necessarily better off.
Her daughter was a puzzle to her in more ways than one. She was a loner, content with staying in her room, playing her records and talking on her phone. Bill was always too busy to care, and anyway, he had this incredible faith and belief that nothing terrible would happen to his family without his becoming aware long beforehand.
The whole situation was annoying, but she couldn’t let it get her down the way it did to so many of the women who fretted and worried wrinkles and gray hair onto themselves. They frowned and creased their foreheads. They ate all sorts of garbage foods out of nervousness and grew old before their time. This was not going to happen to her.
She crossed the street quickly and headed up the block for Ceil’s Boutique. There was a bathing suit she had planned to buy for the holiday if she could trim down five pounds. She had nearly done it. She always enjoyed the indoor pool at the New Prospect. Bill hated it, so it made for a good place to meet with Bruno after he was finished with work in the dining room. It was really a silly affair. She knew the hotel workers looked for women like her—eager to have a sexual encounter that went no further than the weekend or the holiday period. It wasn’t that she was stupid or naive about it.
But Bruno was something special. He had that Latin face and those dancing green eyes. The combination turned her on the moment she set eyes on him. He had come out of the kitchen that first night, carrying a tray of soups for her table, moving with ease and grace, broad shouldered and tall. The moment she saw him and he saw the way she looked at him, they both knew. Thereafter, it was just a matter of arrangements, working out the timing. Once, she claimed a headache and stayed up in the room while Bill took Dorothy to a gymnastics show in the field house. Bruno came up and they made love so passionately and desperately that she really did look like someone suffering from a headache when Bill returned.
After that, she searched for opportunities to get herself up to the New Prospect. When Lillian Rothberg suggested the rally for Israel on Passover, she worked hard with her to make it happen. Now Bill was hooked on it as much as Lillian or anyone in the organization. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Israel and all that. She cared, of course, but why not combine a lot of pleasure with a lot of good work?
Actually, she felt very clever a
bout it. Bruno knew she was coming. His attention flattered her. She realized he could be chasing young girls—and probably had a good share of them during the year—but when she arrived, he sought her out as something special. She had managed to hold on to that. It made her feel eternally young. In her mind, she had come to believe that as long as this kind of thing went on, she could hold on to that intangible thing called youth. It would radiate in her face and move over her body.
Too bad she didn’t feel that way because of Bill; the fire had long since gone out between them. He was once a handsome man and quite sexy, too; however, he had let himself go badly. A potbelly, a lack of concern about his clothes, and a general degeneration in his facial features all combined to literally take the sex out of him. They made love now as though it were part of some marriage routine. Just like you had to take out the garbage, you had to turn over in bed and do it.
She had mentioned that in a session with her psychiatrist once. She had called it, “Flushing out the reproductive system.” It was like a sexual laxative. The doctor liked that a lot—a young-looking Jewish fella who called himself Ross even though she knew his surname was Rosenfield. He suggested she be more open about it all and discuss the situation with Bill, but all that did was make him angry. There was no way to correct the situation. Her husband had become merely someone with whom she shared orange juice in the morning and joined names on a mortgage document.
So she joined the organizations, worked on the causes, and hung out with “Dynamite Lillian Rothberg,” as everyone called her because of her seemingly endless energy. Together they were out to create some excitement in their lives. Of course, Lillian had purer motives. She was actually caught up in the causes and the projects. At times, Toby was sickened by her dedication. There were many occasions when they confronted good-looking men, men who could easily develop interest, but “Dynamite Lil” just went right on talking about the damn Community Chest, boring the hell out of them. Now there was a woman who had lost track of her sex instinct. Toby imagined Abe and Lillian made love only occasionally, and when they did, Dynamite Lil probably proofread charity advertisements while he experienced orgasm. God forbid I ever get like her, Toby thought.
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