by Dov Nardimon
Everyone had betrayed him. Ronit, his life partner; Eddie, his business partner; and Mickey, whom he thought he knew so well. After all the trouble he went through explaining to Ronit how true friends like Mickey are for life . . .
“Be careful with that guy,” said Ronit after a dinner they had together at Mickey’s home. As always, Mickey knew how to make an impression, and his wife Suzy quickly found a common language with Ronit. They sat under the pergola in the yard overlooking their private swimming pool. The blue light from the pool and the candles on the table rendered the setting serene and romantic. The Philippine maid floated about tending to the guests’ every need. The peak of their seafood meal was huge Cape Cod crabs.
“Suzy’s brother sent these over this morning by special delivery from the company’s icing warehouses in New York,” he told Ronit with a bright smile, checking to see if he had made the right impression.
“I’m not much of a fan. All the cracking and shelling, and all this equipment, remind me too much of the operating room.” Ronit managed to spoil Reuben’s appetite. He had been anxious for the evening to go well.
Suzy, eager to keep everyone pleased, quickly changed the subject and told the story of the Berkowitz family and the seafood trade: Suzy’s great-grandfather and his brother, who came to New York from Romania after the First World War, opened a fish stall at a market in downtown New York. Cape Cod crabs had always been considered an expensive delicacy in New York’s luxurious restaurants. The Berkowitz brothers decided to try and bring the sought-after crab to the market straight from Cape Cod to the restaurants, cutting out the middleman and offering it to their customers at a reasonable price. They would head up north to Cape Cod every Wednesday in a tatty, old truck and return the next day with a bounty of crabs and other seafood, which they would sell at the New York market at a huge profit.
The surreal image of two Jews wearing yarmulkes selling all sorts of non-kosher seafood got them expelled from the synagogue where they used to pray every Shabbat. It did not help that they tried to explain they only sold it to gentiles. The family moved to New Haven, closer to their supply sources and far enough from the New York gossip.
“And so luckily for me, I was born in the New Haven paradise and not in the heart of that steaming, New York cauldron,” said Suzy, concluding the family saga.
When the coffees were served, Mickey pulled out his cigar box, and Reuben happily took out a fragrant cigar and removed its cellophane wrapping. In a non-customary gesture, Mickey lit Reuben’s cigar and then his own despite the women’s protests about the pollution.
“The smoke drives the mosquitoes away,” said Mickey, smiling at Ronit, but she went back to her conversation with Suzy, who was busy telling her about the benefits of Pilates over spinning, her former addiction. Later, when the men were enjoying a glass of Drambuie and the women, a sweet Muscat wine, Mickey wanted to show them their new state-of-the-art media room.
“Why don’t you choose a DVD for us to watch, Ronit?” He kept trying to break the ice.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling politely. “But I have to be at the hospital by six a.m. tomorrow morning, and it’s getting late.”
“Then we’ll save the option for another time,” said Reuben in an attempt to reconcile.
“Options are what you give to hotshot executives you don’t want to lose,” Mickey teased.
“Which is exactly what we are,” answered Reuben, putting his arm around Ronit’s shoulder. The Nevos said their good-byes and shook hands with Mickey and Suzy who touched cheeks with Ronit. Reuben drove in silence for a few minutes, taking in the atmosphere of the magical night. He reached out and took Ronit’s hand.
“Five years from now, if all goes as planned, we’ll have a villa like that with a pool and maybe even a maid.”
“I don’t know if that’s my life’s dream. That empty show-off is really not my cup of tea.”
“Is that envy I hear in your voice?”
Ronit pulled her hand away from Reuben’s and crossed her arms across her chest.
“I hope there are a few more things that interest you in life, not just money. Anyway, I don’t like that couple. All those forced displays of affection between them seemed totally fake. I bet Mickey is cheating on that poor woman left and right. He kept undressing me with his randy eyes all evening. I think he’s just gross.”
“Too bad that’s how you feel after such an evening. Mickey’s going to be our partner, and in the few months I’ve known him, we’ve really developed a great chemistry between us. I feel like he’s an old friend of mine. And the money he’s going to invest in us is a real godsend.”
“I’m not trying to convince you to let go of the only investment you’ve managed to secure, but there’s a big difference between that and real friendship. I hope I’m wrong, but Mickey seems to me like the kind of guy that’ll stab you in the back whenever it suits him.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, and I feel badly that you think so negative of someone I want to be friends with. I usually trust your intuition, but in this case I think you’re really wrong.”
“I think you’ve been blinded by Mickey’s money, but there’s nothing new there. You’ve always been dazzled by new money, and that’s fine. All I’m saying is that you should take him with a grain of salt.”
The enchanted night at Mickey’s seemed now as if it happened thousands of years ago.
She was right, I shouldn’t have trusted Mickey, thought Reuben. But what about her? And Eddie? The symbol of integrity Ronit trusted with eyes closed. I wonder how long she’s been feeling that way about him. He tried to think back and trace the breaking point after which the two people closest to him betrayed him. He and Ronit haven’t slept together in months, but no one knew of the tear between them. Or at least that’s what he thought until this morning. He trembled at the thought that there may have been hidden cameras at his house as well, and that his whole life could have been like an open book to Mickey and his bunch.
The break in his marriage wasn’t a big explosion of thunder and lightning or a storm of emotions. In fact, nothing in Reuben’s life was ever involved in bursts of feelings. He was one of the most calculated people you could think of.
“A cold fish like his father,” his mother would say sighing when she could never get her only son to respond to her hugs and kisses. Reuben was adopted after his parents failed to have children of their own. He grew up near Haifa in a small town that was built to take in new immigrants before the blue waters of the sea turned green with industrial pollution. Reuben had vague memories of golden sands and white waves from before he was nine when he was taken to a boarding school in a nearby kibbutz after losing his father and grew up devoid of feeling toward his mother.
To become educated and rich was the dream and vision Reuben’s mother intended for him. That was the brainwashing he received from her with every sigh and moan she uttered about her hard, ungrateful life. She instilled a lot of anxieties in him, but did not succeed in giving him a mother’s love and pampering. Perhaps it was the weight of the struggle to survive, or the adoption she had hoped would bring her joy, that caused her to be this way, but it only took away her husband and left her alone in the world.
The family never managed to break free from debt. The decision to adopt a baby added more financial strain than they could bear. His mother tried to pitch in and found work at a home for the mentally ill. Every afternoon she would rush to her short shift at the facility’s dining room to bring in a few hundred shekels and do her part to help with the burden of debt. She thought that way she might appease her husband, who never came to terms with not having a child of his own and did not want the adoption.
When the adoption time came, the mother received the boy on her own. The last time Reuben saw his father was when he was nine. His dad was waiting for him outside school, and they walked home together in silence. The boy was happier than ever. This was the first time his father picked him up from school.
They shared a sad lunch without a speaking. After a little while, his father left for his evening shift at the metal factory.
He was supposed to return home at dawn, but never came back. His body was found hanging on a steel wire in one of the factory warehouses. In his pocket was a note with only one sentence: I am sorry, but I cannot stand being a failure anymore. In hindsight, Reuben realized that last lunch together was his father’s frustrated way of apologizing for ignoring him and for what he was about to do.
His mother couldn’t cope on her own, and that same summer, Reuben was sent to the kibbutz to live in a group home. She would visit him once a week and poured her frustrations into motivating him to do well in school.
“So you can make money and not end up like your father.” And he, the lonely boy who was unsuccessful in sports or with girls, put everything he had into his schoolwork and year after year was an honors student.
When it was time to join the army, he enrolled to the Academic Atuda—a program that allows excellent students to postpone their army service ’til after graduating academy in engineering, sciences or medicine studies.
After four years he finished his studies at the Israel Institute of Technology—in physics, math, and computers—with distinction. He was drafted to the Military Intelligence Directorate to a research unit and eventually wound up at a department that worked on biological weapons. During his army service, he took some courses in life sciences where he met Ronit, the teacher’s assistant.
It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a few weeks before Ronit even noticed him, and a few weeks before he mustered up the courage to ask her out. Ronit with her compassionate heart, the girl who would always take in every stray cat or lost puppy she found, accepted the offer from the brilliant student with the sad eyes. At first she felt compassion toward Reuben that developed into appreciation for his brilliant mind that overshadowed his emotional disabilities. Reuben, with a life-time deficiency of motherly and fatherly love, became attached to Ronit’s protective affection. Ronit, who despite being younger than him, was much more mature. And so the relationship continued between a man who only knew how to take and a woman who enjoyed the very act of giving.
Chapter 40
The hours rolled by slowly until dinnertime. To his surprise Reuben saw that there was a bottle of Cabernet with the standard meal. After the waiter laid down the food, Alfonso entered the room holding a video tape that he inserted into the VCR.
“This is something else Mickey thought you should see. He says once you watch this, you won’t have as many reasons to be mad at your wife. He also suggested you make use of this little box. That and the wine should help you relax.” Alfonso took out a small tin box from his pocket, placed it on the food tray, and backed toward the door. With a charming smile he said, “Enjoy your meal and have a lovely evening. Just don’t do anything stupid with the lighter. The smoke alarm will alert immediately.”
The images on the TV screen flickered for a moment and when they stabilized, Reuben’s jaw dropped. This time the hero and heroine were himself, and Carolina, Tzipi’s hot Cuban friend he met on the yacht. What he couldn’t remember about that night when his drink was laced with drugs the film now clearly showed. He saw himself lying flat on his back, naked and sleepy or unconscious in the narrow cabin and Carolina wearing nothing but a yellow G-string, working hard in every shape, way, and form to get him aroused. Finally she succeeded, which was clearly shown in the film. Eventually she got him to come in her skillful hands and shortly after, woke him up. He got up in a panic, got dressed, and left the cabin with Carolina right behind him. Stunned, Reuben sat in front of his dinner tray completely frozen. The smell of the food reminded him of the smell of semen and sweat that filled the cabin as he woke up.
That smell was actually his only recollection of that evening on the boat. Only now did the realization sink that in fact, Carolina wasn’t some friend of Tzipi’s whom he naïvely thought was in love with him, but a professional prostitute hired by Mickey to further his diabolical plan. In desperation, Reuben flung the food tray to the floor and grabbed his head with both hands, muttering to himself, “I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill him.”
For a long while, Reuben lay on the bed with his head buried in the pillow. The TV screen flickered, signaling that the video was over. Reuben couldn’t even bring himself to turn it off. He turned on his back and stared at the screen. Angry and frustrated, he started to feel hungry. He looked at his dinner scattered all over the floor, and his eyes fell on the little tin box. He reached over and picked it up. With shaking hands, he opened the box and saw five little joints and a lighter. He inhaled the familiar smell and still shaking lit one joint. When that was done, he lit a second, all the while taking big gulps of the wine.
After two joints and a bottle of wine, he felt a bit calmer. It was like he was still in that cabin on the boat, and the world started to look a bit better. He thought of Carolina, and a warm sensation spread in his loins. He was overrun with craving. The drugs made him forget all about the fact that she had been nothing but a trap. Now he felt sorry he never got to have sex with her. He thought of all the pleasant nights of conversation he had with Mickey, and his wrath and fury evaporated with the marijuana smoke. When Ronit made an appearance in his unstable consciousness, he burst into unstoppable tears for an hour. Finally he fell asleep in his clothes into a deep slumber filled with pleasant dreams.
As he heard the key turning in his room door, Eddie thought it was too early for dinner, and indeed as the door opened, he was faced with an impressive looking woman in her forties. Her skin was dark and smooth, her cheekbones high, and her eyes blue and slightly slanted, which gave her a wicked expression. Her thick, somewhat droopy lower lip softened the harshness of her eyes a bit. She was wearing a long, white, unbuttoned lab coat. She had her hands on her hips, and her large breasts and tiny waists were accentuated by the tight, light blue sweater and thin belt she was wearing. Her blue eyes examined Eddie with great care. Her gaze went up and down as if she were inspecting some goods, and it was clear by her body language that she was well aware of the power of her attraction. She introduced herself to Eddie in a commanding tone.
“Hello. My name is Isabella, and I’d like to take you on a short tour.”
Probably a doctor or a nurse, thought Eddie. The name Isabella and her accent gave him reason to think he was in Spain. The two armed guards who escorted her gave him little choice as to whether or not he wanted to take the tour, and he exited the room.
“Right” and “left,” in accordance with the turns of the winding corridor, were the only words spoken until they reached a closed door. Next to it on the wall was a touch key panel. Isabella gestured for Eddie to look away as she tapped the panel a few times. A buzz sounded, and she pushed the door open, and Eddie followed her into the well-lit lab hall Reuben had been to several hours before.
Eddie’s initial response was much like Reuben’s—astonishment and amazement to see the familiar equipment from Be’er Ya’acov. The hall was larger, and the equipment was laid out exactly according to the designs drawn out for Ebocell-Tech’s new location in Ness Ziona.
Isabella allowed Eddie to take it all in, and after a while said with a friendly little smile, “Looks familiar, doesn’t it?”
“Extremely,” whispered Eddie, still in shock.
“The equipment got here late, which is why we had you in confinement ’til now. I do apologize on behalf of the owners about the inconvenience.”
“What owners? Who are you anyway? And where are we? What is this game?”
“This is no game, Eddie. Nothing here is virtual. We are all real. You are in the lab site of an investment company from Vaduz that has bought control of Ebocell-Tech.”
“No one bought control of Ebocell-Tech. If you’re referring to Mickey Rush, he purchased forty percent of the shares, but we still have the control.”
“I think you’ll have to get some more explanations of what has happe
ned over the past week, but not from me. I’m a researcher here. I have a PhD in viral diseases. My husband, Alfonso, is head of the research group here, and he’s the one who’ll answer any questions you may have. But since he’s busy with some urgent matter right now, he’s asked me to at least show you the lab so that you can check the equipment and make sure everything got here in working condition.”
“You have some nerve not only to kidnap me and steal my company, but to expect my cooperation. I don’t even know where I am!”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge our location. And as for your cooperation, I believe it’s best for the future of your company that you do play along, so as not to let all the years and energy you put in go to waste.”
“Until I know what’s going on here, where I am, and who these mysterious owners who kidnapped me are, I’m not going to play along with anything. You’re holding me here against my will and against the law. You need to let me go first thing.”
“Eddie,” said Isabella, staring at him with her penetrating eyes. “You’re a nice guy, and I’d hate for you to get hurt. But you have to understand that the rules are different now. Full cooperation is the only way for you to quickly leave this place. We talked to Reuben this morning. He’s been here and seen the equipment. Right now he’s in his room processing everything he’s heard and seen. He has already decided to cooperate, and I hope you come to the same conclusion.”