Fracture Point

by T. D. Mandowsky

  She looked at him with a stone face and asked, “Did you swallow a clown?”

  The security routine at the exhibit was calming. I would wake up an hour and a half before the arms companies’ representatives and have a cup of black coffee that I had brought with me from Israel. Zaor and I would check the hotel to make sure it was secure. After completing our inspection, we would sit in the dining room, just the two of us, enjoying breakfast. Half an hour after sunrise, at 6:30, the first delegation members began arriving in the dining room, surprised to see me leaving already.

  Zaor was huge. It was nearly impossible to see the top of his shiny bald head. His chubby face was sweaty most of the day, despite the chilly weather. He had the smile of a good boy, but his dark, crooked teeth reflected the differences in our salaries. On the first morning that we had breakfast together he asked me if I were a vegetarian. “Not at all,” I replied, wondering why he asked. He tried to find the right words in English, and the sausage he was chewing didn’t make it any easier.

  “Slowly,” I said in my heavy Israeli accent.

  He pointed to my plate like the answer was in there.

  “In Israel we aren’t used to eating meat in the morning,” I said, and he smiled in relief. He was already sweating.

  When Donna heard they had changed the destination of my trip, she told me not to go. “Don’t go, on principle. That’s not right. They promised you Miami, and now they want you to go to Azerbaijan?” She tried to rile me up while reading about the Muslim dictatorship on Wikipedia. “They’re Shiites and so are Hezbollah, so maybe they’re friends.”

  I pretended to be considering it, although the answer was clear to me. To get to Azerbaijan, you need to go through the duty-free. To get to the narrow alleys of Hebron, you need to go through the military base. It was a no-brainer.

  I finished my tasteless tomato and pale cucumber. The only thing that got me through this sad meal was the tahini that I had brought with me.

  Zaor was the first person I ever managed my whole life. He would come to ask me for a bathroom or cigarette break, and I approved his requests with a serious face. I let him do the monotonous tasks, and he did them very well.

  “How am I supposed to tie this crap?” I asked Avmeicher at the exhibit operations room, trying to figure out how to tie my tie.

  “My mother tied mine for me at home, back in Israel. Since then I haven’t untied it,” he said, and tightened it around his neck.

  “Give it to me, you rookie,” Liza said, slamming her phone on the desk and getting up quickly. “You’ll be late for the opening,” she said, tying the tie around my neck. She was so close that I could see her nostrils moving as the air went in and out. Her feminine smell filled my sinuses.

  “All set.” She patted me on the chest. “Get out of here. You’re late.”

  Despite all the hotels, ties, passports, and elegant suits, security work at a fancy arms exhibit is like working in any facility. Most of the visitors entered the Israeli stand by nodding to the guard with a smile, and he smiled back and checked them. When someone hesitates, the guard needs to ask who he is and where he needs to be. When I asked him to, Zaor checked their bags, and every half hour he went to check for suspicious objects. When there was a need to talk to one of the visitors in Azeri, I called him over, and he would translate.

  There were hardly any women there. It was almost all men. The classic division between men playing war games and women playing with Barbies hasn’t changed that much. Libby once told me, “We remain children. The only thing that changes are the games we play.” It’s so true. I looked around me at all the men telling those around them how their rocket was the biggest and the best, flies the farthest, and causes the most damage.

  I positioned myself at the entrance; Avmeicher was patrolling. At our initial meeting, we agreed we would alternate every day. Since the visitors were only allowed to visit one day, no one would notice.

  It’s much easier to be on the move because you can wander around and let your mind go instead of standing still in one place and always having to look tough. On the first day that I was patrolling, I walked around between the businessmen and diplomats like one of them.

  The objective of the patrol is to identify the attacker at the preparation stage, to find the spy before he identifies you, turn the invisible into the visible and blind. When I was walking around outside the west side of the Israeli stand, I saw two Chinese men with a backpack and what looked like a plastic pipe. They were whispering and looking at the Israeli pavilion, taking pictures of every possible angle. I notified Liza on the radio that I was going to question them. “Be strong,” her bored voice responded.

  “Be-ijein,” Avmeicher added.

  “Dude,” I heard Liza again, “with jokes like that, you’ll be a security guard for the rest of your life.”

  “Hi guys, how’re you doin’?” I approached them with my broken English. “Looking for something?” I asked. They looked at me in surprise, babbled something, turned around, and disappeared.

  “Good job,” Avmeicher said on the radio, and I responded with a thumbs-up. As Eitan taught us in the course, we can’t prevent espionage, but we can certainly give the spies a hard time.

  “Itay, watch out. Three Persians to your right,” Avmeicher reported. I turned right and saw them. Three Iranians were standing and staring at me.

  You didn’t have to be an expert to identify them. They didn’t bother hiding their badges with an Iranian flag clearly on them.

  “Ahalan, hello,” I approached them.

  “Hello, sir,” one of them answered.

  “Looking for something?”

  “Excuse me, sir. Who are you?” he asked me. His bearded friend, who was exceptionally short, was pulling a bag on wheels. In Israel, an ISA agent has a lot of power, but in Azerbaijan, I wasn’t more than a small usher.

  “Security,” I said and revealed my badge. “Can you open your briefcase, please?” The Israeli flag on my badge clearly made them uncomfortable. “No way,” the short guy said. I had to look down to look him in the eye. Zaor was watching us from a distance, and I signaled to him that this is his time to act. He was by my side within seconds, smiling from ear to ear. He was not a threatening man; his presence reminded me of Arik Goldstein: big, clumsy, smiling at the wrong time.

  “Itay, what’s going on over there?” Liza and Avmeicher said together on the radio.

  “You can either go in and leave your bag with Zaor or stay outside,” I said, updating the new rules of the Israeli pavilion. During preparations, I asked Avmeicher if theoretically an Iranian with a Hezbollah flag can enter our stand. He said, “The Iranians are our bitter enemies, but to the Azaris, they’re just reasonable neighbors. In one word: Deal with it.”

  Zaor stood very close to the uninvited visitors, he placed his heavy hand on the one who looked like the boss and said, “We go?”

  The bearded man mumbled something in Persian to his short friend, and the three of them turned and left without saying a word. My pocket was vibrating. I took out my phone and saw a message from Liza.

  “Good job! Come by the operations room when you’re done. I brought sandwiches :)” she wrote.

  Chapter 27

  There’s only one thing that Baku and Miami have in common, I thought, as I stood in the darkness on the shoreline, facing the Caspian Sea, which reflected sparks of the city lights. Both cities share this very landscape: the black line connecting the sea and the sky at night, and nothing else.

  Thinking of enjoying the beach in the land of endless possibilities depressed me, especially when I put my hands in my coat pockets on the shore of the land of endless limitations.

  The biggest attraction I found so far in this city was a shawarma booth. I know my shawarma. I have it often in Jerusalem and Afula. What I don’t have here or in Israel is American students lying on the beach, en
joying the warm sun.

  Liza sent me a message asking if I had a charger for my phone. “How could you forget something so important?” I asked and added a smiley. I had an inexplicable pressure in my lower stomach. After sending her the message, I remembered that I still hadn’t replied to Donna’s message from the morning.

  “Everything is okay, honey. Working hard. How are you”

  She replied immediately, “Fine. Getting back to normal after the madness yesterday. How are you? We didn’t talk all day, and why did you leave out the question mark?”

  “Sorry, I’m busy,” I lied, and took in a breath of cold air.

  “Okay. Can you talk to me when you have time?” she wrote, and I hesitated.

  “Miss you,” she wrote, not waiting for my reply.

  “Me too,” I replied without answering her question. The failure in bed before I left was killing me. After two years of trying together, reading material, and endless patience on Donna’s part, nothing had helped.

  The dark waves erupted on the sharp stones, and white foam sprayed my face along with the cold water.

  For no reason, I took another glance at Liza’s message. Earlier that day, when I was back from my shift at the exhibit, I took the elevator to my room and she got on on the second floor. I was still wearing my three-piece suit from the exhibit. She was just coming from the gym, wearing a tight tank top and shorts. I tried to keep my chin up, but it was a real effort to maintain eye contact. Her athletic shoulders with her strong collar bones, a muscular chest above her flat stomach, and her smooth, muscular legs were calling to my eyes like a blazing fire.

  A slap in the face by a spray of seawater shook me from my thoughts. I replied to Liza that I had a charger and would be back in 15 minutes. I turned back to town and walked quickly towards the hotel. My feet stomped on the Soviet-made concrete floor, and when I reached the busy street I remembered that I had left my charger at the exhibit so I wouldn’t get stuck without it the following day. I decided to get Liza the damn charger anyway.

  “Wow, what great service :)” she wrote back. But only then did I realize that she didn’t ask me to bring it to her, only whether I had one. “It’s nothing. I’m here outside,” I sent back, realizing that my answer had nothing to do with her message, and looked for a telephone accessories store.

  “What?” Liza wrote.

  “Sorry, I’m distracted. I’ll be back at the hotel in 10 minutes. Bye,” I wrote. I decided to tell her only part of the truth because the whole truth was that I was distracted because of her.

  As I rushed to the hotel, a scooter almost ran over my foot and the Azari on it gave me the finger. Then someone asked me something in Azari, and I replied in English that I’m not from here, but he didn’t understand.

  When I reached the hotel after failing to find a store with chargers, I continued down the street, where I passed more shawarma stands, vegetable stores, and cheap toy stores. I should have given myself half an hour, not 10 minutes.

  I stopped by a store that seemed to be a cross between a kiosk and a pharmacy. Near the cashier, I saw a stand with colorful phone cases. Success!

  “Hello. How are you?” I said as I stormed into the store.

  “Great,” I said as he answered something I didn’t understand. “Can I have the Samsung charger?” I pointed out a charger on the wall.

  The guy reluctantly brought it to me.

  “What?! You’re ripping me off!” I shouted when he told me the price.

  “Get out of here. I’m not selling to you,” the half-pharmacist said, turning his back on me.

  “All right, here you go,” I said and gave him a 50-manat bill.

  “Spasiba,” he said, and dared to smile.

  “I hope you use it on medication,” I mumbled in Hebrew and left the pharmacy. He’ll probably buy medicine with it.

  I returned to the hotel. On the guest list I had in my folder, Liza appeared as a single room, number 1304.

  I knocked on door. “Just a minute!” I heard her call from inside. From the other side of the door, I could hear the sounds of hasty organizing. The bed coils creaked, the chair dragged, and a closet door slammed. She opened the door wide, out of breath. An embarrassed smile stretched between two dimples. I had seen her smile before, but this smile was different. One side of her long winter undershirt with a torn collar slipped off, showing a suntanned shoulder.

  “That is not okay, Liza,” I said.

  Her white smile didn’t disappear, but her eyebrows came closer to one another in a puzzled look.

  “Is that how you open the door? What about looking through the peephole? Or even opening it a crack, the chain still on?”

  “You’re right, but I knew you were coming.” The smile left her face.

  “More importantly, do you have anything to eat?”

  “Probably,” she laughed with relief, shrugging her thin shoulder.

  I walked into the room, and the smell of laundry and shampoo blew my mind.

  “Wow, you saved me,” she said, her hand touching mine as she took the charger.

  “Dude, you’re freezing,” she said. I was thinking the opposite about her.

  “Is this from Israel?” she examined it closely. The local label was still on it, damn it.

  “Umm, listen . . .” I shifted uncomfortably. “I was downstairs . . .I also need a charger. I have one, but I wanted another one, so . . . so I’d have one in the hotel and one at the exhibit.” I stood in the center of her room, feeling my face burning.

  She smiled. I thought to myself that maybe I wanted her to know that I did it for her.

  “And besides,” I tried to recover because, like in security, the worst thing is to stutter, “it gave me a good reason to stop by, you know, to compare our standards of living.”

  “Standards of living,” she said, imitating me, sounding like a professor.

  I didn’t respond − the more beautiful the girl, the narrower my vocabulary.

  She turned to a wooden table with a small electric kettle, two cups, a small bag of Turkish coffee, and tea. She turned on the kettle.

  As I debated where to sit, I remembered Leroy’s tactic with girls. “You enter the room first and sit in the chair. Now, where is she going to sit? On the bed, of course because there’s nowhere else to sit,” he said, gesturing with his hands like he was playing a game of chess, and then he added with a devious smile, “and after a short conversation, you’ll want to show her something on your phone, right? Boom! You move next to her on the bed. Checkmate.”

  Before I could do anything, Liza sat down on the bed and told me this was her second time in Baku. She was here two years ago with the delegation for the national basketball team.

  “Here you go. Enjoy it. It’s a traditional Azeri tea,” she said as she handed me the boiling cup. “It’s called Keklikotu. It has some thyme in it.”

  She sat down with both feet on the chair seat, folded up around her cup of coffee as if it were a bowl of soup.

  “Azeri tea? It sounds like something that heals all your troubles,” I told her.

  “You see? You already got something good from Baku. “

  “It’s enough for me to be away from all the madness going on in Israel right now,” I said.

  “Apparently there was an attack at Mahane Yehuda,” Liza said. I felt shivers up my spine.

  “What? Was anyone killed?” I asked, the way you ask what the score of the game is.

  “I don’t know. It just happened,” she said.

  “Give me a minute,” I said, sending a message to Donna. She wasn’t the going-out type, and it was exam period, so I assumed she hadn’t gone out. But I had to make sure.

  Liza told me she was studying art at the Kibbutzim Seminar College. Her dream was to be an occupational therapist. She works three shifts a week and another shift every oth
er weekend. On the weekends when she is off, she visits her mother in Ashdod and talks to her in her broken Russian.

  On the desk was a big black DSLR camera.

  “Is that the office’s or yours?”

  “The camera? It’s mine, obviously,” she said with a smile.

  “Show me some of your photos.”

  “Not a chance. Too embarrassing.”

  “C’mon.”

  “No.”

  “You know, I write a bit sometimes,” I said, one artist to another. “I have a notebook that I write operation commands and important contact information in, and on the other side of it, I write all kinds of thoughts I have.”

  She took a long sip of her coffee. Her room was surprisingly quiet, compared to the bustling street noise in mine.

  “Show me.”

  I took the notebook out of my pocket and showed her the contact list at the beginning and the small handwriting on the other side.

  “Go ahead,” she urged me. “Read me a story you wrote.”

  “No way.”

  She gave up quickly, maybe too easily.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked while I took a sip of my tea. I coughed when I heard the question.

  “Smalla!” she said − “bless you” in Arabic. A girl who says smalla is hard to find.

  “Umm, yes, I have a girlfriend,” I said, trying to take the focus off my cough.

  “Okay.” She looked me in the eyes, waiting for more information. Maybe she was waiting for an explanation for my apologetic tone.

  “Well,” I said and took another sip of my tea to clear my throat, “we’re trying to figure out our relationship at the moment.”

  Liza furrowed her brow, lost in thought.

  “What are you thinking so seriously about?”

  “Nothing, just about how you men love to keep your options open.” She stretched out to put her empty cup down without getting up.

  I tried to get back to the subject. “All I wanted to say was that the relationship decisions at our age are crucial. Besides that, this is the time for dilemmas. If not now, then when?”