New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

by Shelly Oria

  We, the women of the great American city, we fuck our men on hot summer nights, because we despise weakness, and fucking feels like strength. We fuck our men whether we feel like it or not; we climb on top of them to prove a point, and the scent of our intestines has yet to fade.

  We, the women of the great American city, we row the muscles of our men until they cannot tell pleasure from pain. Then we row some more. (We, the women of the great American city, we use our bodies to speak our minds.) We enjoy inflicting pain upon our men, and when they cry, we lick their tears: returning the favor of compassion.

  We, the women of the great American city, we slap our men’s cheeks when they are dry of tears—we slap them hard. Our men, some of them don’t understand, and we, the women of the great American city, we have to explain it to them.

  This is how we explain: we hold our men by their balls, and we squeeze. This squeeze, it hurts them, but it is necessary. This squeeze, it explains to them by way of the body, by way of pain, that we know. We know, the unbearable pain in their crotch tells them in no uncertain terms, that they, too, were once ass-grading men on the streets of the great American city. We know that deep down they still are, and further deep is where they always will be. Our men, they then cry like babies. Our men, they swear to us that they are different, that they love us.

  We, the women of the great American city, the following morning we always drive north. We, the women of the great American city, we want to consult our mentors. This is what we want to know: how to trust. Our mentors, they say trust is overrated. They say the secret is simply to be, to get up in the morning without murder in your heart, and pour green tea into porcelain cups.

  * * *

  Every time we head back south we ask, Have we learned enough? Every time, we think, Tonight, we will look the grading men straight in the eyes and say, Zero; your grade is zero. Tonight, we will not puke. We, the women of the great American city, as we descend upon our city through the windows of our cars, our trains, our planes, as we descend upon our city, we try to pretend that on this journey we have educated ourselves about trust, about puke. We, the women of the great American city, we look at the great American city drawing to a close, and we know: at times there is murder in our hearts.

  THE BEGINNING OF A PLAN

  1991, Part 1: My Escape

  In 1991, I went to jail for canning goods without a license. My factory was small, really a mom-and-pop shop, but when they caught me it made national news, because they blamed the whole bruchtussis epidemic on me. A reporter named Dolly P. investigated my operation with the kind of zeal people mostly demonstrate when their children’s lives are at risk. Dolly P. had no children, but she had ambition. She traced the first case to the same small town in Israel that manufactured most of my ingredients. For a while, every time a kid ate bad canned soup, it was my fault; the mother would go on television and cry, My baby is coughing all the time now, my baby never used to cough, and the newswoman would wipe away a tear, sigh, and remind the public once again that my trial would soon begin. I got ten years.

  I was a tough woman, a strong woman. But even the toughest human being feels the sting of mortality when the law comes and says, Give us the best decade of your life. I’d just turned twenty-one; it hadn’t even been a year since I’d left Israel. I had to escape.

  Dolly P. was visiting me on a weekly basis, out of guilt. One day I told her, That’s all very nice, but I need to get out of here, and what can you really do for me? She said, There’s talk of a time-stop, you know, like in the Middle Ages—why don’t we wait a few days, see what’s what. I said, Dolly, what the hell are you talking about? If you don’t want to help me out, just say so. I knew how to work her. She said, What do you need? I said, A rope, a knife, a pickup truck. She said, I do this for you and we’re even, that’s it. I said, I get out, we’ll talk.

  1991, Part 2: The First Time-Stop in More Than a Thousand Years

  The first thing people noticed when time stopped: clocks and watches. Nobody could bring back the ticking. Expert horologists from around the world were working the case day and night, except there was no day and no night, only a dim gray. With time went the date: calendars disappeared, the top right corners of newspapers were naked, and the postmarks on letters just said Sent.

  Time Counters started emerging everywhere. They would stand in public places and count out loud: seconds, minutes, hours. They were determined to prove that time hadn’t really stopped, that this was only a problem of counting mechanisms, and that humans had to step in and do the work until things got better. It soon became apparent that no one could reliably count time for longer than ten hours, so Time Counters formed teams and used special signals to let each other know when one Counter wanted the next to get ready. They were extremely meticulous, but really they were nothing more than singers of repetitive numbers. After a while, they began to fade away.

  Dolly P.’s newspaper ran the story of my escape twice in a row, in successive dateless editions, then had me on the front page a third time. I understood, Dolly P. needed to cover her tracks, be the good reporter no one would suspect of any wrongdoing. But for a while every time a stranger looked at me I felt my muscles flex, getting ready to run. At some point it became clear that no one was reading the paper anymore; when people don’t believe there’s a future, they don’t bother staying current. For the first time in a long time I thought, Maybe I can feel safe.

  An Interval: The Time-Stop Stops

  Eventually, it happens. A child sees a flower—maybe a lilac, or a rose—and insists that it has grown since he saw it last. He is young enough to notice.

  The following day, a dog gives birth in some bathtub, to the amazement of her owners, who didn’t realize she was pregnant. In a different place altogether, numbers appear on someone’s pay stub: the date. Rumors start, and people grow optimistic, and with their optimism comes sundown, followed by sunrise the next morning. The last stubborn Time Counters faint on side roads, relieved of their duty, useless. For long days, beds are squeaking with hope, and a new generation is conceived.

  As can be expected, regaining a state of normalcy is not a thing that happens overnight. A good example: when time resumes, women who’ve been trapped in inactive pregnancies give birth within forty-eight hours, regardless of how far along they were when time stopped. The babies almost always survive, but life is never easy for them, with their transparent skin and unfinished features; people call them the half-baked, and generally consider them to be not completely human.

  And yet somehow, in spite of the half-baked walking among us, in spite of mad, ersatz Time Counters who walk the streets of our cities mumbling numbers, convinced that time has not resumed, in spite of the various inedible, temporally corrupted fruits and vegetables that the earth, after its long stagnation, produces for at least a year—people forget. People forget because they choose to do so, because remembering allows for the possibility of recurrence. People forget, and make cardamom tea, and fall in love, and buy ties. On Valentine’s Day, they pay for overpriced dinners. Salmon in their mouth, they talk about their planned vacation for the summer. At weddings, they try to guess who the next person to get married will be, and they smile at the thought of the entire family together in one place again, the joy it will bring. Every moment, they wait for the next. Every day, they think about the future. They forget.

  I can say this: I never forgot. I found it curious that people around me did. I remembered, and I knew that time would stop again, only to resume again, only to stop again. It seemed obvious, like gravity, or death.

  2001: Phil

  We met during the next time-stop, in 2001. By then I was a soaper; Phil came to see me in the Public Cafeteria, where I always held preliminary sessions with potential clients. These sessions were necessary because often people had different ideas about the kind of service I was providing. After the first misunderstanding, I realized I needed to take the time to go over the basics in advance: you will be cleaner
than you’ve ever been, but there will be no sexual activity of any kind, that sort of thing. Given my past, I couldn’t risk any confusions about illegal matters. Nowadays I charge for preliminary sessions, too, even though there’s no actual soaping involved, but back then I had about ten regular clients and maybe six or seven here-and-theres, and I thought if I played too strict I wouldn’t get new business. I was young. I didn’t know yet that life usually worked the other way around.

  At the Cafeteria, Phil looked at me, and right away I knew where things were going. It seemed pointless to waste time, so I said, You remind me of someone: a man I had an affair with. I do? he asked. Yeah, I said, only his eyes were different and he was Israeli and my officer in the army. He smiled. Was the sex good? he asked. Phenomenal, I said. He liked this answer, which was a lie: the officer’s philosophy was, anything over four minutes is a waste of time. But men want to hear that sex can be phenomenal; it opens possibilities.

  I figured, it’s a time-stop; people do all kinds of crazy things. Once the clocks start ticking again, he’ll remember that forbidden fruits aren’t often worth eating and go back to his wife.

  But it was my profession, not his wife, that brought up problems between us. Phil thought I shouldn’t charge him anymore. I said, Then I can’t soap you; it’s against union rules. He said, That’s just an excuse, you’re not someone who’d let unions control her. Eventually, I agreed—though I really needed the money—but our problems didn’t stop. Clients were just showing up at my door whenever they needed a soaping, since setting up appointments during a time-stop is practically impossible. Phil would get incredibly jealous every time I left him to tend to someone else. “Your hands all over his body” and all that bullshit. I said, If you want to be jealous, at least be original about it. He said, Bambi, believe me, I’m as original as it gets.

  And he was. He was a strong man with a child’s heart. Sometimes he would try to look tough, or even say something mean, but I would look at him and see he was only asking for love.

  * * *

  Clocks were still at a halt when I came home one day to find him collecting his things, stuffing socks and shirts into brown paper bags. I felt every muscle in my body stiffen, and not only because I didn’t want him to leave; I’d told him my real name, which was something I very rarely did in those days—the law people weren’t after me anymore, but you can never be too careful. I stood there and looked at him. Finally, I said, Look, I’m a professional soaper. That’s what I do. What did you expect? This isn’t about that, he said. You miss your wife? I asked. I’m not going back to my wife, he said. I don’t understand, I said. I thought you were the one, you know that? he said; but lately I’m not sure. I have to be sure, Bambi. You have to be sure? I asked; I hoped that if I repeated it he’d realize how ridiculous he sounded. He looked right at me. This isn’t working, he said.

  For a while, I stayed in bed, ignored the bell when clients rang it. Soon after, time resumed.

  2011, Part 1: Phil’s Return

  All of a sudden, he came back.

  Dolly P. offered to have a colleague run a soaping piece centered on me. We’ll use stock pictures, she said, to be safe. You won’t use my real name, I said, but I think real pictures are fine. After so many years with no one after me, I felt it was a small risk. And perhaps the truth is, we all forget the things we most need to forget; after living a careful life for so long, I was ready to believe I could be free. And I wasn’t wrong—no law people showed up. The photo featured me with gloves on, scrubbing a woman’s arm with a toothbrush. I enjoyed looking at it. And, apparently, so did Phil.

  At the door he said, You haven’t changed a bit. Time-stops will do that to you, I told him; I’m younger than I am. Actually, that’s not accurate, Phil said; studies show that after time-stops, cells grow quickly, and the body makes up for lost time. Already we were arguing. And yet all I wanted to do was hug him; he was new and familiar and I realized how much I’d missed him.

  I wanted to ask where he’d gone when he’d left ten years ago, where he’d been since, but predictable questions only lead to predictable answers. Instead, I offered watermelon. We could never share one when we were together, since fruits don’t grow during time-stops; it was one of the few things I’d missed, in those days. It’s my favorite fruit.

  Phil and I sat on the floor and he popped the melon open. Red oozed all over the rug, and for a second I wanted to suck it all in, like a vacuum cleaner, like a madwoman. But I didn’t, because by then I was old enough to know that most people can’t tell passion from weakness.

  The next thing that happened was happiness. It crept up on me then, for a short while. Mornings he cooked eggs, and I didn’t have to remind him how I liked them. Evenings we talked and talked, letting words linger and thoughts carry their weight. Maybe this is love, I thought: losing the need to escape.

  Then, two weeks in, I woke up one morning and my heart was beating hard. Phil was snoring peacefully in my bed. I shook him and said How did you find me. He said he called the paper, got hold of Dolly P., paid her to give him my address.

  I said, Dolly P. doesn’t need money.

  He said, I never said how I paid her.

  I said, There’s an agenda, then, Phil. What’s the agenda?

  Sure took you long, darling, he said. I was waiting for you to ask.

  * * *

  This was Phil’s idea: we create another time-stop. I thought he was being ridiculous, and that’s what I said. He said, Bambi, don’t play with me. I said, Don’t call me that if we’re not really a couple, if you’re only here to get results. I was getting dressed now. He was watching me with sex in his eyes, saying nice things about my body, but it takes more than that with me. I said, Phil, you stop this and you stop this right now. I’m leaving—four hours is what you’ve got. The apartment is yours, use anything, call anyone. Make a proposal, a presentation, a pitch. It’s business now is what it is, I said; you and I are done. When I’m back, you get one shot. You talk, I listen, I make up my mind and that’s it.

  I hoped he would say Bambi, what do you mean we’re done, forget this nonsense and come over here. What he said instead was Okay. He seemed ready, up for the task. I went to the park and sat on a bench. I tried to figure out how much he knew. Four hours is a very long time when you feel cheated.

  What this man put together was remarkable. The photographs were what really got me: me, all over my apartment, blown up to a size a woman should never see herself in. Me, huge, in prison; me, huge, in Ashdod, the Israeli town linked to the whole bruchtussis fiasco; and the one that made me nauseated, me, even bigger, escaping. I said, How. That’s all I could say, and I said it a few times. Phil was waiting, letting me take it all in.

  Eventually he said, To save time, let’s skip the bullshit. I know how you escaped from jail. I know everything, so let’s not play here.

  I hoped he was talking about Dolly P., about the pickup she got for me, the guard she bribed. But Phil’s voice was telling a different story.

  He said, It’s maximum-security, Bamb, the best in the country. You really think I’d buy the bribe story and stop looking? Then he said, The bribe was only a decoy, right? I bet you didn’t even need it. You just wanted the cops to find something when they came looking, so no one would find out you stopped time to get out. Right?

  It was exactly right.

  Did my feelings cloud my judgment? Sure. When you love a man, it isn’t some fanatical presentation that sways you; I was still hoping there was feeling at the bottom of things. But all in all I believe I had very little choice. This man had a map of my world.

  Bambi, he said, I want you to do what you did in ’91. I said, I can’t, it’s not something I control. He said Bullshit. I said Phil, it really isn’t. It’s a power that comes over me, that came over me then, not something I can summon. He said, You sure “summoned” it when you wanted your freedom back. The word summoned came out sarcastic and mean—meaner, I thought, than he’d intended.
/>
  I wanted him to understand. I said Phil, please listen now. One day in jail, I got this sensation. It wasn’t the first time, it’s been coming and going since I was very young, but I never knew what to do with it. It always starts with this slow internal tremble, and then my brain begins to feel like copper, and I know that if I tilt it to one side and concentrate it can float, it can do things. In prison, I couldn’t stop thinking about my cat. I had a cat then, Keyvan, and every time I closed my eyes I would see Keyvan passed out, or trying to drink water from the toilet to stay alive. I needed to get to him. Then I talked to Dolly P. The bribe was like you said, but the rest was backup—I didn’t know what would actually happen. And then when it did happen, it was as mundane as buying tomatoes. I tilted my head, and everything froze—the world froze. It was almost disappointing, how easy it was, the opposite of magic. But Phil—once I was out, people were moving again, and my brain just felt like a normal brain. And I’ve never had that sensation since. All right? Do you understand?

  He was quiet the whole time I talked, listening intently. Then he said, You simply let it go once you were out. It was a choice. I said, Maybe, but it didn’t feel that way. He said, For our purposes, it doesn’t even matter; you let it go, it let go of you, whatever. Time had already stopped. You started something, but the world had the last say.

  Phil’s features softened suddenly. He took my hand, and I let him. Bambi, he said, you’re so naïve. What about 2001? I asked. Did I do that, too? It was one of those things I’d always suspected but never let myself know. Phil smiled. It took me quite a while to figure that out, he said, but it doesn’t matter now. You can stop time, Bambi, that’s the important thing. And you’re going to do it again, for me.

  * * *

  We spent the next few days discussing the plan. The first thing I wanted to know was why, why he wanted this, and Phil talked about “doing it right this time.” There are opportunities, great fiscal opportunities in a time-stop, he said, and we were stupid then, in 2001, just staying in bed and having sex. He said “having sex” like it was the worst thing you could do with your time.