by Adiva Geffen
“You’re nuts. What have you done?”
“Not much, don’t worry,” he said and tugged me after him. “Barely a campfire. Let’s not miss the show — we have to get to the fire truck.”
Cooper rushed ahead, and I followed him. He went past the hotel fence and onto the access road leading to Jasmine at the Carmel. The fire truck advanced towards us, and Cooper jumped out and stood in the middle of the road, waving his hands excitedly.
The fire truck stopped right in front of him, and the driver threw a round bundle at him. Cooper caught it and quickly untied it. Inside were two helmets, one of which he settled on my head. Then he worked his way into a fireman’s outfit and jumped up on the other side of the fire truck, holding on to a ladder.
“Get up, Dickie,” he shouted and reached out his hand.
I climbed up, balancing the oversized helmet with great effort.
As soon as I was on board, Cooper howled at the driver, “Get going, Chimp!” As the fire truck took off, he turned to me. “Are you all right?”
“You don’t mean to tell me that the fireman is also one of your…” I almost choked.
“I used to be his platoon commander. He’s a great guy.”
Before I could respond, the fire truck broke through the wooden gate into the hotel garden and halted with a deafening screech of brakes at the entrance. Two firemen leapt off and ran into the hotel, brandishing fire extinguishers. A third fireman dragged the hose behind him.
“Evacuate,” one of them shouted, and the others joined him, “You need to evacuate now.”
Cooper and I calmly dropped to the ground and stood at the entrance, waiting for the fish to fall into our net.
A terrible commotion erupted in the hotel — shouting voices, slamming doors, and thundering footsteps. Then Vardia burst outside, and even though there wasn’t a trace of smoke, certainly not of fire, she coughed in a disturbing way. The tuxedo guy showed up too, along with two other goons similarly attired and a young woman, terribly skinny, they propped up between them. They held her as if she were a rag doll. She blinked constantly as if she had been brought out from a dark pit into the light.
I wanted to rush at them, deliver her from their hands and hug her, but Cooper motioned for me to wait.
They went out to the garden square and watched the fire crew work. The firemen turned on the hose and washed the walls with jets of water. The men surrounding the girl led her to a van in the gravel parking area. She didn’t make a sound. Her head hung down, her arms were slung across her captors’ shoulders. Cooper and the truck driver, aka army buddy Chimp, moved closer to them, holding the heavy water hose.
“Where to, friends?” Cooper shouted and roughly kicked shut the door of the vehicle one of the men had managed to open.
The goon trio froze. I got closer. A ray of hope suddenly brightened the young woman’s eyes, as if she understood.
“Evacuation. Fire. They told us to get away,” the three said together.
“Hold on. I assume this is Galia,” said Cooper and walked over to the trio.
“She’s sick and needs to get to the hospital,” one goon said.
“Excellent idea. Hand her over. We’ll take it from here.”
None of them moved a muscle. They just appraised him with the calculating eyes of predators. “Who says?”
“I do,” said Cooper, and all at once he pulled the young woman from their hands and pushed her gently over to me.
She moved unsteadily from his hands to mine, still a limp rag doll. I wrapped my arms around her and retreated to the fire truck. She huddled against me, taking feeble steps.
The tuxedo goons looked shocked but quickly regained their composure and moved in on us.
“She’s ours,” one said. “Don’t mess with us.”
The quick glint of moonlight on metal next to his leg told me a knife had been drawn.
“Cooper!” I shouted. The fire truck crew reacted instinctively, shooting a massive jet of water at the thugs. They tried to stay on their feet, desperately hanging on to the car, the tree branches, the fence, but eventually the force of the spray and the mud under their shoes combined to take them down.
The girl still trembled like a leaf.
“Are you Galia?”
She nodded.
“Galia,” I whispered in her ear, “Galia, everything will be all right now. You’re in good hands. It’s me, Dikla.”
She pressed her hand on mine to indicate she understood. I pulled her into the fire truck. Cooper immediately followed us, covered her with a blanket, and sat beside her.
“Where to, sir?” Chimp asked.
“Just take us to our car, we’ll manage from there.”
◊◊◊
“Thanks, guys.” Cooper waved goodbye to Chimp and the gang when we reached my Kia.
“Forget about thanking us, just remember what you promised,” Chimp shouted back, and the fire truck rumbled down the road.
We sat Galia in the backseat, carefully wrapped in a blanket.
“Do you have any water?” Galia asked weakly. “They haven’t given me any food or water for three days.”
Cooper handed her a bottle of water. “What did they do to you?”
“Did they put you in the blue room?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s a sort of treatment they thought I needed. If you hadn’t come…”
Galia sipped from the water slowly. We sat beside her in silence for a few minutes and let her recover.
“That’s what they do to anyone who runs away,” she said. “They isolate the rebel, deprive her of sleep, food, give her hardly any water. The Prophetess calls it a cleansing process. She says it’s essential in order to remove the darkness from the heart. They didn’t let me sleep. The room was flooded with light, and they forced me to walk, to keep on walking around the room. I couldn’t stand still, or sit. If I tried they…they’d hit me. They had this stick…” Galia burst into tears.
I hugged her close until she stopped sobbing, closed her eyes, and lay on the backseat.
I motioned to Cooper, and we moved away from the car, allowing her to rest a little before hitting the road.
“By the way, Cooper, what did you promise your useful monkey buddy?”
“A donation. After all, we got some serious help from the fire department.”
“Absolutely. And where is the donation going to come from?”
“One of my former army subordinates is…”
“Mark Zuckerberg?”
“Something like that. Let’s get back to the car. We’d better get out of here, because when the guys in the tuxes report this to whoever’s in charge of their security and reeducation rooms, all hell is going to break loose. Do you have any idea where we can take her?”
“Of course. To Aunt Marita.”
Sammy didn’t answer her cell phone, so I couldn’t report the successful outcome of our assignment, or hear about how she’d finally given Eve the spanking she deserved.
The Queen of Hearts was shrinking.
36
Aunt Marita is my dad’s oldest sister. Actually, she’s his only sister and therefore my only aunt.
Pops tells me she used to be very glamorous and that she was constantly wooed. Nowadays, she’s a seventy-nine-year-old widow who lives in Kiryat Haim in a house that smells like chicken soup and meatloaf. Her pet name in the family is Doc Marita. She wasn’t a doctor, but she was an experienced nurse. She was obviously a good choice to help Galia heal and recover. Also, I knew that they’d never find us there.
We arrived at her house at midnight. Much to my surprise, the lights were on. I knocked on the door. Cooper stayed in the car with Galia for the time being.
“Dikla?” Aunt Marita stood on the doorstep, as if she had known I was coming.
“Come,” she said, gettin
g closer and smelling my clothes, trying to learn where I had been before popping up on her front step. Then she spread her arms and gathered me in, my cheek against her chest, just like way back, when Dad had brought me to her after Mom had gone to sit on a cloud next to the dark angels that had taken her.
“It’s good that you’re here.”
“You knew I was coming, Auntie?”
“I didn’t, but you’ve been in my thoughts since this morning. When I called, your dad said you must have gone up north, so I thought you might come to visit your aunt.”
“Auntie,” I began, “I feel so ashamed, I haven’t come to visit in so long—”
“Don’t be silly, everything is all right,” she reassured me. “Now tell me what’s going on. Who is it in the car?”
Her kindness choked me up. “The car?” I tried to buy some time.
“I understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That you need help. You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“So it’s good that you’ve come. Bring them inside.”
I gave Cooper a signal that everything was all right, and he got out of the car and opened the door for Galia. Without any explanation, my Aunt Marita understood everything, or at least enough. She was already supporting poor Galia while examining Cooper and wondering if he was the heartbreaker I had told her about.
“Boil some water,” she directed after we arranged Galia on the sofa. “We could all use a cup of sweet tea.”
Galia didn’t say a word. Her pallid, delicate face was expressionless. She seemed completely lost.
Marita followed me to the kitchen. “Dikla, that child, I don’t understand what she’s been through, and she won’t talk. She needs urgent treatment.” She took a blood pressure cuff from a small wooden cabinet and returned to Galia. After she examined her, Marita laid her on the sofa and covered her with a blanket exuding familiar childhood aromas. Then she turned to me and Cooper.
“The girl will be all right. It’s a good thing you brought her here. Give me a week and she’ll be able to go giraffe hunting in Zambia. Now give her some sweet tea and let her rest. Get out of here.”
“A week? You’ve got two hours.”
“You heard me, right? Now go and get some rest.” She gave me a meaningful wink.
“We have to talk to her.”
“Not right now. She needs to recover. The girl has gone through a traumatic event.”
Cooper sounded an appreciative whistle. “I wish I had an aunt like you,” he told Marita. “We haven’t been properly introduced yet. I’m Cooper.”
She smiled at him. “I guessed as much. My brother told me all about you. Now scoot, give us some peace and quiet.”
Marita led us to her spare bedroom. “Flatterer,” I told Cooper when we stood in the doorway.
“I meant every word, you evil witch,” he said and took me in his arms and closed the door behind us.
I pushed him away and called Sammy again to report our whereabouts. Again, no answer. Probably went deaf from a painkiller overdose. I wondered how her meeting with Eve had ended. With reconciliation? Forgiveness? I didn’t think so. Sammy sounded determined to finally vanquish her czardas-dancing nemesis.
“Come on.” Cooper pulled me to the bed.
I hesitated. “What about Sammy? I’m a little worried.”
“Let her rest. Even a simple operation is still an operation.” Right.
I gave up and joined him.
Cooper had fingers flowing with streams of honey. Only the down pillow covering my mouth kept our secrets safe.
“She’s still not answering,” I said when we took a break. While Cooper brought his head closer to my nipples, I redialed.
“She’s recuperating from an operation. Now where were we?” His hand was already making its way through various obstacles of cloth and zippers, seeking my pleasure center.
“Wait.” I stopped him. “I also called Yoel, her brother. He’s not answering either.”
“God, woman,” he said and kissed my nipple, which got hard instantly. “Yoel is sleeping or was chased away from there. Sammy is snoring and dreaming about you. It’s two in the morning, Dikla. Just be here with me. God, look how beautiful they are.” He gently pushed my hands from my breasts.
But I was already somewhere else.
“You’ll have to continue and admire them some other time.” I started to put my bra back on. “Something’s not right.”
“Doesn’t this feel right? Don’t you like this?” He buried his face between my breasts and slowly moved down my stomach, leaving a sweet, wet, stimulating trail with his tongue.
For a moment, I thought about lying back and letting him travel all the way down to that place just starting to wake up, but something buzzing at the back of my mind bothered me and wouldn’t let go. That something was Sammy G.
I got up at once. “I have to get a hold of her.”
I zipped and buttoned everything he’d managed to unzip and unbutton and called Sammy. Once. Twice. Three times.
“I told you” — he lit a cigarette for each of us — “she’s sleeping.”
“She’s not sleeping, and you can’t smoke in here.” I snatched the cigarettes from him and put them out in a flower pot. My aunt remains nice and welcoming so long as she doesn’t smell cigarette smoke — she thinks nicotine is the devil’s tool.
Cooper closed his eyes and curled into a despondent ball.
“Sorry.” I stroked his back. “There’s a time for fun and a time to get things done.”
◊◊◊
One of Sammy’s favorite spots was a nice little bistro a few feet from her apartment building. Nira Ben-Lulu, who owns the place, is a wonderful chef and a good friend of Sammy’s. It seemed like the best place to start. I found the number and made the call.
“Hi, it’s—”
“We’re closed,” she answered quickly.
“Nira, hold on, don’t hang up. It’s Dikla, Sammy’s Dikla.”
“What happened?” She sounded worried. I guess it was obvious I hadn’t called her at 2:00 am to ask for her famous orange cake recipe.
“It’s about Sammy.”
“I figured. Her brother was here to take some food for her. How is she?”
“That’s the thing, she’s not answering her phone.”
Nira needed no further explanation. She said she just needed to finish something and then she would go up to check on Sammy. We said goodbye, and I slid next to Cooper and clung to his body.
“What now?”
“I sent someone to check up on her.”
We snuggled for a few minutes until my cell phone rang. “Nira?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No. But the apartment is completely quiet.”
“You didn’t talk to her?”
“Normal people are sleeping at this time of night, Dikla, including Sammy. The door is properly locked, nothing is going on. I have to hang up, my ride is here. Bye.”
“Nira, please, could you try to wake her up?”
“It’s two twenty in the morning, way past witching hour. I have to hang up now.” And she did.
I didn’t know what to do next. I dialed again and again, until Yoel finally called me.
“Thank God!” I shouted.
“Thank God I’m here,” he grumbled angrily. “She’s insufferable. I couldn’t stay there another minute.”
“I agree, she is insufferable, but she’s just had an operation. Yoel, where are you?”
“I’m home. I’m not going back there.”
“She’s on her own?”
“Get off my back, Dikla. She’s there with her friend—”
“Eve?”
“Eve. L
ook, I gotta get some sleep, I went through a night from hell with your precious Sammy.”
“Our Sammy, and you’re going back there right now. We can’t leave her alone.”
He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, I guess you’re right. She just drove me a little crazy. Let me get a few hours of sleep, and I’ll go back there. Talk to me in the morning.”
That made me feel a little better.
Cooper was already snoring lightly when I rejoined him. I curled into him and fell asleep.
◊◊◊
At dawn, we left the bedroom. In the dim light, we saw Marita dozing in the armchair and Galia lying on the sofa with her eyes open. I silently motioned for her to follow us to the kitchen.
“Do you feel a little better?”
She nodded. Had she recovered? So quickly?
“We have to ask you a few questions, all right?”
She nodded again.
“Could you tell us about Deborah? Why is she called the Heavenly Duchess?”
“Because she has been chosen by the heavens. She received her divine inspiration from the prophet Elijah, who was followed by Jesus. She is among the chosen few who were able to ascend to the heavens and receive the divine spark.”
“Jesus and Elijah, Deborah and Barak. Is that why Yokneam is the center?”
“Yes. Come doomsday, all heretics will be destroyed; only the true believers will survive.”
“Where does the money come from?”
Galia’s face reddened. “We have many…they call them the supporting pillars of the community. Their job is to enable the organization to exist and to function. They continue with their regular lives but support the cause in their own way. This is only the beginning. More and more people are joining every day. Soon we will cleanse the earth, and everyone will be touched by the Prophetess’ teachings.”
Galia’s speech became urgent, unstoppable, as if we’d activated her automatic pilot mode. “The Duchess has touched the light and received her knowledge directly from the divine spark, just like Moses, who rose to the peak of Mount Sinai. She has also risen to the sky, and there, she learned the great secret.” She closed her eyes and cocked her head as if trying to listen, then she whispered, “She’s on earth on a directed mission from up there. She and her believers will be saved and thus will save the earth.”
