Three Floors Up

by Eshkol Nevo

  “I fell asleep,” he apologized.

  “It’s about time!” I smiled.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling back. A haunted smile.

  I closed the door behind me. There were more clocks on the wall than I remembered, more crowded together than I remembered.

  He followed my gaze and said, “The ticking can drive you nuts. Makes you feel like screaming.”

  “Not a good idea in your case. The neighbor upstairs can hear. And in your situation, I wouldn’t want to attract the attention of former district judge Devora Edelman.”

  “Thanks for the information.”

  “Turns out you’re a celeb,” I said, spreading the front page of the paper on the table. I sat down.

  I watched his expressions as he read, looking for signs of embarrassment, of shame. But his eyes moved quickly across the lines, and mostly he seemed to be trying to gather details. To survive.

  “Tell me, can’t you sail earlier?” I asked. “You’re putting us all in danger here.”

  “I can’t board the yacht in daylight.”

  “That’s really too bad.”

  He folded the paper, handed it to me, and said, “I’ll return the money to each and every one of those people.”

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “Sure you’re judging me.”

  I smiled. “Are you hungry?”

  “Very,” he said.

  I brought dishes and silverware from the kitchen and set the table for us.

  He said, “What about a plate for Andrea?”

  I laughed. A surprisingly hearty, liberated laugh. I never dared—we never dared—to look at the funny side of that whole business with Andrea.

  “What a lovely laugh you have. You should laugh more.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

  He said, “Hearty appetite.”

  And we started to eat.

  Our hands didn’t touch accidentally when I handed him the salt. Our legs didn’t touch under the table.

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin, looked straight into my eyes, and asked, “Why are you helping me, Hani?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Because you’re desperate.”

  Or maybe I said, “Because I’m the only one who will.”

  Or maybe I said, “Because Assaf wouldn’t want me to help you.”

  Or maybe I didn’t say anything.

  “You know,” he said, “I called my ex-girlfriend and she hung up on me.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Yes, but still…”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Eight months.”

  I threw my head back and laughed.

  “It’s not nice to laugh at me.”

  “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you…”

  “What can I tell you, things never work out for me. With women, I mean.”

  “So maybe you should try men.”

  Or maybe I said, “Too bad, because you’d make a great father.”

  Or maybe I didn’t say anything.

  (I’m not trying to be smart, Netta. I’m really not sure what I said. Or what I just wanted to say. What happened, or what I wanted to happen. Honestly.)

  “You know…,” he said, and bit his lip.

  “What?” I leaned slightly forward.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  I hate it when someone does that to me. I leaned back. Folded my arms on my chest. Frowned. Put my entire arsenal of disapproving gestures on display.

  “Okay,” he said, alarmed. “The chances are I’ll never see you again anyway, so what difference does it make if I tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “But it’s embarrassing, I’m warning you.” He raised his index finger at me.

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  Or maybe I said, “I’m not easily embarrassed.”

  Or maybe I said, “I’m listening.”

  Or maybe I didn’t say anything.

  He turned away from me to look at one of the clocks. And it seemed like he wasn’t going to tell me. But then—

  “When you and Assaf started dating,” he said without looking at me, “you came to Nahariya for the weekend. Assaf had already moved out, so they asked me to give you my room so you two would have someplace to sleep.”

  “I remember. That was the first time Assaf took me to meet your parents.”

  “Yes, that was it. We talked about katushas. You wanted to know what it was like to live under rocket attacks.”

  “Right!”

  “That’s not the point. After dinner, I went out to the Kibbutz Evron pub. We spent a lot of time there when we were in the army. I drank a little. I danced. I made out with some girl at the bar. I remember how weird it was that I didn’t get a hard-on. We were really going at it. And she was hot. But I didn’t get a hard-on. I thought maybe it was because of the liquor. So instead of going to her place, I made a date to see her on Saturday night and went home. I was a little drunk and could barely get my key in the lock. Finally I went inside and out of habit, walked straight to my room and opened the door.”

  “Oh boy…”

  “You…were lying in bed next to my brother…and you were…so…”

  “Wait a minute, was I naked?”

  “Uh…”

  “Was I naked or not?”

  “Not completely. The sheet was between your legs…so one leg was covered and the other wasn’t.”

  “And the top?”

  “Pretty much out there.”

  “Oh boy…”

  “The window was open, and the moon was full, or almost full, and the light coming into the room danced on your body, and I just…just stood there, unable to breathe at the sight of all that beauty.”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  “I’m not exaggerating. The problem was that at some point, all the air I was holding in my chest burst out, and it must have sounded like a moan, so Assaf woke up.”

  “Boy oh boy.”

  “I took off, sure he’d come after me. But he didn’t. Only the next day—you and my mom were in the kitchen—he grabbed me when I came out of the bathroom, pushed me up against the wall in the hallway, and told me I was a pervert. And that if I ever dared to get anywhere near you or even talk to you, he’d kill me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Assaf.”

  “He had a box cutter in his hand. He flipped open the blade, pressed it against my jugular, and said, ‘Hani is my once-in-a-lifetime girl. The girl I want to marry. And if you take her away from me too, it’ll be the end of you.’ ”

  “That really doesn’t sound like Assaf.”

  “It’s a side of him you don’t know, Hani. But I’m sorry to say that I know it very well. That’s why…I took what he said seriously. I packed my duffel bag and said I’d been called back to the unit.”

  “I don’t remember that at all—”

  “Well, I was nothing to you then. Air.”

  “That’s not exa—”

  “It’s okay. Don’t apologize. It’s natural.”

  Suddenly I wanted a cigarette. No, I didn’t want one, I needed one. When I became pregnant with Lyri I stopped smoking, and since then, sometimes, mostly at night, I’d feel the echo of a desire to smoke. Nothing more. Now it was a fire inside me. My fingers were aflame. I remembered that this year, the neighbor whose house we were in started smoking outside on the bench in the garden of our building, and that meant she might have a pack in the apartment. “Wait a minute,” I told Eviatar. And went looking.

  I found one in the den. With a lighter next to it. I never liked Winston Lights, but in a situation like that, you take what’s there. I went back to the kitchen and offered Eviatar one.

  “No thanks,” he said. “I stopped smoking. It projects something unhealthy to the clients.”

  I lit up and took the first drag. I tried not to exhale in his direc
tion.

  That word, “unhealthy,” flickered in my consciousness like the lights of a motel on the way to Vegas. It flashed on and off.

  “That image of you with the sheet,” he said, “stayed in my mind for years.”

  “Oh come on.”

  “I’m completely serious.”

  “Like you were with your clients?”

  “That’s not fair, Hani.”

  “I don’t think you’re the person to decide what’s fair and what isn’t.”

  “Okay, don’t believe me if you don’t want to. But it’s the truth. I fantasized about you in all kinds of situations. I made up scenarios.”

  “Scenarios?”

  I’m stopping for a minute. Writing you all this is making me blush. I remember that in our Octopus Club period, we talked about sex a lot. Guys were constantly coming on to you, so you had a lot to talk about. But sometimes they came on to me too: less-than-perfect guys who felt more comfortable with a less-than-perfect girl.

  I remember that my favorite conversations came after the nights when we both lucked out. Because then there was no jealousy. There was only the sharing. And the joy of discovering the scandalous truth: every guy does it a little bit differently. (The ones who pop into my mind now are the formerly ultra-Orthodox Elida, who used to recite verses from the Talmud when you went down on him, and Yoav from Psychology who used to cry when you stroked his hair and directed his tears so they fell right on your nipples. But now it suddenly occurs to me that both stories are just too good and maybe you actually made up some of the bizarre tales you used to tell me then. Probably not, you’re not a liar like me. I, after all, am capable of making up a complete Eviatar just to impress you.)

  Then you met Noam. And I met Assaf. And those stories stopped. Maybe because it became less important. Or maybe because an intimacy grew between us and our men that we didn’t want to violate.

  Maybe that’s why I’m embarrassed now. And find it hard to go on.

  You know what, I’ll take a break and do a flashback. Maybe I’ll feel more comfortable writing about something that happened in the past.

  The last time (before Eviatar) I was so horny and wild was after Nomi’s funeral.

  Actually, when I think about it, it wasn’t right after the funeral because first we went to see her parents in Beit Hakerem.

  I remember the death notices at the entrance to the building. I remember standing and staring at her full name and you pushing me to keep going. I don’t mean you really pushed me, you just touched my back gently.

  Then we went into the house, which was always our favorite. Being in my house was no fun because there was no mom. They’d already taken her. And my dad, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t take her place. You, on the other hand, had a mom, but she was always looking for reasons to criticize you. I feel like hugging you when I remember that. I think that as a child, I mean, now that I’m a mom, I understand how much power we have, how one nasty remark from us can…And I don’t understand how in the world you came out of that house normal. So maybe that’s your response? That’s your true victory over them, Netta? Being so normal?

  So that left Nomi’s house. With her balding-with-a-ponytail father, Josh, who had that store in the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, “Mister Pop,” remember? I don’t think there’s anyone our age in Jerusalem who didn’t buy Michael Jackson and Police pins there.

  And with her mother-who’d-been-at-Woodstock, Barbara, who used play Santana records for us (right?) and taught us how to dance when you want to attract boys’ attention and how to dance when you just want to dance.

  The two of them, Barbara and Josh, sat in the living room that afternoon and were happy to see us when we came in. Barbara hugged us and said, “How nice it is to see you. You haven’t been here in a long time.” Her hugs were looser than the ones I remembered from childhood. Josh said to me in English, “That was so beautiful, what you read at the funeral.” I swallowed the thank-you that was on the tip of my tongue because who says thank you at a time like that? Barbara said, “Sit down, why are you standing?” She shook hands with Assaf and Noam and said, “Nice to meet you.” And then said in a weirdly cheerful voice, “She loved you both so much, you know?” You said, “We loved her too, Barbara.” I kept silent and thought (I always have to ruin things, if not by what I do, then by what I think) that it was always obvious that my friendship with you was stronger, and that we accepted Nomi happily, but with a tinge of scorn because there was something about her that invited ridicule, with all those flowers in her hair and her Palladium shoes, and all the guys she fell in love with who were completely wrong for her. She seemed to have been born in the wrong decade, but we still needed her with us because without her, we were too “Jerusalem,” too square, not to mention the fact that without her, we would have seen each other less often because it was at her house that we met, and she was the one who had all the bright ideas—let’s go to the Arad music festival, let’s stay in Eilat after the school trip, let’s go down to the Sinai, let’s pick apples at Kibbutz Menara (thank God for that last one. Without Enrique the Argentinian volunteer there was a better than likely chance I would have gone into the army a virgin, and I was lucky enough to do it the first time with someone who thought my body was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Even if he did break my heart a week later).

  Without Nomi, we wouldn’t have gone anywhere. That’s the truth.

  Her desire to be part of us made us realize that there was an “us.” And that it was worth something. So strangely enough, even though you and I were best friends, Nomi was the driving force, and without her—

  Do you remember that at some point during the shivah, I gave you my hand? And you took it and squeezed it hard, doing exactly the right thing, as always.

  I felt as if I was falling, Netta. Plummeting. As if there was no floor in Josh and Barbara’s house. I felt as if my life as I knew it had ended with Nomi’s death. And that now, something new was supposed to start, except that a chasm of confusion lay between me and that something new (that’s actually what I feel now: on the edge of the terrifying chasm before the change).

  So on the way back from Jerusalem, right before Shaar Hagai, I asked Assaf to turn right onto a dirt road that leads to the pilots’ monument. There was still some light, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I said, “I need to feel you.” At first he didn’t understand. He gave me a tight hug. A platonic hug. So I unbuckled my safety belt and pushed the back of his seat down. That he did understand, but I would be on top and that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him to fuck me. So I tugged down my underpants, yanked up my dress, went back to my seat, spread my legs, and said, “Come on already.”

  There’s passion and there’s neediness. And what went on in that Fiat Uno was neediness. I needed someone to defeat me. Because someone who is already defeated is no longer afraid. Someone who is defeated doesn’t care about the chasm. She simply lies down on the passenger seat, free of responsibility. Her legs are spread on the dashboard, waves of pleasurable pain surge through her body, and she believes, if only for a few seconds, that nothing is going to change, that time has stopped its silent movement toward the deadline and things can stay as they are. Forever.

  By all calculations, by the way, we became pregnant with Lyri that night in the car. Even though we can never be completely sure. And it’s a bit too symbolic.

  “Yes,” Eviatar said, “I made up stories that led me to you. That brought us together accidentally. And ended with…you know. I used to play those stories in my mind before I went to sleep. Sometimes even when there was another woman with me…in bed, I mean.”

  “I know you’re lying, but it feels good,” I said.

  Or maybe I said, “Why are you telling me this? What’s the point?”

  Or maybe I said, “Give me an example.”

  “What do you mean, an example?”

  “Tell me one of the stories you made up.”

  “It’s too embarrassing.”<
br />
  “So I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” he asked.

  “I thought smoking ‘projects something unhealthy to the clients,’ ” I teased.

  He reached out to take a cigarette. Not the least bit annoyed. And lit up. He could have leaned toward me to light it from mine. But he chose to light it himself. He had some ugly blemishes on the back of his hand.

  He inhaled deeply. Then exhaled. My smoke blended with his in the air between us.

  Then he said, “You have to close your eyes. It only works with closed eyes.”

  I closed them, only peeking to see if his were closed too, then shut them again. All I heard was his voice, which actually wasn’t very different from Assaf’s, except that it had an additional nuance of urgency.

  “There’s a café across from Yemin Moshe. That’s where I hold all my business meetings in Jerusalem. One evening, you walk in. You’d gone to visit your father, and all he had was instant coffee, so you’re there to get coffee and go right back. I’ve just finished my meeting and am walking the client out. And then I see you at the bar. I say hello and you don’t recognize me at first. Then you do. You’re wearing jeans and a sleeveless tank top with a scoop neck. Ah, yes, I forgot to say it’s a summer evening. A deep blue evening. I ask you to have a drink with me. You say you can’t, you have to get back to your father. I offer to walk with you and you say okay. We step outside into Yemin Moshe—that’s where your father lives in the story, I hope that’s all right with you—and walk through the alleyways and talk. The intoxicating fragrance of jasmine fills the air. As our conversation deepens, we walk deeper into the neighborhood. Until we reach a small park with a bench hidden from view, surrounded by houses no one lives in. We start to kiss tentatively, and then more deeply, but you stop me and say that someone might pass by. Just as you’re saying that, a group of Japanese tourists comes into the garden. Their guide is explaining to them in English that Yemin Moshe is the first Jewish neighborhood established outside the walls of the Old City, and also a well-known meeting place for lovers in Jerusalem. The entire group laughs at us in Japanese, and it’s clear to both of us that we can’t stay there. I lean over and whisper in your ear that maybe we should go to the Mishkanot Shananim hotel. You agree.”