by Dan Sofer
Dave peered around for the hidden camera. He hazarded a smile. The punch line moment came and went and Ben still locked Dave in a ferocious gaze.
Ben had Dave’s full, sober attention. The promise of redemption sparked within.
“Guaranteed to work?”
“Yes. But swear to me one thing.”
“All right. What?” He braced for the fit of scornful laughter. None followed.
Instead, Ben said, “Nobody can know about this. Ever.”
“Done.” He swallowed hard. “I swear.”
“Good.” Ben leaned in and Dave felt the full force of his friend’s mobster exterior.
“Because,” Ben continued, his voice dangerously low, “if anyone learns of this, and I do mean anyone, Dave, as much as I love you, I’ll kill you.”
***
Jay stepped off an Egged bus and onto an unfamiliar sidewalk. Across the road, hugged by forested hills, the Israel Museum complex basked in the soft glow of the setting sun. The short, white funnel of the Shrine of the Book pointed skyward. Designed to resemble the lid of a scroll jar, the building housed the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.
Jay’s business, however, lay behind him in the broad building like a long wall of Jerusalem stone.
He and John climbed the steps of the wide courtyard before the large glass box, the entrance to the Bible Lands Museum.
A graying guard with a thick mustache waved and said something in Hebrew.
“What?” Jay said.
The guard switched to English. “Close. Ten minutes.”
Jay removed the hood from his head. “No worries.”
The guard shook his head at the wasteful youth of today. He waved a wand up and down Jay’s anorak and repeated the procedure on John. They walked through a doorframe metal detector. Nothing beeped.
At the ticket desk, an old woman with blond hair peered at them over half-moon glasses.
“We close in—”
“Yeah, yeah. We know.”
“The tour is closed.”
“That’s OK. This’ll be a quickie.”
The woman shook her head and pressed a touch screen.
“Student?” she asked.
Jay shrugged.
“Eighty shekel.”
“Blimey!”
“Adult forty shekel. Student twenty shekel.”
“We’re students.”
That was true enough.
The woman raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask for ID. Jay placed two crumpled twenty-shekel notes on the counter and pocketed the tickets.
They walked down a wide, ramped corridor that opened onto the main hall. The design was modern and minimalist: high ceilings, white walls and plaster panels, steel railings, and sunken spotlights. The floor was a maze of white cubicles and glass display cabinets, reliefs and three-dimensional models.
A knot of Spanish-speaking tourists passed the two men on their way out. Jay and John were the only ones left.
Two oldies and an empty room. Piece of piss.
This was no City of David. All the pieces lay indoors. Tiny cameras peeked from the corners where walls met ceiling. The hint of a lockdown gate protruded above the lintel of the entrance passage like the portcullis of a medieval castle.
Jay pulled his hoodie over his head. John did the same. He put his index fingers together side-by-side, and then moved them forward and apart. He had learned the gesture from a SWAT team in an action movie. John understood and they split up.
Jay scanned a display case of stone hunting tools, figurines of fertility goddesses and primitive, cylindrical seals. The next enclosure contained household vessels and animal statuettes. The dates on the explanatory notes ranged from five to two thousand years BCE. That was like BC.
Before Christ.
Jay smiled.
He passed the model of a pyramid surrounded by steel railing, a sarcophagus, and a wall mural. A bird-headed god placed a man’s heart on the cup of a scale. The other cup held a feather.
“Psst!”
Jay turned around. John waved for him to follow and marched off. He stopped in an enclosure labeled Rome and Judea. The cubicle contained a stone box, a wall of corroded coins, and mosaics of animals. In the center stood a white pillar, waist-high, that supported a rimless glass display case.
Jay whistled softly.
The case contained three rounded jars. The lids looked like acorn stems. The rightmost jar, shorter than the others, wore three etched characters proudly on its belly. The note read, “Scroll jars, Qumran. Circa 100 BCE. Caves 4 and 3.”
Jay’s hand touched the hidden pocket in the lining of his anorak. He looked around. He nodded at John, who extracted a smooth rock from his pocket, wrapped it in a sock, and drew his arm back.
A speck of black caught Jay’s eye.
“Wait,” he said.
“What?” John whispered. Sweat shone over the triangle of forehead visible under his hood.
Jay weighed the options.
The Teacher’s words echoed in his mind.
Patience, my son.
“Abort,” he said.
“Come again?”
Jay pointed at the upper corner of the case. Barely visible along the black lining of the glass pane ran a thin, black wire.
“Closing time,” he said. “C’mon. Rattle your dags.” He made for the exit.
“But…”
“Not today, mate,” Jay said, “or your five-fingered checkbook will land us both in the boob.”
***
Mandy tossed her mobile phone into the sleek DKNY handbag on her bed. She added a pocket pack of Kleenex and a can of mace the size of a lipstick.
Heroes are dead.
She intended to be neither a hero nor dead.
She usually agreed to a second date, especially when the matchmaker was a close friend like Nat; a change of place and time let her intuition settle.
This second date would probably be her last with Dave. The box of roses had set off alarm bells. God alone knew what he was capable of next.
She swung the handbag over her shoulder and left her bedroom. The living room couch lay empty; an unusual silence filled the apartment. She stepped out the front door, locking it behind her, and her heels echoed down the stairwell.
Mandy hated breaking up. Guys had a sixth sense for approaching breakups that drove them to buy stuffed animals and heart-shaped cushions. She felt bad for them.
She pushed through the door of the apartment building. Dave’s silver hatchback idled on the curb. Too late to leave a note on the dining room table.
She climbed in.
Dave gave her a closed-lip smile. His aftershave filled the car with the scent of coconuts.
No stuffed animals. So far so good.
“Where are we heading?”
Dave stepped on the accelerator.
“Where are we all?” he said.
Mandy squirmed in her seat. She remembered what she had disliked about Brits. They worked double meanings into every sentence. She enjoyed kidding around as much as the next girl but right now she wanted a straight answer to a simple question.
“Dinner,” Dave added in an apologetic tone. “A very nice place. You’ll like it.” He avoided eye contact. He seemed distant. Detached. The false bravado of the male sixth sense?
Her conscience twinged.
“Dave,” she said. “We don’t have to go anywhere expensive.”
“It’s all right,” Dave interrupted. “Please.”
She sighed and resigned herself to the evening. Fancy dinners beat stuffed animals.
The motor of the car murmured as he negotiated corners between stone buildings and a rocky outcrop. An old, abandoned train station whizzed by the window. They made a left at a light. A sign indicated the Mount Zion hotel. The road dropped sharply and meandered onto a short bridge over a shallow valley.
“Ben Hinnom,” Mandy read the street sign aloud. “That sounds familiar.”
They stopped at a red light at the
end of the bridge.
“The Valley of Ben Hinnom,” Dave said. “Or Gey Ben Hinnom in Hebrew. Idol worshippers used to build fires here for human sacrifice. Over time, the name became Gehinnom. Or Hell.”
Mandy sank deeper into her seat.
“Nowadays,” Dave continued, “they use it for rock concerts.”
A nervous laugh escaped her lips. Dave laughed too and drew a deep breath. The tension in the air evaporated.
The light turned green. They followed the road left along the edge of the valley. To their right, the tall, crenellated walls of the Old City rose in spotlight. Dave drove up a steep road and passed under the enormous, arched lintel of Jaffa Gate. They negotiated a herd of tourist caps, kaffiyehs, and a robed priest.
The Old City. Mandy had visited the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall for the first time on Thursday morning. She wandered the narrow alleys and courtyards. Night added a layer of romance.
The car tires pattered over cobblestones. They rounded the Tower of David and then barreled down a narrow one-way between tall walls of stone.
Dave slowed at a tunnel-like archway, letting a tall, bearded priest in black robes, a white belt, and a square, black hat cross their path.
The road meandered on, sheer walls on each side, then emptied into a broad parking lot, speckled with trees and crammed with cars, which Mandy recognized as the edge of the Jewish Quarter.
A romantic dinner in the Old City?
On her first visit, Mandy had noticed pizza and falafel joints but no fancy kosher restaurants.
Dave didn’t park. Instead, he followed the sharp descent to the Western Wall plaza. Only permit-holding cars entered the plaza. Had he made special arrangements to impress her?
He plowed on and exited through Dung Gate.
They had passed right through the Old City!
Was this his idea of a romantic car tour?
He made a sharp left and drove alongside the Old City wall. Ahead, haphazard electric lights lit a hillside like stars, and Mandy glimpsed the edges of rough, chaotic buildings. Two men on the sidewalk, dark-skinned and mustachioed, looked them over. Mandy squeezed her handbag. They had left the safe familiarity of the Jewish Quarter for Arab East Jerusalem.
Dave made a right down a narrow side street lined with crumbling walls and cement barricades marred by graffiti.
Her hand slipped into her bag and touched the cold canister of mace.
“Dave,” she began to say but Dave stopped the car on the side of the road.
“We’re here,” he said.
“Where are we?”
“Look.” He pointed out his window at a façade of clean Jerusalem stone. In the glow of the Old City light, she made out three white arches topped by bushes. The middle arch contained a large bronze David’s harp. Golden letters on the wall read, in English and in Hebrew, The City of David.
“Oh,” Mandy said. Dave had remembered her interest in the City of David Institute. Sweet. But beyond the arches the site sank into darkness.
“Is it open this late?”
“No,” he said and opened the car door.
She got out but kept her hand in her bag. The thump of the car doors echoed in the alley. She looked around. They had parked beside an empty, gated lot with a dirt floor and a perimeter of abused corrugated sheeting. Below the City of David Institute, the road descended into blackness.
The car beeped as Dave locked it and he proceeded on foot down the dark street.
Mandy stood her ground.
Twenty feet down the street, Dave paused and turned to her. He smiled and spread his arms. “Welcome to Ir Da’vid.”
She didn’t budge.
“Just a few more steps,” Dave added. “Over there.” He pointed to the glowing outline of a doorframe that she had not noticed in the darkness.
She let the canister slip from her fingers in her bag. Dave had made an extra effort tonight. She could at least hear him out.
“So this is where David lived,” Mandy said. She descended the slope carefully in her heels. Her dad would have loved to stand here. Perhaps he had.
They walked the rest of the way together in silence.
A lantern illuminated a heavy wooden door in a stone wall, like the entrance to a castle. Or dungeon. The stone of the wall was rougher and grimier than that of the City of David Institute. A sign on the door in thick silver Roman letters read Ornan’s.
Dave pulled the brass knob and the door creaked open. They stood at the top of a stone stairway. Flaming torches lined the walls. Dave started the descent and she followed. Her fingers trailed the walls for support. Her heartbeat accelerated. They had entered another dimension, crossed the portal into a mysterious parallel world.
She neared the first torch. What had appeared to be fire was an electric flicker flame bulb. The fake torches reassured her. They reminded her of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion or the Revenge of the Mummy Roller Coaster at Universal Studios.
Sit back, honey, and enjoy the ride.
Above their footfalls, she heard the clatter of cutlery. Aromas of fresh bread and spices wafted up and her stomach stirred.
The staircase ended in a circular, cave-like landing. Patterned rugs covered the stone floor. A floor-to-ceiling honeycomb of wine bottles rose behind a teak concierge desk. Behind the desk, a muscular, tanned man in opulent gray robes and a red fez on his head turned his bright eyes to them.
“Good evening,” he said in a Middle Eastern accent. “Your name?”
“Schwarz,” Dave said. “Dave Schwarz.”
Their host searched a leather-bound ledger on the desk.
The slow plucking of a harp and the thump of a drum drifted on the air, the music of massage parlors at high-end hotels but with an oriental touch.
“One moment,” said the concierge. “I will call the manager.”
He disappeared down an arched passageway.
Mandy looked at Dave, who shrugged.
Had they lost his reservation?
A framed document hung on the wall behind them. A kosher certificate.
Oh, good.
Not that Mandy had suspected Dave of taking her to a treif restaurant. In Café Atara, Dave had recited the blessing on his coffee aloud.
Consistency. Attention to detail. Good traits in a QA engineer. Not necessarily Mandy’s scoop of ice cream.
Dave remained silent. He stared at the tapestry on the wall to their right. Two figures stood upon a wall. They wielded spears. One leaned on a fork-like crutch; the other turned his head heavenward, his eyes closed.
Mandy shivered. Before she could process the scene, the concierge reappeared with the manager, a short, dark, mustachioed man with a scarlet diagonal sash over his impeccable black suit. He looked like one of the Mario brothers from the arcade game.
He spoke a few sharp words at the concierge in a guttural language Mandy assumed to be Arabic.
“Good evening,” he said and he bowed at the hips, displaying an oily comb-over. He flashed rows of white chisel teeth. “We have reserved the VIP room. Please. Follow me.”
Mario marched off.
Dave and Mandy followed.
The VIP room? Oh, brother.
She should have come clean and wrapped this up before Dave had gone to any trouble.
“Dave,” she whispered, as they tried to keep up with the manager. “You don’t have to do this.”
He waved her objection aside with a hand and smiled briefly.
“It’s fine. Really.” Then he focused on the little man ahead of them. An emotion had clouded his face. Nerves. Or fear.
Mario hurried along the corridor. Arched doorways opened onto dining areas. Mandy caught glimpses of elaborate tapestries and flowing curtains; tables for two set in rich, white cotton; heavy silverware; women in evening dresses, men in collared shirts; intimate words over aromatic cuisine and large wineglasses; and in the backdrop the lull of harps and the heartbeat of a bass drum.
The arches ended. Mario drove on, foll
owing the lines of ersatz flaming torches. A barrier of thick rope between two golden poles blocked the corridor. Beyond the barrier, the torches ended and the corridor faded to black. Mario moved one of the poles aside and led them through an arched doorway of overlapping crimson curtains.
“Ladies first,” Dave said with a flourish of his arms. Mandy clutched her handbag and pushed through the curtains.
The room resembled a jewelry box, ten feet wide and padded with Bordeaux tapestries and rugs. A bronze floor lamp cast a cozy glow over a two-seater couch of carved wood and velvet cushions. Mandy stepped around the small table draped in white cotton that reached the floor, and sat on the couch. Dave sat down beside her, his hands on his knees, a safe empty strip of couch between them.
The soothing harp music permeated the air from hidden speakers.
The tapestries depicted biblical scenes. A young man slept on a hilltop at the foot of an impossibly tall ladder flanked by rows of winged men. A ram snagged his horns in a thicket beside a rocky altar. A pair of lovers embraced, their naked limbs entwined, like the interlacing branches of the enormous tree behind them.
The couch was surprisingly comfortable. All tension drained from Mandy. Anticipation and a sense of heightened awareness tingled along her body. She breathed in the air and the scent of history about to unfold.
Wow.
This was unlike any restaurant Mandy knew.
She broke the silence. “How did you find this place?”
“A friend,” Dave said.
She turned to him. His shoulders had relaxed. His fingers had moved to the silky cushions. She’d wanted to tell him something but she couldn’t remember what.
Never mind.
From this angle, he looked different. His solid jawline and manly cleft chin brought to mind a young Michael Douglas in the swashbuckling romance movies of the eighties.
Mandy breathed in his aftershave, which hinted at sun-drenched beaches and luxury yachts in tropical, azure waters.
A dark-skinned young woman in flowing red robes entered the chamber. She placed two leather-bound menus and tall wineglasses on the table. She filled the glasses with red wine and hurried away in a ripple of red fabric without once making eye contact.
