Fracture Point

by T. D. Mandowsky

  I turned, again and again, trying to find a position to fall asleep in.

  It was her.

  I started texting her: “Umm, still awake?” but I deleted it and went back to bed.

  I tried to think of tiresome things to help calm down from Avmeicher the fool − or charming Liza. I thought of the landscape I had seen in Argentina on my post-army trip. I thought of Leroy’s fish pond in his parents’ garden in Herzliya, and of the time I pretended to pee in it and the way he reacted (he almost had a heart attack). I thought of things Donna had told me with excitement about the British royal family, such as Queen Elizabeth having reigned longer than any other queen in history. She owns an elephant and two sloths. I was still awake.

  I picked up my phone and sent Donna a short apology.

  I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. It had an ugly plaster design. The sound of cars on a highway filled the room, like an urban river flowing. The sound of an incoming message disrupted the cars’ concert. Opening the messages will pull me into a conversation that would last for hours. I chose the “ignorance-is-bliss” option.

  I was trying to think of something soothing that would help me fall asleep. I pictured Leroy’s pet fish, big and gold, hungry for some fish food. Damn it, I took the phone to read Donna’s message. I read it over and over until I got it − it was from Liza! “Are you awake?”

  Chapter 31

  “There’s a 12-hour delay in our flight tomorrow!” she wrote, and added a smiley.

  I guess it wouldn’t hurt me to sleep a little more.

  “How can we celebrate” Liza wrote to me, saving herself the punctuation efforts. I wonder what she’s doing with all this time she’s saving on punctuation.

  “Will we take a walk to the beach tomorrow? I was there today,” I wrote to her.

  “In the cemetery is more fun” she wrote to me, and immediately sent another two messages:

  “Today”

  “How to celebrate today”

  I breathed heavily. I looked at the clock at the top of the screen, then at Liza’s message, and again at the clock. I opened her profile picture and she smiled at me.

  Maybe I just won’t answer her. I’ll tell her I fell asleep.

  “Your charger is here,” she wrote me another message.

  “Come take it”

  The feminine scent in her room filled my lungs. Only a reading lamp was lit and painted the room in a dim yellow light.

  “Black coffee?” she asked. I giggled because I thought she was kidding.

  She filled the kettle, and when she returned it to its place, a red light shone from it.

  She lay down on the bed, leaned her back against the wall, and made it clear: “This time you’re making the coffee.”

  She wore the same loose-fitting shirt, but this time didn’t bother to wear a bra. All the words I learned in my life just got erased.

  “Hello?” She waved at me.

  My gaze rested on her camera, which was located exactly where it had been on my previous visits.

  “You promised to show me your photos,” I told her. “Come on, jackass,” she said, and patted the spot right next to her. I glanced at the kettle. It was slowly boiling.

  When I stood up, I stopped in mid-air for a second, between sitting and standing. I looked at Liza’s face because I wasn’t sure I had her heard correctly. “Are you coming?” she asked.

  “Umm. Yeah,” I mumbled, feeling as if she had thrown a lasso around my neck and pulled me towards her. She gave me her phone, and our fingers touched for a second.

  I scrolled through beautiful photos. There were close-ups of the Black Hebrews of Dimona, wild landscapes in the Golan, the Judean Desert under a full moon, and birds drinking from a puddle of rain in the western Negev.

  “This sunset was taken in Ashdod.” She came closer and scrolled through the pictures with me. Her arm rested on my thigh, her eyes on the screen. The light from her phone lit up her face and neck, casting a shadow between her shirt and her breasts. Her light hair covered her perfect skin and collar bone.

  Her hair was smooth as ice. I touched her warm scalp, caressing her warm neck and shoulders

  “What are you doing?” she asked softly. The kettle bubbled hard.

  I didn’t know what to say because I had no idea what I was doing. My hand reached the end of a tanned shoulder with a thin mark from a missing bra strap. I raised my hand back to her hair again. Her question was still lingering in the air. What was I doing?

  I grabbed her hair, feeling soft breath that was accompanied by a gentle moan.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, my face close to hers. She lay on her back on the mattress, and my ribs pressed on hers. There was a clicking sound when the light gleaming from the kettle turned off.

  “Itay. . .” she said, and I smelled her breath for the first time. My hand moved from her hair to her ear, her cheek, hovering above her lips, towards her neck. Her heartbeat was as fast as mine.

  Her smell overwhelmed me as we came closer. My nose met her forehead. I breathed her in deeply, holding her neck with one hand and her ribs with the other.

  “I really don’t know,” I said without her asking, pulling her warm body to me. She put her arms out and held my back. We were so close that I could feel her heartbeat in my body as it pressed up against hers. I looked down at her breasts, which rose as we got closer. Our lips were so close that her breath mixed with mine. She stuck her nails in my neck, and when she said, “Come on,” her upper lip touched my bottom lip.

  As my body hardened, my mind weakened. Our tongues and breath intertwined. She was as hot as a gun at the end of shooting practice.

  When she climbed on top of me, I grabbed her waist, which was thin, yet hard and muscular. Her loose t-shirt dropped off her shoulder, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her perked-up breasts. I could almost see them entirely.

  She took off the ridiculous sweatshirt I was wearing from basic training, I took off her shirt, and I scratched her back, which was as smooth as it was warm. She blew a hot and wet “yes” into my ear, the way Buchnik had panted when I dragged him behind the wall. I started to feel the rolling thunder, but a slow, deep scratch of my back turned off the flashes and brought me back to her. Her smell was driving me crazy.

  The room was so hot, and I could no longer tell her sweat from mine, just as it was back then when I dragged Alamo. She looked me in the eye. I tried to do the same, but I couldn’t. Our waists moving at the pace of our increasing breathing. The pressure in my chest also increased, as if I was preparing myself to get hit. She grabbed my short hair and pulled it back, the way you pull back the head of someone when arresting them. She burned me with her look.

  “Harder,” she said, and looked like she knew what she was talking about. I obeyed because I felt that otherwise she would pull my hair out.

  My dick almost ripped the last piece of clothing left on my body. Liza’s naked body appeared before me in all of its glory when she held my jaw with a force I didn’t know she had in her.

  “I said . . .” she put her fingers on my hand that was holding her muscular little ass, pushing my nails into her, “harder!”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Honey, what don’t you understand?” she whispered gently, sticking her nails in my butt. Her face shrank as if she was angry when she shoved me inside her, her nails cutting my thighs.

  Frightened and obedient, I sweated like crazy and waited for orders.

  Her voice became harder with every order she gave me. “Fuck me! And do it hard!”

  Chapter 32

  For years Israel has been selling arms and military technology overseas. Retired Defense Ministry employees become rich from private ventures, and lieutenant-colonels become wealthy middlemen. Sometimes handlers become salesmen of combat technologies worth billions. Huge salaries are offer
ed to the graduates of the computer software engineering faculties, convincing them to develop smart missiles instead of smartphones. These programmers become the designers and developers of arms that first serve Israel and are then sold to the highest bidder. The senior managers are recruited to develop combat systems and data collection instead of their working for development and bio-med companies. As a result of its particular circumstances, the State of Israel has become Sparta, the country where the western world comes to learn protection.

  However, one thing is still missing: a reasonable rest between missions. Leroy called me as I landed and asked me when I’ll be back in office.

  “We’ve been working like crazy ever since a bomb went off near Captain Billal,” he said.

  “What? When did that happen?”

  “It happened when you were with the delegation. There’s still a gag on it, but in the next few hours it’ll be reported in the media. They carried out a ’Little Red Riding Hood’ attack on Billal.”

  “My God! Is he all right?”

  “Billal is all right, thank God, just a few broken bones. He’ll be back in action in two months. I’ll tell you when you get back, not on the phone.”

  My battery was about to die. I hung up and thought of Captain Billal, the old guy who hadn’t seen his daughter in daylight since she was two years old. His wife had learned long ago that threatening would make no difference. She was probably even a bit happy to have him home for two months, even if under such circumstances.

  I had three messages when I landed. One from Dad’s partner Sharon, one from Donna, and one from Liza.

  Sharon wrote, “Call when you land,” with a heart emoji.

  Donna wrote, “Call when you land,” without a heart.

  Liza wrote, “Have a good flight.”

  A few hours before, at 3:00 am, the blanket covered her body up to her neck. I lay naked, trying to cool down my burning body, right after I did what I shouldn’t have done. Her captivating gaze controlled me.

  “Why are you still out of breath?”

  How could I explain to the girl that it has been five or six years since I have had proper sex? That I thought I would never have real sex again. I tried to think of the right words to convey my thoughts, but all that came out were a few unclear words. Liza looked at me, and I had to say something.

  “I . . . I never had sex like that before,” I stuttered.

  “Like what?”

  “You know, I had a spanking and all that, but . . .”

  “Like . . . violent?” she said, completing my thoughts, drawing shapes on my chest.

  I lay on my back, my hand reaching all the way to her, but that was still hot. “Yup,” I laughed in embarrassment. “Not like that. No hair pulling, no tying. I’m not used to that.”

  Liza kissed my shoulder several times, and I breathed in her hair. Her kisses turned into licking from my shoulder to my neck. The licking turned into sucking my artery.

  “No hickeys,” I said before it would be too late.

  “Uh-huh,” she nodded and bit me so hard that I think I woke the people in the rooms next to us.

  “When did you come?” she asked.

  “Didn’t you notice?” I asked, and she said she didn’t.

  “When you were on top of me,” I said. Liza said she hadn’t noticed.

  She didn’t notice because I was lying. This was by far the longest I had managed since the incident, even though I still couldn’t climax. It was clear she enjoyed it, and it made me feel useful. However, from the moment we went our separate ways – God, I never felt so lonely.

  Her flight with the last two members of the delegation was the following morning. Each sound informing me that I had a new message that I received on the way to the airport caused my stomach to turn.

  I took the gun bag from the security officer and hopped in the first cab that stopped for me. The driver had a white ponytail, and his name was Gregory. I put my bags in the back and my gun bag under my seat, tying the strap to my leg.

  “So, where were you?” he asked.

  “London,” I replied, focusing on my phone. For some reason, I kept Liza’s message for last.

  I sent a message to Sharon saying that I landed and am okay and am on my way home. I copied and pasted it to Donna. Thinking of meeting her terrified me. I suddenly asked myself what was wrong with my life before I met Liza, with her solid athletic body and her singing at the karaoke club. I didn’t know what to write back to her.

  “Oh, boy,” Gregory said, as he slowed down to a stop behind an endless line of cars on their way to Jerusalem.

  This seemed like a good time to turn off my phone and go to sleep. I put my seat back and asked Gregory to change to a quieter station on the radio. I put the stupid hat, which I bought with Liza on Fuzuli Street, on my face and took a deep breath. I breathed in and out slowly, letting a horrible idea sink in, the thought that there was no way back. Donna is not going to be the one I would raise children with, not the one I would take out a mortgage with. We wouldn’t be sitting with a pile of bills and a calculator, and she wouldn’t be making me any more beet soup.

  “Are you okay?” Gregory asked me, seeing his passenger wipe tears from his cheeks.

  “Yes, I just want to rest a little bit.”

  Chapter 33

  One of the residents on my street is none other than the prime minister. This is not for professional reasons, it’s just that the official residence of the prime minister is located in an area in the center of the Rehavia neighborhood that has a lot of students and professors. The fact that the building I lived in in Jerusalem was adjacent to the prime minister’s official residence had many advantages, one of which is that the street was secure 24/7. I didn’t have to worry about burglars.

  The downside was the traffic jams. I looked out the window at the British foreign minister’s convoy that was entering the prime minister’s residence, blocking the entire street.

  The British restraint in the meeting between the prime minister and the British foreign minister was nothing compared to the restraint in my small room down the street. The British minister was here to mediate between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. No one wanted this escalation, but it was still happening.

  I’ve been going insane. Alone in my apartment, waiting for who-knows-what. In fact, I was not completely alone; the secret was with me in the room; it was bigger than me and struck me every few seconds. I tried to play the guitar, but it sounded terrible. In the evening, Donna returned from her parents’ house. A sling hung around her neck, holding her injured hand. She opened the door with her elbow, put down the bags she had brought, and pounced on me with open arms and a huge smile. I hugged her and I smiled, too, even though I had the rusty taste of a secret on my tongue.

  “When I was there under the bar, I was sure the terrorist would get to us,” she said, reliving the moment when she covered her head with her hands. “Then there were gunshots on the street, and we hid between two beer kegs!” the excitement in her voice was strange, as if it was not she who had been under fire.

  “Unbelievable,” I said, and I turned to the big window facing Azza St. Her connection to the pale skinny guy hurt me. I couldn’t even imagine how much my truth would hurt her.

  “Then, within a minute, there were hundreds of policemen there, maybe even more. It was impossible to leave the area for about an hour afterward.”

  “Isn’t that the pub where we met? The Shuka?” I asked.

  “Yes!”

  “That place has good karma. Maybe now something will happen between you and that guy.”

  “Come on.” She pulled my chin so I would look at her and not at the window. “Why are you like that? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just tired,” I lied.

  “To you, my drama sounds like just another day at the office, right?�
�� she smiled, as if all the anger dissolved the moment she walked into the apartment.

  “Hello?” she said, knocking on my head. “Anybody home?” I tried hard to smile, she caressed my arm with her two hands, caressing that turned into shaking. I looked at my phone; it was “22:22.” They say this means that someone is thinking of you.

  “Hey!” She checked to see if I was paying attention, and she waved her hand up and down in front of my face.

  I looked at her, her deep brown eyes swimming in red transparent emotion. Longing and disappointment were threatening to burst through with a tear dripping down her cute nose.

  “I’m sorry. I’m distracted,” I explained, stating the obvious.

  “I see that,” she said, and her voice broke. Three or four tears rolled down her nose, following the first one.

  “I . . . I’m really sorry, honey.” I tried to change things with words, but it was hopeless.

  “You barely talked to me when you were there.” She said what we both knew. “I needed you.”

  What could I say? I couldn’t even imagine telling her what happened over there.

  “And why aren’t you touching me?” she asked, and I suddenly noticed the distance between us.

  I didn’t have any wise words, just told her it would be all right. Usually, when someone says it will be all right, it won’t, but Donna actually believed me. She stopped crying, came closer, and put her head on my shoulder.

  “You promise?” she asked.

  The truth was that I had no idea what was going to happen. I thought I would come back home and finish it. What happened shouldn’t have happened, but as she leaned her curly head on my shoulder and patted me, every decision I made was irrelevant. I asked myself, can I keep the secret? Everyone in the ISA keeps secrets. I never tell her what I do at work, who we arrested, where we were, and the things I saw. Why not keep another secret with me forever?

  “Yes,” I caressed her soft curls. “It’ll be okay.”

  Donna turned my head towards her, and her lips closed on my lower lip. I put my hand in her hair. She pushed me onto the bed and climbed on top of me. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.