Is that what she was doing in this rathole? I could have used another shot of Scotch, but I was frozen in place. Delia pulled tighter at the fabric on my wrists and gave me a questioning look, flicking her head toward the black corridor from which she’d emerged.
I was horny as hell, and just as scared. What kind of invitation was this? Was there a room off the back corridor for casual liaisons, or was this to be a crude bathroom fuck? Both options made me shiver with a strange mix of fear and desire. Why couldn’t I follow this gorgeous Moldovan woman if I wanted to? But then a wave of panic flooded over me, much like the terror I’d felt on the bus. Her hatred for me was palpable—was this some kind of entrapment? Pinya was no one I wanted to mess with; I was scared to even look in his direction. Would he exact some kind of violent retribution if I slept with his girl? I’d seen too many sordid movies, and the stories about Delia’s roughed-up girlfriends hadn’t helped.
She pulled the scarf around my wrists tighter with one hand and reached the other under the table to feel my hard dick.
“It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you won’t,” she said and unloosed the scarf from my hands. “Pinya’s right, you don’t belong here.”
“No, it’s not that. You’re beautiful. It’s just that . . .”
“What?” She put the scarf back over her shoulder, and I watched the rope tattoo slither on the muscles of her arm.
“Think you too good for me?” she hissed. “Think big bad Pinya’s gonna beat up your soft little Jewbody if you fuck me? Maybe he would. Maybe he’d cut off your bald dick and go sell it in the shuq. What you think? You think it be worth anything?”
“Look, I just came in for a drink. I was . . .” Again, I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“You was what? What? You’re scared of me, that’s all.” She put her chin back in her fist and stared at me. Her voice was so low I could barely hear her. “You got some pretty little wife at home? Some fancy office job? You think they’ll all find out what a horny bastard you are and your precious life will be over? Well here’s what Delia says—your life’s not worth the balding hair on your head or you wouldn’t be here flirting with a washed-up foreigner half your age. You wouldn’t be wandering this low-life neighborhood, in the middle of a Jew holiday, looking all lost and lonely. You’re right, you should have let me be.” She leaned far over the table, the outline of her breasts straining against the thin fabric of her dress. “You hear what happened to that asshole Zimri? Fucked the wrong girl at the wrong time. Big mistake. Ask Pinya what they did to him. They do the same to you if Delia tells them to. Here I am, stuck on Easter in this sewer of a pub, and you the only squirrel walking through the door. Your life’s worth no more in the shuq than your shrunken little clipped-off dick.” I could hear Pinya chuckling lightly behind his paper. How he could hear her from that distance was beyond me.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said.
I got up, placed some money on the bar, and left. It had grown dark outside. I walked briskly through the gloomy, unfamiliar streets, Delia’s fierce mockery still echoing in my ears. I imagined Pinya sending someone to follow me and clutched the wallet in my pocket. Only when I finally came upon a thoroughfare did I begin to feel safe, and only then did I notice my racing pulse.
I hailed a cab back to Kiryat Yovel, wondering, as the now-familiar city flew by, why I had panicked like a clumsy teenager. A good, desperate fuck would have done me well. But Delia had terrified me at least as much as the innocent boy riding home on the bus with his backpack. Who knew that Jerusalem, the Holy City, harbored pubs like Soreq’s, lives as debased as Delia’s? I thought we’d confined all the foreigners and lowlifes to the slums of South Tel Aviv. Did the fancy-café hoppers on Emek Refaim, the spiritual seekers of the Old City, the artists and songwriters of the Zion-romance industry, even know such places existed, here, in Jerusalem the Golden?
Back in my ugly flat, I stumbled into the bathroom and stared for a while at the face in the grimy, streaked mirror, absentmindedly rubbing the wrist that had been bound in the cheap fabric of her scarf. I dropped my clothes to the floor and went straight to bed, quickly soothed the ache in my groin, then instantly fell into a fitful sleep, my dreams inhabited by duplicitous, scissor-wielding foreigners and buildings crashing senselessly around me.
6
Yossi returned to Jerusalem on Monday night. Hearing the desperation in my voice, he agreed to meet me the next day for a game of squash and, as always, beat me handily. Not only was he almost a decade younger than me, but he also was in far better shape—short and muscular to my taller, leaner frame—and he played with a sly and ruthless energy I could never quite muster. The games had begun a few years back—when the YMCA first opened its courts, to great fanfare—as Yossi’s not very subtle way of proving his alpha-male dominance at the clinic. But I had never minded losing to Yossi, had relished this rare opportunity for male camaraderie. It reminded me of the only thing I liked about being a soldier: men bonding with each other through the alchemy of sweat and sublimated rage.
We usually followed our games with lunch at Yossi’s favorite hummus dive, tucked away in a back alley off Jaffa Road. But since it was still Passover week, we had to settle for a leaven-less meal in one of the few open restaurants in downtown Jerusalem. I hadn’t wanted Yossi’s wife, Elizabeth, to know about my conversation with Jezebel and had kept it to myself while staying in their apartment. But alone now with Yossi, I let spill all the humiliating details.
“Probation? Man, that’s too much,” he said, before ordering a large assortment of dishes for both of us. He had started growing a beard since I’d last seen him, adding gravitas to his otherwise boyish face.
“Kobi, you need to get out of that racket,” he went on, pouring himself a tall glass of Coke. “It was the smartest thing I ever did, getting myself fired from that job. God, it’s boring, sitting and listening to people’s troubles all day. And the constant bitching of the staff! I’ll be honest with you—I’m grateful to those bastards for letting me go. It was just the spark I needed to get my ass out of there.” He downed half his drink in a long, noisy gulp.
Yossi had come to the clinic five years earlier with a reputation as a whiz kid. It was no small feat to become director of a prestigious mental health clinic at the age of thirty-two, supervising a large and experienced staff. It was clear to everyone that he had gotten the position not through any stellar clinical or administrative skills, but on the force of his impenetrable arrogance. He was so convinced of his own worth, so smooth and well-spoken, that people couldn’t help entrusting him with authority. But eventually that same arrogance managed to alienate both his subordinates and the administrators who had appointed him. By the time he left the clinic, he was almost universally hated. But I had remained fond of Yossi, had always been impressed by how little he seemed impacted by the resentment he routinely aroused in others.
The dishes began to arrive, crowding every corner of the round metal table. “I tell you, Kobi, Elizabeth’s father was right,” he was saying. “There’s nothing like being your own boss.”
“So you really enjoy running that little store he bought you?”
Yossi started heaping his plate with meats and salads, talking all the while. “It’s smack in the middle of the Jewish Quarter, just a few doors down from the firebrands raising money to build the third temple. It’s a great location. Tourism is way down, of course, with this damn intifada. But even so, word is getting out and folks are starting to wander in.”
“And you like selling knickknacks?” I scooped some food onto my plate, though I wasn’t feeling very hungry.
“Her
