Chapter 2
And may I ask the fair maiden’s name?” Halimi asked me, openly flirting as he lit my cigarette. “Idit. Rozhevsky,” I said, exhaling smoke.
“Hmm, Rozhevsky,” he repeated after me. “What’s that, Russian?”
“Daughter of,” I answered with a smile.
“I dig the Russians,” he said playfully. I wondered if he presumed I knew who he was.
“And the lord’s name?” I courted him back.
“Saul Halimi,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “But everyone calls me Halimi.”
I’d always been good at predicting what the future might hold.
I used to go to interviews, for example, imagining the intimacy I might develop with the dictionaries stacked behind the editor’s desk or the hallway leading to the restrooms. Now I imagined the two of us making out in a hammock, and I’d already nicknamed him “Lim-Lim.” I almost said it out loud just to shock him but stopped myself.
“Did you want to say something?” he asked.
It was mesmerizing how he projected the idea that he already knew what I was thinking.
With a stab of guilt, I peered at Ronen, still reclined on the daybed with his tea shades on the end of his nose, a few feet from us. Probably snoring.
“Boyfriend?” Halimi asked with interest, following my gaze. “Something like that,” I answered uneasily, then recalled Hila’s words. I looked at Halimi again—swarthy, laid-back, with large, strong hands. I really do want to get properly fucked, I thought and turned my entire body toward him.
We ate dinner quietly. Lily filled the silence with her own demands.
“I want yogurt, not cheese!” she yelled when she saw the carton of soft cheese, something she’d requested only seconds earlier.
I usually tried not to give in to her sporadic tyranny, but this time I acquiesced, switching the soft cheese for yogurt.
“Mommy, wear a dress now,” Lily said.
I sighed and said, “Why?”
“Because you look nice in a dress,” Lily and Halimi said together. Although this little dialogue had taken place dozens of times, Lily was startled that Halimi knew what she was going to say. “Funny Daddy!” she giggled and then repeated in an imperious tone, “Mommy, wear a dress now.”
“Because you look nice in a dress,” Halimi repeated.
After a bath and a bedtime story and a good-night kiss, Halimi switched off the light in Lily’s room and came into the living room.
I was already curled up on the couch. There was a half-smoked joint on the table, and I was half-heartedly searching for something to watch on Netflix.
Halimi didn’t like weed; he was mostly into chemicals and alcohol, but he always bought me the purest medical cannabis he could find. Naturally, he had the best connections.
“Still moody?” he asked in his soft nasal voice.
He smelled of clean laundry and Lily’s soap.
It was difficult to be angry with such a devoted father who’d just finished the long and arduous process of putting Lily to bed while I had rolled a joint and smoked it peacefully on the balcony, straining to hear the sound of the waves from the shore.
It was much easier to give in to him, to snuggle up to his chest and let him stroke my arm.
“I hate getting mad about these things,” I said, imagining the slut he’d probably texted earlier.
I figured she was a production assistant with full lips and big tits, perhaps the one who’d arranged the meeting with the reality TV show star he’d interviewed the week before.
It didn’t surprise me but made me somewhat wistful how the slender wedding ring on his finger made him even more attractive to those vibrant young women whom he charmed with his knowledge and generosity.
“I hate you getting mad about those things too,” he agreed, and I smiled despite myself.
There was no point in arguing. Our conversations on the subject went nowhere—every time I thought we’d reached an understanding, I realized I was delusional.
Whenever it looked like I was going to break up with him, he would threaten to kill himself and embark on a self-destructive rampage.
It always ended with the two of us breaking down in tears, hiccupping pledges of love to each other.
Two months after we first hooked up, he began pestering me to have a kid.
“Have my baby” became the catchphrase of our first year together.
“Put the kettle on?” I’d text him on my way home.
“Only if you’ll have my baby,” he’d text back.
At first I thought he was just saying it, but he pushed the topic even when we were fucking, deadly serious.
“I’m going to put a baby in you,” he would whisper while penetrating me deeper and deeper, pinning my hands above my head.
Whenever I recalled this, I was faintly embarrassed, but it made me come every time.
Back at the party, a long shadow obscured Halimi’s face, while I laughed at his story about a dangerous liaison with a reindeer in the snowy reaches of Lapland.
I looked up and saw Ronen standing over me.
The tea shades were now resting on his forehead, there were pretzel crumbs on his trimmed beard, and his eyes were even narrower than usual.
“Having fun?” he asked, his voice venomous.
“Totally!” I said and opened my eyes wide in his direction. Ugh, I thought with revulsion, how could I have slept with this creep?
Halimi looked him over with interest.
“Right, I’m out of here,” Ronen said, expecting me to follow.
“Bye then,” I said. “We’ll catch up later,” I added, so as not to seem like a complete asshole. Ronen raised his eyebrows, threw a virulent glance in Halimi’s direction, and walked off. Relieved, I watched him walk away.
“So, he’s your boyfriend?” Halimi asked, removing an invisible crumb from a lock of my hair.
“Was my boyfriend, I guess,” I said.
“Seems like a nice guy,” Halimi said lazily.
“Don’t be a jerk,” I said.
We fell silent and watched Ronen go. When he paused to say goodbye to Eran, they both cast glances in my direction. Eran looked a bit spooked, but Hila, who was standing next to him, raised her glass in our direction.
“What a sweetheart,” Halimi said.
“Totally,” I agreed and then added, “A good fuck too?”
Halimi choked on his drink. “What, she told you?”
“Actually, no, but I guessed as much,” I beamed. Halimi smiled back, revealing small, overcrowded teeth. He surveyed me with renewed appreciation.
“So was she?” I asked again.
“Was she what? A good fuck?” Halimi repeated my question. I shrugged my shoulders and took a drag of my cigarette.
“And why would you want to know?” he quizzed me.
I exhaled smoke slowly. “You can never tell,” I replied. “Maybe I want to sleep with her?” He laughed and stood up. “I’ll bring drinks, and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Whiskey?”
“I don’t really drink,” I admitted, one hand dipping into my bag for the little joint I always had ready at parties.
“Today, you do,” Halimi determined and blinked once in my direction, like an owl.
“You’ve got nerve,” I said.
“Damn straight,” Halimi agreed. “Whiskey?”
“Vodka,” I replied. “And something nice to wash it down with.”
He liked that.
“‘Vodka and something nice to wash it down with,’” he repeated. “Did you walk straight out of a Russian novel?”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“‘Vodka,’” Halimi repeated again, as if to himself, and moved in the direction of the drinks.
I got out of the uncomfortable chair I’d been sitting on and dragged a sun lounger over.
I flopped onto it with a sense of liberation.
I checked out all the couples who were gathering up their overheated children, barking orders at each other, and dedicated myself entirely to the pleasure of being free.
I thought with gratification of the novel I’d finished translating a few days before, meaning I was free for the next two weeks.
I looked at Halimi chatting with Eran and whispering something to Hila—who erupted in howls of laughter that disturbed a raven on a nearby antenna.
I wondered how wanton I’d feel if I slept with him that very night.
The movie finished. I tried to reach the remote to turn it off, but Halimi’s head had cemented my arm to the couch, and I had to squirm my way out from under him.
He lay on his side, his nose thrust into the embroidered cushions.
I stopped the movie as the credits began rolling and switched off the TV.
A distant noise made me look up, then silence resumed.
New sounds, I told myself. I need to get used to those too. It takes time to differentiate among the different barks of the neighborhood dogs, the habitual gurgling in the pipes, the rumbling that sounds like footsteps but is simply the generator adjusting itself.
Halimi’s cell phone vibrated. He usually kept it close to his person, and I preferred not to snoop too much.
More than once, I’d come across text messages that sickened me and made me hate him.
This time, in a rush of adrenaline, I reached for the phone, ready and waiting to hate him, to accuse him of being a complete bastard.
I imagined the two of us fighting, me scratching and kicking, him slapping and shaking me.
Not that anything like that had ever happened.
“Saul, call when you can” was the WhatsApp message in French. His mom. I put the phone on the table and hugged Halimi from behind. A few hours later, we dragged ourselves, exhausted, off to bed.