Look for Me (8 page)

When I came to know Daniel better I understood that he felt there was something trivial and tedious about endless analyses of the situation, endless conversations in living rooms. A few months after we married there was a problem with an Arab at the firm he worked for. The army approached the company and asked them to design a big military complex. It was a great contract for them, huge. The army said this guy, Isa, who was one of the architects, couldn’t be part of the project, or even part of the firm, because he didn’t have clearance. The firm didn’t want to fire Isa, but they promised to keep him away from the project. They took away his keys to the filing cabinets and moved him to an isolated office. He had an entire floor to himself, but he was all alone there. Daniel quit in protest, and one other woman left, too. Daniel didn’t tell me about any of this while it was going on. He just came home one day and announced that he’d quit his job. “Why?” I asked. “Too many racist cowards,” he said. I had to ply him with questions to get the full story.

It was time for the sea, my drug and my salvation. The sea kept me from drowning myself, a notion I had never seriously contemplated, but I knew that if I did, the sea would be there to hold me up and send me back. Every evening I walked the one hundred steps from my flat to the beach, to the soft hot sand
or the soft cool sand, depending on the season. There were times when I didn’t go out until late at night, but my favorite time was dusk, when the waves turned into white satin and pale blue silk with gray transparent strips of light shimmering under the fading sun.

I stepped out of our building and waved to Marik, a young immigrant with smooth skin and slanted eyes who guarded the gleaming new City Beach Hotel across the street. Poor Marik sat on his stool all day, sullen and languid behind an incongruous office desk that was taken out to the street every morning and removed at midnight.

I once had a very embarrassing experience with Marik. One sweltering summer night I had left the house wearing a long cotton dress. I rarely wore anything but jeans, but I had a yeast problem at the time and the doctor had recommended loose clothing until it went away. So I bought an ankle-length Indian dress; I wanted it to be light and colorful because I didn’t want to be mistaken for a religious woman. I wasn’t wearing panties; they only made matters worse, and the dress was long enough to provide a feeling of security. Unfortunately, on my way back from the beach, just as I reached my building, I stepped on a sidewalk grate, the kind that produced such winsome cinematic results when Marilyn Monroe encountered it in her white skirt. In my case, the dress blew skyward above my shoulders, leaving me completely naked on the street.

I didn’t understand at first what had happened, which made the dreadful moment last even longer. I tried to pull down my dress, without success; my second idea was to crouch down. Only then did it occur to me that I had to move away from the grate under my feet. Luckily it was already dark, and the street was deserted, but Marik was still on duty. He had ducked inside the hotel in a panic.

I decided to ignore the event entirely, and made a point of waving to him as usual when I left the building the following morning. But Marik never recovered, and though he continued to nod back in his usual sullen way, after that day he looked mortified every time he saw me.

I waved at him now, then headed west, toward the sea.

Though I had walked down this street ten thousand times on ten thousand evenings, the pangs of my unrequited love for it never diminished. The buildings on my side of the street were weather-stained in competing layers of black, sepia, ash, bone, peach. Geometric patterns emerged from the edges and rims of windows, doors, security bars, the metal rods of air-conditioner supports, the fat, hairy trunks of palm trees next to narrow electric poles. A multitude of details interrupted the patterns: black and gray graffiti, abandoned scraps in the alley, crevices and cracks in the walls, the tips of new sunny-white buildings peeking from other streets. In the midst of this collage a naked neon woman reclined on a white panel like an oblivious angel; she had once reigned over Bar Sexe. The caged cavern under the sign no longer led to a bar but was still an important meeting place for certain citizens who, as I quickly discovered, did not like to be photographed.

Further down, behind a brash pop drink sign, our miniature La Scala maintained its dignity, despite the yellow and maroon sheets nailed to its arches. The real La Scala’s arches are on the ground floor, but here the four arches had been reproduced on all three stories, and the building, which stands at an intersection, curves gently around the corner. I often thought about the surge of enthusiasm that lay behind the design of this building, when the city was very young. And though the arches were now smudged and dingy and someone told me that people did drugs behind the yellow and maroon sheets, the faith that had inspired this doomed project still had the power to move me.

I walked past the defunct Bar Sexe, past our miniature La Scala, past the chairs scattered on the sidewalk outside the little convenience store, past the store’s mounted television, set permanently to the sports channel, across the street to the paved boardwalk, with its patterns of concentric circles echoing the movement of the waves, and down the stairs to the beach. The change from walking on a hard surface to sinking unpredictably with each step was always a surprise. At this time of night the sea was black, except for strips of pearl white foam along the edge of waves, and navy blue shadows where light from the street or moon happened to fall. There were couples lying on blankets here and there, a few joggers, and one or two determined late-night swimmers. A voice said, “Mia?”

I turned and saw a man with a long oval face standing behind me. He was dark-skinned, tall and very broad, like a weight lifter.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”

Normally I would not have answered because I had a rule about pickups and the rule was that I didn’t do them. A year after Daniel vanished I had yielded to the relentless pressure of friends and acquaintances, and allowed someone to follow me home. I met him at a little video store down the street from my flat. There was barely room to move between the three crowded shelves, and our bodies kept brushing against one another as we looked for movies. Finally he spoke to me. I suppose it was partly his height that misled me about his age, though it’s also possible that I was too detached to worry about how old he might be. I didn’t discourage him, and when I left the store he trotted next to me like a colt. He came into my flat, and then remembered to ask my name. I didn’t want to tell him. “What do I look like?” I asked him. He considered. “You look like a Simone,” he said. “That’s me, Simone,” I said. He let it go; he was too excited to insist. I liked him: his soft green eyes, his
anxious shoulders, the way he talked about his collie and his trip to Italy on the way to my place.

But in bed, he barely knew what he was doing—though he wouldn’t admit it and tried hard not to show it. I had to explain some things to him; he was embarrassed and pretended he’d known all along. Everyone had told me I needed to see other men, but it didn’t work. The experience had no relation to anything that was going on in my life, to who I was or how I felt. After he left I soaked the sheets in soapy water and called Odelia. “I wonder why everyone thinks adultery is such a good thing,” I said. I told her about the boy and about the sheets soaking in the tub. “Washing sheets after the guy leaves … that’s always a bad sign,” she agreed. And then she apologized, because she’d been one of the people advising me to date. “Do what you feel is right,” she said.

For weeks afterward he called me every day, came knocking at my door. It turned out that he was sixteen and in high school. He was desperate, and it took a lot of energy getting rid of him, and I hurt him. I promised myself that this would be the last time, and it was.

But that night, after the demonstration in Ein Mazra’a and the two intrusive sentences in the letter to my father—that night I wanted distraction. And though I had no intention of letting this man follow me home, I didn’t send him away.

“I’ve seen you here,” the man said. “I’ve seen you walking here at all hours, as solitary as a wolf in the forest.”

I continued strolling along the shore, where the tide had created a smooth shelf of wet sand, flat and generous, giving us back the imprints of our shoes as we walked.

“Once I saw you with a camera slung around your neck,” the man said. “You were taking photographs at dusk. Is it okay with you that I’m walking next to you? Tell me if it isn’t. I don’t want to intrude.”

And this is where normally I would have said, “It isn’t okay, go away, I need to be alone.”

But I said, “I don’t mind.”

His spirits lifted. “You’re very kind,” he said. “You have a compassionate heart. It really shows on you, it sits on you like a coat. A coat of many colors,” he chuckled.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” I asked him.

“I just came back from reserve duty, I came for a jog, to clear my mind,” he said. “To breathe in some sea air. You can feel the heat coming from the waves, but it’s a pleasant heat.”

I took another look at him, and it was true, he was dressed for jogging: running shoes, shorts, T-shirt. He looked reliable; he looked like someone you could trust to pick you up in his large arms and carry you if you fainted or had a seizure from tear gas. He would know not only what to do but also how to do it, because he was clever. You could tell these things from his eyes, his hands, and especially his way of speaking—not just his voice but also the interesting words he used, his perfect grammar. It was pleasing to the ear, his poetic use of language.

“You use nice words,” I said.

“Nice words?” He was puzzled.

“Yes.”

“No one ever said that to me.”

“People don’t notice things.”

“I
never noticed,” he laughed. “What sort of nice words?”

“The way you speak, the phrases you use.”

“Come to think of it, I did very well on the vocabulary part of my psychometric exam. I remember they remarked on that, they were impressed. I just have a good memory. Maybe one day I’ll write a novel. About reincarnation. A man who was a warrior in the days of the Bible, reborn today …a hero from ancient times, like Samson, let’s say. Fighting the Philistines.
The whole story of Samson repeated, because he’s a reincarnation. Do you believe in reincarnation? I do.”

“I support the Palestinian struggle,” I told him.

“Oh well,” he said. He didn’t care. He only cared about whether he was going to get anywhere with me. “This is romantic,” he said, “walking along the shore with you.”

“It would be, if I knew you,” I said. “If I knew you and we were in love. Then it would be romantic. As it is, I can’t think of anything less romantic.”

“We were destined to meet, it was preordained,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“How do I know you’re not a psychotic rapist?” I asked him.

He paused, surprised. “I’m safe,” he said.

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, a son. I missed him while I was away. I’m glad to be back from reserve duty. He’s in kindergarten. A very naughty boy. Naughty, but clever. You know what he asked me the other day?”

“No.”

“Where is yesterday’s time? Is it gone, or is it in our thoughts? That’s what he asked. Isn’t that clever?”

“Yes.”

“It’s nice to be home.”

“Where were you?”

“In Dar al-Damar. I’m in a special unit.”

“What do you do, in civilian life?”

“I teach programming.”

“You could be lying,” I said. “I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you. Maybe you just escaped from prison. Where you were serving time for killing your wife with a chain saw.”

“I’ll show you my ID if that helps. My army ID too, if you want, I think it’s still in my pocket. I’d show you my business card but I don’t have my wallet on me—I just came to jog.”

I laughed. He was very happy when I laughed.

“Okay, show me your ID,” I said.

He pulled his ID out of his pocket. His name was Aaron and he was forty years old. Then he showed me his army ID. He looked about eighteen in the photo.

“Well, now that I’ve seen your ID and I even know your serial number, I guess you can come over.”

“Thank you. You can trust me.”

“I was just kidding.”

“Why not? Why not? This is perfect—you, me, a perfect night.”

“No,” I said.

I didn’t say anything more. Aaron went on talking about how much he loved the sea, and then he talked about his son, but I wasn’t listening. He gave up and walked silently next to me.

We reached the southern end of the beach. “I have to go now,” I told him. “It’s getting late.”

“Do you have a boyfriend waiting for you?”

“No, I live alone. Good-bye.”

“Maybe I’ll run into you another time.”

“Maybe,” I said. I climbed the stairs to the boardwalk and walked back to my flat.