Fairfax Avenue was jammed with small restaurants that served falafel and shuwarma. They were in constant and largely unsuccessful competition with Cantor’s Delicatessen, the flagship anchored on the busiest part of the thoroughfare. Cantor’s was the premier hangout for newly arrived Israelis, as well as for Americans who wanted to meet them. Young Jewish girls who were bored by the nice Jewish boys they’d grown up with were thrilled by the prospect of these exotic specimens. (How strenuously, after all, could one’s parents object? These Israelis
were
Jewish—and war heroes to boot.)
The Israelis were perfectly well aware of their allure, and took full advantage of the many romantic opportunities it afforded them. Some were honorable; some weren’t. The rogues among them left a trail of broken hearts and bitter stories that eventually saddled the whole lot with reputations as womanizing bastards. When I came on the scene, that rep hadn’t yet evolved; we still had reason to believe that they could be okay guys.
My girlfriends and I tended to congregate at a joint across the street from Cantor’s. It had only about ten glass-topped tables, seating forty at most. On the walls hung posters of Israel. A tape of popular Israeli music played nonstop. The owners didn’t object to patrons nursing cups of coffee for hours rather than spending money on dinner. This made it a great favorite of the Israelis, and of the girls looking for Israelis.
It was there I met my first husband.
I wasn’t looking for a husband, or even a boyfriend. I had no desire to be added to anyone’s list of conquests. My friends and I had finished eating when I was aware that one of the sharks was cruising our way. I was about to warn my friends to ignore him when he pulled up a chair and sat down next to me.
It was one of those heavy-handed advances so typical of Israeli men. I signaled to my group to ignore him, but he’d already started chatting up one of the girls. She was getting all shiny-eyed and breathless and had taken it upon herself to make introductions. I half-turned to say hello—and sitting next to me was the most incredibly handsome man I had ever seen.
He had glossy dark curls and enormous green eyes. His features were angelic and yet strongly masculine. Gaby—that’s what his friends called him—was doubtless a womanizing cad. But he was very charming. And he was incredibly funny. Gaby’s wit was never self-deprecating; the joke was always at someone else’s expense. But it was always right on the mark. I was charmed by him despite myself. He spoke to me only in Hebrew, which seemed more intimate than English. About a hour after we’d met he told me, “I’ll take you home.”
It was not an offer. It was an order.
All my life I’ve had this thing for bad boys. I’m embarrassed even having to think about this, let alone talk about it. But I got turned on by that tired old macho come-on. Worldly as I considered myself, I was still a kid. I was wildly confident one moment, withdrawn the next. And so when I ran smack into this handsome, assertive man who seemed to know exactly what he wanted, I saw in him only what I wanted to see: real strength.
I let him take me home to the studio apartment I was sharing with a friend near campus. We began seeing each other. In less than a month I was living with him.
Gaby and I made an odd pair. Here I was, a grubby college student in jeans, whose idea of high fashion was the latest shipment at the army-navy surplus store. I studied all day and ventured out at night only for folk dancing. Gaby was flashy, always dressed to the nines in body-hugging suits. He seemed to have plenty of money. He slept all day and went nightclubbing all night. I found his lifestyle very glamorous, and allowed myself to be swept along by it.
Gaby played backgammon for a living. I’d never even heard of the game before I met him, but Gaby took great pains to teach it to me. He instructed me not only in the basic rules, but in theory and strategy as well. He spent hours explaining the various plays and how to size up your chances of winning at any given point. The sizing-up business was important, because the stakes of the game could be raised over and over again by “doubling.” One player could challenge by offering to double the stakes. If the other player refused, the game ended and the challenger scored a point. The stakes could range from a quarter a point to hundreds or even thousands of dollars a point. When you consider that fifty or sixty points can be easily racked up in one sitting, you can see how some heavy coin could change hands, fast.
I soon learned that backgammon was a real hot pastime with the rich. The craze was in its infancy when Gaby and I first met. Two years later, when I started law school, it had become a full-tilt mania. Bars and clubs everywhere had at least one or two tables. Some clubs devoted themselves exclusively to it. The most popular of these was Pips, in Beverly Hills. Pips catered to the rich and famous. The name of the club was inlaid discreetly in brass to the right of the large double-doored entrance. Muted lighting, thick carpets, and dark, paneled walls lent the place an air of understated opulence. The room devoted to backgammon was right off the foyer. It had ten tables and its own bar. I liked Pips more than other places on the backgammon circuit because it was relatively quiet and had cushiony, well-upholstered chairs. There, I could park myself and study while Gaby played.
Gaby and I would drop into Pips every other night or so while he tried to hustle up a “pigeon,” the pro’s term for a novice who played for high stakes. It wasn’t easy to get a game at Pips. The fashionable set usually played with their friends and were understandably leery of a flashy stranger with an Israeli accent. So if he failed to score, we’d move along to the Cavendish.
The Cavendish, located on the border between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, was a private club that had been devoted largely to bridge and gin rummy. Gambling, of course, was illegal, and I’d heard that the Cavendish had been raided a couple of times—but as far as I could tell that hadn’t slowed down the action. During the early seventies, the entire back room was given over to backgammon. The Cavendish was not the plush playground that Pips was. It was located in an office building, two flights up. There was no elevator that serviced the club. Nor was there any sign visible from the street to announce its existence.
The first thing you saw when you came in was a long counter where club personnel would check to make sure you were a member in good standing. To the left of that counter was a lounge with a couple of sofas and coffee tables. If you passed through the lounge, you’d walk into a large room filled with bridge tables. To the back was a partition of wood and glass; beyond that, backgammon.
Gaby never had trouble finding a game here. In fact, he made a lot of money. The tabloids later portrayed Gaby as a chronic cheat. I should tell you that backgammon is a game of cutthroats, and it was very common for players to accuse one another of cheating. So you have to take those stories with a grain of salt. All I can say is, I never saw him cheat.
At the beginning, I loved doing the clubs with Gaby. The nightlife reminded me a little of my time in Greenwich Village—which I still think of as the happiest, most carefree part of my life. But looking back on it, I can see that my life with Gaby was a weird existence by any standard. Gaby would play all night; then we’d hit a twenty-four-hour diner. By the time we got home, it would be four in the morning. We’d be too keyed up to sleep, so we’d watch TV until at least five or six A.M. Of course, then we slept until one or two in the afternoon. We’d start out again at seven or eight. It was common for us to see the sun only as it was setting or rising.
I skipped classes. Actually, I’d never gone much, to begin with. I’d check in for a few sessions at the beginning of the semester and then spend the rest of the term reading on my own. That suited me better. My grades stayed high. Everything worked out fine.
After the first year, however, I found the charm of the nightclub circuit wearing a little thin. Nocturnal living left me isolated, dependent almost solely upon Gaby for love and companionship. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that he and I fought a lot. Sometimes the conflicts were subtle—he’d get sarcastic over something as small as my not making dinner the way he liked it. But that was usually a pretext for deeper irritation, like the fact that I’d come home from dance class later than I was supposed to. He didn’t like being alone. He couldn’t stand not knowing where I was. He’d say he was afraid that whenever I wasn’t with him, I was seeing other men.
We’d scream at each other in Hebrew. Once he barricaded the front door with chairs and sat down on one of them, arms folded, refusing to let me out. I’d lock myself in the bathroom to get away from him; once, he literally kicked the door in. I tried to leave him so many times. One time in particular, we’d been fighting about God knows what, and I decided I’d had enough. I threw some clothes in my dance bag and ran out of the apartment. Gaby ran after me and caught me just as I reached my car. He grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me back with him across the street. He yanked me so hard the he knocked me off my feet. As he dragged me over the ground, I screamed “Let me go!” over and over. Finally, a neighbor opened a window and shouted, “If you don’t knock it off, I’m calling the police!” That sobered us up real fast.
But the brawls continued. I’d try to leave; he’d try to stop me. Once as I was headed for the door, he pushed me onto the bed. I got up and pushed him back. As I tried to make for the door again, he grabbed hold of me. The next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the floor and he was standing behind me. I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting. I swung my foot up behind me to ward him off and I felt it connect with his body. For one startled second I waited in dread for the retaliation. It didn’t come. I leaped to my feet and, without so much as looking at him, I ran to the balcony, climbed over the railing, jumped, and hit the ground running. Thank God, we lived on the first floor. I ran hard, convinced I’d hear him gaining on me. After about five minutes, I realized that he wasn’t following. Winded, chest heaving, I stopped and looked back. He wasn’t there.
I was puzzled. This was a first. I’d never run out the door without Gaby hot on my heels. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I hadn’t kicked him. After about an hour, I figured it would be safe to test the waters. I entered the apartment warily and found Gaby sitting in a chair in the bedroom, slumped over, ashen-faced. What had I done?
“Are you okay?” I asked him timidly.
“You kicked me in the balls, damn you,” he managed weakly.
I started to apologize, but he waved me away and limped over to the bed.
“Just leave me alone.”
I felt so guilty that I stayed. Things went back to our peculiar idea of normal. That meant rolling from the heat of battle to the unnatural quiet that settled over us after we’d wrung ourselves dry. Then we’d drift for a while into a loving period when we’d actually laugh and have fun together. And then it would all start up again.
Gaby never slapped or punched me. Things never escalated past the shoving stage, which was almost always the result of my trying to leave and his trying to restrain me. Once, during an argument, he pushed me against the wall, pinned my shoulder back with one hand, and tapped my cheek in a mock slap. Then he grabbed my chin. I asked him tearfully to let me go. He looked in my eyes and said, “I hold you like this because I love you. You make me act this way. I’d never get this way if I didn’t love you so much.”
And I accepted that. Somehow, we’d both come to equate a display of physical aggression with a demonstration of love. When our fights escalated to the point that I tried to walk out the door, his efforts to restrain me were actually a form of reassurance for us both. It was the way we proved to each other that we were still in love.
I spent half the time wishing I could get away from him; the other half of the time I felt that all I wanted to do was be with him. I hated myself for being so weak. I seemed to have no real personality of my own. Gaby was the mirror in which I saw myself. I’d changed my habits to fit his convenience. I’d pegged my expectations to his. I had never had a job other than waitressing or salesclerking. I knew that those menial jobs paid barely enough to live. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, unable to see a route out.
I had a vague, unformed, yet undeniable realization that having a job was where it was at. If you had well-paid work, you had some power in a relationship. You could be independent. And if you had a well-paid job that was interesting and satisfying? That almost took the place of a relationship. But how the hell did you get a gig like that?
By now, I’d realized I would never make it as an actor or a dancer. I had some talent, but not the insane drive you need to make it to the top. I had enough sense at the time to realize that I needed a profession. But I didn’t have any clear idea what that was. I was so clueless that I actually applied to United Airlines for a position as a flight attendant. (In those days we were still calling them stewardesses.) The airline called me back for a second interview. I’ll never forget it—about ten of us sitting around the table. They started asking us our political views. Everybody’s sitting there simpering, “I don’t know, I mean, I don’t really care.” Then I weighed in with a few strong opinions. I never heard from United again.
I fell back to reconsider. I could be a diplomat. Sure. Why not? This was admittedly an odd choice for someone as impulsive and confrontational as I am, but I already had a couple of languages under my belt. I could speak French and Hebrew. I applied to work in the Foreign Office in the State Department. During my first interview some functionary informed me that I would have to take an entry-level post as a secretary. I thought,
I don’t see how that works. Secretary to diplomat? No. I don’t think so
.
In the spring of 1973, after graduating from UCLA, I took a job with a law firm that specialized in estate planning. My God, was that dense. I did accounts receivable and reception work. Basically, I was a girl Friday. At the outset, I approached the job rather too casually for my employers’ taste. I came in late, showed up when I felt like it. Before long, my supervisor called me in and warned me that I was about to be fired.