Avram walks beside her, wriggling his toes in Ofer's shoes. When he first stepped into the shoes, he immediately announced that he was swimming in them, and that it wouldn't work. "It will, it will," Ora mumbled and took out a pair of thick walking socks from his backpack. "Put these on." He did, and still the shoes were a little big, but they were more comfortable than his old pair, whose soles were so worn out that he could feel the ground through them. "Just let your feet sail, and think about what a nice feeling that is," Ora advised.

He spreads out in Ofer's s.p.a.ce, measuring his toes. The soles of his feet study his son's footprints. Tiny dips and mounds, secret messages. Things even Ora doesn't know about Ofer.

"But most of all, he fixed up Adam. Cleanliness and neatness and discipline, like I said, and then came the reeducation. How can I explain it? Adam was a fairly quiet boy. I wasn't much of a chatterbox either, back then. I didn't really have that many people to talk to. Adam and I were alone at home most of the time, and we had our little life, and it was pretty good, considering, and talking really wasn't the most important part of it. We got along just fine without a lot of words. We understood each other perfectly. And I also think-although maybe not-"

"What?"

"Maybe I'd had a little too many words out of the two of you, all those years, you and Ilan together. Maybe I wanted a bit of quiet."

He sighs.

"All that talk of yours, the brilliant, witty yada yada yada that never stopped for a second, that constant effort the two of you made."

Ilan and me, Avram thinks. Two arrogant peac.o.c.ks.

"And I always felt a bit left out."

"You? Really?" Troubled, he does not know how to tell her that he always felt she was the center, their focal point. That she, in her own way, created them.

"Well, I never really got into that thing of yours."

"But it was all because of you, for you."

"Too much, too much."

They walk silently. The dog trails them at a fixed distance, her ears c.o.c.ked in their direction.

"And Ilan"-she returns from her contemplations-"was really amazed at Adam, at his underdeveloped speech, as he put it, and he started teaching him how to talk. Do you get it? At the age of two and three-quarters he put him through talking boot camp."

"How?"

"He just talked to him all the time. He would take him to day care in the morning and talk about everything they saw on the way. Bring him home from day care and talk to him about what happened at day care. He asked questions and demanded answers. He wouldn't let him off the hook. It was like a one-man protest movement: Fathers Against Silence."

Avram laughs softly and Ora turns red: her joke worked.

"He talked to Ofer while he dressed him and while he put him to bed and while he fed him. I heard him all the time. There was a constant hubbub of speech at home, and Adam and I weren't used to that kind of noise, and it wasn't easy for me. I'm sure it wasn't for Adam, either.

"There was no more pointing and saying 'that.' Now there was 'doorframe,' 'lock,' 'shelves,' 'saltshaker.' I heard it in the background the whole time, like a broken record. 'Say "shelf." ' 'Shelf.' 'Say "gra.s.shopper." ' 'Gra.s.shopper.' And he was right, I'm not saying he wasn't. I felt he was doing the right thing, and I could really see Adam's world growing richer and fuller because he suddenly had names for things. I'm just not...I don't...You see, I don't really know how to say it exactly." She laughs and points sharply to the spot between her eyes: "This."

Her heart pounded when she saw the immense thirst coming from Adam, which she previously hadn't detected at all. Because after the initial shock, he seemed to get what Ilan was offering him, and she suddenly had a prattling child.

Ilan-she explains to Avram-talked to Adam like you talk to a grown-up, both in vocabulary and in tone. It stung her to hear the businesslike, egalitarian way Ilan addressed the boy, using a voice that did not contain a hint of the childish, slightly playful tone that she herself used. There was almost no word he considered too sophisticated for a conversation with Adam. "Say 'a.s.sociation.'" "a.s.sociation." "Say 'philosophy,' 'Kilimanjaro,' 'creme brulee.'"

Ilan explained to him about synonyms, drawing pictures of words as identical twins. At three, Adam learned that the moon was also a crescent, or Luna. That at night it could be dark, dim, or even dusky. That a person could jump, but also leap and hop. (As Avram listens, a strange smile curls inside him, slightly proud, slightly embarra.s.sed.) Ilan used nursery rhymes to teach him grammar and spent hours practicing "my child," "his rabbit," "her fingers."

Every so often Ora would find the courage to protest. "You're training him to do tricks, you're turning him into your toy."

"For him it's just like LEGO, but with words," Ilan replied.

She wanted to object-You're just marking him as your territory-but all she said was, "He's too young for that, a boy of his age doesn't have to know all about possessive p.r.o.nouns."

"But look how much he enjoys it!"

"Of course. He can tell you're enjoying it and he wants you to like him. He'll do anything to make you like him."

"And listen to this"-she tells Avram parenthetically-"about six months after Ilan came home, Adam asked where the man in the hut had gone."

"What did you say?"

"I just couldn't talk, and all Ilan said was, 'He left, he's never coming back.' I only just remembered that. What were we talking about?"

She was weak. Her second pregnancy, which had begun with ease and a sense of health, grew burdensome and sickly toward the end. Most of the time she felt elephantine and drained and ugly. "In the last trimester, Ofer was pressing on a nerve that gave me horrible pain every time I stood up." For the last two months she had to spend most of the time lying in one position, in bed or in the big armchair in the living room, and her breathing was labored, cautious-it hurt to breathe sometimes. She would stare at Ilan and Adam as they buzzed around her with intellectual fervor while she grew weaker and weaker, squeezing into the old familiar niche she had carved out years ago with a dull sort of self-deprecation.

She had no way to prevent Ilan and Adam from constantly amusing themselves with synonyms, rhymes, and a.s.sociation games, and of course she was flattered when the day-care teacher talked about Adam's huge leap, and how within such a short time he seemed to have matured by at least two years. His status at day care greatly improved, although his wetting problem grew worse for some reason. But at least he was able to report the little accidents, so it was hard to get angry. "'My pee-pee escaped,'" Ora quotes with a crooked smile. "What are you smiling about?" she asks irritably.

"I was thinking," Avram says without looking at her, "that I would have definitely done that, too."

"With your child? What Ilan did?"

"Yes."

"I can't say the thought never crossed my mind," she notes, and vows not to expand on this point, ever.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Come on, what?"

"That that was really what he was looking for. A partner like you. So that he'd have someone to be witty and clever with."

Avram silently twirls a strand of his beard.

"Because I wasn't a good enough subst.i.tute," she continues drily. "At least not in that regard. I couldn't do it and I didn't try, either."

"But why did you even have to?"

"Ilan needed it. Oh, how he needed you and what you had together. And how withered he felt without you."

Avram's face burns, and Ora has the sudden gnawing thought that she may not have understood what Ilan was going through at all, and that perhaps he had not been looking for a subst.i.tute for Avram, but trying to be be Avram. Excited, she hastens her steps: Maybe he was trying as hard as he could to be a father the way he imagined Avram would be. Avram. Excited, she hastens her steps: Maybe he was trying as hard as he could to be a father the way he imagined Avram would be.

They are so lost in their thoughts that the sudden appearance of a road startles them. What's more, the path markings have disappeared. Ora walks back to look but returns disappointed. We were happy with our path, she thinks, and now what? How will we get to Jerusalem?

The road is not especially wide, but vehicles zoom past frequently, and they both feel slow and dull in comparison. They would happily retreat to the quiet, light-filled meadow, or even back to the shadowy forest. But they can't go back. Ora cannot, and Avram seems to have been infected by her onward-and-forward purposefulness. They stand there confused, looking left and right, pulling their heads back with every pa.s.sing car.

"We're like those j.a.panese soldiers who emerged from the forests thirty years after the war was over," she says.

"I really am like that," he reminds her.

She can see that the road and the violence that emanates from it are scaring Avram. His face and body have locked up. She looks for the b.i.t.c.h. She was walking behind them just a few moments ago, keeping her distance, but now she's gone. What to do? Should she go back and look for her? And how will she get her across the road? How will she get the dog and Avram across?

"Come on," she says, swinging into action, knowing that if she doesn't do something now, his enervation will seep into her and paralyze them. "Come on, we're crossing."

She holds his hand, feeling how defeated and stalked he is by the road.

"When I give the word, run."

He nods feebly. His eyes are on the tips of his shoes.

"You can run, right?"

His face suddenly changes. "Tell me something, wait a minute-"

"Later, later."

"No, wait. What you said before-"

"Pay attention, after the truck. Now!"

She takes some steps into the road but is pulled back-his ma.s.s, his weight. She quickly looks to both sides. A bright purple jeep roars around the bend at them, flashing its headlights. They are stuck almost in the middle of the lane-can't swallow and can't throw up-and Avram is frozen. She calls to him and tugs at his hands. She thinks he's talking to her, his lips are moving. The jeep whips past them with an angry honk and Ora prays no one comes from the other side. "Tell me," he mumbles again and again, "tell me."

"What?" she groans in his ear. "What's so urgent right this minute?"

"I...I...What did I want to ask...What did I want to ask ..."

A truck rolls in their direction, bellowing with what sounds like a foghorn. They're standing in its lane. Ora pulls Avram toward her and out of the truck's path, then they freeze on the white stripe in the middle of the road. They will die here. Run over like two jackals.

"n.o.body else, either?"

"n.o.body else what? what? What are you talking about, Avram?" What are you talking about, Avram?"

"About what you said, the subst.i.tute, that Ilan...that Ilan didn't have."

Through the din of a pa.s.sing horn she hears a thin whisper slip away in his voice like the sleeve of a child playing hide-and-seek behind the drapes. She stares at him: his large, round, sun-scalded head, the wild tufts of hair sprouting on both sides, his blue eyes with their gaze refracting like a teaspoon in a gla.s.s. She finally understands what he's asking.

She slowly smoothes both hands over his face, his disheveled beard, his broken eyes, erasing the road around them with one stroke. The road will wait. Very quietly she says, "Do you really not know? Can't you guess? Ilan never had another friend like you."

"I didn't, either," he says, and bows his head.

"Me neither. Now come on, give me your hand, we're crossing."

"I'm in h.e.l.l!" he announced in a letter from a pre-military training camp, at age seventeen. "I'm at the Be'er Ora base, which is undoubtedly named after you. You would like it here, because we get to eat sand and gun grease, and jump off twelve-foot-high platforms like hunted fowl, to land on canvas sheets. All your favorite pastimes. Me? I make do with fantasies about you, and failed attempts to deflower your stand-ins. Last night, for example, I invited a young lady named Atarah to my room. I have no love for her in my heart, as you well know, but (a) I had the impression that she was available, and (b) biology calls...The excuse (a lowly trick!) was that we'd listen to Paul Temple Paul Temple (it was the Vand.y.k.e Affair episode) on the radio together, but then they announced that the girls weren't allowed in the boys' rooms, and I would therefore be left on my lonesome to shrivel away in my hole. Meanwhile, Ilan disappeared with the guys-who included, if you ask me, a number of girls (FYI), and there was undoubtedly some fooling around going on there." (it was the Vand.y.k.e Affair episode) on the radio together, but then they announced that the girls weren't allowed in the boys' rooms, and I would therefore be left on my lonesome to shrivel away in my hole. Meanwhile, Ilan disappeared with the guys-who included, if you ask me, a number of girls (FYI), and there was undoubtedly some fooling around going on there."

"This morning, my dear," he wrote the next day, "we got up at five-thirty and went to work on a mountain, clearing stones, weeding, and building terraces (Can you imagine me there? Without an undershirt?). I devised a plot whereby I was the only boy working with seven members of your gender, but they turned out to be cold-b.u.t.tocksed females with no fondness for the common Avram wherever he may grow. Next to me was Ruchama Levitov (I wrote to you about her, we once had a hasty and cheerless affair), so I had the opportunity to examine our relationship more profoundly. But in the end, as usual, we just engaged in small talk (I've made up a new word for it: 'chat-air.' Do you approve?), and she had the audacity to tease me about how we always argue and fight and break up and then start over again, like a double diagram. I gave her a perfect Jean-Paul Belmondo look and said nothing, but afterward it occurred to me that this has always been my fate with girls, that something never quite works out, and even when I have the occasional success, there's always a moment when she suddenly gets scared of me and runs away, or claims I'm too much for her (Did I tell you about Tova G.? About how when we finally horitzontalized, she declared that I was 'too intimate' [??!!] and literally fled from the bed?!). Honestly, Ora, I don't know what my problem is with girls, and I'd be happy to discuss it with you one day, candidly and uncensored.

"Yours, blister-footed Caligula, as he rushes to dinner."

Ora rummaged through the br.i.m.m.i.n.g shoe box and fished out another letter from the same period. She glanced at Avram as he lay there covered in bandages and casts, and read out loud.

"My Shaina-Shaindle Shaina-Shaindle. Chemistry cla.s.s yet again, with promising talk of endodermic and exothermic activation reactions. I had a huge argument with the teacher. It was fantastic! She tried to get out of it, so I had to smite her hip and thigh. She crawled out of the jubilated cla.s.sroom with her tail between her legs, and I made my triumphant victory laps around the cla.s.ssss!"

She glanced at him. No response. Two days earlier, the doctors had gradually started to bring him out of the induced coma, but even when he was half awake he did not open his eyes or speak. He was snoring now. His mouth was open, his face and exposed shoulder covered with open, p.u.s.s.y wounds. His left arm was in a cast, as were both his legs. His right leg was raised and suspended in a Thomas splint, and tubes emerged from every part of his body. For several nights she had read to him from letters he'd sent her when they were young. Ilan did not believe in this therapeutic approach, but she hoped Avram's own words would be able to penetrate him and rouse him to speech.

Perhaps there really was no point. She leafed through the letters and notes. Every so often she pulled one out and read from it. Usually her voice died down after a few lines, and then she read to herself and laughed again, struck by how Avram, at the age of sixteen and a half, used to describe his dates with other girls-"Don't worry, they're only pale imitations of you, and this is only until you decide to lift the pa.s.sion embargo you've imposed on me and give yourself to me wholly, including the holy sites"-and his failed courtships, and the mishaps. Above all, he described the ridiculous, humiliating mishaps. Ora had never met anyone who reported with such glee on his own failures and shortcomings. One evening, after seeing a movie with Chayuta H., he had walked her to Peterson Street, where she lived. He pulled her into a yard and they started making out. When he reached into her pants, Chayuta stopped him and said, "No, I've got the curse," and Avram, who didn't realize what she meant, was overcome with compa.s.sion. He consoled her and encouraged her and tried to rescue her from this surprising, exciting self-loathing, which he would never have imagined existed in lighthearted Chayuta. Chayuta listened silently as he prattled on, and since she was so quiet, for the first time that evening, Avram felt that he was finally reaching a pure spot in her cynical, socialite soul, and when he went so far in his eager consolations as to rival Gregor Samsa and the Brothers Karamazov, Chayuta cut him off and grinningly explained to him what exactly she had meant.

He described the episode to Ora with merciless precision, and she laughed from the bottom of her heart and wrote how much she hated that ugly euphemism for menstruation. With rare courage, she added that when she gets her period-I had a medical problem for a few years after Ada, but now it's all right, she explained-she actually feels extremely feminine. He replied immediately that the fact that she had chosen to tell him something like that meant she had already made up her mind to be only his friend friend, and that he must be like some sort of male girlfriend to her, and in his opinion that's what she had really decided about him right from the start, when they met in the hospital, and it killed him, but that seemed to be his permanent fate, to suffice with the leftovers of her love, or of any love.

Hundreds of notes and letters were stuffed into that shoe box, written in his crowded, frenetic handwriting, which shuddered sometimes with a tension that could not be released even in words. The pages were covered with doodles, charming ill.u.s.trations, arrows, asterisks, and footnotes. He overflowed with inventions and puns and tricks and little traps, meant to test her attention to all his details and minutiae. On the backs of the envelopes she read: "Hilik and Bilik, Ltd., Accessories and Auxiliary Equipment for Dreams and Nightmares." Or, "S. Bubari, Pharmacological Consultant for Cuckoldry Troubles." On each envelope, next to the official stamp, he stuck his own private stamps, on which he drew himself and her, and, of course, her with Ilan, and with their three, five, seven future children. He cut out funny or rude newspaper clippings for her, and copied engravings from tombstones in Jerusalem ("This one reads, 'Dispirited by Torments'-it's like they were thinking of me!"). He sent detailed knitting patterns for an elf's hat made of thick wool with red ta.s.sels, and his own recipes for hamantaschen, quiches, and cakes, which she never dared to bake because simply reading the recipes made it clear that too many conflicting flavors were doing battle.

Avram groaned in his sleep and his lips moved. Ora held her breath. He mumbled something incoherent, squirmed with pain, and sighed. She wet his lips with a washcloth and wiped the sweat from his face. He relaxed.

He had started writing to her the morning after their last night together in isolation. "I feel as though we've been surgically separated," he wrote. "I am wounded, bruised, and desolate, now that you're uprooted from me." Another wave of wounded soldiers had arrived, and Ora, Ilan, and Avram had been moved to different hospitals. He wrote to her daily for three weeks, even before he got hold of her address, and then he sent the first twenty-one letters in a decorated shoe box. After that, for six years, he never ceased producing missives of five, ten, or twenty pages, covered with limericks and poems and quotations and excerpts from radio plays. He sent telegrams too-he called them yellegrams-and sketches of stories he would one day write and swirling footnotes and erasures that intentionally revealed more than they concealed. He gave her his whole heart, and she always read his letters with a voyeuristic l.u.s.t, slight suspense, raw nerves, an almost physical longing for Ada, and a vague sense of guilt at betraying her. In the first months of their correspondence, she had a half-formed snicker ready and waiting at the corner of her mouth each time she opened a letter-a snicker that sometimes, as she read, turned into a sort of pre-crying spasm.

And in each letter he interjected something about Ilan. To pique her curiosity or to torture himself-she wasn't sure.

"Today, Ora," she read to him in a whisper and leaned in closer to his face, which was cut to the bone, "I am mired in lonesome sorrow, and I walk by myself, like Rudyard Kipling's cat (do you know him?). The only character I commune with is Ilan, he that is maimed in his privy parts. As you know, we habitually discuss the female species, or rather, I discuss it, particularly you, of course, and Ilan does not respond. But it is his silence that makes me think he is not completely indifferent to you, although it's obvious to me that he has yet to make what I have termed, in consultation with my friend Sren Kierkegaard, 'the leap of love.' On the other hand, he does insist on maintaining total indifference to the herds of fair girls-and some unfair ones too-who inundate him and seek his favors (!?). For the most part, I am the one who advises him, due to his lack of experience and utter numskullery in his relations with women. I do this, of course, with complete neutrality, as a person now observing exclusively from the margins, without any personal stake in the subject-a.k.a., you you. You wouldn't believe the enthusiasm with which I attempt to convince him that you are his intended one. You must be asking yourself why I do this. It is because integrity dictates that I do so, and because I can plainly see that even though I am intended for you, you are, unfortunately, not intended for me not intended for me. That is the bitter truth, Ora, and that is the law of my love for you: I shall bring you only heartache and complications, and so, precisely because I care so deeply about you, and precisely because of my total and un-egotistical love, I must fan the flames of Ilan in your direction, open his bedaubed eyes, and remove the foreskin of his heart-isn't it nuts of me?

"Get cracking and write quick, lest I sprain my heart with longings!"

But in the P.S. of that same letter he cheerfully reported his intricate and unfortunate affairs with other girls, who were, as always, only a cheap and available subst.i.tute, and only because she, in the depths of her heart, insisted-he was convinced-on loving the forlorn Ilan, he of the Kafkaesque joie de vivre, who was utterly unwilling to acknowledge her existence, and because she refused to wed Avram and move into a chamber (preferably one with maid service) with him.

During the first few weeks she replied with short, cautious letters whose timidity embarra.s.sed her. He did not complain. He never kept score with her over the number of pages or the meagerness of their content. On the contrary: he was always enthusiastic and grateful for every sign she sent. Then she grew bolder. She told him, for example, about her older brother, the rebellious Marxist who was making her parents' lives miserable, doing only what he felt like, which made her angry but also jealous. She wrote about her loneliness among her friends, and her anxiety before compet.i.tions-she had almost abandoned other athletics and was focusing on swimming; the transition from dry to wet made her feel instantly better; there were days when she felt like a burning torch hitting the water. And she wrote to him about Ada, missing her in writing as only he could understand. Every so often-actually, in every letter-she could not resist asking him, in a P.S., to send Ilan her warm regards. Although she knew it pained him, she could not help it, and in the next letter she would be unable to hold back from asking if he'd given the regards.

Of this correspondence, of this new friendship, and of the maddening heartache caused by thinking about Ilan, she told none of her friends. Since coming home from her hospitalization in Jerusalem, Ora knew that what had happened to her there all those nights was too precious and rare to be handed over to strangers, and this was all the more true of what was happening to her with them now, with both of them; the duality presented a mystery she did not even try to decipher. It had snuck up on her secretly and struck her, like lightning or an accident, and all she could do was adapt to the consequences of the strike. But from day to day it grew more obvious, until she knew with unimpeachable certainty: they were both necessary to her. They were essential, like two angels who ultimately fulfill the same mission: Avram, whose presence was inescapable down to the very last thread, and Ilan, who was entirely absent.

Almost without her noticing it, writing to Avram became a sort of diary she kept. But since she could not write to him about how much she missed Ilan, day and night, and about the physical longing that burned in her, she wrote about other things. More and more she wrote about her parents, mainly her mother. She filled pages upon pages about her and had never imagined she could have so much to say. At first, when she read her own words, she would be shocked at the treachery, yet unable to keep from saying these things, and in any case she had the peculiar feeling that Avram knew everything about her, even what she might try to hide. She told him about the constant, exhausting efforts to guess the reasons for her mother's anger and for the implied accusations that were concealed in the s.p.a.ce of the house like dense, inescapable netting. She revealed the well-kept family secret of her mother's attacks: every few days she would shut herself up in her room and beat herself cruelly. Ora found out by accident, when she was ten and hiding, as she often did, in the linen chest in her parents' closet. She saw her mother come into the room quickly and lock the door, and then she started to hit herself silently, scratch her own stomach and chest, then scream in a whispered voice: "Garbage, garbage, even Hitler didn't want you." At that moment Ora made up her mind that she would have a wonderful family of her own. It was a determined, crystalline decision, not the kind of fantasies little girls often entertain. For Ora, it was a life decision. She would have her own family, with a husband and children-two, no more-and their house would always be full of light, even in its farthest corners. She could see it vividly in her mind's eye: a house flooded with light and free of shadows, in which she and her husband and her two small children sailed happily, transparent and open, so that there would never be any surprises in it like this one like this one. She still pictured it when she was fifteen, and twenty. She would have at least one person, or two, or three, of all the people in the world, of all the mysterious and unexpected strangers, whom she could really know.

As she wrote the letters, she gradually found that dim and burdensome things became clear when she laid them out on paper. She was somewhat surprised to discover that she could write with such clarity and precision-she had always thought she was best as a reader of the really good writers-and then she started to feel that she wanted, needed needed, to write, and that, no less than that, she wanted Avram to read what she had to say and to tell her more and more of what he saw in her.

And warm regards to Ilan.

Once he wrote: "You are my first love."

She was dumbstruck for two weeks. Then she wrote that she was not ready to talk about love yet. That she felt they were both too young and immature and that she wanted to wait a few years before discussing matters of love. He said that now, after having written it explicitly, and after having told Ilan, he was completely certain of his love for her, and that she held his fate in her hands. He enclosed a stamped envelope for her reply. She asked him vehemently to stop talking about his love for her, because it introduced anxiety and unhealthy feelings to their beautiful, pure relationship. He replied: "A: In my opinion love is the healthiest, loveliest, purest feeling there is. And B: I can no longer stop talking about my love for you, my love for you, my love for you ..." He filled the whole page.

"It was not love at first sight," he wrote in a telegram he sent a few hours after the letter-but which reached her one week sooner-"because I loved you long before that stop before I met you stop I love you backwards too stop even before I existed stop because I only became me when I met you stop." She sent a short letter saying it was difficult for her to keep corresponding with him now, she had a lot of exams and compet.i.tions coming up and she was very busy. As evidence, she enclosed an article from Maariv Youth Maariv Youth that described a high-jump meet at the Wingate Inst.i.tute in which she had partic.i.p.ated. He sent back the letter with the article's ashes and did not write for three weeks. She almost lost her mind with antic.i.p.ation, and then he started writing again as if nothing had happened: that described a high-jump meet at the Wingate Inst.i.tute in which she had partic.i.p.ated. He sent back the letter with the article's ashes and did not write for three weeks. She almost lost her mind with antic.i.p.ation, and then he started writing again as if nothing had happened: "Last night I was at a jazz show with Ilan, RIP (who, amazingly, sends his regards this time and keeps trying to peek over my arm at what I'm writing, even though he continues to insist that he's not interested in you!). Anyway, last night we were at Foos-Foos. It was extremely wonderful, and I had full-on experiences with all sorts of lovely women who exchanged looks with me, but unfortunately not phone numbers. With the music in the background, I was able to pull together some of the opinions I've been gathering about girls lately, and I came up with some well-founded and interesting theories about them, and mainly about you. I believe that, ultimately, you will not tie your fate with mine but with some other dude, Ilan or someone of his ilk, the point is, a guy who will definitely not tickle your navel with giggles like I do, and won't drive your mind wild with sharp observations like I do, and make every organ of your body tremble with pleasure like I do. But the thing is, he'll be hunkier, much hunkier, and calmer and more solid, and mainly more understandable understandable to you than I am (and your mother will love him at first sight, I'm positive!). Yes, yes, treacherous Ora, such are the thoughts that came to me as I sat in that damp little grotto that was aromatic of to you than I am (and your mother will love him at first sight, I'm positive!). Yes, yes, treacherous Ora, such are the thoughts that came to me as I sat in that damp little grotto that was aromatic of hashish hashish (!!!), surrounded by the angels climbing up and down the harmonic scales of Mel Keller, and I lost my train of thought ... (!!!), surrounded by the angels climbing up and down the harmonic scales of Mel Keller, and I lost my train of thought ...

"Yes: that in the end you'll mate for life with some gorgeous, grave-looking, silver-haired alpha male, a guy who may not know to ask if your viscera pullulate at the sight of a beautiful sunset, or upon reading a lipless poem by David Avidan, but your future by his side will be secure and solid forever and ever. For I suspect, my duplicitous Ora, that deep in the depths of your light-filled and beautiful soul (which, I do not need to tell you, I love very much) lies a minuscule recess (like the ones in some corner stores, where they keep the old preserves?) that is, forgive me, slightly narrow-minded in matters of love. Of true love, I mean. And that is why you will probably make the choice you will make and doom me to misery for the rest of my life, and of this (the misery) I have no doubt, and I treat it now, in a purely philosophical mode, as a permanent state, like a chronic illness from which I will suffer for the rest of my life, and therefore you can stop reacting so hysterically every time I talk about it!

"On the way back from the jazz club I discussed it with Ilan-long-legs (and they're not the only thing that's long ...), and I expounded upon my theory about him and you, and of course I lamented my bitter fate at being destined to be indentured to a woman who scorns the gifts of my love, and having to suffice with cheap subst.i.tutes for the rest of my life. Ilan, as usual, said maybe you'd change your mind and grow up and offered other foolish consolations, and I explained to him again why I thought he was much more suitable for you than I am, being an alpha male etc., and that it is only for his sake that I am willing to vacate the s.p.a.ce in your heart to which I still cling tooth and nail in the most pathetic manner, and he reiterated that you're not his type at all, and that he doesn't really know you anyway, and then he repeated that on that night when the three of us talked in the hospital he was completely blurry, but that didn't rea.s.sure me, because I do feel that something powerful happened between the two of you that night, precisely because of his blurriness, and yours, something happened there, and it kills me that you won't confirm or deny that for me, and it's like the two of you were together in some place I couldn't get into (and probably never will), and I can only eat my heart out over the fact that it didn't happen to you with me, that revelation of love (because love is a revelation!!), because I was so close (f.u.c.kit, hissed the defeated Avram as he poured out his wrath), and that's also something I feel quite a lot in my life, the almost-happened, and I only hope it won't be the guiding principle of my life, the main tenet of all the guiding principles of my life.

"Yours, Dispirited by Torments."

She was then finally able to overcome her cowardice and the paralyzing confusion that had seized her and told him with simple words that grew increasingly complicated that she really thought she was in love, but unfortunately not with him, and she hoped he could forgive her, it wasn't something she could control, and she liked and loved him like a brother, and would always like and love him, but in her opinion he didn't really need her-and here her hand shook wildly, to her amazement; the pen jumped around on the page like a horse trying to throw off its rider-because he was, after all, such a br.i.m.m.i.n.g person, a thousand times wiser and more profound than she was, and she was positive that once he got used to this idea he would have many other beloveds, she was really convinced, and they would be much more suitable for him than she was, whereas she believed that the boy she loved needed her "like air to breathe, and I'm sorry, but in this case it's not a cliche at all. That's really the way I feel." She added that it was a love that had troubled her and crazed her for months, almost a year, in fact, because it was very clear to her that it was senseless and hopeless, and she wished she understood why this had happened to her, and so on and so forth. Avram sent a rushed telegram: "Do I know him question mark is it Ilan question mark just say his name and I will murder him exclamation point."

When she confirmed, after weeks of interrogations and pleading, that she was in love with Ilan, he almost went mad. For a week he was unable to eat a thing. He did not change his clothes, and he walked the streets for nights on end, crying. He told everyone he met about Ora and explained in a measured, considered way why what had happened was inevitable, even essential and desirable, in terms of evolution, aesthetics, and in many other regards. Of course he told Ilan the secret immediately, and Ilan repeated that he had no interest in Ora, and made fun of her crazy notion that he needed her "like air to breathe."

"Is that what she said?" he asked Avram with slightly alarmed amazement. "That's what she wrote about me?" He promised Avram he would never have a relationship with her.