All the same, Elias could make an effort, just out of friendship for Diabolo. No. He does not want to work for Diabolo or interview Juliette.
“OK, so would you give me her number, so I can do the interview myself?”
“Stop it, she knows we’re buddies.”
“I’ll get someone she doesn’t know to call her, OK?”
“Who?”
“Jonathan. They don’t know each other, right?”
“Which Jonathan?”
“Simsen.”
“OK, all right.” And Elias finally gives him the number.
“Great, thanks, Eli. See you soon at the barbecue?”
Elias sighs. “It’s nine already.”
“Life begins at midnight.” Diabolo laughs and hangs up.
Man, she’s sticking to him like a leech. Like a piece of gum on your shoe. She’s invading his life, she’s even annexing his friends with her bad luck. Elias doesn’t realize his own good luck. A beauty like Juliette, most guys would crawl on their knees to get her. Hey, Jonathan Simsen!
After the phone interview, he gets a selfie from Juliette in her hospital bed, and it floors him.
“You see that bombshell?” Jonathan says to Diabolo, whose face darkens.
“Don’t give me that crap, Jojo, she’s Elias’s woman!” Diabolo answers, with that godfather frown that sometimes crosses his face, and Jonathan shuts up fast. But Diabolo’s best argument is his build, of course. Weighing in at over three hundred pounds inspires a certain respect. But still, he’d better lose at least a third of it. If he’s not going to put a ring in his stomach, he absolutely has to slim down. All that bad fat could screw up his coronary arteries. Forty-eight’s the ideal age for a heart attack.
CHAPTER 3
They can smell grilling meat before reaching Diabolo’s place. It’s spreading through all the Yemenite neighborhood of Kerem HaTeimanim that evening. Elias’s mouth waters and Scarlett gets nauseous, while Manu is almost feverish at the idea of meeting Romy Schneider. But he doesn’t show it at all. She’s finally back after two months of immersion in the kibbutz at Beit El to improve her Hebrew. And also to save money, since she rented her apartment on Dizengoff Avenue to tourists through Airbnb. On the other hand, the torture is going to begin for Manu. There are women who get wildly excited when they learn he was a porn actor, as if that guarantees he’s a great lay. Not Romy, though. She doesn’t give a damn about his sexual talents. Anyway, she’s not looking to date right now. She’s told him twenty times. Poor Manu, he’s still crazy about her. And then he knows very well that no woman goes for long without screwing. She must have some guy here in Tel Aviv. But who? Who is the lucky sonofabitch?
On the terrace, Diabolo’s box of Havanas has pride of place in the middle of the table. Elias digs out two Cohibas right away and puts one in his mouth, the other in his shirt pocket, without hiding or standing on ceremony. He helps himself to meat without excessive politeness, either, a heaping plate, because he hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday noon. He skips meals often, but he never talks about it or else he makes a joke out if it: “I skip meals more than I skip screwing girls.” Poor Elias, a Don Juan with a postgraduate degree—but undernourished. Diabolo on the job, Elias stuffing himself, Manu like a little virgin with Romy, Scarlett and Jonathan Simsen yakking away in Hebrew in a corner, that’s the atmosphere of the terrace as the evening starts up. In the sky dotted with stars, the full moon gives the Royal Beach Hotel a halo of silvery particles, and it seems that new residence for billionaires is throwing out more sparkles than usual through the stellar haze. Since Royal Beach was erected along the Tayelet promenade, the only bit of sea that used to be visible from Diabolo’s place has been blocked. The Tel Aviv landscape changes every day. No ocean view can be guaranteed. They’re building everywhere.
“Bring us up two more bottles of red, Jonathan!” Diabolo calls out to the company at large, and the young apprentice reporter immediately rushes down the stairs to get the wine in the kitchen.
“Stop treating him like that,” whispers Romy, irritated.
“What the hell!” Diabolo says, mocking her. “At least he doesn’t mind working with me.” A hardly veiled allusion to Elias’s refusal to work at Israel Breaking News.
Elias answers right back from his seat on the wicker sofa: “Hey, don’t complain, thanks to me, IBN got its first scoop!”
“Roger that,” Diabolo says graciously. “I guarantee you, with Juliette’s picture bringing people in, they’ll pick up that piece everywhere.”
Someone named Sandy arrives on the terrace at that moment. She’s an apprentice reporter at Israel Breaking News, too, and she walks right up to Elias. As if she’s teleguided. Or magnetized. Really, he attracts them like flies. A half hour of conversation and she’s literally sprawled all over him. He lets himself go without thinking of Juliette anymore. Well, yes, he does think of her a little bit. But reluctantly. Besides, it looks like couples are forming fast this evening: you can see Diabolo and Scarlett getting much closer even if their respective sizes pose a small problem. Laurel and Hardy are fine for movie farces, not for ill-matched couples. As for Manu, he finally dares to look Romy in the eyes. With the help of the wine, he even begins to kid around and make her laugh. At one moment, he takes her hand, and she gives him a tender yet irritated look. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t feel like it?” she whispers to him, smiling. Smiling, for once. Usually, she’s brusque with him. Nonetheless, Romy agrees to let him walk her back to Dizengoff Avenue.
From Kerem to her place takes a good thirty minutes on the Tayelet promenade along the seaside. In general, that creates a connection, and sometimes, even when the girl isn’t exactly filled with desire, she finally accepts, just so as not to sleep alone or even out of weariness. Manu’s kind of counting on that. It’s really a shame she doesn’t want him, because they’d make a fine couple. Despite his sixty years, Manu has a natural casualness that’s extremely intriguing, a real detachment, and Romy—well, Romy makes you think irresistibly of Romy Schneider. And she’s already over fifty, so they’re almost the same age. You’d think they’re a couple out of a Claude Sautet movie. Once they’re in front of her door, he tells her timidly that he’s writing a screenplay with her as the heroine.
“You’re crazy, Manu!” she exclaims. “You’re a nutball! What do you know about me to write a screenplay about me?”
“I know the main thing.”
“Stop it… and since when are you a screenwriter? You just did X-rated movies, that’s not film.”
“You have to hurt me?”
“Sorry. It’s touching, that you’re writing about me, I guess, but you see… but… how can I say this? You see, I just want us to be friends.”
“Well, that’s just it, it’s the story of a chick who just wants to be a pal of the guy who’s crazy about her. A real classic, right?”
As for Elias, he has no problem bringing Sandy back to his little pad at the corner of Levinsky and Herzl in Florentin. Hardly have they arrived downstairs than they’re already upstairs and Elias is digging around between her thighs. At least this Sandy isn’t modest like Juliette. Juliette always burst out laughing when he licked her, as if he were tickling her. Sandy likes it so much she’s moaning, and Elias doesn’t stop until six in the morning, dead drunk from coming. A girl who likes having a guy go down on her, that’s so rare! Well, no, there are lots of others. But man, what a change from the ticklish Juliette.
Instead of going calmly back to Florentin, Manu grabs Romy on her doorstep and kisses her on the mouth despite her resistance. He sticks in his tongue, she pushes him away, but he wraps her in his arms. She struggles, but he throws her back on the couch at the entrance and rips off her panties. He’s going off his rocker. His demon’s got hold of him again without warning, and he forces her thighs apart. Just when he’s going to penetrate her, she sticks her thumb in his eye. Then he lets go.