The AFP correspondent finally gets bothered by it and quickly finds his pedigree. He gives him an appointment for an interview at Café Nina on Shabazi Street, and there he starts grilling him, but like a cop. He keeps pushing for the origin of the money at his disposal.
“It would be a bad idea to write about me, man,” Diabolo warns him.
“What about freedom of expression?” the other retorts.
“What about my freedom to punch you in the nose?” Diabolo says, frowning.
Every time he goes straight, he runs into a guy who wants to sniff around in his past. And stay there. Forgiveness and redemption, never heard of it! On the other hand, you really do have to respect freedom of the press, transparency, and the whole nine yards. So everybody thinks they’re within their rights, and the result of the contest is far from certain.
The AFP guy clears off fast, leaving Diabolo comfortably ensconced in his big body. Just afterward, here’s the lovely Karen Besnainou coming to offer the services of her PR agency. Diabolo goes to bed with her the same evening, but it doesn’t go any further than that.
Now that Elias has started working as a reporter at H24 and Diabolo’s a bigwig in the press (or almost), there’s only Manu to recycle. He does get some subsidies from seasonal rentals, but he only has three apartments in his portfolio. What’s more, even if Tel Aviv attracts tourists, since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 in Gaza, the vacancy rate has gone up. Add the low euro into the mix, and it’s grown even more expensive. Too expensive. Either business has to start up again, or he has to fill out his portfolio and vary his offerings. But that means being in constant contact with the owners—mostly French—and that’s beyond his powers. The only social milieu whose codes he knows is the world of X-rated movies. Elsewhere, he’s adrift. Luckily the gays are faithful to Tel Aviv! That makes business thrive in the Beans on Abarbanel Street just across from him. As if his material survival, from porn to real estate, in all times and all latitudes, is always due to other people’s libidos.
I’m going to call it Jean-Pierre, Elias says to himself as he picks up a little dying cat from under a car parked on Herzl Street.
“What about the salary?” Juliette shyly asks the owner of Gallery Moins de Mille just down from Manu’s place with its back against the slums.
Normally an area like this would have been razed to make room for a little park. But since its inhabitants have gone through all kinds of maneuvers to block it, it’s still in limbo. Shows you people hang on to the little they have, even if it’s ugly and unhealthy. And then city planning is too geometric and rigid. For example, since they’ve finished the four Beans on Abarbanel Street, everybody agrees they should leave the slums alone, in the last analysis, and not necessarily destroy everything to make a park. By preserving that habitat, they’d create a kind of contrast between the old and the new, all the more so as there are a lot of little trades that are plied under those corrugated metal roofs. Furniture makers, framers, upholsterers, and now the Moins de Mille gallery. In short, they should reboot the city plan for the neighborhood.
“Let’s say I can give you twenty-five hundred shekels a month part time,” the gallery owner says.
“That’s not much,” Juliette answers, looking around at this odd place, where the paintings are arranged any old way.
“But you’ll have a lot of responsibility,” he adds. “I’m counting on you to reorganize things, OK? I like to hunt around for antiques and stuff, and I have an eye, but I need someone who has a sense of space and public relations.”
“OK for twenty-five hundred, but just three afternoons a week,” Juliette proposes, looking for her phone. It’s in the palm of her hand, as it has been since the knife attack.
“I don’t like cats, Elias darling. I’m allergic,” Olga confesses.
“All right, I’ll put it back in the street.”
“No, no, he’s so cute. Try to give him to someone.”
CHAPTER 7
In the two weeks since she got to Tel Aviv, Juliette has cried a lot, felt sorry for herself, and complained. A contradictory mixture of hope and despair is beginning to grow in her mind. She thinks she can see Elias coming back to her, and she’s even ready to forgive his transgression. On the other hand, she doesn’t believe he’ll really come back. Up to now, she’s suffered the usual torment of dupes. What’s new is her need to obtain reparation. She feels Elias owes her something, without knowing exactly what. Manu made her admit she decided to live in Tel Aviv on her own, not because Elias asked her to, but still. She expects reparations.
She sent him message after message, and he never answered. So one night she goes back to see him, but Elias has moved! What’s more, without telling her! Why such cruelty? Does she mean so little to him? And Manu—why didn’t he tell her anything, he who’s so protective of her? She bites her lips, but the sobs squeeze her like a vise.
“Tell me where he’s living, Manu… please.”
“Why, Juliette? How would that help you?”
“It’s my right, Manu! I have a right to know!”
“Still on Levinsky Street,” Manu finally answers, with a sigh.
“That’s not true, I went there!”
“But in another building…”
“Alone?”
“No.”
“Who is that girl, Manu? What’s her name? Is she the one I found him with?” she asks, half smothering a sob.
“No,” Manu answers, embarrassed. “It’s not her.”
“So who is it?” Juliette yelps in despair.
“What’s the use of all these questions, Juliette?”
“Come on, Manu, you have to understand me, I need to know! It’s killing me! I want to meet her!”
“Why?”
Good question. Does Olga have anything to do with Juliette’s misfortune? She doesn’t even know she exists, since Elias didn’t tell her about their relationship. Besides, the fact that they work together at H24 gives them another, much more important problem: Announce it, or be discreet? Elias is so in love with Olga he’d shout it from the rooftops. Olga is more prudent. There’s so much jealousy in a TV station. Luckily, Elias is always out in the field and Olga’s in the studios. That way they have less contact during the day and won’t give themselves away by a gesture or a word. But Tel Aviv is a small place. In the French community you can hear someone sneezing for miles around. Rumors fly quickly too. And then you can easily bump into someone on the street who works in TV, so that creates another connection with the stars of the small screen. Sometimes that proximity is unbearable. In Par Derrière, the restaurant on King George Street, it’s like eating with the TV on when there’s Danielle Godmiche at the table next to you.
What’s more, Elias is bored as hell at the Gaza border. Too calm. Deadly calm, in fact. Since the ceasefire of August 14, 2014, the front totally cooled off. In ten days, all Elias covered was the story of a little Gaza girl of eight who was transported to the Israeli hospital of Be’er Sheva for a heart operation. He didn’t put the necessary pathos into it so they had to jazz it up to get it on TV, and that didn’t sit well with Elias.