Noga sat on the roof and embroidered. Jordana looked at Noga and Noga raised her face and said: It's so hot! Jordana couldn't say a thing, she touched Noga's face, let her stroke her hand softly, and as they stood there obeying something remaining between them without words for a moment, they seemed to be hoarding an anger that had dissolved into their standing. Jordana drank water straight from the faucet and only then did she pour herself a glass of water from the jar she took out of the refrigerator and drank from the glass until she was amazed that there wasn't a drop left in it. Dead tired, she looked at the old grandfather clock without hands and allowed her clothes, with a light and unconscious help of her hands, to drop off her. When she stood in front of the grandfather clock, which she was apparently still looking at, but didn't see, air blew from the vaulted window and she saw the upper end of the wheel of the setting sun and a plane was seen cutting the air and descending on the way to the airport. The breeze lightened the heat a little and her sweat cooled. As in a daze, she moved to the shower. For a little while she stood unmoving under the stream of cold water. Then, without drying herself with the many towels hanging there, she put on a robe, and dripping water, stuck to the robe that was clasped to her, she went out to the twilight on the roof and looked at its serene riot, and Noga said: Sit down, I'll make you coffee. And Jordana said: I'll make it myself, she sat and looked at Noga and saw again the woman hanging laundry in the house next door. She got up, and without looking at Noga, she went to the kitchen, put on water, waited until it boiled, poured Nescafe and some saccharine, went outside holding the full coffee cup, and said: I dripped all over your kitchen.
The wheel of the sun almost disappeared, leaving behind an astounding wake. The shadows were starting to fill the roof and penetrated between the flowerpots. Jordana, still dripping water, drank the coffee and started dancing. Noga came to her. They stood so close they almost touched one another, Jordana sipped the coffee she held behind Noga's back, the sun disappeared behind the department store, and Jordana said: What a disgusting pink, and Noga looked at the old antenna and saw a bird landing, cleaning its feathers, and soaring again. Noga gently pinched a bush growing in a giant flowerpot, picked a jasmine flower, brought it to her nose and smelled it as in a long ceremony and then, gently, she moved it back and forth in front of Jordana's nose. Jordana stood transfixed, her face almost didn't move toward the flower, her nostrils expanded, and then, with a quick movement, she tried to snatch the flower from Noga's hands, and in a twinkling, Noga managed to hide it behind her. When she moved and stamped on the floor, the phonograph started playing. Jordana could move from the spot, and so, even though she didn't pay any heed to it, she let the half-full cup drop from her hand and shatter on the floor. Only after the smash was heard did her hand start shaking again. Noga didn't avert her face. Her back reconsidered, and when Jordana came to her, she waited until she was clinging to her and bent over, picked up a shard of the coffee cup whose slivers were scattered around them and black coffee still poured from the shard. The coffee was thick and a drop fell on her shorts. Her leg was long and well-shaped, and Jordana went down on all fours and cleaned the drop of coffee dripping from the pants on Noga's well-shaped leg. Noga held out her hand, and moved it very close to Jordana's long hair, got wet from the water still dripping from the hair and Jordana stopped shaking.
The woman in the house next door started playing her Italian singers, and Jordana said: They always sound as if in the last opera they die and only then do they live.
Get up, said Noga.
Jordana couldn't get up, but she couldn't say that. She was stooped, curled up in herself, before her the day broke and shadows deepened, the light was swallowed up rather than disappeared, a plane passed by and left a long darkening white trail behind, the roofs were swallowed up in the dark that was already heavy and its dimness was cracked by flashes of lights. The wind that had blown before stopped, and the air stood still again. They cleaned up the shards, swept the roof and washed it with water, and then Jordana tried to direct her body to the two pleasures competing with one another: the Italian from the house next door and the melancholy rising from Noga's phonograph, but Noga refused to be caught in her mood that may have been impossible, and the stumbling, that was right for her, maybe therefore something that accompanied her from the moment she left the office. When she fell she thought she wanted to burst out laughing, but she didn't know why she didn't laugh. Her head hit the floor that was just cleaned, and Noga said: Come, let's go in and eat something.
When they went in, Noga slammed the door and turned on a light. She put out a plate of cheese and rolls, butter, and a bottle of red wine. The phonograph went on playing, maybe because Jordana changed the record, even though the two of them weren't aware of that, the light from the vaulted window was red and vied with the light of the lamp, and the burst of air was stronger now. They ate in silence and then Jordana spread butter on a roll, put a triangle of cheese on it, chewed, looked at the zigzag snake of light bursting from the broken vault above the grandfather clock, and said: I went with him to Independence Park, Noga, there were homos there and a woman with a dog. We searched for shade, in the distance I saw Henkin's roof, I ate lunch with him. Sad, Noga… Boaz's father put up a new television antenna, and Boaz didn't approve and didn't not approve. Near the demolished wall of the Muslim cemetery, he told me he loved me. I said to him: You don't love me, Boaz Schneerson, if you love, you love Noga, and he said: Maybe I'm not using the right words. I told him not to say anything, then he said, It's true, maybe I am tied to Noga, but I need you. I told him, I love you Boaz, say "love," don't say "tied," and he said, But Noga hates you, and then I told him: So what, and I laughed, Noga's feeling is stronger than your empty words.
Noga didn't say a thing and Jordana stood up, the roll in her hand, finished a glass of wine, looked at Noga, and said: How beautiful you are, Noga, you sit here, bring me into the house, give me coffee, cheese, red wine, and Boaz, tell me things so I'll understand him, what do all the ceremonies he makes for people tell you, you do know how to obliterate and you give him to me, some fine gift!
Maybe Boaz discovered my demon, only you know him, nobody else does, when I loved Menahem Henkin Boaz came and took that love too, even before he took me…
Noga started humming something that may have been some echo to the music from the phonograph. She said: You want to disgust me, to hurt me, but I'm protected, Jordana… Got to say what happens on the roof on Lilienblum Street, on that roof, not what happens in comparison with something else. There are time differences-in Los Angeles it's now ten hours earlier, but for me those are only words, now here and in Los Angeles is the same time. I've got my own time; you're there, Boaz is there, what happens to us, Menahem, you and Menahem, me and Menahem, no love is that love, in that moment Boaz has to see himself in your eyes, or even "only" in your eyes, that you will love him, that he will know how dreadful he is and of course wonderful, after the ten hours' difference he returned to me, and he was with me also ten hours or ten years before, and always will be. This is home. This home is not love or hatred and not what happens to you or to me or to him, at the limestone wall of the Muslim cemetery.
When did I have more than ten hours? said Jordana.
When you loved Menahem, said Noga with sudden anger that passed immediately.
Maybe, said Jordana, I once tried to feel what it is to be a bereaved father or mother, Noga?