“Yes?” Gali said then, and Talia realized she’d been staring.
“I’m Talia,” she stammered. Gali nodded, then put her hands on her hips and shot a look that sent her straight back to junior high, and Talia wondered why she was still standing there. She took a step back and Tomer whispered, “Please don’t leave,” so she slipped into what looked like his room and closed the door behind her. It was tidy and small, with turquoise walls and furniture Tomer and Efrat must have hauled in off the street and stripped and repainted themselves. This was exactly the kind of place Talia would have picked out — not just the apartment but the way they’d decorated it, everything mismatched but so carefully chosen. Tucked into the dresser mirror were photos of the three of them through the years: on the tiled apartment steps Talia had just walked up; in a restaurant; in a park at what looked like Gali’s first birthday, sitting on Efrat’s lap. Efrat was attractive in the sort of way women noticed as much as men: laughing at whoever was holding the camera, her long blond hair in a frazzled knot, holding her daughter by the shoulders as if they were both about to tip over. Tomer was squatted beside them, his mouth open and eyes wide, as though he were making silly faces to get baby Gali to coo.
Talia sat on the bed and listened. She knew she should leave — it seemed only sensible — but couldn’t find the will. Gali’s story was growing increasingly elaborate and Tomer was caving, and Talia could see when he walked in now, wearing the tired and gentle look of defeat, that his daughter had won this round.
“Didn’t she know you’d be back tonight?” Talia said.
Tomer took off his glasses and nodded. “And now,” he said, lowering his voice, as if Gali could hear anything above the music she’d flung back on, “I look like a pushover.”
“True.” Talia regretted the word even before it had left her mouth — it couldn’t be fun bringing a date home to witness this. But Tomer just flopped beside her on his stomach and said, “I can’t believe I got caught with a woman. I guess we’ll have to get married now.”
He had to be joking. But something in his voice, low and tender, made Talia wonder if a nugget of truth existed within those words — if he just might not be wired for a one-night thing. She stood up.
“I was kidding,” Tomer said. He reached for her, but she intercepted his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked hurt, in a puppyish and confused way, as if he didn’t completely get it. He rolled onto his back. “Okay,” he said, sighing. “I’ll call you.”
On her way out, she passed his daughter’s door, cracked halfway open. “Nice to meet you too,” Gali called out, as if Talia were the rude one, so she poked her head in. Papers and makeup littered the carpet in messy but distinct piles, as if a complex order existed that only Gali understood, and the entire room smelled of burnt hair and nail polish. She was lying on her unmade bed with her hands behind her head. “You’re leaving?” she said.
“It’s late,” Talia said, though she had no idea what time it was. “I work early.”
Gali squinted at her suspiciously. “What do you do?”
“I’m a reporter,” Talia said, and when Gali said, “That’s cool,” Talia felt as if she were letting them both down when she admitted, “I’m actually between jobs. Right now I’m fact-checking for Boker Yisraeli, the free paper? I kind of hate it.”
“Sucks.”
“It does suck.” The music was so loud that Talia’s cheeks throbbed, but at least she felt a little hipper for recognizing the song that came on. “I love Kaveret,” she said. “They were my first concert.”
“My dad likes them, too,” Gali said. “My mom was kind of a music snob and this was one of the things we could all agree on, in the car and stuff.” She said it so matter-of-factly, and Talia wondered if this was casual conversation or if Gali, for whatever reason — the pot, perhaps? — was opening up.
“I’ve got a bunch of Yitzhak Klepter’s solo stuff on vinyl you can borrow. Come over sometime,” Talia said, immediately wishing she could retract it. She had a habit of over-offering when she was nervous and wanted people to like her, but why did it matter what this fourteen-year-old thought?
“Thanks.” Then Gali lay against her pillows and looked up at the ceiling, and Talia stood there, not knowing whether the girl wanted her to leave or stay, or why she even cared. “See you,” Gali said finally, and when Talia backed into the hall, Gali lifted her leg, and with one bare, red toenailed foot, kicked the door shut.
“I ADMIT THAT didn’t go perfectly,” Tomer said when he called her at work the following morning, so early Talia was still blowing on her to-go cup of coffee. “We just need to try again.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Talia said, clicking through her email. She was determined not to give him her full attention. “And,” she said, emboldened, suddenly, by the distance between her office and wherever Tomer was calling from, “maybe think twice before bringing someone else home to your daughter.”
“I made a mistake,” he said. “I’m a human being.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She’s gone this weekend. On a class trip to the Golan.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Let me make you dinner this weekend. My famous baked chicken.”
“Tomer,” Talia said, “this is nonnegotiable.” There was no point in making her life this cluttered. Not when she was leaving, not when these weren’t her problems. Not when the last thing his daughter needed was a new woman around. (Or was it what she needed most, and wasn’t that an even bigger reason to stay away?) That was what she told herself after she hung up and immersed herself in the details of a story so dull she wanted to bang her head against the desk, calling the kosher certification board to hear their latest verdict on swordfish, and whether a restaurant open on Shabbat could even claim the fish was kosher if the board deemed it so, and at lunchtime she went around the corner to the falafel place on the off chance that Tomer was at Café Noah. That was what she told herself all through dinner with her family and the following day at work, and even as she passed her bus stop home and strode into a market in Neve Tzedek, where she walked right up to the grocer and asked which wine he thought went best with baked chicken.
She’d imagined sex with Tomer would be primitive and charged, that they’d have ripped off each other’s skin if they could. But he was slow and nervous and kept his eyes open the whole time. At one point, he stroked her cheek in a way that felt so stagey and cinematic she wondered if he was going through the moves Efrat had liked, if she was a stand-in for his wife. But then he turned to her, and the expression on his face seemed to be only for Talia: filled with desire and gratitude and something close to joy.
Afterward they lay around for hours. Talia had forgotten how much she liked that time, when everything — the rough folds of Tomer’s elbows, the coin-sized scar on the back of his thigh, from when he’d fallen off his bike as a kid — was new and interesting and had a story. She liked how purely herself she could be around him, initiating sex when she wanted it, clicking on the stereo without asking, sifting through his dresser for an undershirt. She liked how, when she woke the following morning in that tiny turquoise room, the kettle was hissing and milk was on the counter, and when they walked out to the terrace off the kitchen, the rest of the city was going about their day. She’d forgotten about them. About everyone — and yet there they were, still functioning as though nothing had changed: a line of people outside Tazza d’Oro, a woman leaning against a Vespa and laughing into her cell phone, a black dog barking on a roof.