Orly Castel-Bloom - Textile

Two hours later, after returning to the triplex on the corner of Yocheved Bat-Miriam and Alexander Penn Streets, she sent all five notices of dismissal by SMS, and they complained about it to the labor tribunal. The case is still under review, but a photograph of the five women has already appeared in the press under the heading: “Dismissed by SMS.”

Mandy wasn’t bothered by the bad press. In any case, most of her customers only read the ultra-Orthodox newspaper.

LIRIT PREFERRED THE TRIPLEX IN TEL BARUCH NORTH TO the penthouse in Neve Avivim. Although she never said anything out loud, because she had hardly ever had the opportunity to stay in Telba-N., it was evident that she was glad to move there after life close to the earth and close to Shlomi. Indirectly, therefore, her mother’s plastic surgeries did her a favor. And since this time, as it sometimes happened, Gruber was abroad, Lirit took over her parents’ handsome suite and settled down to reflections of a futuristic nature, about how her own apartment would look when the day came. In these plans for her future, neither Shlomi, nor his enlarged nature photographs decorating the walls, appeared in her mind’s eye. She lay in bed like a princess and watched her favorite channel on the huge television facing her, the E! Channel, reporting on the difficulties in the lives of Hollywood stars in the past and present. She was in no hurry to get to the factory in the mornings, she knew that Carmela was on the job, and only when it was nearly lunch time she dropped in to Nighty-Night to see that everything was under control. In the meantime she saw a repeat showing of a program about Winona Ryder, and allowed herself to drift off into different thoughts. For example where should she have her children, in a Jacuzzi or in a dolphin pool? It was clear to her that she would go for one of these options, after hearing a videotape of some actress, not Ryder, who gave birth to her first son in a Jacuzzi, and then her first daughter in a dolphin reef.

On no account did she wish to repeat her mother’s mistakes, giving birth to her and to Dael in a hospital and relying on a local anesthetic. Lirit didn’t want any anesthetics, local or general. She knew that the secret of her strength was to be the antithesis of her mother.

On the other hand, the design of the new house was definitely something she could adopt. For weeks Mandy had searched for an architect to plan the interior before the contractor went for the standard. She drove to see the houses in Arsuf at the suggestion of recommended architects. She saw five possibilities in Arsuf, and three in communities where well-known people had built themselves homes. She didn’t like any of them. Luckily she heard about a certain Oz Bonfil, a gifted Israeli designer who had gone to live in Tuscany and changed his name to Pasquale Bonfil. The person in question came to Israel twice a year, on Passover and Rosh Hashanah, to visit his sister. Mandy flew him over and put him up in the Dan Panorama at the end of winter, beginning of spring, and he stayed in the hotel for two months, for at a certain stage he saw fit to supervise the progress of the work himself.

Before Bonfil began work, Amanda presented him with two no-nos. One, that there be nothing in the apartment reminiscent of the Levant, nothing exotic, oriental, or Indian. And two, he was on no account to exceed the generous budget she had allowed him, because although from a socioeconomic point of view they belonged to the top 10 percent, they didn’t belong to the top 1 percent and not to the top one-thousandth either. There was a difference that wasn’t a nuance between the top 10 percent and the top 1 percent.

“In the top 1 percent, the sky’s the limit,” said Mandy, “but with us the limit is lower,” and she told him the sum she had in mind.

At first Bonfil grumbled about the second veto and argued that he only worked with people for whom the sky was the limit, but afterward he agreed and said that if he had to stay within the framework she had given him, they could forget about the possibility of uniting the first and second levels in one big space, and crowning it with a ceiling that had become available from a cathedral in Bologna.

Mandy took a week to think about the possibility of bringing the ceiling from the Bolognan cathedral for the unification between the first and second levels recommended by Bonfil. Sometimes the idea seemed fine to her and sometimes it seemed silly. She took into account the cost of bringing an entire ceiling from Bologna, with the insurance and the headaches, asked herself why she should do away with a level and turn a triplex into a duplex, she could have bought a duplex to begin with, so what if the ceiling would be high and ecclesiastical? And after she had considered every aspect, and calculated the cost, she decided: No!

They decided to leave the ceilings as they were and dwell mainly on the division of the space and its design. And in the end what came out was such a charming little palace that Mandy didn’t feel right hanging the old pictures from the previous house on its walls. She went around a few galleries and bought a few interesting originals. Bonfil agreed to pop over from Tuscany for a couple of days and help her find the right place for each painting, and he didn’t ask a fee for his advice, and even said that it was fun.

LIRIT THOUGHT THAT what was so great about the house was that it was both as amazingly comfortable and as gorgeous as an adorable hotel in a European capital, without the artificial manners of the reception clerks.

The film about Winona Ryder came to an end and Lirit got into the Jacuzzi feeling that she had come to a certain conclusion, both as a result of her private thoughts and as a result of the film about the difficulties in the life of the Hollywood star, but in fact she hadn’t come to any conclusion at all, since she hadn’t actually defined her doubts to herself yet.

The Jacuzzi had not been used for quite a time and it took a while for the water to come out of the nine jets, but after a few minutes she abandoned herself to the currents massaging her muscles, and she thought, how can this compare to the miserly trickle coming out of the rusty shower in her and Shlomi’s house. She was sure that if she could only succeed in getting him into the Jacuzzi — perhaps if she got in with him, after all it was a Jacuzzi for two — he wouldn’t be able to deny his body this pleasure.

But she knew that after Shlomi had been shocked by their leather living room, and asked if Mandy had a fur coat, and she said she didn’t know — there was no chance he would come to her parents’ home any time soon, let alone take a dip in their Jacuzzi. She switched on the radio next to the foaming tub, and read the label still stuck to its side that informed her that the Jacuzzi possessed 1.2 horsepower, nine jets, a special regulator governing the strength of the massage, and underwater lighting. She looked for the regulator, and tried out all kinds of combinations, until she found the one she liked best. Strong on the upper back and shoulders.

Suddenly something bothered her. She felt guilty for being in the Jacuzzi and not at least at work, or perhaps even more worthy: by the side of her mother who was undergoing her surgery today. She was sorry she didn’t have a telephone with her in the Jacuzzi, because she didn’t feel like getting up, and also because she didn’t know what to say if her mother asked her why she wasn’t at the factory.

Still, she had gone to Medical Frontline with her yesterday. She was there all day, and it drove both of them crazy. They argued nonstop. Lirit took a lot of crap from her until she finally lost her temper and said that her stomach hurt and she was going home. And Mandy had explicitly asked her to go to the factory today, but she, Lirit, didn’t have it in her system to be with her mother on the day of the operation, or at least in the factory from 8:00 a.m. People are sometimes mean and I can be mean sometimes too, she thought to herself and sighed. It wasn’t clear yet, maybe she would still go, maybe she would still make it, although how much could a person be expected to take?