Марко Коскас - Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

“Get the hell out of here!” she yells, wild with rage, when he’s already outside, holding his hand over his eye that’s dripping with blood. “Get out of here, you loser! Don’t let me see you again!”

“Want to do it sitting down?” Diabolo suggests. But because of his prominent belly that doesn’t work. So he lies down, and Scarlett climbs up and straddles him with her back turned. It works a little better that way. Except Scarlett’s scrofulous shoulders leave something to be desired.

Diabolo has the unpleasant impression of copulating with a little boy, or a little girl, so he has that droopy erection that always hurts Scarlett’s feelings. But she’s used to it.

Around noon the next day, Elias and Sandy wake up glued to each other. They finally manage to get up. Elias lends Sandy a shirt because she didn’t take anything with her when she went out, and then it’s really sexy, a girl in a guy’s shirt that is too big for her. He empties the fridge to prepare a little breakfast Israeli style, with eggs and cheese, tomato-cucumber-hummus-and-tahini salad, a full pot of coffee, and a pitcher of orange juice. Enough to hold them till evening. Besides, they say the Jewish philosopher Maimonides recommended eating like a king in the morning, like a bourgeois at noon, and a beggar in the evening. Ever since he’s been in Israel, Elias follows this diet exactly, but just in the morning: noon and evening, he often starves.

“How do you say ‘cucumber’ in Hebrew already?” asks Sandy.

“ Melafefone ,” Elias answers, and Sandy can’t help laughing because it sounds like a dirty word in French: “ Mets —put—your lala in my foofoon,” she says, dying of laughter, and that’s all he needs to start over again.

She excites him with her slightest word. But she irritates him too. She’s already irritating him. He screws her again even before she finishes her breakfast and sticks his prick in her mouth still full of salad. Only problem, somebody rings the bell at this very moment. Right in the middle of the bit. The landlady, of course! That old bitch bugging him again. Elias breaks off unwillingly, puts away his thing dripping with vinaigrette, and goes to open the door. My God, Juliette!

Juliette immediately glimpses Sandy on the couch covered with a little red wrap, and now her heart breaks into a thousand pieces. Oh no, not that! It’s worse than a stabbing. Where can she go? What can she do? Why is life so unkind to her?

“It’s not what you think! Not at all!” Elias says, still with a stiff erection.

Why did he make this poor girl come here? To humiliate her like this? But did he really make her come? Isn’t she the one who announced she was coming to Tel Aviv? He should have said no, that was his mistake. But he didn’t dare. Anyway, if everyone has his own version of the facts, one thing is certain: he’s openly cheating on her, and she can’t stand it.

Juliette immediately turns around. Elias tries to hold her back, but she pushes him away. She goes back down the rotten staircase. Sandy yells, “Elias, you coming back, or what?”

The worst of it all is that Elias didn’t lose his hard-on for a second, despite all this drama.

Juliette walks around Florentin with tears in her eyes without knowing where to go, and lots of guys are tempted to console her on the way. Such a pretty girl! But she rebuffs them all, and to stop the little game she puts on her round Ray-Bans that make her even sexier but less accessible. She goes up Vital Street, where it’s completely calm in the middle of the afternoon, unlike the evening, and finally stops at the terrace of Florentin 10 with a heavy heart. Sad and nauseous. Why did she leave her job at the museum and her apartment in Jeru? How idiotic! How could she have thought she’d go back to Elias without a crisis and without being disillusioned? How naive she was to believe in a happy household, shalom bayit , with a neurotic from the diaspora like him! And how long could she last in Tel Aviv with her five thousand shekels?

Manu only saw her two or three times a few months ago, but then he had both eyes. With gauze covering his right eye, he obviously can’t see as well. Romy really fucked him up, and he spent the night in the ophthalmic emergency room of Ichilov Hospital. The doctors weren’t sure he’d get his eye back, but they did all they could. So he leaves the bar at Flo 10 to get closer, and once he’s a yard away, there’s no doubt about it. “Juliette?” he says in a low voice, because he sees she’s in the middle of a crisis. She raises her head toward him, and as soon as she sees he has only one good eye, you’d think her own tragedy has yielded to his.

“Poor Manu,” she says, distraught. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, an accident at home, I got the cork of a bottle in my eye.”

Juliette hugs him, moved to tears.

“They told me you escaped a stabbing attack, you must’ve been scared shitless.”

“Sit down, sit down, please,” she says, and without even answering his solicitude, she takes a handkerchief out of her purse to wipe the wound. Who knows why exactly. A compassionate reflex typical of her.

“No, no, I’m OK,” Manu first says as he sits down. Then, looking at her with his only eye and seeing tears rolling down her cheeks, he says, “But you’re crying… or am I seeing things?”

“Totally unimportant,” she answers in a trembling voice.

“Don’t say that. What’s going on? It’s because of Elias?”

She nods rapidly, sobbing. Manu hugs her. He’s not supposed to have seen Sandy all over Elias the night before, right? He can act astonished. Ask questions. Play the guy who never heard about it.

“We-e-ll… he-he-here’s what,” she hiccups between sobs. “H-he was with another w-woman when I g-got there. B-but h-he knew I was coming! He did it on purpose, there’s no other explanation… h-he’s so destructive!”

Manu orders her a café Affour and gives her a Kleenex, stupidly repeating himself. Come on, come on, it’ll be OK, don’t think it’s all over, blah blah blah. People can’t really be consoled. So why try? Waste of time, it’s well known. But on the other hand, how can you watch someone crying without trying to make them feel better? Especially such a pretty girl. He was struck by Juliette’s fragility the first time he met her, but she controlled herself so well Manu was impressed. It was one evening in Jerusalem, and he thought she was really stoic with Elias, who was already mistreating her. Not a shout, not a tear. Proud, head high, a queenly bearing through it all. But that was in Jeru and that was back then. The poor darling isn’t made of stone, after all. She must have a tolerance threshold, she can’t always take everything stoically. In this kind of situation, it’s better to change registers and ask concrete questions to help people who’re hurting. Material life can assert itself over moods and emotions and change the atmosphere, Manu thinks.

“So you’re going to go back to Jeru?”

“No-o-o, I c-came to live in Tel Aviv, and I don’t have anyplace to live in Jeru anymore. Except at my mother’s, that is.”

“So you need a place?”

“Well… yes,” she confesses, sniffling.

“I have the key to an apartment in the Beans on Abarbanel Street.”

“Whose is it?”

“It’s in the brand-new buildings in front of my place. They look like beans. You can live there, OK?”

“Really? I can do that?”

“Well, yeah, the time for you to find something…”

“That’s nice of you, Manu, but I don’t feel I can live alone at this moment… I can’t stay at your place, instead?”

“S-s-sure,” Manu stammers, extremely embarrassed. “But you don’t think… I mean, for Elias…”