Shelly Oria - New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

He was quiet the whole time I talked, listening intently. Then he said, You simply let it go once you were out. It was a choice. I said, Maybe, but it didn’t feel that way. He said, For our purposes, it doesn’t even matter; you let it go, it let go of you, whatever. Time had already stopped. You started something, but the world had the last say.

Phil’s features softened suddenly. He took my hand, and I let him. Bambi, he said, you’re so naïve. What about 2001? I asked. Did I do that, too? It was one of those things I’d always suspected but never let myself know. Phil smiled. It took me quite a while to figure that out, he said, but it doesn’t matter now. You can stop time, Bambi, that’s the important thing. And you’re going to do it again, for me.

* * *

We spent the next few days discussing the plan. The first thing I wanted to know was why, why he wanted this, and Phil talked about “doing it right this time.” There are opportunities, great fiscal opportunities in a time-stop, he said, and we were stupid then, in 2001, just staying in bed and having sex. He said “having sex” like it was the worst thing you could do with your time.

Once time stops, Phil said, waiting as much as possible is key. People grow so desperate that they forget how to hope, he said. They forget how passing time feels, and then there’s so much more we can do for them. He talked about banking all the energy that the world saves, and the ways in which we could capitalize on that energy. Time capsules were one. Selling dreams was another. He was excited. It seemed like I wasn’t getting the whole story, but I didn’t know what part was missing.

An Interval: 1982, a Memory

There is a moment I remember well. I was twelve years old, discovering for the first time that desire made the air thinner. I was running in a field. This was in Israel, a field on the outskirts of the town where I grew up. It was wartime, but the kind of war not too many people cared about. Also in the field: boys and girls I went to school with, a bonfire. My clothes were all stripes: gray and black, a matching skirt and top I had gotten the day before. This is what I heard: a boy I loved, who had broken my heart a few weeks earlier, was now jealous because I had a new boyfriend, a decoy boyfriend, a boy I never wanted. The two of them were trying to figure out who had the moral obligation to step back. Other boys were there to supervise, make sure things didn’t escalate to a fight. This is what I learned: boys think that life is a call they get to make. This is why I started running: overturning this boy’s rejection made me feel too powerful, like life was a call I got to make. The smoke in the air from the bonfire got in my lungs, and I thought I would run forever.

2011, Part 2: Hope

I tried many times and nothing happened, but Phil never worried. He believed that it was only a question of time, that I’d get it eventually. He said rumors in the street had already started, which showed that my brain was releasing some kind of substance, just like in ’91. More than anything, he wanted me to believe in my power.

Every few days I’d try again, and fail again. It was clear what the problem was — there was nothing at stake. I knew that hurt Phil’s feelings, because it showed him his goals were not my goals. But he never complained. He had enough patience and confidence for both of us.

What happens when you don’t complain is that solutions find you. On a Tuesday morning, after we’d made love, Phil lay next to me and said, Bambi, just relax now, can you do that for me? I said nothing, but he knew I meant yes. He did all kinds of things with his fingers then: nothing too sexual, just tapping, touching without touching. He said, Close your eyes, and when I did, it felt like I had a blanket. This went on for a while. Then he said, How about we do this, and when the time-stop is over we make a baby.

I never knew that this was what I wanted. But now I knew, and all of a sudden it was the only thing. My breathing hastened. That’s right, he said. What do you say?

I had to ask now. What about your wife, I said. Long gone, he said, and then again, long gone, and the way he said it answered the question I hadn’t asked. I knew at that moment that our first encounter had not been random; knew that he’d already had intentions back then, the beginning of a plan. Whoever he’d been with before me had probably become unnecessary to his plan, the way I almost had. I knew all that, but I didn’t care. There was no effort left in me, except the kind that makes you get up in the morning to braid a child’s hair, write a note for school.

* * *

The next day, time stopped again. I still experienced it as two entirely disparate events, in two different sites — my brain being one, the world another. But by now I knew better. Phil was the happiest I’d ever seen him. He couldn’t stop talking. In our apartment, enthusiasm was everywhere, and in many ways we weren’t part of the world anymore; outside, people were developing all the regular time-stop symptoms, reenacting patterns of behavior that were long ago declared detrimental, against studies and cold data, against the soft whisper of their own inner voice. At airports, riots were erupting. Airline company reps, and even the pilots themselves, would try to reason with the crowds; there was obviously no way to ensure safe travel, no way to synchronize sky traffic, and you’d think that people would understand that. Instead, they threw stones, broke glass, shouted things like “But I need to get to my convention, asshole.”

On street corners, huge piles of microwaves grew, their frustrated owners unwilling to remember that at some point time would resume, that when others stepped back into their own kitchens and turned on cooking timers — casually, as if they’d always been able to do so — they, the people who were quick to discard, quick to give up hope, would form the famous ten-mile lines outside the various Baking Solutions stores.

This is the truth: there is no objective reason for time-stops to be as devastating as they are. For example: food can be tricky, sure, but no more people die of starvation during time-stops than at any other time (supplies always last until the manufacturing of Synthetic Food is in full force, and generally speaking, people are a lot less hungry). And not being able to travel by plane is limiting, yes, but in fact the difficulty of going anywhere else allows you to more fully be where you are. Really, the worst thing about time-stops is that they make people believe that time is something like oxygen.

* * *

Phil and I were working around the clock, so to speak. I followed every instruction he gave me. Together, we built a big device that looked like a satellite dish, and another one that Phil called the Medusa — a big silver ring with eight arms like hooks. Both fit in what used to be my study, after we took everything else out. The satellite dish, facing the window, was meant to receive much of the energy saved by the time-stop (up to 70 percent of it, Phil said proudly), and the Medusa was to store that energy and later convert it into a greasy blue liquid that Phil would use to make his products — mainly pills (those known today as T. pills) and these oddly shaped metal disks that allow some people to relive scenes from their old lives. (I personally see nothing but gray snow on my screen every time, which has been the subject of quite a few clashes between us — Phil believes that I’m blocking the feed on purpose somehow.)

We worked together, but it never felt that way; often I would shout out to Phil only to discover he was standing right next to me. I asked as little as possible about it all, afraid of the information as if it were another person lurking around the house. It was clear — this was Phil’s main course, the one he’d been waiting for his entire life. I think he assumed I would come around eventually. I was waiting for him to be full, and trying not to resent him for his undying hunger. Waiting, when time is standing still, is not an experience I wish on anyone with a beating heart.