Shelly Oria - New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

Kiss #99

This is a Sunday-morning kiss in upstate New York. We are at a bed-and-breakfast. It has been a long time since you kissed me like this, and it reminds me of that kiss that made me fall in love with you (see kiss #3). Yesterday was filled with disappointment; we got lost and couldn’t find I-87, then the hot tub wasn’t as big as you’d expected. But this kiss, the first thing that happens to me on Sunday, is light with possibility and future.

Kiss #146

This is the kiss that tells me the rules have changed. I clearly taste salami, which I know you don’t eat, and your tongue is doing something it’s never done before: some kind of loop to the left, then to the right; it feels calculated and foreign, and my mouth goes numb.

Kiss #147

I kiss you again, two hours later — an attempt to replace the memory. You would never let me kiss you if you knew my motivation, because you think I’m always treating life as if it’s a film and pretending to be the director. I want this kiss (#147) to prove the former (#146) wrong. It does not. I decide to ignore it, ignore the salami.

Kiss #163

The promise kiss. There’s something I need to tell you , you say, and Salami has a name now, though I refuse to repeat it. You promise me that it’s all behind us. You say it was just a slip, and I keep thinking, Slip, slip, slip of the lip.

Kiss #212

This kiss tells me you’re bored again. We are at MoMA (this is before they closed, before they renovated, before they reopened; by then we will not be together). We look at a beautiful black woman Chris Ofili made from elephant dung. The couple next to us finds it romantic. They laugh, and mid-laughter the man grabs the woman by her shoulders. It’s a powerful gesture; his hands are telling her he is sure.

We look at them, and it seems that we’re supposed to follow. But in our kiss there is nothing but habit. I realize then that we are not really done with Salami — that when you let things like that in, they can never find the way out.

Kiss #288

Kiss #288 gives me false hope, which, without the perspective of time, appears simply as hope.

We are visiting your parents in California, and it is going well. I’ve already met your dad when he was in New York on business, but everyone knows it is the mother who decides how the parents feel. She will announce her verdict with her arms, I know, when she hugs you goodbye before we leave. But this will only happen in two days, and now, on the evening of our arrival, everyone is tired except us, though we are the ones who should be sleepy, with our internal clocks still on East Coast time. You sneak into the bathroom when I go there to pee, and we kiss with the excitement of teenage rebels.

Kisses #289–301

These kisses are an attempt to relive that bathroom kiss, kiss #288. We look for dark places, inappropriate places, places lived in by people we don’t even know. When there are no more excuses for hiding, we hide in private and pretend it’s the same. When we can no longer pretend, we lie. Hiding was something we found exciting for a while, we say, and now we’re over it. When the lie is exposed, we look the other way. I know what you are thinking: we’re like the worst poker players on earth, refusing to look at the cards we are holding.

* * *

When winter comes, I know the end is close. When I tremble at night because the window is cracked, you hold me, and you let your hands run up and down my back, my arms; but there are no more kisses. All winter long I wait for you to show up with empty boxes, a duffel bag, something that can host your belongings as they depart from shelves and drawers. I say nothing about it, and clean the apartment twice every day because I don’t know how to passively wait for things to get worse. When I cry one evening for no reason, you kiss my tears, and I wonder whether or not it counts, whether or not it should be documented. By the end of winter I know, the way events sometimes unfold in a woman’s mind before their time, that our first ice cream this summer will be our last.

Avner had woken up too late. Only when he walked over to get the coffee going, his electric toothbrush humming along — how Netta used to hate that — and caught a glimpse of the clock on the kitchen counter did he realize he’d miscalculated. How had that happened? He’d set two different alarms to two-fifteen a.m., was half awake the whole night, but by two-fifteen, he now realized, he should have already been on his way. He felt terror at the thought of his little girl waiting for him alone at JFK in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t be alone, would she? There would be a flight attendant taking care of her, there always was, but he’d never been late, and so who knew how that worked. He started moving fast, throwing last things into his suitcase, bumping into everything in his speed. What a bad idea it all was, this trip to Albany.

* * *

From a distance it looked like they were laughing, Maya and this stranger in uniform, but perhaps he was wrong, because by the time he got closer they both seemed annoyed. Maymay, he said a bit too loud, and hugged his daughter. It always took her some time to warm up to him, and he could understand that, no reason to take it personally. Photo ID, please, the flight attendant said in Hebrew, looking at Maya but obviously meaning him. So sorry I’m late, Avner said, and handed her his passport. It was the normal procedure, and her rudeness was normal, too, for an Israeli, and yet he couldn’t help but feel … criticized. Was this only about his lateness, or did Netta perhaps say something about him when she dropped Maya off? Sorry, Avner said again, although the woman had clearly heard him the first time; I’m really sorry.

* * *

Now it was five a.m., and Avner and Maya were making their way through the Penn Station crowd. Where were all these people rushing to so early in the morning? Avner was anxious that he would lose Maya. He tried again. Come on, why not give me your hand? But she’d said it earlier — his hand was sweaty. She made her cheek and shoulder meet, indicating her no-thank-you. Avner wished to find himself in a world where grown men could do that too, make their cheek and shoulder meet.

He could see she was looking at his beret. Or was she? He might be imagining it, which would be Netta’s fault. When Netta called to announce that “the package has been shipped,” right before they hung up she said, Avner, one more thing. Don’t wear that silly hat, okay? It embarrasses her. What an awful word, embarrass . This isn’t Israel, Netta, he said; in New York, people wear whatever they want. People wear whatever they want in Tel Aviv, too, Netta replied, only here when you look ridiculous they tell you to your face. And then — she’s a little girl, Avner, and she’s getting to that age. Just don’t wear the hat. Avner exhaled into the phone. Netta, he said slowly, if my daughter wants to ask me something, she can ask me herself. Occasionally, since moving to New York, he was able to stand up to Netta in these small ways. You’re such a teenager, Avner, Netta said.

* * *

Maya was carrying a purple backpack, and he was carrying her TIME magazine duffel bag and his own suitcase. It was incredible, how long Netta managed to hang on to things like crappy duffel bags they’d gotten for free years ago. The weight of it made him twist as he walked, and he wanted to call Netta and ask if she was ever going to buy a trolley suitcase like a normal person. But he didn’t, of course, and what was new about that? They’d always been experts at not saying things to each other.