Light Years (7 page)

They all settled down in their seats, hauling out notebooks and textbooks and looking prepared to defend their theses. Two minutes before class began, in walked our fearless leader, the graduate student who would lead us down the path of right conclusions and critical thinking.

At first I thought that maybe all graduate students looked
alike, bought their clothes at the same shabby-yuppie store, had the same careless haircut that flopped over their eyes. But as he opened up his satchel, brought out the class textbook, and looked at us, I realized that he wasn’t a carbon copy. He was the same guy in the coffee shop from four weeks ago. What was his name?

“Justin Case,” he said. I nearly jumped. Just in case what? I wanted to ask. “I’ll be your section leader. Let’s have everyone go around and introduce ourselves. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, we might as well know each other’s names.” He had a very smooth way of talking, comfortable in front of the class. I had a feeling he’d be a good instructor.

We all said our names, one by one. I hadn’t done this since my parents sent me to sleep-away scout camp the summer after sixth grade. At least I didn’t need to think of an animal that starts with the same first letter of my name. Maya monkey. Maya manatee. Maya mamba snake. Deadly, poisonous, and fast.

“Maya Laor,” I said. He hadn’t noticed me until then. His eyes widened slightly. He remembered me.

He handed out a schedule for the semester: due dates for papers, office hours, discussion topics in the upcoming weeks. Then he discussed what he expected from us and what we could expect from the class.

After class ended, I gathered my notes. On my way out, he called my name.

“Can I speak with you for a moment?”

The other students shuffling out the door looked at me
curiously. I wondered if they’d noticed anything during class. There was something about Justin. I kept looking at him, analyzing, trying to figure out what it was about him that both irritated and fascinated me. He had one of the most perfect faces I’d ever seen on a man. Straight, narrow nose, perfectly centered between gray eyes and above firm lips. I was more than a little disturbed by the thought that I wondered what it would be like to kiss him. I walked over to his desk feeling slightly ill.

“This is a surprise.”

“Right. Small world.”

“You said you were from Greenland, wasn’t it? Settling in okay?”

I studied him closely. His face seemed open, his question friendly, but there was that glint of amusement that told me he wasn’t buying any of it.

“I’m fine.”

Pause. I knew I was being a bitch. I didn’t know why.

“What year are you?” he asked. Maybe I wasn’t the only one in the grip of an uneasy fascination.

“First.” I tried to keep my face blank, but it was hard. He clearly wanted to keep asking questions, but good manners prevented him. “I’m not eighteen, if that’s what you were wondering.”

He saw I was laughing at him. He smiled. He had a nice smile.

“Somehow I didn’t think you were fresh out of high school.”

“Nope, I’m fresh out of the army.”

“The army?” he said. “In Greenland? I didn’t realize they had an army.”

“Doesn’t everyone have one?”

Then he smiled again, and I smiled back before I realized it.

“Welcome back to the civilian world.” He rose from his seat, and again I was struck by how tall he was. He was one of those people you didn’t realize were big until they stood near you. I took a small step back. “I’m glad to have you in my section. I think you’ll be able to bring in a different perspective that will make the class much more interesting. Obviously the military has played an extremely important role in the history of the twentieth century.” He zipped up his bag and put on the strap diagonally across his chest. “It’ll be interesting to have a former soldier sharing her opinions.”

“Yeah,” I said, eloquent as ever.

We walked out of the room together.

That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking about Dov. I thought about the first time we kissed, sitting on a blanket near his father’s jeep in that dusty field. My heart hammering under my shirt, wondering if he could see it leap, it felt so wild. I could picture him clearly with that half-grin of his. I could hear his voice. How could he be gone? It seemed impossible, a stupid joke that I shouldn’t fall for.

I listened to Payton breathe. She was almost invisible under her sky-blue bedspread. Only the top of her head showed, resting on a white pillow that nearly glowed in the dark room.

Finally I got up, pulled on a pair of jeans, and tucked in the
large T-shirt I slept in. I grabbed my sandals and crept out of the room.

I walked for nearly two hours, aimlessly. It was a warm night, but cool enough to be comfortable. I tried to pick out the Big Dipper or the Summer Swan, but the sky was hazy and the clouds kept shifting. The stars were the same as in Israel, the same constellations I once pointed out to Dov, but I couldn’t see them. There was nothing here from home for me to hold on to. Home felt light years away. Looking at the ground as I walked, I couldn’t make out the sidewalk. There was only darkness under my feet.

I picked up my pace, nearly running through the dark and quiet streets. I thought these memories would fade once I got here. I thought they would diminish once classes began. But they hadn’t. They were still here with me.

I was beginning to think they would always be with me, wherever I went, whatever I did.

I finished my one-week course in office administration, and I wasn’t terribly surprised when I received my assignment. Whether Aunt Hen had pulled strings or whether it was just good luck, I was assigned to Rishon Lezion, a large base near Tel Aviv.

Once I moved into Hen’s apartment, I quickly discovered that she was rarely there. I would catch a quick glimpse of her in the morning swallowing the last of her coffee and rushing out the door, and then I wouldn’t see her until late at night. She saw many of her clients at dinner, and afterward she returned to the office to work on what they had discussed, which meant she usually didn’t come home until nine or ten.

I realized that I had only ever seen Hen on her time off, when she was lounging, sipping a drink, taking it extremely easy, and I’d always believed that she was not a hardworking person. Now I saw that she was such a slow-moving slug during her downtime because she had so little of it.

Hen had three bedrooms in her apartment. Since her bedroom had its own bathroom, I had the hall bathroom and shower all to myself, something I’d never had before. Hen’s kitchen was large, with pale cabinets that hid the oven and
fridge. It was very modern and sharp and clean. It was also very empty.

That first morning, after saying a sleepy good-bye to Hen in her purple business suit and towering heels, I stumbled into the kitchen looking for breakfast. All I found was some instant Nescafé powder, no sugar. The fridge held a carton of milk, greenish cheese, and a shriveled little pear. Clearly, Aunt Hen was not putting on her hated pounds at home.

I made myself a cup of coffee and wrote a grocery list as I nursed it, making a face at its watery bitterness. But there was no time to do anything about breakfast now. I put on my uniform, assessed it in the mirror, and still felt a small thrill to see a soldier staring back. I practiced making a blank face so that I looked tough and unapproachable, then headed off to my new office.

I caught a bus and tried not to think about my stomach when the bus stopped by a bakery and the smell drifted in through the open windows. Cruel, just cruel. I told my stomach to stop whining. You’re in the army now.

Every morning I’d get up, get ready for work, walk three blocks, catch two buses, and stand in morning formation. After work, I’d catch two buses back home, walk three blocks, enter a quiet and empty apartment, and eat dinner alone in front of the television. Once a week I had overnight duty and I spent the night on the base in a barracks room with three other girls. Irit and Leah were both stationed nearby and we managed to see each other, though usually only on Friday nights. When Irit
came, she spent the night with Leah or me, since she lived over an hour away. Most nights I was in bed by ten, out of it by six. It was my first taste of true privacy and solitude. My first taste of loneliness.

Aunt Hen didn’t have nearly as many glamorous parties as I’d always imagined. In two months she only had two functions, and I tagged along for one of them. It was a hugely boring affair and I finally understood why my parents were not more impressed with her lifestyle. It was glitzy, true, but deathly dull and more an extension of work than I had pictured. Conversations buzzed around a certain merger and one red-faced CFO who was caught in an extremely embarrassing situation with his young male assistant. As soon as people heard I was still a soldier, they’d ask me where I was stationed and what I was doing, and then pat me on the head. Sometimes literally.

In my third month at work, I stepped out of my cubicle and into the makeshift kitchen so that I could take my headache pills without any badgering from my co-workers. I had developed chronic headaches, dull and steady behind my right eye. There was someone in the kitchen heating leftovers in a dingy plastic container, and when he saw me choke down the pills he looked mildly concerned. I rummaged through the communal fridge to prove that I didn’t just skulk into the kitchen to take medication (which I did) and found an apple. I wiped it on my shirt in a halfhearted effort to clean it.

“Do you want some?” he asked, tipping his head at the
rotating container in the microwave. “If that’s all you brought for lunch, I have more than enough for two.”

I raised a doubtful brow.

“Thanks, I’m fine.” I showed him my apple. I didn’t know who he was. He looked about my age, maybe a couple of years older because he was an officer, and you had to have been in the army longer before you could be one. He was tall and very dark, so that his blue eyes were almost startling when you looked him full in the face. If I hadn’t felt slightly cornered, I would have thought he was cute.

“You might be having headaches because you aren’t eating right.”

“How did you know I had a headache?”

“You keep rubbing your right temple,” he said.

I dropped my arm.

“You’re too skinny.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Sometimes officers let their responsibilities go to their heads. I was not about to let him order me to gain weight. I did notice that he had nice hands, broad across with long, tapering fingers. It was almost a shame he was so annoying.

“Who are you, my mother?”

He started to smile, stopped, tilted his head, and looked at me. Finally he stammered a bit, cleared his throat and said, “What I meant to say was, do you want to go out sometime?”

Well, that was rich. “Do you even know my name?”

“Sure.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked
back on his heels. “You’re Maya Laor, you work for Lieutenant Colonel Beral, and you’ve been here for a couple of months, plus or minus a few days.” He grinned and his eyes crinkled so that only a wedge of blue showed.

Had he been spying? The movie I’d watched the night before was all about a charming but demented stalker.

“How do you know who I am? And who are you?”

“Dov Morelan. I work with intelligence one floor down. Don’t freak out. I saw you walk to work a few times, asked around, and found out. You don’t exactly blend in with the crowd.” That was an odd compliment. Did he mean that I was pretty? Or just strange-looking? “I’ve been having lunch here all week, but this is the first time I’ve seen you.”

“I usually skip lunch.”

“Then no wonder you’re downing pills like candy. Come on, let me take you out.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” The weird thing is I was tempted. He followed me to my desk and leaned a hip against it.

“So what are you working on?”

“Can’t you take a hint?” I asked in disbelief. He looked very comfortable there, leaning against my cluttered desk. I tried to look cold and uninterested, but he was cute. He could also get in a bit of trouble, a lieutenant flirting with a private. I could feel people staring at us.

“What?” he raised his hands as if I held him at gunpoint. “I’m just being friendly.”

“I’m not interested.” I tried to talk quietly, but I knew I was going to get ribbed for this no matter how softly I spoke.
Good-looking officer, not from our floor, asking me out? Oh yeah, I was going to get a lot of grief for this.

“Who said I’m interested?” he asked.

“You asked me out to lunch.”

“That was out of pity, sweetheart.”

“What?”

The fact that I just squeaked like a mouse wasn’t a good thing. The fact that he threw his head back and laughed wasn’t so good either. “Kidding. I’m just kidding.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been told.” He straightened off my desk and winked. “See you around, Private Maya.”

“Sure, whatever.” But I turned back to my computer and had to fight a silly grin that kept wanting to take over.

Not quite love at first sight, but that was me, I guess. Give me a glass slipper and I’d twist my ankle and shatter the shoe.

The first time we went out for lunch, a week after our first meeting, Dov ordered for me before I had the chance. When he saw the look on my face, he had the good grace to look a little abashed.

“I hope that’s all right with you,” he said. “I come here a lot, I know what’s good.”

“Next time a simple recommendation will be fine.” I was torn between anger and laughter. “Tell me, did you ever go to flight school?”

“No, why?”

“Because the only people I’ve ever met who are as arrogant as you are pilots. Do you usually order for people?”

“Only when I’m trying to impress them.”

“Well, stop it. Because if you order my dessert, I’m leaving.” I meant to sound peeved, but he just laughed and I was surprised to find that I found it funny too.

When the waiter came back, before Dov could say a word, I ordered two coffees and two desserts. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head, and smiled.