Safekeeping (45 page)

Farid's lips parted, but no words came out. She could see him thinking of what to say, and for the first time it dawned on her that the answer might be no. The thought gave the bedroom's diffused light a pale, cold quality.

“Well? Do you want me to have this baby?”

“Ulya . . .” He reached his hand out, as if in apology, and then dropped it.

“Oh . . .” Ulya looked around the room in disbelief and was confronted with her reflection in the oval mirror over the dresser—fake red hair stringy with sweat, smudged eye makeup, sunburned arms, loose tank top hiding the bump of the baby he didn't want.

Her lip quivered. “You don't love me.”

He had loved her once. She was sure of it. He must have fallen out of love when she didn't show up for those twenty nights. And what had she been doing instead? Sitting in her room, savoring the idea of him lying heartbroken on their blanket all night, listening for her and getting nothing but the plunk of the falling mandarins. She had enjoyed torturing him, and now she wondered why he didn't love her?

Farid walked toward her with his arms extended. Horrified at the prospect of a pity hug, she put out a hand. Maybe he had never loved her. Maybe she had been his fool and not the other way around. When he would ask her to marry him every night, he knew she'd say no. He may have never been willing to marry a non-Arab. He tried to hug her, and she smacked his arms away.

“Ulya, Ulya.” He attempted to get his arms around her while she thrashed left and right.

“Fuck you!” she cried. “I hate you.”

He caught her wrists and held tight. “Ulya! Please! Listen! Please!”

Tears—embarrassing tears—streamed down her face as she tried to free herself while simultaneously not wanting to lose his touch.

“Ulya! Listen! Listen! . . . Of course I want you to have our baby!”

She heard him, but had trouble calming down. She breathed hard, waiting to hear more.

“I assumed you didn't want it. I still want nothing more than for you to be my wife. Will you be my wife?”

Ulya drew a short breath, looked anywhere but at him. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She remained stiff at first, then dropped her head on his shoulder, giving into the comforting smell of him. He then wrapped his other arm around her lower back. He did love her, and yet the light in the room didn't lose its sadness.

Farid lowered his head so their cheeks brushed. “I had given up hope of ever having you in my arms again, and now I'll be able to hold you every day for the rest of our lives.”

Looking at their reflection in his parents' mirror, Ulya wiped the streaks of mascara from under her eyes. The panic over Farid not loving her was swiftly being replaced by the panic that she was going to hate her life. She couldn't let that happen. She pulled back her head and fixed her eyes on him. “I'm not going to live in this run-down village and work on the kibbutz until I die.”

The fear returned to Farid's eyes. She was relieved to see how quickly the tables turned back.

“I'm going to get that restaurant. Eventually.”

“Eventually isn't good enough. This baby is going to be here in five months. You have to have the restaurant in five months.”

“That's impossible.”

“Why?”

“I don't have enough money saved.”

She knew he had no money saved. Most of his earnings went to his family, and the pittance left over he had spent on the wine and chocolates he brought her every night.

“If you haven't been able to save the money until now, what makes you think you'll be able to do it after this baby is born? How much money do you need to open a restaurant?”

“A lot. At least a hundred thousand to lease a space. And maybe thirty thousand to purchase kitchen appliances, tables. I'd have to get a sign. Maybe a helper. I don't know. I guess I'd need a hundred and fifty thousand shekels. More perhaps.”

The idea of stealing the brooch was already there, as if she had been looking, waiting, for an excuse. She had said she would only steal it if she needed it to survive; well, now she needed it to survive.

“I can get us twice that. Maybe more. And I can get it by tomorrow.”

Farid looked at her sideways. “You're not planning to rob a bank, are you?”

For the first time in her life she would be open about being a thief, and not a petty thief, but the kind that stole the truly valuable, the irreplaceable. Something that would break the owner's heart. And all this time she had worried what people would think of her shoplifting hand cream.

“No. We're going to steal a brooch with a sapphire the size of my thumb. It's worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. That's four hundred thousand shekels, Farid!”

“Steal?” Farid released her, rubbed his forehead. “I don't know.”

“You don't know? You're always going on and on about your father's father's father, how happy he was with his olive trees and blah blah blah until the Jews took over. Well, now you can take something back. Remember that old Jewish bag you tried to help down from the truck? How she shooed you away like you were a dirty fly?”

“Yes, but it isn't her brooch. Is it?”

“No, it belongs to the American who barged in on us. So we're not just talking about a Jew, but an American Jew. Believe me, he'll be fine. And we need it to survive.”

Farid hooked Ulya's hair behind her ear. “Survive? Isn't that a small exaggeration?”

“No. It's not. We either get that brooch or forget it. The baby. The marriage. The whole thing. I can't risk being stuck here in this horrible village for the rest of my life.”

Farid closed his eyes, as if that would make the whole proposition disappear.

“I mean it,” she said.

“I could try to get a few friends . . .”

“No.” She shook her head. “These friends might keep the brooch or want to split the profits, and I don't trust you to stop that from happening. I'll do it.”

“How?”

“Don't worry. This is something I can do.”

U
lya scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. Did showing all that leg offset the baggy T-shirt that hung off her achy breasts, hiding the repulsive bump? Her body had been hijacked. She felt bone-tired, queasy, like she constantly needed to take a dump—nothing like molten lava.

She dabbed on lip gloss. “So is this friend a man friend?”

Claudette sat on her bed, hugging her pillow. “Yes.”

Ulya turned from the mirror. “Is this who you've been spending every night with?”

Claudette nodded.

“So you're not just friends, are you? You're romantic?”

Claudette didn't answer this time.

Ulya turned back to her lip gloss. “Why are you inviting me and Adam to tag along?”

“It was my friend's idea.”

Ulya had been shocked when Claudette invited her to a party. Not only was it strange to see the word
party
come out of the weirdo's mouth, but she couldn't understand why she would want her to come. She'd never been nice to her. But she accepted. Gladly. Not only did she love getting dolled up, but a party provided the ideal setup for stealing the brooch. So far, despite having followed Adam around for a week, like that pathetic dog of his, she hadn't come close. When he said the brooch never left him, he hadn't been exaggerating. She even pretended to fall asleep on the empty bed in his room and then waited all night for him
to either remove the brooch from his pocket or to take off his jeans; but he fell asleep in the jeans and in the morning wore them into the bathroom. She would have snuck into the bathroom while he showered if the showers here had tubs and curtains like they did in civilized countries. Even slurring drunk, Adam didn't seem to forget about his brooch. Half the time his hand was buried in that pocket. Parties, though, had distractions. Mishaps. Lights pulsed. Drinks got knocked over. Things were lost. People danced, pushed, flirted. The mere thought of all that fun blasted away her fatigue.

A knock came at the door. When Ulya opened it, she found a teenage boy.

“Hi. I'm Ofir.”

“
You're
Claudette's friend?”

He nodded. “That's right.”

Ulya smiled, amused. “I'm Ulya.”

She had hoped to see proof on the boy's face that she looked good, but his strange eyes already stared past her at Claudette. Noting the teardrop pupil, she registered this was the seventeen-year-old Ofir from the bus bombing. He wasn't a handsome boy, but he was tall and self-possessed for his age.

She grabbed a pack of cigarettes from her dresser and told the boy, “This party better be good.”

Ofir shrugged; clearly he couldn't care less if he impressed or disappointed her. “I can't make any promises. I never used to go to these parties, but . . . things change.”

Ulya turned to look at her roommate, who stood, gazing at the boy, hands clasped in front of her white sundress, painted lips in a small smile. Everything about Claudette seemed different: her hair longer, cheeks pinker, eyes brighter. She was so much prettier than upon her arrival. How had she not noticed this transformation?

“Yes, things change,” said Ulya, heading for the door. “I'll get Adam.”

When Adam heard the knocking, he didn't budge. He remained on the bed with a beer in one hand, Dagmar's note in the other. For the hundredth time, he searched the words for a clue. It was almost two weeks since Eyal, after much begging, put him on probation, and though he'd managed since then to do a passable job in the dishroom, he'd made no progress with his search for Dagmar. Or his sobriety.

The knock came again. He stared at the door, hoping the person would just go away. The knock came a third time before Ulya poked in her head. “You ready?”

“Ready for what?”

She stepped into the room. “What do you mean ‘ready for what'?”

Ulya didn't know what to make of Adam's expression. As she walked toward him, his eyes enlarged. Oh my God. She came to a stop. He could tell. “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”

“You look . . . you look . . . incredible. More stunning than ever.”

Ulya breathed again. She shook her head as if she were above needing such flattery, but inside she felt the rush of his words.

“Well, I'm all dressed up for the rave, remember? Come on, we're leaving now.”

“Rave?” He shook his head. “No thanks.”

“But you promised you would come.”

“No, I didn't. That never happened.”

“Come on.” She took him by the wrist and pulled. He remembered that first day when she wanted to show him the magazine, and it felt like a long time ago. “You have to come!”

“Why? Why do I have to come?”

“Because I . . . I want you there.”

She hadn't had to pretend to be in love with him yet and was hoping she could get the job done under the guise of friendship. Adam, however, couldn't help but wonder if she were reconsidering him. Why else would she be hanging around all the time? She wasn't being flirty, but she watched him like she did before, when she seemed to be waiting for him to do that one thing that would settle her mind about him. He didn't know how seriously to take the renewed attention. She might just be lonely, now that she no longer sneaked off to see her Arab boyfriend. But then, maybe, just maybe, after not seeing or speaking to either of them, she had realized that it was him, Adam, that she missed. Yeah, right.

“Come on, Adam who will always be young.”

He smiled, touched that she remembered him saying that.

“Come on!”

She could see him wavering, that all he needed was one more nudge. “There's going to be free alcohol.”

Free alcohol? He looked down at the six-pack waiting on the floor beside the bed. He'd drunk two. If he went to this party, he could save the others for tomorrow. A week after getting his monthly stipend, he'd already blown through half of it. In another week he'd have no money for beer. Maybe that was a good thing, having no way of buying booze for two weeks.

“All right, let me get dressed.”

She gave him a big smile and released his wrist. After the door closed behind her, he chugged the rest of his bottle and schlepped to the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and ran a hand over his stubble, assessing his reflection. He could really use a shave. He picked up the razor but then decided against shaving with that dull blade again. He'd already made that mistake three times. After much effort, he squeezed a smudge of toothpaste out of a shriveled tube and brushed his teeth for a count of ten, nowhere near Zayde's hundred. He shook the can of hair mousse but got nothing.

Everything in his closet was nasty. He hadn't had his clothes laundered in weeks, even though he just had to drop the shit off. The hangers were empty, everything heaped on the floor. He rooted through the shirts, sniffing their pits, until he found a red tee that stunk a little less than the others. He swapped his work pants for jeans, deciding no underwear was better than dirty ones, and transferred the brooch.