Feldman donned a sweater and returned to the balcony with a black coffee. Inside, their preparation work finished, Hunter and Cissy were making sport of one another again while Bollinger talked with the home office and the rest of the crew wandered downstairs for a break. Yawning and stretching, Feldman couldn't be sure he'd heard someone call his name.
There it was again. It had come from somewhere down below. Leaning over the second-floor balcony, he scanned the crowd, before finally doing a double-take on the alluring, upturned visage of Anke Heuriskein.
“Am I disturbing your final meditation?” she called up.
“Wait there, I'll be right down!” he shouted back, and he was gone, depositing the coffee cup so hastily on the rail it spilled over the side onto a turbaned, semitoothless man below. The poor victim, his black, angry eyes searching the mysteriously vacant balcony above him, swore profusely in an acerbic Middle Eastern tongue.
Feldman was thrilled at his good fortune. Although Anke had taken his phone number at the embassy party, he'd never heard from her. So he'd impatiently searched for her number in both the Tel Aviv city phone book and Tel Aviv University directory, to no avail. Finally, with the help of a university professor friend, he'd gotten what he'd been looking for. Only to be greeted by the beep of an answering machine.
He'd left three messages: asking her to call; asking her to dinner; asking her to meet him this evening for the televised finale, given that Millennium Eve would be his last official day with WNN and he'd be leaving for the States shortly. His last invitation was days ago and he'd heard nothing. Yet, he'd sincerely believed he'd made a favorable first impression. He'd
His feet were in no way as light as his heart as he tripped over squatters in the stairwell, nearly taking a nasty fall. Undaunted, he pressed his way out into the square, fearful he'd lost her in the crowd. But there she was, waiting for him, smiling with those appealingly full and sensual lips. He reached through the last barrier of people and drew her safely to him. Wrapping his arm snugly around her shoulders, he worked their way back to safety, shielding her protectively from the buffeting crowd.
Struggling once more past the loiterers in the stairwell, at last reaching the sanctuary of the makeshift WNN news room, he closed the noise and turmoil behind them. Turning to her inside the door, his eyes were aglow with delight and adrenaline.
“I didn't think you'd gotten any of my messages,” he said, still out of breath from his exertion.
“I hadn't until yesterday,” Anke explained. “I live in Jerusalem, you know. I was here all week.”
This was good, Feldman concluded. She hadn't been ignoring him. “It's great to see you, Anke, you look wonderful!”
And she did. Her thick hair was straight now, pulled back loosely and held up with a simple clip. It didn't appear as if she were wearing makeup, not that she had any need. Hers was that exceptional complexion with the healthy gleam of a natural tan.
It intrigued Feldman how each time he saw her she looked so different and yet so gorgeously the same. There was a versatility to her beauty that slipped dimensions. Tonight, she exhibited a more casual, girlish demeanor. As he looked into her face, he saw a sweetness, almost an innocence, that made her feel far more familiar than their brief acquaintance gave him any right.
“So you live here in Jerusalem?” Feldman confirmed. “Where?”
“Yes. On the North Side, but I keep an apartment in Tel Aviv when I'm attending classes.”
A rather expensive arrangement, Feldman surmised. “How did you find me here in this crowd?”
“When I got your messages”-and she laughed at this, perhaps finding Feldman's somewhat awkward invitations amusing-“I tried to reach you at your office and they told me you'd be out all day. They were kind enough to give me your location here.”
From over Feldman's shoulder came the mischievous voice of Breck Hunter. “So, Anke, you decided to come spend the last hours of planet earth with us?”
Anke looked past Feldman and smiled. “Sure. You seem to have the best seat in the house.”
“Catered, too,” Cissy McFarland added, and was introduced holding a bulging paper sack. She invited their new guest to join them in some kosher box dinners.
On the way to the dining room to join the rest of the crew, Cissy held back, elbowed Feldman's side and whispered up to him, “She's gorgeous! Where did you find her?’
Feldman shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly with a sly smile.
Over bagels and sandwiches, and thanks to Hunter and Cissy's unrestrained curiosity, Feldman was able to fill in some important gaps about his new acquaintance.
“So tell us a little about yourself, Anke,” Cissy suggested.
“Yeah,” Hunter intruded, grinning, “the standard stuff. You know: age, weight, measurements.”
Cissy shot the brash cameraman a scowl.
‘I'll give you a partial answer.” Anke laughed, taking no apparent offense. “Twenty-seven.”
“And are you married, engaged or otherwise attached?” Hunter persisted.
“Give her a break, Hunter!” Feldman protested.
“None of the above,” Anke responded with a good-natured laugh.
Cissy rescued her. “Where are you from originally, Anke? Do I detect a French accent?”
“I'm from Paris,” she said. “My mother's French, my father American.”
“So what brought you to Israel?” Hunter would not be elbowed aside.
“I came here in ‘97 to take an assistant professorship at Tel Aviv University. I'm working on my graduate degree.”
Hunter stole a quick, sideways glance at Feldman. “Let's see now, Anke,” he summarized, “we've established that you've got looks, personality, brains-probably money, too, eh? So, what I can't figure out,” and he gestured with his coffee spoon toward Feldman, “is what you see in this underfed, underpaid, diehard news geek!”
Bollinger and the other crew members burst out laughing.
Nodding slightly, pursing her lips to restrain a smile, Anke regarded the uncomfortable man next to her. “Well,” she teased, “I should think he has promise as a reporter, if only he'd show a little more social conscience.” She paused at the look of objection on his face. “But then again,” and her eyes locked into his, “there was the wonderful report he did about that meteorite destroying the Negev Institute. Now,
The timing and sincerity of the compliment caught Feldman quite off-guard. He felt his cheeks grow warm.
“Okay,” Cissy stepped in once again, “I think our guest has endured about enough of our keen interviewing skills for one afternoon.” She turned to Anke, apologetically. “You'll have to excuse Hunter's retarded social graces. You see, he spent his formative years in solitary confinement at a home for unwed fathers and he simply doesn't know any better.”
Anke laughed. “I see now why Mr. Hunter operates behind the camera instead of in front of it.”
This unleashed an appreciative chorus of scorn directed at Hunter, who accepted his comeuppance with a broad-faced grin.
As they finished their meal, Bollinger had one final question of Anke. He wanted to know if she was unduly concerned about the prospect of the world ending in the next three hours and thirty-five minutes. She replied that she was not.
Outside on the mountain, however, it was an entirely different story. Escalating noise drew Feldman and his associates onto the balcony where they observed increasingly strange activities underway.
The rising tensions and close quarters had apparently pushed several incompatible cults into open opposition. In some instances, what began as civil disagreements in theology had degraded into shouting matches and even fist-fights, pitting zealot against zealot in a battle of the self-righteous.
“There, I think God likes that guy's style.” Feldman facetiously pointed to an open circle of fighting where one defender of the faith ran up and smashed a folded lawn chair over the head of another.
“Yeah, skull-cracking for Christ,” Hunter snorted, and Anke looked disapprovingly at both reporters.
“Oh, over here!” Hunter shouted. “Where are the field glasses?”
To their right, a small group of men and women had shed their clothes and were prancing before a bonfire to a poorly played pan flute.
“Yes,” Hunter intoned in a bad W.C. Fields imitation, “naked unto the Lord!”
