The elevator shook wildly, as if it couldn’t recover from her departure. And then it continued to descend. To plummet.
For a long time.
Too long.
When I finally reached the lobby, the doors opened directly into a white abyss. Standing on the bottom, waving at me, was Mayan from Death Road. Do you believe in God?
No, but I tend to believe in karma, that if you do something bad, it has repercussions, and if you do something good, it comes back to you. It’s never one-to-one, of course. Fate is more circuitous. And most of its boomerangs are invisible. Take, for example, a story. Not mine, but one written by R (a pseudo-letter), who came up to me after a readers’ meeting in Kfar Saba and said: You said you were a story hunter, right? So I have a story for you. Want to listen to it? She was wearing a sweater that was several sizes too large for her, thick glasses, and black New Balance running shoes. Her tone was matter-of-fact. Almost businesslike. And she looked a bit tired. Nothing in her appearance even hinted at scandal. Nonetheless, I liked that she said “listen” instead of “hear,” so I asked her to sit on the bench outside the library.
—
It turned out that R had once had an affair.
And not just a run-of-the-mill affair. A sadomasochistic affair.
Twice a week she used to meet with a square-chinned guy on the bottom floor of the Beit Silver parking garage near the Ramat Gan Diamond Exchange, and there they would hurt each other until they swooned in pleasure or one of them would say the word “suburbia.” That was their code word. To signal the other that the pain had passed the point where it was arousing, and to calm things down, they said “suburbia.”
At first, R thought she was succeeding in living her dangerous life on the bottom floor of the parking garage and her normal life on the third floor of the building in suburban Kfar Saba without either of them affecting the other.
In addition, she sometimes felt that one complemented the other. That one enabled the other to exist.
But then R’s husband began to have pain.
He couldn’t pinpoint its specific location. Sometimes he thought it was in his stomach. Sometimes his back. Sometimes it climbed to his throat.
In any case, it was very strong. So much so that he couldn’t fall asleep at night. He tried painkillers—starting with over-the-counter medications and moving to prescription drugs—but nothing helped.
She had no choice but to take him for tests. Which showed nothing. There was no finding that could explain the pain. No unusual blood test results. No growth. No damage to any of his internal organs.
Each doctor sent him to another doctor, and at first, each new one was loudly skeptical of the professionalism and judgment of the previous one, but ultimately was forced to admit that he too had no idea what the source of the problem was.
And then—the tough square-chinned guy went abroad. To a work conference. During the two weeks they didn’t meet, her husband’s condition showed a marked improvement.
R didn’t notice the connection right away.
It took another few visits to the Beit Silver parking garage, after Square Chin returned from abroad, and another few visits to the emergency room, when her husband’s pain grew worse again—for her to understand: It was her. She was hurting her husband.
Something in his subconscious felt it. The poisonous substance of her infidelity was seeping into him.
From the moment she realized it, she had no doubt about what she had to do.
She made a date to see Square Chin outside of their regular meeting times in the parking garage, told him what she had discovered, and said that was it, it was over.
He grabbed her ass, slammed her against his car, and said, Nothing is over.
She pushed his hand away and said, I’m serious, it’s over.
He grabbed her by the back of the neck, yanked her head closer, tore at her hair painfully, and said, Don’t play games with me.
She tried to push him away, and said, I’m not playing.
He pressed his pelvis against hers, locked her arms behind her back with his huge hand, and began to grind against her.
She said, Suburbia.
And he kept going.
She said, Suburbia!
And he kept going.
So she kicked him in the testicles.
He shuddered for a moment, recovered immediately, and punched her a few times. Real punches. The bones in the back of his hand crashed into the bones of her nose. And then into her stomach.
She fell onto the filthy ground next to her car, and he, as if waking from a daydream, bent over her quickly. I’m sorry, sweetie, he said.
I said suburbia.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I got carried away.
Take me to the emergency room, she said, clutching her stomach. No, don’t take me to the emergency room. Just go.
Your nose is bleeding. I can’t leave you like this.
Please…go.
Go?
Yes, I’m begging you. I’ll manage. Go. Enough. It’s over.
R called her husband, told him that a car had hit her in the parking garage and taken off, and asked him to pick her up. He came with his soft, vulnerable chin and, horrified, hurried her off to the emergency room. He sat beside her for hours, the way only someone who loves can. He held her hand and didn’t let go. He brought her decaf with soy milk and a not-too-warm chocolate croissant from the shopping center. He walked alongside her bed when they moved her from one department to another. He brought her another blanket from a different department when she was cold. He slept all night on two chairs joined together at her bedside, and talked with the doctors in the morning, his voice trembling and his eyes wide with worry.
One of the doctors, young and not yet burned out,
