“Fine. Between you and me, I don’t think he would have had much fun anyway.” She bites into her Danish and a tiny glob of jam smears her chin. She doesn’t wipe it.
“What do you mean?”
“She was never a very sexual person.”
“What are you talking about? Her sexuality has nothing to do with rape.”
“Don’t play dumb. The woman’s already dead, you can stop being afraid of her. She was practically asexual.”
Sex is power, and Dina had power, that much is obvious, but where did it come from? I think back on the long, sultry days of summer, when we sprawled on the beach. Dina looked like a giant cat, napping in the sun, but she always kept one eye open. What was it fixed on, that open eye?
“You remember that Purim party, when her brother put his hand on you?”
How could I forget that party? It’s where it all started, and it still hasn’t ended.
“What about it?”
“Dina didn’t like it. Think why.”
I look at Ronit as she leans closer with wolfish eye and says, “Think hard.”
I am thinking hard, but not in the direction Ronit’s hinting at. Young Dina always took an interest in whoever grabbed her shy brother’s attention. But Ronit can’t be implying that Dina was actually… can she?
“God, no!” she cries out, as if reading my mind. “Way off base. You’re gross.”
I’m the gross one?
“She was a control freak, and when sex comes into the picture, a lot of times things get out of control.” She finally finishes her sticky Danish and licks her oily red lips. “That’s what bothered our Dina, and I’m asking myself whether this has something to do with what bothered our killer.”
Oh, now it’s our killer. Very interesting.
“What do you make of him writing on her forehead with red lipstick?”
I stare at her lips, still shimmering with butter, as if she has just devoured a small animal.
“Come on,” she laughs and dabs her glistening lips with a napkin, as if leaving an oily kiss for a secret admirer. “You’re not trying to imply it was me, are you?”
“At least I’m not setting detectives on you,” I say. Nope, I’m keeping them all for myself.
“You can set as many as you like,” she replies with a smile. “At least that means you’re no longer afraid of me stealing your men.” And once again Neria’s lanky image flits before me, fair curls, brown eyes, and the young Ronit who wasn’t allowed anywhere near him, the Ronit who, only a few weeks into our freshman year, earned herself the reputation of man-eater.
“I’d watch it if I were you,” I say.
“But you’re not me,” she retorts with a grin, “although you’d like to be.”
A young Orthodox couple sits down at a nearby table. I quickly tug my skirt over my knees but then remember that I’m in the more liberal Ramat Gan, and I hike it back up and spread my legs open just a little bit wider. The baby in their stroller won’t stop squealing, but they just keep their indifferent eyes on their menus. I wonder what kind of kid he’ll grow up to be with all that attention.
Yesterday, while ambling down a side street in Bnei Brak, I walked past two kids sitting on the kerb, one of them mind-blowingly fat. The street was empty and the whale of a kid mumbled in my direction, “kurve.” A whore? Nice. It wasn’t the flattering kind of kurve, but an automatic kurve without so much as a trace of lewdness. I turned around and ripped into him, “You’re a kurve!” He was terror-stricken, as if he couldn’t believe I would answer him. It’s highly possible that if the street hadn’t been empty, I would have swallowed the insult and kept walking. And you can bet none of the passers-by would have told him off. The only thing that mattered to them was that the street loudspeakers came on at the right time to announce the arrival of Shabbat and blare its tune: “Privilege me to raise children and grandchildren.” Who knows, maybe one of those children will grow up to be as lovely a creature as the foul-mouthed blob-fish on the kerb.
I keep my eyes on the couple at the adjacent table. She’s one of those prim and manicured Orthodox frummies, the kind who keeps her willowy figure even after a thousand births (and there will be just about a thousand), but the husband is just a bespectacled putz. Ronit is eyeing me eyeing them.
“Why did you move back to Bnei Brak anyway?” she asks.
“Because I don’t have to pay rent there,” I reply, “and besides, it’s not Bnei Brak, it’s on the border.”
Ronit snickers blood-red.
“Don’t try to sell me that one,” she says. “My apartment is on the border of Ramat Gan. You live in Bnei Brak, honey.”
The baby is still shrieking, and his parents are still ignoring him. Ronit stares at the baby with a pensive gaze. “Do you know the human ear can’t bear a baby’s scream? It’s literally ear-splitting. Nature created us that way.”
I recall the squeals of other babies, and the soothing words that always followed, Little baby… sweet little munchkin… don’t cry… It seems like Ronit reads my mind because she suddenly shoots up and walks out of the café, far from the squeals the human ear can’t bear, especially not her human ear.
When Ronit’s back, her face is beaming with the idiotic smile of a twenty-year-old student.
“Look who I found outside,” she says, holding the door for a tiny, scrawny woman pushing a double stroller carrying twins.
The vicious delight in Ronit’s voice makes me cast a glance at the woman. Then a second glance, followed by a third. Tali Unger. Taliunger. Of course. Only she could make Ronit sound so very pleased.
“Sheila! How are you? It’s been years!” As always, Taliunger’s feigned geniality is so intense that an innocent bystander might be fooled into believing she’s
