Standing by the door to the balcony is another semi-recognizable actor, muttering tired happy birthday greetings in front of someone’s smartphone screen. A few other couples are roaming the room, armed with tiny crackers and large wine glasses. Neria and Taliunger are nowhere to be seen, but I sidle up closer to Eli, just in case.
“I’m so happy you made it! Oh my, and you’re not alone!”
Ronit leaps at us from across the room in her dark, slinky dress, holding a glass of twinkling red wine that swirls and splashes as she zips towards us, making me fear for the fate of her spotless IKEA armchairs. Off-white can be quite unforgiving. She greets me with a peck on the cheek. For all its smudge-proof promises, I feel her lipstick smearing a clown-like red circle onto my cheek.
“Good to see you, Witchiepoo,” she smiles at me and immediately turns to Eli, “and you too, Mister Witchiepoo.” She holds out her hand with that dramatic poise of hers, and I can practically hear the cogs of her mind cranking and clicking as he shakes it. I consider her with weariness, a twenty-year-old weariness.
Eli stares at her and says, “Sheila and I are good friends.”
Ronit’s red smile widens into a devious grin.
She lifts her hand and performs the old, familiar gesture of running her fingers through her hair, and I smile at the thought that the gesture might be twenty years old, but Ronit is not. The dissonance is jarring, and the way she’s squinting like a leopardess on the prowl makes me think that this leopardess might need reading glasses.
“Really really good friends?” she asks, and I notice her black dress isn’t new. In fact, it’s either terminally old or has suffered one too many laundry spins.
“Pretty good,” he replies, and looks more like a punctilious accountant than ever.
Ronit, on the other hand, looks like a priestess sizing up a new follower. I remember how back then, when the group helped me land Neria Grossman, and we each had our distinct role, Ronit’s only duty was to remove herself from his field of vision. That’s all she needed to do, just pull a Houdini.
Out of the corner of my eye I notice a red-headed girl smiling at me from across the living room. As she raises her half-empty wine glass in my direction, she suddenly looks familiar. I turn to ask Ronit who she is, but Ronit and Eli have already disappeared.
And now, good lord, they’re stalking towards me.
Taliunger is in the lead, dragging a reluctant Neria by the hand. She waited for the moment I’d be alone to make her move. My God, my Eli, why hast thou forsaken me? I want to reach up, run my hand over my hair and tuck in the loose strands, but a small voice orders me to keep my hand where it is. No last-minute makeovers needed! You’re not some runny-nosed invalid recovering from mono this time, you’re a gorgeous woman in her prime, standing here in the middle of the living room with killer instincts and a winning smile, waiting to bump into Neria again as if it hasn’t been at least ten years since you last crossed paths. But it has been.
And here he is in front of me, and I sense Taliunger’s body tensing beside him. I look up and meet his gaze; still the same lofty height, nor has his face changed much with those bright eyes, and yet there’s no doubt this is a man in his forties. And the years have not been kind to him. As hard as I try, I can’t see the boy I once knew inside this man. He’s just a stranger in a living room. And was his nose always that crooked? I look at this tall stranger and feel nothing. And shooting into that nothingness is one distinct feeling: the spandex! First chance I get, I’ll go to the bathroom and peel it off me.
But Taliunger is a whole other story: standing beside us tense and tremulous, her face twitching underneath several strata of make-up, her stilettoes embedding themselves in the floor, she looks like a tiny nail. She shifts her gaze from me to Neria, her lips ready to curve into a smile, but her nerves get the better of her and her mouth flatlines. She still doesn’t get that I don’t care about him, same as back then.
Go ahead, Tali, you can smile.
But, boy, did I chase after Neria back in college.
The whole gang joined in on the effort. “What are friends for?” Dina said, but that icy look had already filtered into her eyes. It didn’t stop her from overseeing the entire operation, learning his class schedule and tracking his movements around his department building (“Hey, Neria, funny running into you here!”), finding out which protests he attended (“Hey, Neria, funny running into you here!”) and rifling through the phone book for his home number. Naama was entrusted with emotional support, and Ronit? Well, as I said before, she was tasked with not straying, even by accident, into his field of vision.
And what do you know, it actually worked. The hunt was deemed a success. I still remember the moment when one of my idiotic excuses for calling him yielded an invitation to go to the movies with him. A movie! I couldn’t believe my luck. But then, after a remarkably short period, came the moment of dumb dismay.
As we sat in his car, Neria Grossman confessed his unwavering love. I remember that moment well, the image still pooling across my mind. How the prey had finally succumbed to my weeks-long hunting campaign and said, “I’m in love with you,”
