The Best Place on Earth (12 page)

I started selling gimel forms a couple of months ago. The money from the army wasn’t enough and trying to hold a waitressing job on the side had me sleep deprived and distracted. I fucked up so
many times that eventually I was held back from getting my rank and spent three days in detention. One day at the canteen, I ran into Yafit, who I knew from junior high. Her family had moved to Tel Aviv after ninth grade. She was working in the maintenance department. When she heard I was a medic, she asked if there was any way that I could score her a couple of gimelim. She said she used to have another contact, but he had finished his service. It made me think. I saw soldiers come to the clinic every day with pretend limps, carrying a Thermos of hot tea they drank a minute before I checked their temperature, eyes swollen with creams and drops.

I stole empty forms over the next couple of months, a few each day until I’d amassed a decent stack. I photocopied the doctors’ signatures and practised forging them. One day I took home the doctors’ stamps and sat up all night stamping the forms. I brought them back early the next morning so the officers didn’t even notice they were missing. I never sell in the clinic, even though it’s tempting. Yafit hooks me up for a small commission. I just hand her the forms as she requests them. Fifty bucks a gimel. Clean.

I’ve never told Oren. I don’t think he’d approve. He’s changed a lot since he started the army, become distant and depressed. When we see each other he mostly wants to catch up on his sleep.

I come back from lunch
and see two army police officers sitting in Sagit’s office. Sagit looks up at me through the glass and keeps talking. My heart jumps. “What’s going on?” I ask Shuli. She shrugs.

I sit down at my station, go through the motions, but I can’t concentrate. I keep glancing in the direction of Sagit’s office.

Just before the officers leave, they stand and scan the room. I look
down at the file on my desk and then ask the soldier sitting in front of me to roll up her sleeve.

As soon as the soldier is gone, I get up and peek into Sagit’s office. “Everything okay?”

She writes something down on a notepad, doesn’t look at me. “What do you mean?”

“The army police.”

“Wouldn’t you love to know?” She leans over, opens the filing cabinet on the floor beside her and browses through folders. I stand there a bit longer. Eventually she raises her gaze. “Anything else?”

I walk out. Buzaglo winks at me from the swivelling chair outside Mizrahi’s office and nods toward the door. I step out and he follows.

He lights a cigarette and offers me one. I take it. “I heard Mizrahi talking about it in the car this morning,” he says. “They suspect a gimelim operation at the base.”

I cough on the smoke. “Gimelim operation?”

“Some guys at human resources gave their officer fake gimelim. I guess he suspected something because he checked them against other gimelim from the same doctor and the signatures didn’t match.”

I cough some more. “Like they weren’t forged well enough?”

He gives me a narrow look. “No, like way off. Just a scribble or something. You okay?”

I nod, tap the cigarette on the railing until it’s out. Good. Not my work. My forged signatures are works of art. “How can you smoke this shit?” I hand it back to him.

He shrugs.

“So how did they get the forms?”

“They think they broke into the supply room, stole them straight from the printer.”

I exhale. Not related to the clinic. Not related to me.

I pretend to get a call and walk away, texting Yafit: Need to talk. We should probably lay low for a while. I remember the paratrooper at the bar and my face flushes. Shit.

Oren finally gets a hold of me
while I’m out grabbing coffee. “Thank God,” he says. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Are you okay?” I sit on the front step and blow on my coffee.

His voice is distant and the line is choppy. “I don’t know.”

“Oren, I only have a minute. What’s going on?”

He’s breathing into the phone. “It’s just shitty here … Everything. My sergeant is an asshole. The entire unit is going out this weekend, but I’m staying behind because my weapon wasn’t clean enough.”

“Oren, you have to be strong.”

“It’s not just the sergeant. Yesterday we had to go into a house, the sergeant kicks the door open, and it’s the middle of the night and we scare the shit out of this family. They all sit in the corner, Mom, Dad, three kids, looking at me with these eyes. The two young kids are scared, but the older one—he looks at me like he hates my guts. I mean, can you blame him? I’m in his house, in the middle of the night, with my gun. And the sergeant is opening doors and drawers and throwing everything everywhere. Food. Underwear. Books. It was fucked up. When we got back to the base he was making fun of me in front of the whole platoon, calling me a pussy. I couldn’t trash their house. I froze.”

Sagit opens the door and taps her foot. I lower my voice to a whisper. “Oren. I have to go. Tell them you need to see an army
shrink, okay? And call me after five. Everything will be okay.” I hang up.

Sagit purses her lips. “I thought we had a discussion about personal phone calls.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was an emergency.”

For the rest of the day, every time I catch her gaze, she’s looking at me funny. I have an awful feeling in my gut.

When I get home,
Vicky is sprawled in her underwear on our faded corduroy couch, watching a telenovela. Her legs are on the coffee table in front of the TV, and the spaces between her toes are stuffed with cotton balls. She’s blowing on her long red fingernails. I sit next to her, stretch my legs on the table, nudging an overflowing ashtray and an empty coffee mug. The shutters are closed to block out the heat and noise, but you can still hear the city. We live right on Allenby Street, opposite the market, and the street never stops: buses and people and cars and sirens and vendors and street cats and taxis and car alarms. In the evenings, when it cools down, we open the windows and the city barges into our home.

“I’m meeting Dan at the bar tonight,” she says. “Remember Dan? I met him there last week.”

I yawn.

“Come with me.” She curls up to me. “A drink will do you good.”

Vicky and I strut
in our strappy sandals down Allenby Street, arm in arm. She has let me borrow her silver minidress for the evening, to cheer me up. A Subaru blasting Middle Eastern pop slows down to a crawl beside us and two guys look out the passenger window.
“Where are you going, pretty ladies?” asks the one in the passenger seat.

“We already have dates, honey.” Vicky exhales cigarette smoke. Behind them a taxi honks its horn. “Okay, okay.” The driver waves his hand and takes off. The sidewalk is littered with cigarette butts and plastic wrappers. A gang of emaciated street cats are fighting for scraps by the garbage bin. Before I moved here I used to think Tel Aviv was all long beaches and white houses with rounded balconies, but Allenby is lined with crumbling buildings in grey and yellow, leaning against each other like a row of crooked teeth. Sometimes I miss the silence and open spaces of the desert.

Dan is already at the bar, and he’s brought a friend. His name is Gabi and he’s got a pretty cute face, though his chest is broad and bulky, a bit too big for his height. He tells me he just finished his service, he works in security now. I let him buy me drinks and feed me lines I’ve heard a thousand times. When he goes to the washroom I check my phone and see I’ve missed a call from Oren. I bum a smoke from Vicky and step outside to call him, but the phone just rings. Gabi walks out. He has a bit of a swagger, and his chin is tilted up, as if he’s trying to gain a few extra centimetres. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

In the bright light of the street lamp, he doesn’t look so cute anymore, a little Neanderthal, his face too boxy, dumb-looking. “I had to make a call.”

“You want to get out of here?”

“I think I’m just going to go in, finish my beer.” I drop my cigarette and stub it out with my heel.

Once we’re back inside, Gabi turns me toward him for a dance, his hands a little too low on my back. I laugh. It’s Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly”—not the most danceable song. Gabi leans over
and kisses me. He smells like Johnnie Walker. I move my face.

“Come on, don’t be a tease.”

“I’m not,” I say sweetly, moving away from him. “I’m just not feeling too good.”

“Come on.” He breathes in my ear.

I glance at Vicky but she’s laughing with Dan, leaning forward, her hand on his wrist. “I tell you what.” I feign a smile. “Why don’t I give you my phone number and we’ll get together another time.” He weaves his fingers through my hair, pulls me closer and sticks his fat tongue down my throat. I push him away and this time I say loudly, “I said no.”

Shai, the bartender, steps from behind the bar. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem.” Gabi smiles like a hyena.

“There’s definitely a problem,” I say.

“Whore,” Gabi hisses.

“Out.” Shai places his hand on his shoulder. “You’re done here.”

Gabi shakes Shai’s hand off and raises both hands. He walks out slowly, shooting a cold look at me.

“You okay?” Shai puts his arm around me and looks at me with concern. He smells like laundry soap. I put my face in his chest and start to cry.

Back at the apartment,
I sit on the couch, staring at the streaks of light from passing cars crawling up the cracked white walls, across the dog-eared poster of Bob Marley. The window is open, and the night sky is black and foggy. You can hardly see stars.

“Are you okay?” Vicky asks, stepping into the apartment, tossing her purse on the chair. “What the hell happened?”

“I should have just stayed home,” I say.

Vicky sits next to me and hands me a Marlboro Light. “What’s going on?”

I lean my head back against the couch and inhale deeply. “Things are stressful at the clinic. And Oren is freaking out on me. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Vicky stares at me like she’s about to say something, then shakes her head.

“What?”

“You know exactly what you have to do with him,” she says.

By the time I get to bed
it’s three in the morning and I can’t sleep. Cats in heat are yowling and moaning outside my window. I hear a car door slamming, girls laughing. An alarm goes off, causing a choir of dogs to howl. I press my hands over my ears. I moved to Tel Aviv to start fresh, and now everything is going to shit again. I tell myself I’m going to stop selling gimelim, quit drinking, break up with Oren. Maybe I can take up swimming. I’ve been living in this city for six months, two blocks from the beach, and I’ve never gone in the water. I can see it from our living room windows, peeking blue between the buildings.

When I fall asleep I dream I’m swimming all the way to the string of rocks that break the waves, taking long, well-formed strokes, immersing my head in the water. Everything goes silent and peaceful, the city finally muted.

Outside the office,
Buzaglo singsongs, “Yael, Yael, Yael. Why must you be so cruel?” I smile tightly. I’m not in the mood today. Before
I open the door, Shuli steps outside. “Heads up, there are officers here to see you.”

I pause. “To see me?”

“What have you done?” She grins.

“I keep telling you.” Buzaglo shakes his head with mock gravity. “This girl is trouble.”

As soon as I walk into the office, Sagit corners me. I don’t even get to drop my bag. “Can I see you in my office?” She gives me a fake, saccharine smile. I glance at her office and see three officers standing behind the glass, looking at me grimly. My heart beats inside my mouth. I take two steps backwards. “I forgot something,” I say. “I’ll be right back.” I turn around and walk out, colliding with Buzaglo at the door. He steps aside.

“Yael?” Sagit calls after me. I pick up my pace and make it through the gate. I hear Sagit calling, “Stop her,” in a high-pitched voice, but I’m already off the base. I bump into a soldier and he grabs me by the elbow. I look up at him and whisper, “Please.” He lets me go.

I start running. Across four lanes of traffic on Ibn Gabirol and up Dizengoff. I take a left on King George. My phone rings non-stop, vibrating against my thigh. King George is crowded and people are staring at me, parting as I run through. “Soldier,” some call after me. “You okay?” I turn onto a narrow street, pass Meir Park on my left: mothers pushing strollers, people walking their dogs, lovers kissing on a bench. When I reach Trumpeldor Street, I slow down and catch my breath. At the end of the street I see a shimmering patch of blue. The sea. I can smell it, the salty, fishy breeze. For the first time since I started running, I look back. The street is empty, the windswept buildings seem deserted, their windows shut, everything momentarily still. I can hear birds chirping,
leaves rustling, the whisper of waves crashing on the beach.

I check my phone. I have seven missed calls. But they’re not all from the clinic. Vicky, my mother, a friend of Oren’s from Haifa. I close my eyes and picture the officers in Sagit’s office. I realize they weren’t wearing army police caps but purple caps. Purple. Oren’s unit. Their grim faces, Sagit’s pleading tone. I can’t breathe. My heart becomes heavy, full of water, sinking slowly like a punctured boat. The ring of my phone startles me. I look at it, surprised, as if I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. And then I place it carefully on a stone fence and carry on running. Toward the blue.

A rental van was parked
in front of Savta’s house early Saturday morning. Rosalynn had tilted the shutters in the living room to let in air, and watched as a young, lanky man climbed out of the front seat of the van, opened the back doors and started piling boxes on the unpaved road.

Savta called from the washroom and Rosalynn hurried over, placing two hands under her employer’s armpits and shifting her into her wheelchair. It was easier to lift her now; over the past few months Savta had become smaller, lighter than she had been a year ago, when Rosalynn had first started working here. Then, she had called her employer Mrs. Hadad. Now she was Savta: Hebrew for
grandmother.
It was what her family called her. It was the name Savta preferred.