“Let’s take a look,” I said, curious. Halimi took a bottle of vinegar and a rag and began polishing the coin.
“I think it might be a dinar from Crusader times,” Simone said.
“Crusaders? You think?!” I asked with increased interest. I leaned over Halimi’s shoulder. The coin was small and tarnished, not quite round, its surface embossed with something I couldn’t decipher. “Do you think it’s worth anything?” Halimi asked his mom in French. “We’ll see,” she replied.
“I wanna coin too!” Lily shouted.
“Ask nicely,” Halimi said.
Lily glared at him and then acquiesced: “I wanna coin too, please.”
He gave her a ten-agorot coin out of his pocket. She played with it for a few minutes and then tucked it into my purse, which was hanging off a chair.
“Keep it safe for me,” she said. “And don’t spend it!” she added in the tone of a kindergarten teacher.
Simone and I made dinner while Halimi played with Lily. He hoisted her onto his shoulders and tickled her until she laughed so hard, she almost choked. Roaring, she raised her plastic sword, and they dueled. His cell phone rested on the table in the living room, and I noticed that he hardly glanced at it. I wondered if this was a calculated move on his part—so like him—but decided not to go there. Simone was a great cook, naturally, and we got on well with me as sous chef. Later, I tucked Lily into bed, read herThe Runaway Bunnytwice, and fell asleep beside her.
Halimi woke me, and we sat with Simone for a while over a bottle of port she’d brought especially for me. She told us about a new paper she was writing about the illumination workshops in the Crusader city of Acre. She also described her last trip abroad with Richard—a tour of Crusader castles in Cyprus. Halimi told her about our new exurban life, the cashiers in the supermarket and the local postman, Lily’s preschool teachers, and the different sand in Atlit.
Later, in bed, Halimi whispered, “I’ve got an awesome idea.”
“Go on,” I whispered back.
“Let’s leave Liloosh with my mom for the weekend, and we’ll do mushrooms,” he said, nuzzling up to me under the blanket. “We haven’t tripped for way too long.”
“Hmmm …” I responded, dubious, but kind of into it. “Where will we get them? And where will we go?”
“Dan’s been growing them for a while now. I thought we could hang out at the Le Destroit ruins.” He looked up at me. “It’ll be a real journey. What do you say?”
“How are you, darling?” he asked. It took me a moment to figure out where I was. I must have fallen asleep on the couch in Halimi’s bachelor pad when he went off to fix me some coffee. Quiet music played in the background—French chansons with Cuban touches and a sophisticated rhythm, the divine voice of a young girl—and my maxi skirt had ridden above my knees. “I think I’m okay,” I mumbled and began yanking down my skirt, but Halimi stopped me.
“It’s incredibly sexy,” he said, and passed his fingers over my black pantyhose. He sat next to me on the couch. On the table stood two cups of Turkish coffee and a bag of white sugar with a teaspoon stuck in it. “Not exactly tea with the queen,” Halimi said playfully.
I sat up. “I can suspend my lady-in-waiting mode for a few minutes,” I answered him. I stirred a spoonful of sugar into the coffee.
“Do you always talk like this?” he asked, his smile broadening, his hand traveling a little above my knee and under the skirt. “Or is it just for me?”
“Wow, you’re good,” I said, eyeing his fingers on my leg. The hand paused. “What do you mean?” Halimi asked.
“Look,” I began, stammering a little but determined to be honest. “I’ve heard all the gossip about you.” I smiled broadly to make it clear I wasn’t judging. “I’ve seen you in action, okay? You charm women just for the fun of it,” I continued. He took a deep breath to respond, but I pushed on. “And I’m into it …” I looked down and then up again. Halimi narrowed his eyes, unsure. “In other words, you’re welcome to keep going.”
Halimi pulled me to his chest and stroked my hair.
“Really? You like that?” he asked, amused.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
I prepared myself for an embarrassing, clumsy first round of sex, but our bodies matched perfectly. I’m on the petite side, and he’s broad-chested with powerful arms, but he didn’t feel heavy as he leaned intome. He wasn’t in a hurry, nor did he draw things out for too long. I liked his salty taste; after a few dry months with sleepy Ronen, I gave it my all—fingers, nails, lips, and tongue. I went down on him and even let him go down on me, and I came like that and then came again when he was inside me. I fell asleep, my head on his chest, while he stroked the length of my back up and down, up and down.
Halimi told me later how he’d stayed awake to watch me sleep and tried not to get too excited (“Not that it helped,au contraire,” he’d added in that pervy tone of his). “So you’re not just sweet, funny, educated, and intelligent,” he wrote me on WhatsApp as I slept beside him, “the sex was awesome too.” It awakened within him, he told me later, a sudden hope that had died long ago. He enjoyed his conquests, but lately sex had been nothing to write home about. Occasionally, his cock had failed him. “And then you arrived” is what he always said, “like some German porno fantasy from the ’70s.” Later, I heard him boasting to his closest girlfriend, Zozo, that I was the embodiment of a hot librarian.
It was already close to midnight when I got up to pee, wondering how I could solve the problem of my contact lenses if I stayed the night. When I exited the bathroom, I bumped into Halimi on his way to take a shower, and he dragged me back into the room with him. We climbed over the bathtub’s edge, and I stood naked while he adjusted the temperature of the water from the shower nozzle above. I was flustered, overly self-conscious.
I cast a fleeting glance at his hefty body. He reached for me with both hands, and we clung to each other under the flow of water. He soaped himself, then me, with vigorous and purposeful movements that stimulated me more than any foreplay could. We fucked again, holding each other tightly under the hot water. It doesn’t always work—something about the water clashes with the fluids of sex, and it can chafe painfully—but this time it did work, loud moans and hands spread out over ceramic tiles made slippery in the clouds of steam.
After he came, Halimi sat on the edge of the bathtub, supporting himself with one hand on the wall, breathing heavily. I lay down in the tub. “At least it’s easy to clean up in here,” I said. Halimi caught his breath and rinsed off, standing over me and grinning. He leaned over, kissed me hard on my forehead, and left the room.
I sat under the flow of water and lost all sense of time.What just happened?I moved my head from side to side, hot water trickling through my hair. My mind wandered between various insignificant recollections—familiar streets from my childhood in Jerusalem, empty talk heard at a party, people from the café, everything random and unrelated. It was a bit like falling asleep, only the same question popped up again and again in my head, unanswered:What just happened?
