you think you’ll write about this hospital?
Maybe, I don’t know. I actually had one idea, but it’s already—
About what? Tell me …
Avram sat up with effort and leaned on the wall. He had given up trying to understand her and her reversals, but like a kitten with a ball of yarn, he could not resist a “tell me.”
It’s about a boy lying in a hospital, in the middle of a war, and he goes up onto the rooftop and he has a box of matches—
Like me—
Yes, not exactly. Because this boy, with the matches, in the middle of the blackout he starts signaling enemy planes.
What is he, crazy?
No. He wants them to come and bomb him, personally.
But why?
I don’t know that yet. That’s as far as I’ve thought.
Is he really that miserable?
Yes.
Ora thought Avram had gotten the idea from what Ilan had told him. She didn’t dare ask. Instead she said, It’s a little scary.
Really? Say more.
She thought about it and felt the rusty wheels start to turn in her brain. Avram seemed to sense them too, and waited silently.
She said, I’m thinking about him. He’s on the roof. He lights match after match, right?
Yes, he said, and stretched out.
And he looks at the sky, in all directions, waiting for them to come, the airplanes. He doesn’t know where they’ll come from. Right?
Right, right.
Maybe these are the last moments of his life. He’s terribly frightened, but he has to keep waiting for them. That’s how he is, stubborn and brave, right?
Yeah?
Yes, and to me he looks like the loneliest person in the world at that moment.
I didn’t think about that, Avram said with an awkward giggle. I didn’t think about his loneliness at all.
If he had even one friend, he wouldn’t do it, would he?
Yeah, he wouldn’t—
Maybe you could make someone for him?
Why?
So he’ll have … I don’t know, a friend, someone who can be with him.
They sat quietly. She could hear him thinking. A rustling, rapid trickle. She liked the sound.
And Avram?
What?
Do you think you’ll ever write about me?
I don’t know.
I’m afraid to talk, so you don’t go writing down all my nonsense.
Like what?
Just remember that if I talk nonsense here it’s because of the fever, okay?
But I don’t write things exactly the way they happen.
Of course, you make things up too, that’s the whole fun, right? What will you make up about me?
Wait a minute, do you write, too?
Me? No way! I don’t, no. But tell me straight—
What?
Weren’t you planning to call me Ada in the story?
How did you know?
I knew, she said, and hugged herself. And I agree. Call me Ada.
No.
What do you mean no?
I’ll call you Ora.
Really?
Ora, said Avram, tasting the name, and the sweetness poured through his mouth and his whole body. O-ra.
Something was flowing inside her, some ancient, measured knowledge: He is an artist. That’s it, he was an artist. And she knew what it was like with artists. She had experience with them. She hadn’t used it for a long time, but now it was filling her up again. And she’d get better, she’d beat the illness, she suddenly knew for sure, she had female intuition.
She closed her eyes and a slight shock of pleasure hit her as she wondered how, in a moment’s urge, she had been emboldened to lean over a strange boy and kiss him on his lips for a long time. She had kissed and kissed and kissed. And now, when she finally dared to remember without holding back, she felt the kiss itself, her first kiss, seeping into her, awakening her, trickling into each of her cells, churning her blood. What will happen now? she wondered. Which of the two will I … But her heart was surprisingly light and cheerful.
The truth is, I also write a little, she confessed to her complete surprise.
You do?
Not seriously, nothing like you, never mind, I just said that. She tried to shut up but could not. They’re not really songs, never mind, honestly, just hiking songs, for trips and camps, nonsense, you know, of the limerick family.
Oh, that. He smiled with odd sadness, retreating into a sort of politeness that pinched at her. You should sing me something.
She shook her head vigorously. No way, are you mad? Never.
Because even though she knew him so little, she could already tell exactly how she would feel when her rhymes echoed inside his head, with all his twisted, snobbish ideas. But it was that thought that made her want to sing—what did she have