tangled thicket. Dragging past thistles and shrubs, she trips as she walks, and Avram follows her. She climbs up a little crag of tall, gray rocks, and he follows. And suddenly they’re inside a small crater, where the light is dull and shadowy; the sun seems to have gathered up its rays from this place.
Ora plunges onto a rock ledge and buries her face in her hands. “Listen, I did something … It was wrong, I know that, but I called your apartment. I picked up your messages.”
He straightens up. “My apartment? Wait, you can do that, too?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“There’s a code, a general one, the manufacturer’s default option before you set it yourself. It’s really not that complicated.”
“But why?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I don’t understand. Wait—”
“Avram, I did it, and that’s that. I had no control over it. I dialed home first, and then my fingers just jumped to the numbers.”
The dog comes over and nestles between them, offering Ora her warm, padded body, and Ora puts her arms on the dog. “I don’t know what came over me. Listen, I’m really … I’m so ashamed.”
“But what happened? What did she do? Did she do something to herself?”
“I just wanted to hear her, to hear who she is. I didn’t even think—”
“Ora!” he practically bellows. “What did she say?”
“You had a few messages. Ten, and nine are from her. There’s one from your boss at the restaurant. They’re finishing the renovations next week, and he wants you to go back to work. He really likes you, Avram, you can feel it in his voice. And there’ll be a housewarming party that they—”
“But Neta, what about Neta?”
“Sit down, I can’t do this while you’re standing over me like that.”
Avram doesn’t appear to hear her. He stares at the gray rocks protruding all around him. Something in this place is closing in on him.
Ora rests her cheek on the dog’s body. “Listen, she called about a week and a half ago, maybe more, and asked you to call her back immediately. Then she called a few more times and asked … No, she just said your name. ‘Avram?’ ‘Avram, are you there?’ ‘Avram, answer me.’ That kind of thing.”
Avram kneels down in front of her. His head is suddenly too heavy to bear. The dog, with Ora hunched over her, turns to him with her dark, soft eyes.
“Then there was one message where she said”—Ora swallows, and her face takes on a childish, startled expression—“that she had something important to tell you, and then … Let’s see, yes, the last message is from the evening before last.” She laughs nervously. “That’s exactly the same time Ofer left his last message for me.”
Avram is hunched, rounded into himself, ready for the blow—he won’t be taken by surprise.
“ ‘Avram, it’s Neta,’ ” Ora says in a hollow voice, her eyes fixed on a spot beyond him. “ ‘I’m in Nuweiba and you haven’t been home for ages and you won’t call back your loving ones—’ ”
Avram nods, recognizing Neta through Ora’s voice.
Ora continues lifelessly, as though her entire being is operated by a ventriloquist. “ ‘A little while ago I thought I might be slightly pregnant, and I didn’t have the courage to tell you, and I came down here to think about what to do, and organize my thoughts, and of course in the end I’m not, as usual, it was a false alarm, so you have nothing to worry about, my love.’ And then there was a beep.”
He stares at her. “What? I don’t understand. What did you say?”
“What’s not to understand?” Ora rouses from her trance and sharpens her knives at him again. “What exactly don’t you understand? Did I say anything not in Hebrew? Do you understand the word ‘pregnant’? Do you understand ‘false alarm’? Do you understand ‘my love’?”
His mouth drops. His face stiffens with immeasurable wonderment.
Ora abruptly turns away from him and the dog. She hugs herself and rocks back and forth. Stop this, she orders herself. Why are you attacking him? What did he do to you? But she cannot stop. Back and forth she rocks, finding pleasure in pulling this molten thread farther and farther out of her innards and unspooling herself until she disappears completely—if only. And poor Neta—and of course in the end I’m not, as usual, it was a false alarm—and suddenly Ora knows how Avram and Neta sound when they talk to each other, she knows their music, and the soft playfulness, exactly the way