HE’S COMING. Tidy up the place, hide whatever needs to be hidden.
I rush through the rooms, checking every box, making sure that what happened last time won’t happen again.
A quick sniff reveals the slightly dank odour coming from the plumbing system, always the same smell. I spray a few aggressive spurts of a special mist that’s supposed to give my living room “the fresh floral aroma of spring,” but unfortunately the whole apartment now reeks of a giant toilet. At least my sweaty clothes found their way to the bedroom; they’ve been sprawled out on the couch for over a week now, waiting to magically regain their former cleanliness and take on “the fresh floral aroma of spring.”
I was never good at housekeeping. I remember the painfully brief period in which Maor and I lived under the same roof. I had a few reservations about it, a few fears, but they were probably misdirected, because what turned out to threaten my composure most (apart from having a very young and capricious partner) was the constant need to pretend I was adept at household chores. How often should the sheets be changed? When does the floor need mopping? What do you use to wipe the counter so it won’t be rough and grimy? What kind of mother will you be? All those rags and dusters naturally placed by the sink in every home, what are they for? What kind of mother will you be? That mysterious business of “housekeeping.”
A house doesn’t need to be kept; oh, no, it’s the one keeping you in its vice grip, chaining you to it by a string of clandestine tasks. “And that’s when it’s just the two of you,” Shirley told me at the time, “just imagine what it’s like when you have kids.”
Believe me, I did.
A quick glance in the mirror, Who are you trying to fool, Sheila? You’re not waiting for a cop, you’re waiting for a man. I run my fingers through my hair, trying to fluff it up, and consider my face. He’s twenty-seven, and you have that new crease between your eyebrows. Even if it is a fine, almost imperceptible line. It’s true what they say about us women who’ve never given birth. We maintain our youthful look. Nature is on our side, aiding us in the deception, at least until we attract a suitable male, and then, only then, will we let our bodies collapse with a loud thud into gestation.
But nature also wants us to attract males of a suitable age, which is why the face wrinkles, someone once told me. The lines reflect the womb’s biological state, so that young men can know what’s happening inside you and you won’t be able to fool them. I think it was Maor, he always liked presenting me with these fun bits of trivia. I even found it amusing at first.
I keep studying my face until a deafening knock on the door jolts me back into the present, and I realize that I forgot to hide the most important thing.
He barges in and stands in the middle of the living room; he’s taller than I remembered, and his eyes much darker, a kind of dirty green, not to mention the expression.
Silent and hostile he stands before me, and I take a step back, praying he won’t turn his gaze in the wrong direction. I try to enlist the help of polite gestures, imprinted on us by centuries of civilization, “Coffee?” My voice is warm and civil, “There’s even milk.” The image of Dina suddenly flashes before me, her small hands cradling the empty mug.
“Tell me, what were you doing there?” he asks in a churlish tone. “What were you doing at her house on the night of the murder?”
The night of the murder, the words sink deep inside me.
“I told you, she invited me over, we talked for a while, that’s all.”
“Oh, so it was a friendly conversation?” No. I don’t like that tone one bit.
“Yes, pretty friendly, I think.”
“You know what I think? That you’re a shitty liar.”
You’re wrong, I’m an excellent liar.
“Pretty friendly,” he parrots me mockingly. The impersonation, I must say, is surprisingly good. “Stop bullshitting me! She was scared to death of you, scared you’d kill her!”
“What?” I exclaim, hoping my shock sounds genuine. “Who told you such a thing?”
“Who do you think?”
I’ll never say.
“Come on, Sheila.” Even now, saying my name makes him sound a little more relaxed, but he’s still standing firm in the middle of my living room, with those squinting green eyes, like a giant boa constrictor.
“Who even told you I was over there?”
“You tell me.”
Not again with those silly cop-show games. “Has anyone ever, in your entire career, given you a straight answer to that ‘you tell me’? Does that even work?”
He smiles despite himself, although it’s definitely not the smile I was hoping for. As the venom glands begin to swell, the snake appears to be smiling.
“Ronit Akiva,” he says, “she told me.”
Thrump! Thrump! Of course it was her, and still it isn’t easy for me to hear. Ronit’s image flits before me, dark and beautiful, flashing that crimson smile of hers, a man-eater. That smile erases all other memories, apart from that final one.
“How does she look?” I can’t believe that’s the first thing to come out of my mouth.
“I have no idea, we spoke on the phone,” he says, “but she’s around your age, isn’t she?”
Okay, I deserved that: ask a dumb question, get a dumb answer – and Ronit always did make me act like an idiot.
“It turns out your…” He pauses for a moment, “friendly chat with Dina scared her so badly that she called Ronit right after you left.”
So the two were in closer contact than Dina was willing to admit, and this revelation makes me so angry I almost miss the implication of Micha’s last few words.
“But that means when I left she was still alive!” I exclaim triumphantly. He pins me with a sharp gaze.
“It doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe you went back there afterwards?”
My eyes bore into his, which have resumed their bright, soothing shade, and what I find inside them encourages me to continue: “Look at me, do you honestly believe I killed her? Come on, you actually think I tied her to a chair and glued a doll into her hands? How did they even manage with those tiny fingers of hers? Like a midget’s hands.” Shut up, you moron.
And once again his green gaze locks behind the thicket of eyelashes, casting about the apartment and lingering on the couch. He’s searching for my doll, I know, but he won’t find it, and the rest of the boxes are carefully sealed.
“I honestly don’t know,” he finally says. I guess that’ll have to do for now.
When I bring him coffee, he’s already sitting leisurely on the couch, one leg folded underneath his youthful body, full of bendable joints. I hand him the mug, and our fingers brush against each other.
“Did you add anything to this?”
“Other than sugar?” I consider him.
“You know what I mean.”
Oh, yes, I definitely do. I felt it the moment he stepped into my house, the way he studied me, that something was certainly there. I never get these things wrong. I have no doubt the blame lies with Ronit, who opened her big painted mouth. “You tell me,” I say. I just can’t help myself, but he refuses to play along.
“Ronit said Dina was scared of you, afraid you cursed her or something.”
Good.
“Then you can tell her from me to stop talking nonsense.”
“She talked about it very seriously. Said that in college they called you the witch.”
“Baloney,” I reply, but suddenly, in what must have been the devil’s work (or a witch’s), the familiar song arises from the street, “Little witch, little witch fell down a ditch!” The small voices sound more menacing than usual, and despite my overwhelming urge to slam the window shut, I obviously won’t do that in front of the suspicious green gaze.
“Are they singing about you?” he asks, feigning amusement, but it only makes him sound more serious.
“Of course not! What are you, crazy?”
“If that was your reputation in college, maybe you carried it into adulthood.”
“Now you listen to me, it was a private joke between me and my friends, nothing serious, I just had… good instincts, intuition, that’s all. Like how I knew the moment I saw you that you used to be religious.”
“You don’t need intuition for that, most religious people would have caught on to it within seconds.”
“Or how I knew you were into more mature women.”
He considers me carefully. “You don’t have to be some gifted psychic for that either.”
True, certainly not with all those looks and innuendoes of yours, which at present seem to have faded without leaving a trace. But I’m not worried: cute ex-Orthodox boys like you are invariably capricious, playing hot and cold with you, expecting you to be the supportive adult, until it blows up in both your faces, because you yourself happen to prefer being the little girl.
He picks up his mug, now cold. His eyes narrow as he studies the inscription, “To the Best Mum in the World.”
And now he’s tinkering with his teaspoon, eyeing it intensely, as if it will reveal to him everything he wants to know. I can’t help but notice he hasn’t taken even a tiny sip, just keeps on stirring.
“Have there even been any Jewish witches?” He’s still stirring the coffee with those slow circular motions, like a witch over a bubbling cauldron.
“There were a few,” I say, “but I promise you, I’m not one of them.”
“Hypothetically,” he says, stirring even slower now, “strictly hypothetically, what would you have slipped into my drink?”
I know I’m supposed to say now something like “a love potion,” and I know that if I say it in a seductive, soft enough tone, I’d clear the air between us and maybe even more than that. But that slow stirring, the fact that he’s barely looking at me, not to mention everything that happened with Ronit, who apparently stayed in touch with Dina after everything, everything!, that had gone down, all these result in me blurting out the word “poison,” promptly followed by, “I’d slip poison in your drink.”
He finally stops stirring, looks up at me and without blinking, draws the mug to his mouth and takes a big gulp. I stare at his Adam’s apple. Yes, that was indeed a big, smooth swallow. Good boy.
“You know, we used to sing a different song when we were kids,” he says. “Instead of ‘Little Witch’, we sang ‘Old Spinster’. It went something like, Fat old spinster, chin full of whiskers.” He smiles at me while taking another sip of coffee, making me regret not lacing it with a deadly dose of poison.