When Matti got to the parking lot he found a sizeable gathering of neighbors and passersby next to a decrepit looking midsized truck with Arabic lettering on its side. The area nearest the building wall and the upstairs bedroom window was occupied by three parked cars, and everyone was discussing how to locate the owners—residents of the building—and persuade them to move their cars.

Adnan, a short, thin young man wearing a red T-shirt that said “Petach Tivka Summer Camps” on the front, had walked away, sat down on the curb, and was smoking a cigarette while he waited. “This is when they come to fix the power?” grumbled a young woman with a stroller. “They’ll end up causing a power outage all night with their repairs.” Arieh, who stood next to her wearing his baseball cap, aflutter with excitement, did not correct her mistake. (“Don’t go opening your mouth and telling everyone about Margie, don’t open your mouth,” Peninit had warned him earlier.) He scowled at Ilan, who had moved away from the truck and was conversing with someone (Arieh had just instructed him to stand by the truck and hide the Arabic words as best he could). The doctor sat on a nearby wooden bench, next to Gramsy, whose eyes were shaded behind Ilan’s gold-framed sunglasses. Gramsy looked around, and every so often she stuck out her long, supple tongue, moistened her lips, and stretched it down to her chin. Matti sat down next to them, assuming the status of a bystander, but a few moments later he changed his mind, walked over to Adnan, and looked down at the young man who still sat on the curb with his feet crossed. “How’s it going?” he asked.

Adnan looked at Matti’s black patent shoes. “Are you something or other from the municipality?”

“I’m the groom,” Matti replied and sat down next to him.

Adnan offered a cigarette. “Total mess, huh?” he said, lighting the cigarette Matti refused and smoking it himself.

Matti looked at the truck. “That elevating ladder—is it going to reach up there?” he wondered.

“It’ll reach,” Adnan confirmed. “Why wouldn’t it? We get it to reach all the way up to the wires. Nothing happens to them, they’re all good.”

Matti had trouble following. “Who’s all good?”

Adnan did not answer. Lost in thought, he tapped the cigarette with his finger, flicking ash on the sidewalk. “Why don’t you lock her up?” he finally asked. “Lock her up for two or three weeks, maybe four, let her sit it out.”

“Lock who up?”

“Your fiancée. Lock her up,” Adnan advised.

“But she’s already locked up. How much more locked can I get her?”

“No, no, no,” Adnan corrected him, straightening up. “You lock her before she locks herself. Before. After, it’s no use anymore.” He looked to one side, as did Matti, at a small cluster of neighbors standing around Nadia next to the truck.

“Ten years after the girl left, another one goes,” Nadia was saying in a subdued voice, wrapping her fingers around a piece of fabric, a scarf or handkerchief, staring far away above their heads. “I don’t have the heart to feel what I’m going through anymore. Where will I get the heart?” she lamented, walking in a circle from one neighbor to the next, touching each one and standing close to them, as if she were circulating among wedding guests.

“And she won’t come out? She won’t come out of the room?” asked one of the neighbors worriedly. His neck was stabilized in a high orthopedic neck brace. He gave a quick glance at Arieh and then at Matti.

“Won’t come out,” Nadia confirmed. She looked out beyond them again, at the reddish roof of the shopping center across the street, seemingly broadcasting her voice to something, not someone.

The neighbor in the neck brace held Nadia’s clammy hand and stared at the truck. “But why did you bring Arabs to rescue her? Why Arabs? Don’t we have our own rescue forces?” he asked. The young woman with the stroller scolded him, distractedly rocking the empty stroller as she held the baby in her arms: “Stop with that. What’s it got to do with rescue forces? The bride doesn’t want to come out, you heard what she said, she won’t come out. What does that have to do with rescue forces?”

Peninit stood there listening bitterly, overcome with an urge to pull Nadia and her words out of there and give them a good shake. (“Be diplomatic,” she commanded herself, “diplomatic.”) Instead she went over to the circle, made her way to Nadia (“Excuse me, excuse me, I’m sorry”) put her arms around her shoulders, gripping tightly, brushed away the hair stuck to her forehead, and led her slowly out of the circle (“She doesn’t feel well, she mustn’t talk so much,” she explained pleasantly) to the bench where Gramsy and the doctor were sitting.