Safekeeping (32 page)

She had defied the Bad Feeling.

T
he quad was still in the blue half-light of morning while Adam waited for Ulya at the picnic table, next to the strange tree, its fruits having transformed again, the green balls now flecked with red, the flower at its end, desiccated, woody. If she didn't come out in five minutes, he was leaving without her. He hoped if he got to the United Kibbutz office early enough, they would check their files before he left Tel Aviv at the end of the day.

Ulya emerged from her room, red plastic bangles on her wrists, eyeliner as bold as ever. She came forward swinging her purse like a little kid. “Let's go!”

Adam had never seen her this happy. He pointed at her sandals. “Can you hightail it in those things? The bus comes in fifteen minutes.”

“No problem. I wore platforms today because I want to walk all over the city.”

Adam and Ulya scampered down the road, away from the kibbutz. They reached the bus stop at the bottom of the hill just as the bus was coming around the bend.

“Will you pay for my ticket?” said Ulya.

“What?”

“I don't have any money for the bus.”

Adam groaned. “Fine.”

A half hour later the bus was climbing through the hill city of Haifa, making its way to the central bus station at the top of the mountain. Adam couldn't believe he was finding five-story buildings tall. Two months on a
kibbutz had warped his perspective. Ulya seemed impressed too, staring out the window, watching the small city start the workday.

It was the heart of rush hour at the central station, where they needed to switch buses to Tel Aviv. They disembarked into a chaos of blaring CD stores, competing food stands, people running for the green buses. Ulya paused in front of a kiosk to study the covers on the fashion magazines. She pointed at a picture of a girl wearing only white cotton undies, her small breasts hidden behind a spindly arm. “Kate Moss is so skinny. Do you like it?” Adam grabbed her arm. “We can look at magazines all you want in Tel Aviv. We can't miss this bus.”

On the bus, Adam extended his hand, offering Ulya the window seat. He had enjoyed how keenly she had looked out the window. Her curiosity made everything they passed seem more interesting. Waiting for the bus driver, it occurred to Adam that this might be the same bus route Ofir had been on.

“Yes,” Ulya said. “An early bus from Haifa, heading in the direction of Tel Aviv.”

Adam observed the next few people to board. A darker guy climbed inside, and once again Adam found he couldn't always tell if someone was Jewish or Arab. So many of the Jews here came from Iraq or Egypt or Yemen. If the person wore a keffiyeh or kippah, easy, but this guy in a T-shirt waving at someone through the window, no idea. He figured people who lived here must have no problem telling each other apart, just as he could nail someone down the second they stepped on the subway, gleaning their background by the cut of their jeans, the trim of their beard, the way they took their seat.

The express bus drove without break down a highway alongside the Mediterranean. The sea appeared more gray than blue, its modest waves frothing onto the sandy shore. Ulya bopped her head and sang along to the pop music blaring out of the bus driver's radio. She wondered what they would do after Adam's office errand. Tel Aviv had an American-style mall with the Levi's store and Zara. It would be fun to go shoplifting, but that was impossible with Adam in tow. Still, she was glad for his presence. Walking around a city was more fun with somebody else. And he paid for the bus.

The music was interrupted by the long beep that heralded the news. Adam liked the female broadcaster's sonorous voice and was pleased to be able to pick up a word here and there:
boker tov
, good morning,
Byll Clyn-tonn
, Bill Clinton. He unfolded the map Yossi had lent him to figure
out the quickest way from the bus station to the office. The streets formed squares within squares, like a giant Pac-Man board. Having never left New York City, this was his first time needing a map. Even if Manhattan hadn't been a numbered grid, he knew the place too well to ever get lost. Every block was familiar all the way up to 148th, where he would meet Bones. On those rare occasions when he got turned around, he only had to look up, see the twin towers, and that was south. Adam returned the map to his back pocket, a little excited to be visiting a new city.

The bus wound its way up the ramps of Tel Aviv's central bus station and dropped them off on the fifth floor. Under an enormous departure board hung a banner:
TEL AVIV'S NEW CENTRAL BUS STATION—BIGGEST BUS STATION IN THE WORLD!
Adam couldn't understand why such a tiny country needed so many buses. Did no one have a car? Along the walls, soldiers napped on the floor, heads on their duffel bags, M-16s under their arms.

They pushed through the front entrance and were greeted by a square full of homeless people and street vendors. It was a lot hotter and more humid here than on their hilly kibbutz in the north. On the other side of the square, taxis and scooters whizzed down a street lined with white buildings, discolored by exhaust and packed with restaurants and shops. Ulya gave the urban scene a huge smile, and Adam consulted the map. “It shouldn't take more than half an hour to walk there.”

They ended up on a pedestrian road closed to traffic and flanked by open-air stalls, tables laden with sunglasses, pyramids of colorful spices, knockoff designer underwear, the brands misspelled: Calbin Klein. “Come, come!” vendors called. “Special price for you!” Adam would have liked to explore the
shuk
, but there was no time, and it was annoying the way Ulya, hand shading her eyes from the sun, stopped at every second stall. Now she fingered a beaded necklace while the huckster said, “Beautiful necklace for beautiful girl.” Adam grabbed her hand and pulled her along.

They arrived at the office later than planned, but it was still earlyish and the air-conditioning gave Adam solace. A directory in the foyer sent them up an open staircase to the third floor. Climbing the last flight, Ulya said, “After this let's go for a drink. We can have piña colada on the beach.”

Ignoring this suggestion, Adam opened the office door and walked up to the reception desk while Ulya took a seat behind him in the waiting area.

“I'm looking for information on someone named Dagmar Stahlmann. She lived on a kibbutz in 1947, and I'm here to find out which kibbutz and if she's still living there.”

The receptionist put a finger on her place in her book. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but I wrote you guys a month ago and—”

“You can't expect me to drop everything. You need an appointment.”

“Please, I've come all the way from a kibbutz near Haifa to ask you to look this woman up.”

The receptionist adjusted her ponytail. “It's not my job to look people up. I don't even know whose job that would be. You need to request an appointment.”

“Can I make an appointment for today?”

“Today?” The receptionist snorted and handed Adam a form.

“Last time I wrote you guys, I never even got a response. If I fill this out, how long will it take to get an appointment?”

The receptionist shrugged.

“You can't tell me how long?”

“Two weeks. More, perhaps.”

The woman returned to her book, and Adam walked the form back to Ulya.

“Are we done?” she asked, checking her face in a compact mirror.

Adam shook his head. “I'm going back to the kibbutz. That bitch won't do anything. She says I need to make an appointment. And who the fuck knows when they'll give me one. And all she's doing right now is reading a fucking book.”

Ulya wasn't going back to the kibbutz. She dropped her compact into her purse and marched to the front desk. Adam followed, unsure what was happening.

“Shalom.” Ulya rested her arms on the reception desk.

The receptionist lifted her eyes. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry, but you're going to have to do what he asks.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes, I am sorry, but we can't take no. He has come all the way from the United States of America to find this person.”

“I already told him that he needs an appointment.”

“And what are you doing that's so important that you can't help? I'm going to stand here watching you do this important thing until you look this woman up.”

Adam grinned at Ulya's chutzpah. He knew some guys didn't like strong women; they wanted to be the only strong one. But maybe because his mother was such a weakling, so incapable, never coming through for him on anything, he didn't see the charm in it.

“If you don't turn around and go right now,” said the receptionist, “I'm going to call the police.”

Adam raised his hands. “Whoa, there's no need to call the cops.” He turned to Ulya. “I really don't want the police coming.”

Ulya didn't even look at him. “Fine, call the police.”

Adam looked from Ulya to the receptionist and prepared to bolt as soon as the latter made a move for the phone. But she didn't. Ulya had called her bluff. The receptionist rolled her eyes, stuck out her lower jaw, and went back to her book, pretending to read.

“Police!” Ulya yelled. “
Mishtara
! Yoohoo,
mishtara
!”

“Okay, okay.” The woman turned over her novel. “I'll do it. What's the name?”

Ulya turned to Adam.

“Dagmar,” he said. “Dagmar Stahlmann.”

“Write it down.” The receptionist passed over a paper and pen. “Come back at three o'clock.”

Adam skipped out of the office and down the building's stairs. “That was amazing, Ulie! You're fucking amazing! A fucking dynamo.”

Ulya laughed. “I am molten lava.”

“Okay. Molten lava. That works.”

Outside, the old, tarnished Bauhaus buildings appeared almost white again under the bright midday sun. The air blowing off the sea, only two blocks away, was briny, fresh. “We have three hours,” Ulya said. “Let's get a drink and walk around the city tipsy.”

Adam rolled his head as if he had a crick in it. How good that sounded: getting stupid and wandering around a foreign city with this gorgeous woman. But he couldn't.

“Let's get ice cream. We can probably find some on the beach.”

Ulya gave him the same big smile she gave her first glimpse of Tel Aviv. “Okay. Ice cream first.”

They walked down a residential side street, the sand and sea visible at the end. Cats lurked everywhere, walking along the white concrete fences, sleeping in packs on the sidewalk. They arrived at the beachside boulevard, which had a wide esplanade across the street from rental car offices, travel agents, and high-end stores for foreign tourists.

“Look at those shoes! So beautiful! Can you see me walking down Park Avenue in them?” She twisted her foot this way and that, envisioning the fuchsia pump on it, and then returned her focus to the real pumps behind the glass. “Vivienne Westwood. That's a very fancy designer.”

Adam saw both the shoe behind the window and Ulya's reflection in the pane. It broke his heart how far she was from owning those shoes other people could waltz in and buy without a thought. He wished he could do that for her, as a thank-you for sticking up for him back in the office.

“You think that's a nice window? Wait till you see the ones on Fifth Avenue. Especially Bergdorf's Christmas windows—even I have to stop and stare at them, but you, you are going to die.”

Ulya closed her eyes. “Yes, I am going to die.”

They crossed the street to the esplanade, where Adam bought ice-cream bars from a shirtless old man rolling a cooler around in a shopping cart. They walked alongside the beach, biting through the chocolate shell into the vanilla ice cream, taking in all the people on the sand, women reading under umbrellas, children running into the waves. Some college-aged kids—tanned girls in stringed bikinis, buffed guys wearing wraparound sunglasses—played volleyball, calling out to each other before they dove for the ball.

He was young, thought Adam, but he wasn't like them. He would never be a guy playing volleyball with his buddies. Why did only the most normal people seem to have a crew of friends? Would he regret never having tried to be like those guys? Why did people say time flew, that youth was wasted on the young? It felt like he'd been young forever, after all he'd been through, and he was still only twenty-six.

“Do you find it hard to believe you're not always going to be young?”

Ulya sucked a dribble of ice cream off her thumb. “Never thought about it.”

“It's funny. Even though everybody grows old—I mean, everybody who doesn't die young, of course—somehow I feel like it's not going to happen to me, like I'm going to be the only person in the history of the world that it just doesn't happen to.”

“When does someone become old?”

“Forty, I guess.”

Ulya stopped and turned to him, the sea breeze tousling her hair. “Can you picture me forty years old?” She didn't say it coquettishly, fishing for a compliment, but holding her half-finished ice cream off to the side, solemnly offering herself for consideration.