Aaron Hamburger's "Law of Return"

Law of Return

by

Aaron Hamburger

I.

The Russian taxi driver took them to a suburb thirty minutes north of Tel Aviv. He dropped them off in front of a white stucco home surrounded by a wall of black hedges. They heard the hiss of a neighbor's sprinkler, strangely sinister, and further off, a truck grinding its way up the main road. It was almost three in the morning.

Still groggy from the flight from Prague, Michael hoisted his monogrammed backpack off the sandy sidewalk and stumbled forward. He was a head taller than Becky, his traveling companion, best friend, and temporary heterosexual cover.

"Into the lion's den," he said, checking the address on his palm pilot a third time.

"Don't be so dramatic," Becky whispered. "They're your family."

Michael rang the doorbell. "Yeah, but they're so... Israeli."

His aunt opened the door and frowned. She wore a pink robe and a pair of thin wire-framed glasses with narrow lenses, as if all she needed to see of the world could fit within those two rectangles. "I told you on the phone to knock, don't ring the bell."

"I'm sorry, Aunt Sarah. And I'm sorry the flight came so late. There was a bomb scare in Ruzyne Airport. It's the latest trend in Prague. They're always fake, but..."

"Please speak more quietly. You're waking the whole house. And who is Aunt Sarah? Call me Sarah." She closed the top of her cotton robe, perfumed with the fabric softener Michael's mother sent from the States. "You will stay in separate rooms," she went on as she led them upstairs. "Here is Becky's room." She flicked on the light and stood back from the door. "And this one is for you, Michael. It's Eli's room. He wanted you to have it. He's staying now with a friend from the army."

"He's not here?" Michael asked.

"You'll see him tomorrow. He's coming to dinner with his girlfriend."

Eli's room smelled musky, like boy. The walls were tacked with photos from a trip to Europe, including a shot of himself standing by the Vltava River in Prague. A pile of folded laundry sat beside the bed, with a pair of red briefs resting on top like a jewel.

Sarah shut the glass door to the balcony, which someone had left open, then drew the curtains. "Cold," she said, rubbing her arms. "It's all okay? So good night."

"Wait, Sarah," Michael said. Standing before her, he was surprised how small she was, coming up only to his chin. "I mean, it's wonderful to be here, to see you."

She extended her cheek to give him permission, and then he kissed her.

A few minutes later, he crept next door and knocked softly. "Are you naked?"

Becky let him in and went back to unpacking her camera equipment. She was checking her lenses for scratches. "And if I was naked? It's not like you'd get off on it."

He slumped on her bed and sighed, but with a smile. "My aunt hates me."

Becky sat next to him and kissed the top of his hair, thick, dark, and tangled from the trip. "Sarah doesn't hate you. She's just Israeli." She ruffled his curls and whispered in his ear, "Who could hate you, Michael? You're irresistible."

Confused by something sad, even hopeful, in her voice, Michael kissed her forehead and then jumped to his feet. "You're the best," he said.

"I'm the best," she echoed, "until your next boyfriend comes along."

Back in Eli's room, Michael slid the balcony door open and then threw himself on the mattress face down without taking off his clothes.

He dozed for a few minutes and woke up to his lover coming through the curtains and squeezing a bright red flower in his left hand.

Their plan had seemed simple when Michael phoned at the end of November, even though they were only supposed to write. In response to Michael's weekly fat profusions, bursting out of their airmail envelopes, Eli had sent a grand total of one postcard.

"They give me vacation for Christmas," Michael said. "Please let me come. I won't tell a soul."

"Israel is too small to hide," Eli objected. "Everyone knows everyone's cousin."

"Then I'll be your cousin," Michael replied.

He recruited a girlfriend (Eli already had one from the army) and invited himself and Becky to stay at his Aunt Sarah's house (the prerogative of all American Jews with relatives in Israel). And now his Eli stood before him, passing a flower back and forth in his hands. He looked awkward and thin, with pointy elbows and knees, and jutting ears. His black hair had grown out of his army buzz cut.

"Shalom," Michael said, slightly afraid of him. "I remember this house now, when my parents used to take me to Israel with them. You were five. You were very quiet."

"I don't remember you. I tried." Eli stepped out of his shoes. His feet were slender, sharp. "You didn't take off your shoes? My mother always asks to take off your shoes."
"Can I have a kiss?"

Eli pressed his ear to the door to listen for his parents. "No, it's okay. I hear nothing. Did you meet my father? You must speak to him tomorrow."

Michael leaned back on the mattress. "So are you going to give me that flower or stand there holding it all night?"

"It's from my mother's garden. I thought you must have some present." He tossed the flower to Michael, who twirled the stem like a pencil. It smelled sweet, simple. One of its petals was bruised. "Did you see? I put some of our photos on my wall."

"But no pictures of me."

"I don't need for you." He shuffled across the room and crumpled into Michael's lap like a rag doll, but the effort of the gesture struck them both as strained. Michael's hands felt big and clumsy. He was glad the lights were off; his fingernails were dirty.

"You're glad I'm here, right?" he asked. "I mean, I know you are, but are you?"

"Please, we must stay quiet."

Michael's hand wandered down Eli's spine and into the back of his pants, but Eli pulled the hand away. "Not here," he whispered. "I must go, before they find me. My girlfriend and I will come tomorrow for supper. My mother is the best cook in the world."

"Does your girlfriend know?"

"Yes, but we don't talk about it."

"Then how do you know she knows?"

"We are not Americans. It is not necessary to talk about everything to know it." Eli slipped into his shoes. "We will see each other." He kissed his cousin quickly on both cheeks and grabbed the flower, "so my mother will not ask who gave you it."

The balcony door closed behind him with a muffled thud.

When Michael woke up, his first instinct was to check his voicemail, but his cell didn't work in Israel. He grabbed Eli's phone and began punching in the Sprint access number until Sarah picked up and said in Hebrew, "Who is on the phone?"

"Sorry, Aunt Sarah, I knocked it over with my foot," he said, feeling flustered and temporarily incapable of explaining about phone cards. He quickly hung up.

The room was too stuffy for him to fall back to sleep. Instead he put on a polo shirt and khaki shorts and rubbed on extra-strength sun block. He'd lost so much weight the past few months, the shorts kept riding down his hips, even with a belt on. After clapping on his metal watch, shoving his palm pilot into his pocket, and hooking his cell to his belt because it made him feel safe, Michael trotted downstairs. He took them two at a time.

Appiah, the servant from Nigeria, was mopping the kitchen tile. The front door had been left wide open and the hot white light outside hurt Michael's eyes. "Good morning, sir," Appiah said in an English accent. "Breakfast will be in the garden."

Michael walked around to the backyard, where the wet blades of grass poked through his sandals. He looked for the flower Eli had brought him among the severely trimmed rhododendrons that stood at attention along the garden wall. Their waxy green leaves flapped in the warm wind. On a plastic table covered in a pink cloth, Sarah had set out a light breakfast: black grapes, cucumbers, bowls of marinated salads, glistening olives with a light sheen of oil, slices of Swiss cheese, individual cartons of blueberry and strawberry yogurt, a basket of rolls wrapped in a pink napkin that matched the tablecloth, and two glasses of fresh orange juice, thick with pulp.

A young orange tree stood tied to a stake in the middle of the yard.

Sarah, in dark slacks and a white silk blouse, slid open the screen door. "You're hungry?" He realized in a different world she might have been his mother-in-law.

"This is wonderful, Sarah. A feast for a king. I'm sorry to put you out like this."

"It's only food. You have to eat. What's missing? What do you want?"

"Nothing. It's all perfect. Maybe some tea, if you have it, but if not, fine."

"If you want tea, ask. No one is allowed to be afraid in my house."

Michael clapped his forehead. "Oh, wait! I forgot!" He dashed upstairs, where Becky was coming out of the shower in a striped towel that had once hung in his mother's bathroom.

"After all this time in Prague, I feel like we've finally stepped back into civilization," she said. "Screw liberty. Give me fluffy towels or give me death."

Michael ran back down with a box of tea cookies. For weeks, he'd been searching for the right gift. He was terrible at this, and he knew it. His secretary (a native) suggested a vase. For anyone else he'd have bought a vase, but for Eli's parents, he wanted something unusual, authentically Czech and memorable. He chose a box of delicate tea cookies shaped like moons and stars, glued together with jam and powdered lightly in sugar, each one a work of art and a taste of the culture. These he offered to his aunt, packed in a plain white box that suddenly struck him as too informal.

Sarah opened the box and sniffed. Several of the cookies had crumbled during the trip, and Michael wished he'd bought a vase. She bit into a cookie, then threw it back into the box. "Nice," she said. "I'll bring your tea."

"Yummy oranges! I feel like I've never eaten an orange before!" Becky exclaimed later at the breakfast table, her hunter green camera pack between her ankles. Michael looked on gloomily as she did her best to fill in the silences between Sarah's frantic cell phone calls. Each one sounded more anxious than the one before, but Sarah said, "It's my friend. She wants to meet for lunch and she can't decide where to go. She is a donkey."

Sarah asked Michael something in Hebrew that he didn't understand, so she repeated herself in English. "You don't want to call your mother to tell her you're safe?"

"No thanks," he said, stirring his yogurt absently. "I'll call her when I'm back."

"Okay. Do it your way," she said. "I would never allow Eli to live so far. He wanted to go for university in Haifa at the Technion, but I said go to Tel Aviv. Why should he live far away and eat falafel? Here I can cook for him. He's sensitive, special."

"He's special to me too," Michael said. He caught Becky smirking.

"I was happy last summer when he stayed with you instead of going with his friends to Vienna and Berlin and all these terrible places." She wiped her eyes under her glasses. "So what exactly are you doing there?"

"We work as consultants," he said, brightening a little. "Like doctors for sick companies. We come in, see what's wrong, and give advice."

"How are you qualified to make such a diagnosis? Do you have training?"

Michael swallowed. "It's complicated. See, people in the company might know the actual business, but we know more about process. For example, Becky just led a very well-received seminar on developing web-site content." Sarah threw her napkin on the table and pushed her chair back. "It's a good living," he added. "I could take care of someone I loved on what I make."

"I don't understand." She grabbed a broom resting against the screen door and began sweeping sand off the concrete porch. "Eat, eat. You'll be hungry later. You want some different kind of tea, maybe? Jasmine? Earl Grey?"

"You don't have mint by any chance?" he asked. "If it's no trouble."

"You want mint? Why didn't you tell me?" Sarah bent over one of the plants in the yard, her expert fingers picking through the leaves until she found the sprig she wanted. She washed it off with a sharp blast of her garden hose, then plunked the fresh mint into Michael's mug. "There's your mint tea."

The sun grilled the back of Michael's neck and made his eyes water as he waited with Becky for the bus to Tel Aviv. Even the shadows of the trees, shifting in the gusts of hot air that blew down the street, sparkled with yellow-grey light.

"Where does this sand keep coming from?" Becky asked. She held onto his shoulder and shook out her sandal. "We should have rented a car."

"Sarah said to take the bus," he said in a dead voice. He needed sleep.

"Michael, you're almost thirty years old. I think you can rent a car if you want to."

"But Sarah saidÉ"

"Sarah thinks we're children. She asked me if we wanted her to pack us a bag lunch." Becky slipped her sandal back on and checked down the road for the bus. "Nothing," she said. "You know, she told me she was twenty when she had her first kid. I'm waiting until thirty-five. If I'm not married by then, I'll have one on my own. You can be the father." He hoped Becky would change the subject, but she said, "I mean it."

"Why? Because I'm the last guy you've gone a date with?"

"I was paying you a compliment, jerk." She punched his shoulder. "My parents still think we're getting married. My father says, ÔIt's no one's business what the two of you do in your bedroom.'"

"There's no one else I'd rather pretend to be married to," he said. "How's that?"

"I think you'd better try again," she said, and the bus pulled up.

They sat next to a fat woman with dyed blond hair. She was reading aloud to herself from a Russian newspaper.

"I need to send a fax when we get downtown," he said to steady himself. Becky launched into a story about a friend's wedding back in New York that Michael wasn't listening to. He was thinking of what a boor he'd been to put his hand down Eli's pants on their very first night together after all this time like, like some child molester, and then the bewildered look on the poor kid's face. He blurted out, "I made a mistake!" and the Russian woman looked up from her newspaper. "Sorry," Michael said, wiping his eyes with the backs of his knuckles. "Eli visited me last night," he told Becky in a softer voice.

"You're kidding. And?"

"And nothing. I think I was just a phase."

Her fingers crawled between his. They felt clammy, like women's hands felt. "It was a long shot," she said. "The whole kissing cousins angle, the ten year age gap..."

"Seven and a half," he interrupted her. "I trusted him. You don't know what the men out there are like."

"That's right, I'm pathetic. I never meet men."

"I didn't mean it that way," he tried to explain. "I meant my kind of men."

"Forget it." She pinched his cheek, forcing a smile. "Forget him. Hey, I'm here, remember? We're here in Israel, our Jewish homeland. Don't you feel homey?"

"And to top it off, Sarah hates me," he said, laughing in spite of himself.

"Let's rent a car and take off. We could go to Jerusalem, stay in a hostel like a couple of backpackers, meet Americans. They have Ben & Jerry's in Jerusalem."

"I don't know." He was thinking of summer.

* * *

Six months before, Deloitte & Touche had sent Michael to Prague to consult for CzOL, a Czech service provider modeled on America On-Line. His mother passed his phone number to Eli, then traveling through Europe after his stint in the army.

Except in pictures, they hadn't seen each other since Michael turned thirteen. Then, in a fit of teenage rebellion, he announced he would no longer accompany his parents on their annual summer visits to the Holy Land. As an adult, he continued to avoid Israel out of a kind of habit that seemed like principle. Politically, he considered himself pro-Israel the same way he considered himself for capital gains tax cuts. The only difference was that a warm feeling welled up in his heart whenever he thought of capital gains tax cuts.

Before Eli's arrival, Michael practiced his speech in front of the rented antique mirror above his desk: "I'm as much of a stranger here as you are and I don't have time to show you around." That was before he met the embarrassed kid shuffling his feet in the doorway.

"A place to sleep, it's all I ask," Eli said in a meek voice beside the air mattress Michael had borrowed for him. He unpacked the meager contents of his duffel bag, lining them up against the wall: a couple of T-shirts, black and red bikini underwear, a folding tin utensil kit, a car magazine, a stash of envelopes pre-addressed by his mother.

Their first night together, Eli curled up on his air mattress and grasped his thin blanket in his long, careful fingers. His head was a black dot above the blanket. Michael, tired of reading report summaries, got up and turned out the light in the living room. He stood in the doorway a few seconds with his hand glued to the light switch. "Feel free if you want to go out later."

"No," was the muffled reply. "It's lonely to go places without friends."

"So why did you leave them?"

"Because they wanted to go to Berlin and my mother said I should see you."

"A-ha." Michael snapped the lights back on. "You feel like taking a walk?"

They wandered through Mala Strana. Michael led Eli down a crooked street below the Castle, where crystal animals glittered in the dark souvenir shop windows, and pigeons roosted on black iron railings twisted into vines and flowers. Eli stopped to check his reflection in the side mirror of a Skoda. "I have black circles around my eyes," he said.

"So in the army," Michael said, "did you ever see... Did you ever kill anyone?"

"I was in reconnaissance, not the regular army. We went out with a team to look for terrorists, and then we called for help if we found them. Mostly we didn't fight."

"How did you know if someone was a terrorist?" he asked. They sat on a cement ledge outside of a closed pub. The air smelled like piss and beer.

"In Lebanon, anyone who goes outside after curfew is a terrorist."

"Everyone? What if there's an emergency or something?"

"Okay, not everyone. I didn't do personal interviews like on the American television, excuse me, Mr. Arab, are you a terrorist? But you can see them moving in lines across the fields. One night, they shot a missile at our tank. It went over our heads and we hit them back. Four were dead. The others ran away."

They stopped talking as a tram rumbled by.

"I guess you have to grow up fast where you live," Michael said.

"First you are afraid, but then it's okay. You are like a machine, to save yourself."

"Is that why you're so quiet?"

"You think I am quiet?"

Michael nodded and dared to squeeze him by the shoulder.

"Maybe I am." Eli's look, alert, mocking, vulnerable in the corners of his trembling flat lips, was an unmistakable invitation. Michael kissed his cheek and then laughed at himself. "I've heard men kiss a lot in your culture," he tried to explain.

Eli hesitated, then kissed him back, on the lips. "I like listening to you," he whispered.

That dizzy night, they kissed against the concrete wall of the Waldenstejn Garden and inhaled the perfume of cut grass. A month later, they were crying at the train station.

Eli came late to dinner with his girlfriend, P'ninah, who wore a low-cut fluorescent yellow bikini top, cut-offs, and platform sandals. She had a rose tattoo on her left breast.

"She's gorgeous," Becky marveled.

"Sort of," Michael admitted, wondering if P'ninah really was only a cover like Becky. "But in a kind of up front frank way, like a porn star."

Sarah kissed P'ninah on both cheeks and seated her next to Eli.

Michael's uncle, Alain (he'd been born in Morocco), presided over the table, his thick forearms folded over his belly. The Israelis pronounced his name "?lan." He was short and squat, with a face like a bullfrog and thick lips drawn into a pout as if he was continually about to spit. Occasionally he reached over to pat Eli on the back of his head.

P'ninah startled Michael with her American accent. She'd spent a year in a high school in Iowa and hated it. "Do you like the yogurt in Israel?" she asked. "It's much better than American yogurt, right?" She kissed Eli on the cheek.

Michael shoved a forkful of rice into his mouth and tried not to look at her.

"Why are you eating so much?" Sarah asked him. "Didn't you eat in Tel Aviv?"

Eli excused himself to the bathroom, upstairs. Michael went too and waited outside the door until his cousin came out.

"What?" Eli asked, trying to get by. "We can't talk in here!"

Michael buried his nose in Eli's neck. "I have to touch you," he breathed.

"So is that what you want? To fuck with me now?"

"I just want to be with you, you idiot. That's all I'm saying."

"I am not idiot." Eli pushed him off. "Wait a minute before you come after me."

When Michael returned to the table, Becky was trying out a joke about American English teachers in Prague on a bewildered-looking P'ninah.

"We're driving to Jerusalem tonight," Michael announced and sat down.

Eli's head jerked up from a dish of cantaloupe his mother had cut into bites, the way he liked. Everyone stopped talking. Becky smiled triumphantly.

"It's Shabbat," Sarah said. "Everything is closed. How will you find your way?"

"Hotels are always open," he replied. "They gave us maps with our rental car."

"So what's in Jerusalem? Why do you want to go to Jerusalem?"

"Who's going to Jerusalem?"

"They're going to Jerusalem. Tonight!"

"It's Shabbat. They can't go to Jerusalem."

"Jerusalem? What do they want in Jerusalem? With all those crazy Jews?"

"There is nothing in Jerusalem," Alain concluded and they all fell silent. "If you want to see this famous wall I can drive you there and back in one afternoon."

"That's very kind, but we want more time there," Michael said. "I'm sorry."

Alain threw up his hands. One of the hands landed on Eli's neck.

II.

Eli had been hiding in the finger-like shadows of the vines that crept up the trellis of his mother's house. A garden hose curled up at his feet as if asleep. Moths flitted against the wildflowers that grew between the cracks in the cement path, which threatened to split open. Upstairs, behind the purple windows, Michael was waiting for him. A miracle.

Eli suddenly resented his cousin for transforming his own mother's house into a place as foreign and dangerous as a field in Lebanon.

Still, he enjoyed the climb up the trellis, his sandals scraping the stucco walls, silvery in the moonlight. His mother had caught him at it once and warned him never again. He might hurt himself. She wasn't someone you wanted to argue with.

But tonight he was an explorer, an astronaut heaving thin air. One of his mother's flowers brushed his face, and he choked on its perfume.

The tall and bony American cousin sat up on the bed, his rolled-up shirts and underwear spilling all across the carpet, his backpack in the middle of the floor. Couldn't Michael put away his clothes like a person? But how elegant he looked, perched like a stork on the edge of the bed. He wore an expensive shirt the color of a plum and shiny black shoes, like for a meeting.

"Shalom," Michael said. "I remember when you were five. Can I have a kiss?"

This was the mythical boy whose mother sent his old clothes for Eli to wear: T-shirts and sweaters with American words, and faded jeans.

"So are you going to give me that flower or stand there holding it all night?"

The muscles in Eli's neck went lax under Michael's awkward icy fingers massaging his skin, deliberate and greedy with lust. Eli wished he could speak more English. He wished they could stay in a hotel by the beach and touch for hours with the door locked. Who would have found them? No, it was impossible because they deserved to get caught.

Eli kissed Michael's forearm. Unlike his own, it tasted plain, with no tang of salt.

"You are glad I'm here, right? I mean, I know you are, but, well, are you?"

"Please, we must stay quiet." Eli had never understood why Michael needed to talk so much. He and his American friends all traded intimacies like poker chips: "This scar's from when my stepmother hit me with a brush... He fucked me up the ass four months before I told him it hurt... No, the third time I was hospitalized for depression..."

"Does your girlfriend know?" Michael asked. "How do you know she knows?"

His head throbbed remembering it all, especially with his parents in the next room.

"We'll see each other," said Eli, desperate to sneak back down the trellis, away.

When Eli told his parents he was going to Jerusalem too, his mother kissed his forehead and said she was proud of him. That was what family was for.

That's just what's wrong, Eli thought. This is not what family is for.

Still, it was what he wanted, and during the drive on Highway 1, he didn't resist when Michael rested his hand on his thigh, centimeters from his penis. In back, Becky prattled on about an ice cream shop. At last, five minutes from the city, she fell asleep, and Eli felt free to guide Michael's hand toward his zipper. The hand crawled into Eli's underwear and rocked gently. They rounded a curve and hit the blinking lights and purple hills of the capital. A white banner suspended over the road declared that Peugeot welcomed them to Jerusalem. Becky woke up with a start: "We're here!"

The hotels Michael had phoned were full, so they stayed in the apartment of a friend of Eli's, whose parents had gone to Austria on vacation. It was a small place, with a slender hallway that connected three tight rooms stuffed with pressed wood shelves and a collection of African masks and sculptures. Becky got the children's room. Eli had never slept in such a big bed as the one he and Michael shared (with a bamboo frame and canvas sheets), like the one his parents had. A wooden figure with a banana-shaped nose and webbed fingers leered over them. He stared up at it as Michael climbed into bed.

"What?" Michael asked as Eli crawled away from him. "Don't you want to?"

"I want," he said, his penis sliding against a wet spot in his underwear, "but I don't want. I came with you here but not for sex."

Michael frowned. "So you are fucking your girlfriend."

"I don't fuck with her!" he insisted. "I tell her I am traditional. I lie to her because of you. Because of you, I'm lying to my parents too, all of the time. I never did that before. And I must think, why am I lying? Why am I so much ashamed?"

"If it wasn't me, you'd be lying to them about some other guy."

"Who? I don't go to these places." He couldn't say Ôgay places.' "Anyway, you are my cousin. We should not do it, like you should not do it with your brother."

Michael stood next to the bed and began pacing. "If you'd asked me before I met you, is this a good thing, I'd say no. But now I have to look at it differently because... Because I can't stop thinking about you, because you have the power to make me miserable, because I need you. And to me it comes down to who am I hurting?"

"If you say it's okay for us, then why not okay for a mother and son?"

"I don't knowÉ Forget that. You can't explain why this is wrong. What's wrong with us, with you and me?" Michael offered his hand, but Eli flinched. "That's great. Thanks a lot. So now what? Do you want to be friends?"

There was the dirty word: "friends." If one American knew another for five minutes, suddenly he was his "friend" and required to lay down his life for a stranger. Wait one minute more and they'd forget each other's names.

"I'm tired," Eli said and put his pillow over his head.

Michael tried to pull away the pillow. "What did you expect when I came here?"

And what did he expect? Eli thought. To fuck me in the house of my mother?

For all their sunscreen and water bottles and guidebooks and maps, they were helpless. Michael almost brought his palm pilot, but Eli said, "You are addicted to this machine like drugs."

Michael stared at the palm pilot and then tossed it on the bed.

The guidebooks irritated Eli especially. "What do you need me for?" he sulked. When the girl wanted to go to Mahaneh Yehuda market, he asked, "You need groceries?"

"We don't have markets like yours in the States," she replied, slinging her camera around her neck. "Or in Czech Republic."

"Yes, you have. I was there." He blushed as he thought of the Havelska market, where Michael had bought him a miniature clay bird with its wings folded over its eyes. "Looks just like you," he'd teased, sneaking a kiss when no one was looking.

In the throng of shoppers at Mahaneh Yehuda, Becky aimed her camera in all directions, at an Orthodox woman pressing into a melon, then a pair of brawny young men in blood-soaked aprons at a butcher stall. She took shots of mounds of olives, wheels of cheese in glass cases, trays of smoked fish with their mouths gaping open, oranges as big as grapefruit and grapefruit the size of small melons. "Let me peel you an orange," she said.

For a minute Eli didn't understand, since he'd never heard the word "peel" in English before. In Hebrew, "peel" meant elephant.

"It's okay," he admitted as he chewed his slice.

"You're smiling," she said, and he grinned wider. "You have a beautiful smile! Why don't Israelis smile? Whenever you walk into a store in America, everyone smiles."

Eli turned to look for his cousin, who'd disappeared. It was Michael's first day in Jerusalem and he didn't remember Hebrew so well. Did he even have any shekels? Eli climbed on a wooden crate to get a better view, but it was all a blur of nuts and olives. An ultra-Orthodox fatso in a black bathrobe bumped into his hip. Eli spat on his black hat and looked around the market again. This was Becky's fault, Becky and her stupid oranges.

But there Michael was, sulking next to a banana cart.

"Here, taste," Eli said with a relieved smile and extended a slice of orange.

Michael bit into the orange slice, which sprayed juice all over his face and eyes. He glared as if Eli had planned it. "Let me help," Eli said, digging in his empty pockets, but Michael had already taken out his travel-sized packet of Kleenex. How efficient of him.

Next, they wanted to drive out to Yad Va-Shem.

Across the valley from the museum, dark clouds sagged over the hills. Eli advised them to tour the gardens first in case of a downpour. Becky walked ahead, taking pictures. Michael paused in front of a bronze sculpture of a woman with her head buried in her hands. "I know how she feels," he said.

Eli laughed. "You are speaking about this statue like it's really some person."

"I suppose that's against the rules too."

"No, it's nice." Eli patted his shoulder. "It makes me like you."

"What else can I do to make you like me?" Michael asked, his eyes wet.

We shouldn't talk about this here, Eli thought, not with all the Nazis and ghosts. "Let's go on before it rains," he said.

They passed through the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, a grove of trees with dark coin-shaped leaves, then entered a maze of Jerusalem stone walls engraved with the names of all the towns in Europe where Nazis had killed Jews. Michael found LUNINECÑthe shtetl in Poland where their great-grandparents had lived, had been killed.

And instead of continuing the line, we destroy it with our fucking.

"I never saw this before," Eli said.

"Why not?" Michael asked.

"It's the past. My mother's uncle traveled to this town last year. He saw nothing." Eli didn't know how to say in English that their history had been erased, buried in a place with no marker. Now other people lived there. "It's nothing. It's nowhere."

"I know." And Eli knew that Michael really did know.

"Why don't I take a shot of the two of you by the name?" Becky said. When they bent over to touch the engraving, their hands met.

Eli wanted to start all over again in the bamboo bed, but first they had to drive in the rain and find a place to park, and then where to have dinner on Ben Yehuda Street, the Israel with no relation to Eli or anyone he knew. His father was right: any time of day, you could walk there and see not one Israeli. Instead there were religious fanatics from Brooklyn, tour groups in search of T-shirts, french fries, and frozen yogurt.

Back in the apartment, the Americans washed and brushed, skin, teeth, and hair. Michael took an extra shower, "for the glory of having a hot shower." Eli removed the African sculpture from over the bed and hid it in a closet.

"What?" Michael asked when he came back to their room. He smelled like the seaweed shampoo he'd borrowed from Becky. "Did I do something wrong again?"

Eli pinned him against the door and gnawed on his neck.

"I don't get it. What's happening?"

He kissed Michael on the mouth to shut him up.

They dropped to their knees. Eli tugged at his cousin's towel and kissed the rough points of bone on his narrow shoulders. His tongue trailed down to a pink nipple island in a shallow sea of black hair. He sucked gently, then looked up with his eyebrows raised. Neither of them smiled. Eli stretched his T-shirt over his head and then pulled off his pants and underwear. He dragged Michael to the bed and balanced himself on his cousin's body. The tips of his fingers and ears tingled, like he was angry. Eli grunted and rubbed harder.

"Good, good. Take it out on me." Michael's cool fingers tickled under Eli's balls and then plunged into his anus, which Eli clenched shut. "Relax," Michael whispered. "I'm gentle." So Eli let his cousin pry in there, pull where the skin was wet and sensitive.

"Ay, ay," he breathed, almost crying.

"Shh," Michael whispered, smoothing Eli's face and hair with his free hand. He said in Hebrew, "You're safe with me, right? You're safe."

And then Eli streamed white curls over Michael's stomach.

They stood naked at the window together and watched the grey sunrise with regret. Michael said, "You're okay with this? The gay part, the cousin part, all of it?"

"Yes, yes, yes." Eli kissed Michael's neck three times. "I need you with me." Here was love, everything he wanted. He couldn't imagine anything else.

"What about your parents?" Michael said.

Eli shuddered. "My father must never know about these things."

"I guess even if they knew you were gay, it wouldn't do us any good."

"I like your body." He stroked his cousin's chest. "Why are you not fat like so many American tourists, like, how do you say... Ôpeel'?" Eli blew up his cheeks, hung his arm from his nose, and made a noise like a trumpet.

"Elephant," Michael laughed.

"Yes, elephant."

"Come here, elephant," Michael whispered and kissed him. "You're not tired?"

"I don't want to sleep," Eli said. "I can sleep any other time."

III.

Her last evening in Israel, Becky sat on the couch in Sarah's living room and studied a cooking magazine. She didn't cook, but she might someday in that house in the suburbs she and Michael always joked about sharing. Alain, sunk into his brown leather easy chair, watched TV in Hebrew.

The two lovebirds had abandoned her as soon as they'd returned to Tel Aviv that morning. In Jerusalem, they'd become intolerable, inseparable. They wanted to linger all day under the lime green awning of the cafe at the top of the street and babble together in Hebrew, their secret language, which Michael suddenly remembered. She tried to persuade the couple, if that's what they were now, to go with her to the Old City, so she could take pictures in the Suk for friends.

"Friends.," Eli sneered. "Americans, always with your friends."

Like she was some flirt, which couldn't have been further from the truth. Though men often asked her out, she rarely went on dates any more, maybe because she was too picky. The men she met were too awkward or else too smooth, too pretty or too dirty, too ambitious or too dreamy, and she wasn't going to settle for anything less than what she had already with Michael.

They'd tried dating in college a few times until Becky told him she was looking for her knight on a white horse and he wasn't it. They became reacquainted in New York, after he'd come out and become polished. Sunday afternoons he'd tell her about his love life over brunch and then they'd relax in his apartment. She took photos from his terrace, which overlooked the Hudson. The doorman knew her name. (She wanted a doorman! Sometimes she pretended Igor was her doorman.) Michael escorted her to weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, seders. The extended family didn't know the truth; telling them would have been like exposing a rash. Anyway, the truth was more like a lie since she was the closest thing Michael had to a better half, the way he went through men.

When he went to Europe, she called him and cried about the drudgery of her job at the Joint Distribution Committee. He arranged for his firm to bring her over. Her mother baked brownies, which Becky brought across the ocean in her overnight bag. She sent his Mom postcards from the Jewish Quarter, and when Michael was too busy to send his own postcards, he signed his name next to hers.

Every few weeks, he fell in love and forgot she existed, which was all that Jerusalem was. All gay men were like that until they got dumped. Then they came crawling back and cried on your shoulder.

She'd insisted they visit the Western Wall at least, but by the time they showered and had a bite to eat, it was almost dark. Black birds swirled overhead as the falling sun sizzled against the Dome of the Rock, then lit the Wall orange. Dried weeds grew out of the cracks near the top where smaller stones were jammed in together like bad teeth. Below, worshippers in black had crowded up against the base. How strange to pray to a wall, Becky thought. She wished she'd brought color film.

The boys sat on a stone bench while she finished up with her pictures. They held hands under the shelter of Michael's daypack and Becky wanted to scream, Your kids will have six toes! But of course she couldn't, since they wouldn't.

Alain suddenly leaned forward in his chair and asked, "Do you like Israel?"

"What? Oh, beautiful," she said. "I'm surprised how many Russians there are." She was going to add that in New York she'd raised money to aid in re-settling them.

"They are all robbers," he said. With his accent, Becky thought for a second he'd said "rubbers." "They steal mezzuzot from our doors to sell on the black market."

"Maybe," she said, the way she would have to a child.

"Sorry my English is kacha-kacha." From his gesture, she knew he meant "so-so."

"It's fine. You're doing very well."

The rush of color in his brown cheeks was not altogether unattractive. "You are always welcome here," he said. "Beautiful girls are always welcome in my house."

"Merci, monsieur," she laughed. Just then she could believe he'd been handsome as a young man, like his son.

Eli and Michael came in with P'ninah, who looked skinny enough to be a model in her hot pink bikini top. Looking at her made Becky feel bloated, often on the verge of exploding. Sarah came downstairs and sent Eli and P'ninah back out to buy pita. Michael stretched out on the couch next to Becky and yawned. Eli had shaved Michael's head, and she thought he looked like a shorn sheep.

"What'll they say at the office?" she asked.

"Does it matter?" Michael giggled. He seemed awfully chipper for a guy who was leaving his "true love" behind the very next morning. But then he was always in "love." What a cheap word, she thought. No one was in love.

"You are packed for your trip home?" Sarah called out on her way to the kitchen.

"Almost." Michael scratched his fuzzy skull. "It's all laundry anyway."

"You have laundry? Where is it? Give it to me. You too." She pointed at Becky.

They each brought a heap of clothes, which Sarah insisted on separating into colors and whites even though they said they never did. "I separate them," she said.

Becky felt relieved at the sight of the washing machine. People were supposed to live with washing machines in their homes instead of dropping their clothes off at some harshly lit laundromat manned by bitter Czech grandmothers. She noticed a framed sepia-toned photo above the dryer: a handsome soldier and an elegant woman with thin, delicate hands, also in a uniform. "Is that you and Alain?"

Sarah, about to slam down the lid of the washing machine, smiled. "Yes. It's us."

"How did you meet?" Becky asked.

"We worked in the army together," she said quietly and shut the lid.

"There's much more to it," Michael said after Sarah went downstairs to make dinner. "She's Ashkenazi, from Eastern Europe, and Alain's Sephardic. Back then, that was like a black and white person getting married. They were Romeo and Juliet."

"I bet Juliet didn't keep Romeo's picture above her washing machine."

"I don't know," he said seriously. "Maybe sometimes you need reminding." From the tone of his voice, she guessed it hadn't worked with Eli, as with all the others. Of course she was glad Michael had found himself, but was he really happy this way?

Sarah served a heavy dinner: potatoes fried until they were hard and yellow, green peppers stuffed with ground beef. Becky pointed her pepper away from her face, afraid the hot breath of the meat would make her acne flare up. Alain kept smiling at her. He asked if she wanted humus and laughed when she pronounced it to rhyme with "pumice."

"CHOO-moos!" He refused to pass the bowl until she pronounced it correctly.

Michael's skin was a feverish shade of orange from too much sun. He wore a red shirt printed with flowers and leaves that Eli had bought from an Arab tailor in the Old City because Michael had said, on a whim, that he liked it. Eli picked at pita and olives. He said nothing except to answer "ken" or "lo" when his mother asked if he wanted anything.

P'ninah asked if Becky wouldn't miss the oranges of Israel.

"We have oranges at home," she retorted. You're just a cover like me, she thought. Don't put on airs.

After dinner, they all drank tea and nibbled on Michael's crumbled tea cookies. Meanwhile, Michael couldn't stop babbling about the wonderful food of Israel, Sarah's beautiful home and gorgeous garden, the sights, smells, tastes of Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem is absolutely a fascinating city, though it surprised me that it wasn't exactly beautiful, not in a strictly aesthetic way, not in the same way as say, Paris."

Alain slammed his fist on the table and pointed at Michael. "You are a beatnik!"

"Why am I a beatnik?"

"Because you speak of beauty and you wear flowers. Do you know how many men have sacrificed their lives for Jerusalem, the most unique, special, beautiful city in all the world?"

"Then I guess I'm a beatnik." Michael winked at Becky and put his arm around the back of Eli's chair.

They found their laundry on their beds, folded into piles and decorated with plastic bags of kosher candies tied with red, white, and blue ribbons.

"Amazing," Michael marveled, sampling a hard lemon candy. "She's..."

Becky closed his door. "I want to talk. I'm mad at you."

"Okay." He sat down on Eli's bed. "What's up?"

"To be honest, I'm a bit tired of playing the supporting character in your boy-toy-of-the-week-mini-dramas. You dragged me here, and now we're leaving..."

Michael interrupted. "Becky, you should know, I'm moving to Israel."

"Are you crazy?" she yelled out, then lowered her voice. "He's your cousin!"

"Well, it's not like we're going to have kids," he said.

But we might have, she thought.

"I found out, I can just show up, prove I'm Jewish, and boom, I'm on the government dole for six months. It's the Law of Return. Eli and I asked about it in town today." Michael touched her arm, but she shuddered and stepped back from him. "I'm realistic. I'm sure it's headed for disaster. Eventually. But now... we're right together."

She snorted.

"Maybe you're cold enough to abandon him, but I can't. If I leave him here, he'd be lost. I'm the only gay guy his parents would let near him. Anyway, I've always wanted to move to Israel. The army ought to do wonders for my abs."

"Bull-fucking-shit! You hate Israel! We hate Israel."

"I don't hate it."

"You're living in a romance novel. What about your job? You love your job."

"You're not listening," he said. "Maybe you don't know me so well, not really."

"Oh, yeah. I've listened to your crap for ten years, but I don't know you."

"Maybe you don't," he said. "It's not like there's anything tying me down. I mean, if I'm so eager to drop my job and everything to do this, then maybe that whole life meant nothing. Maybe this isn't crazy. Or maybe it's just crazy enough to work. I don't know." He scratched behind his ear. "All I know is my head itches from this haircut."

She was hurt, but she didn't want him to know. "So you're not going back at all?"

"No, I am going back, to settle things first. Hey, are you interested in a slightly used palm pilot?" He put on an Israeli accent. "I can make you good price."

"Thanks, but if I wanted a palm pilot, I could buy a new one."

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Of course it's yours for free."

I haven't made a dent on you, Becky thought, no more than a mosquito landing on your arm for a few seconds. "I guess you have to pack now," she said coldly and left the room. She hated him for what he was about to do to his life.

Becky thought over the whole story as she scraped her face with Noxema until her cheeks burned. She tried to imagine making a sacrifice like this for any of the men she'd dated. There wasn't one she'd have done it for.

On her way back to her room, Becky looked in on Michael, who'd left his door open. With his haircut, and in the silly shirt Eli had bought him, he looked like a stranger. He was leaning against the doorframe to the balcony, and from far off, she could hear a child crying, somewhere outside, far away. She watched him standing in the breeze, scratching his freshly shorn head and just breathing, breathing deeply.