Lunar Eclipse by Alona Kimchi

Yes, beyond question, a lousy day. Fuck them all. Then in the afternoon, at the restaurant with that Yaniv guy from Barel PR. God almighty, the people I have to mix with! The lowest kind of urban trash. Tel Aviv trash. Ambitious cruds. But I got the Levis campaign! Then came the worst part. Returning from the restaurant in the evening, looking for parking space near the studio, I came across Gadi. That's right, the handsome slim Gadi I used to love.

Meetings with former lovers are a tricky business. For your peace of mind, try to be at your best when they they take place. We all want to be loved for ever. Especially by those who were smitten in the past. It's no caprice, it's an instinct. Gadi didn't have this instinct. Or maybe he doesn't have any instincts. Perhaps he's been excessively cultured and socialized and lost that human impulse to revive the old thrill. He was cool and relaxed, as only someone who's learned to hate you over the years can be. He'd waited for this meeting from the day we parted. I'm sure of it. And me? Like a wave of nausea, sudden and swift, came the need to inform him that he was speaking to a happy person. A successful one. To let him realize that my life had worked out just fine. Let him know what he'd missed. That's pathetic, I know. The sign of a petty spirit? OK, that too. No matter how predictable, my behaviour veered with sudden violence right out of my hands. 'It was beyond my control,' as Glen Close said to John Malkovich. This desire that the people who saw you in your weakest moments, at your ugliest, when you were skinless, should think that the passage of the years has changed all that, that your aspirations bore fruit and you became what you'd always longed to be. You want to scream at them to stop looking at you with superior knowingness. They know nothing! The extensive intelligence information in their possession is obsolete and trashy. Why? Because! Because you've changed from top to toe. It simply happened, far from their watchful eyes. You've changed beyond recognition, and your feeble nakedness is only a vestige from your naive youth that they've retained, distorted and exaggerated, in their memory. Yes indeed, there are moments when the urge to shield yourself from other people's knowing you is more powerful than reason, just as there are moments when the opposite urge - to shed all protective shielding - can drive you equally mad.

I informed him about the Levis campaign. He'd always known how much I wanted to make it big in my work. I explained the difficulties involved, the size of the competition. Fortunately, I was able to hold on to a smidgin of good taste and didn't mention how much they'd be paying me. He was glad to hear I was contented. I invited him to come in and see the studio. And all the time a sticky Japanese smile, like instant glue, stayed on my face. A horrific sight, I suppose, especially for someone who knew my usual glumness. I could tell that he was scanning my soul with his spiteful eyes and knew that while everything I said might be true, the facts might be true, but the spirit behind them was a gross lie, obvious and unsophisticated. A sitcom. A farce. A nightmare poem.

"No, I don't think so, Mori, I'd be glad to some other time."

Mildly surprised, at ease. An elegant tourist who stumbled into an agricultural museum in a provincial town. I couldn't believe that this man had cried because of me, grovelled, begged, adored the black-and-white photos of old women I churned out by the gross. Wanted to have children with me.

What can I say - it broke me up.

My stomach shouted to me - stop, Alkabetz, you dumb suicide, watch out, you crazy woman, but the slope was too steep. It was beyond my control.

So I told him how much I thought about him. Sometimes. And about us. And how much I missed him. Idiotic, meaningless lies. And he, looking serious (only deep inside his pupils gleeful little demons were sniggering), yes, oh really, I see, courteous. Suddenly I saw the whole scene from outside. The entire gruesome comedy. But by then there were no handholds for me to haul myself up, and a voice in my head said, go for it, Alkabetz, go overboard, the way we like it - so I slipped a finger into his belt, gave it a little tug and said, come let's fuck...

After that things went very quickly. He backed away, said quietly, I don't think so Mori, really. But by now I was totally jagged (this is a falling-on-my-sword scene, sweetheart, on a fatal, total, terminal scale), come on Gadi, hey come on, trying to touch him again, on the neck, and he removes my hand and says, enough Mori, what's the matter with you, but I can't stop and try to hug him and bury my face in his chest and he has no choice left.

I stood there in a daze and he muttered "Take care of yourself" and split, with that queer walk of his, cautious, slightly swaying, as if walking on a wobbly tightrope.

His fist of a rump. A tiger in flight. Loser, bastard, candy-ass, impotent. A nightmare poem indeed. No, that's not how sudden encounters with former lovers should go. Not a bit like that. I should have found him burdened with three kids and a small bespectacled brown-haired wife with an intelligent but forgettable face. And in his eyes I should have read a gulf of longing, shallow but aching, for the madness of past times. That's how it should have been. I'm so ashamed. Just thinking about it makes me cringe from shame. What a fool I am. A liar and a fool. Since when do I care about him, and why did I tell him I missed him when I hardly remembered him all those years - and what's worst, why oh why did I suggest fucking him, when nowadays I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. And he felt sorry for me. He pitied me!

I'd eat something. If I could. But - no no no... I'm as disciplined as a Prussian soldier. I'm as strong as the devil. The brave devil Schweik.

I went back to the studio. To function. Always keep functioning. That's the sacred mission. Soldier, halt, password! Sanity! Well done, dismissed. I had to do the two fashion pages of the supplement, but all I could think of was what I was going to buy in the supermarket and how much, and couldn't wait to finish everything and get home and eat and eat till I couldn't eat anymore, then throw up and feel a great peace come over my soul.

But sure enough, I got stuck till late at night with the paperwork for the annual tax return. Sitting and rootling in papers like a little municipal clerk, till I saw circles floating before my eyes. By the time I finished it was so late I didn't hear a single car passing in the street. After midnight. Long after. I went out into the landing, locked the door, and then it happened.

I saw the studio bin lying on its side, and beside it, amid the garbage, a big rat sat chewing the model's pitta. My pitta.

I knew it at once, because of the lipstick smear on the bitten edge. I froze, and very slowly, delicately, careful not to startle it, I lifted a foot, took off my shoe and threw it at the rat with all my strength. I wanted to slash it open with the sharp end of the heel and see his insides burst out - guts, shit, blood and bits of the shawarma that belonged to me. I missed.

The rat scooted off into the night and I went to the bin, squatted down, picked up the pitta and ate it.

How did I get into this crazy state?