A Certain Scene

Talma and Ruvke Etsioni apartment was in the 'L housing estate', in one of the buildings opposite Dov airport, a northern Tel Aviv new suburb. That is where their friends Nehama and Yoske Solan where bound for, to pay a visit to their dear old friends, who have just returned from a trip abroad.
Yoske stopped the car next the the entrance to let Nehama off, and drove on to the airport's parking lot. Parking in Tel Aviv is a problem, just like in any other part of the developed world.
He was a bit worried as he was driving slowly on, towards the small airport's parking lot. During the past twenty minutes that have elapsed since we left, she didn't exchange a single word with me. I do hope that this meeting with our old friends would calm her down. He kept thinking a bit perturbed though.
Having found a free space a bit far off, he parked his car locked it and rushed back to his wife, who kept waiting for him at the house entrance.
'What took you so long? How much time is needed to park a car?' She scolded him angrily.
'The place is fully occupied I hardly found an open space.' He replied her with much restraint.
'I can see from right here at least two free spaces, and it isn't clear to me at all why you'd to muck about so much time there!' She kept scolding him in some subconscious urge to arouse a quarrel.
His blood was flooding his face and he was about to answer her with an angry reproof, but managed to control himself with much effort. 'It's a pity you haven't noted it before, you could have parked the car yourself; or you could simply wait for me at Talma and Ruvke's apartment ? if you're so impatient.'
To his utter surprise she kept her mouth shut this time. She pushed the Etsionis' intercom button, exchanged a few warm words with Talma, as if nothing happened. When they heard the buzzer sound she pushed the entrance door, and they went together inside to the lift. They were standing next to its door like two strangers, that have met there by sheer coincidence. Yoske kept throwing furtive glances at his angry wife, but she stood there just as Lot's wife stood after she had looked back on Sodom against God's warning.
As the lift arrived he hastened to open its door and let her pass, but that little gesture like all the other gestures; which he bothered so much to do recently to appease her, did not work as usual. Nehama stood erect her back to the lift's inner wall, looking straight ahead above his shoulder ? as if he did not exist. While he was wondering gloomily when this cold offensive that his wife is carrying out against him, since the embarrassing affair with Smadar is going to end up.
When Talma opened up the Etsionis' front door and greeted them smiling, Nehama fell into her friend's arms, releasing her inhibited feelings; embracing warmly her friend and kissing her on both her cheeks, while omitting excited sounds of happiness; cheerful ejaculations without words, that amazed Yoske and Talma as well no doubt. It reminded Yoske the days when he was the instructor of Nehama,Talma and of Erella his old flame; and the rest of the girls and boys who were part of his group. It was just like the cheerful ejaculations of excited teenage girls while meeting each other, as if they haven't seen each other several weeks. He exchanged an embarrassed smile with Talma as soon as his wife had put off her siege on their host, and kissed her lightly on her cheek, taking care not to over do it, and arouse his wife's jealousy.
'Well, let them in, are you holding them up there or what?' Ruvke her husband called out, feigning impatience in a demonstration of heated up feelings. He rose on his feet and stepped forward to welcome Nehama, taking advantage of the occasion he kissed both her cheeks, and embraced her with warmth; he did not exclude Yoske from a similar emotional offensive, to abate any suspicions that might arise by his too enthusiastic welcome. 'Well do sit down please.' He urged his two guests, and dropped back into his armchair.
Ruvke (Reuven) Etsioni was a bit younger than Yoske, he too was a member of the Working youth movement, but belonged to the Borochov branch on the eastern side of the town. Talma met him in one of the movement's journeys and did not leave him since then. It was a real love story as Nehama used to note it to her husband quite frequently, particularly lately to tease him; for he was forced to marry her although he loved Erella with all his heart, and if she would have consented this very day to be his, though he has not seen her since those early times; and how she looks nowadays he can not even imagine; he would have followed her as if he were dazzled, particularly after Smadar's betrayal. Thus he kept thinking as he sat down in one the comfortable armchairs, watching an abstract painting hanging on the opposite wall. Nonsense, he scolded himself almost uttering it aloud, after a few seconds. She too made a fool of me more than Smadar, and I loved her more thanany other woman.
All that while Ruvke was answering to Nehama's questions about the trip Talma and he just returned from in the United States. He quoted names of well known cities and sites, New York, Chicago, Niagara falls, the grand canyon. Most of the conversation details have not penetrated Yoske's brain at its beginning, but Talma's appearance with a huge loaded platter in her hands has cut off his illusions and he sat listening attentively to the dialogue between Ruvke and his wife. It has reached a lively peak, photos were passed around; after a few moments of preparations they watched a video abundant with American landscapes,and their friends' smiling faces now and then. In spite of his gloomy feelings Yoske hoped that this evening would be a pleasant one. That was his hope and pray. That this meeting would dispel the last remnants of the mistrust that was sown lately between Nehama and himself.
Ruvke poured him a glass of a fine bourbon, while Talma was teasing her husband and telling them all about a chance meeting with Ruvke's first girl friend in Niagara Falls. 'That Yemenite girl that made you lose your head.' She remarked laughing.
After one more glass of bourbon Yoske heard himself telling them a childhood episode, about another Yemenite that made many lose their heads.
'I was about nine or ten years old then, and I climbed to our house roof to look for my best friend. His mother was up there dealing with their laundry, and in those days if you remember every family had its day of laundry on top of the roof. There was an open room in one corner where the laundry was boiled in a huge boiler upon a fire. My friend was supposed to help her to keep the fire going, and some other small errands which he was able to fulfill. His mother was a Yemenite, a beautiful woman with black curly hair, black eyes. She was married a second time to my best friend's step father, and young men still courted her with much zeal. I reached the roof and saw her standing near the roof's parapet, and a young pale men stood next to her leaning on the parapet with his elbow - while she was hanging her washed laundry.' He made a short pause and emptied his glass, surprised how eager they were to hear more - including his own wife that never heard that certain story ever before. 'Well that young man was talking to her ceaselessly,while she looked at him from to time with a shade of a smile - a Mona Lisa mysterious smile. I was getting near them to ask her where my friend could be. My lips almost uttered my question: "Jacob's mother where's Jacob?"; when I heared the young man say: 'Just one word from you and I'll jump off the roof.' Yes that's what he said, and he was much younger then her, no more than twenty, twenty two years old. I was a yard away when she turned to me smiling and asked 'shall I tell him?' Shocked and frightened I raised both my hands as if to protect my face, and shouted no, no and ran back to thestaircase.'
'Did she mess around with them?' Ruvke asked after the short burst of laughter subsided,. The three of them laughed, Nehama did not.
'No I don't think she did, she simply enjoyed their attention, their compliments that's all.'
'How do you know, you were just nine or ten years old, that's what you just said, didn't you?' Nehama scolded him angrily.
'That's what I would call a loving man.' Talma exclaimed with feigned enthusiasm, trying to resume the pleasant atmosphere. 'You would have surely jumped off the roof for me, wouldn't you?' She asked her husband laughing.
'Come on, did any one jump off a roof then? Have you ever heard such a thing?' He turned to Yoske. 'Nobody jumped then and nobody jumps nowadays, it's just someone who wanted very badly to get her laid that's all.'
'That's the whole thing more or less. Even if she would have told him to jump, she would have caught him in the last moment, though he was just a pretender.'
'That's what you all are, a bunch of pretenders!' Nehama remarked with bitterness. 'Give me the car's keys.' She turned boldly to Yoske.
'What for?' He asked her utterly surprised.
'I wanna check something okay!?!' She answered raising her voice.
Both the Etsionis were stunned. Talma was about to say something to calm Nehama down, but changed her mind. The matter was much more serious from what she and Ruvke could have thought of.
'Okay I'm off,' Nehama said quite calmly, right after having collected the car's keys. She rose to her feet and turned to her husband: 'You may hail a cab or walk back home for all I care.' Having said that she turned round and moved towards the front door with a resolute step.
'Nehama?!' Talma called out after a few seconds of utter shock, and rushed after her friend running through the front door that was left open.
Yoske and Ruvke kept sitting still and worried, listening to the excited verbal exchange outside, the opening of the lift's door, its closure and the silence that reigned right after it.
Some ten minutes passed and Talma returned alone, pale and disturbed. 'What has happened to her? What's happening between you two?' She turned to Yoske with a clear note of reproach. 'I went all the way down with her and couldn't persuade her. What could have caused such a behavior?'
'Cut it off Talma!' Ruvke retorted. 'Maybe Yoske himself doesn't know, and if he knows it's between the two of them - he doesn't have to tell anything to you.'
Another short and embarrassing pause of tensed silence fell, and the three of them sat gloomily round the small loaded table - undecided, ignoring each other's eyes.
'Listen,' Ruvke turned to his friend, 'let's get down and I'll give a lift home.'
'Thanks, it's rather critical, I'd better get home as soon as I can.' Yoske replied and rose to his feet. 'Don't worry Talma,' he added. 'We'll settle it down between us, Nehama and me.'
'Wow, that was the record of all records,' Ruvke remarked excitedly on coming back. 'How she jumped down his throat! "Hail a cab, crawl back home!" But I guess the climax is over, and he'll see to appease her.'
'Has he told you anything on your way?'
'He didn't tell me exactly what the matter was, but he says that she's behaving like a cuckoo for sometime already. That's how he described it, which means she lais an egg in some forlorn nest and flies away - the results are none of her business. But that was the first time that she's staged such a tricky scene to him. That was all he had to say.'
'That was all he told you? I can't believe it!'
'Well there were a few more unimportant things.' Ruvke admitted against his own will, he preferred to skip it. He feared it might serve as food for thought to his own wife. 'He said that lately Nehama stuck to him like a limpet, afraid he might get involved in some affair under her nose, like that nasty business with what's her name? Ohm, Smadar their new efficient stewardess.' He added and went on right away laughing slightly. 'Thus this trick of hers surprised him and do listen how he described it: "Imagine her sitting in wait for me any hour of broad daylight, like the parents of a teenage girl, waiting till the small hours of night to their only girl, to return from her first party". He burst out with a short embarrassed laugh and a sense of remorse, thinking on their own young daughter Riva. 'Well, I dare say Yoske had a dubious past in these matters, and his marriage with Nehama isn't the best thing since sliced bread. The truth is I was surprised myself, I was sure she has overcame that old affair of his.'
'She'll never forgive him for his love to Erella.' Talma replied with a sarcastic chuckle.
'Come on, it was ages ago! The whimsical Erella, whom everyone almost tried to court in vain.'
'I too didn't like her, but you didn't know her like me, and like Yoske knew her. You don't know what influence she'd over him, and how he broke down when she left him.'
'She left him you say! She never dated him as far as I know. He was your group's instructor, and that was all there was to it.'
'There're many more things which you don't know, but Nehama in spite of the exceptional number she gave us tonight, will never give him up.'
'Okay, they'll get along in the same way they did get along till now, but she could do without that peculiar number of hers.'
Except a slight node of her head, Talma didn't react this time. There was no need to fall to a futile argument. They have just returned from a pleasant trip, that could have been defined as a second honey moon; she had no intention to get on her husband nerves and end up with a quarrel, not even for the romantic problems of her best friend.
'By God that nasty business made me hungry. Get us something light to eat please.'
'What about you diet?'
'Tomorrow is another day, I'll resume my diet tomorrow morning, okay?'