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out?”
    “Maybe.”
    “What is it, Gideon?”
    “I don’t know. But I do know the only way I’m going to find out. I’m coming.”
    “Well keep our asses down low.”
    “Your assignment with me doesn’t call for this kind of crap. You don’t have to come.”
    Shlomo puffed out his chest. An insult. “Be here at the hotel at five in the morning,” he said. “I’ll take you to the staging area.”
    V ALERIE SAT cross-legged on the bed, her gown drawn up so that her thighs were bared. The international edition of Time was balanced between her legs as she wiped her reading glasses. She had hit the waste-basket with the Jerusalem Post and Herald Trib. Four points. Gideon’s pages were on the bedstand to read last, for dessert.
    Val turned to the Time book review. A full page in frothing lionization of a minor talent who couldn’t sell twenty thousand books if they spotted him nineteen thousand.
    “Pricks,” she said, tossing the magazine. She picked up Gideon’s pages, teased herself with them. She had looked forward to them voraciously.
    Val read half a page, then lay back on the pillows with a thud and rubbed her eyes. My God, I’m finding fault. Nit-picking. I’m not reading what he’s saying, but what I want it to say. I’ve become just like those God-damned critics I loathe. It’s become insatiable. Why? To annoy him? Hell no, to hurt him. My head’s not clear anymore. You just can’t read with a hate bird sitting on your shoulder.
    Val, damn you, you’ve got to be more supportive. Read what this guy is reaching for. He’s good. He’s ripping himself open to find meanings. That’s when a writer can really be great, on a voyage of discovery.
    What the hell, I came to Israel, didn’t I? Isn’t that being supportive enough? Did you come for Gideon or to save your own ass?
    She heard Grover growl and the rubber flap of his dog door snap open and shut. Sounds disturbed her here, adding to the jittery feeling she always had when Gideon was away. Everything in this damned country ran on nerves and anxiety.
    Val drew images of him whispering into the phone, calling that woman. Perhaps that woman was waiting for him at the hotel and they’d go at it desperately. If he smelled of a fresh shower, it was no doubt to get rid of her scent. He usually wore his guilt like a neon sign.
    Lots of parties in Israel. Big social life. You know what it’s like to feel every pair of eyes in the room glaring at you. That’s the poor wife. Pity. No big deal in Israel, this bed-hopping: sophistication personified.
    Natasha Solomon. She’s a bloody charmer all right. So sweet to Penelope and Roxy at the Savyon Club.
    “When you come up to Jerusalem, I’d love to take your daughters around.”
    And I’d like to bust you one in the mouth, lady!
    Come on, Val, read the pages ... no use. She flung them down rudely. Stinks! Oh God, it hurts!
    There was that awful night, not long after I had arrived in Israel. Gideon was working late at the hotel. Or so I thought. I decided to drive over and surprise him and maybe talk him into a little romantic stroll on the beach.
    When I parked the car in the front of the Accadia, I heard riotous laughter coming from the beach.
    “What’s going on down there?” I asked the doorman.
    “A reunion of Hungarian survivors, from all over Israel,” he answered.
    I was magnetically drawn to the bluffs that ran along the rear of the hotel. The Hungarians were strung all up and down the beach; a crowd of them around a campfire were having a boisterous time. Some of the revelers began to shed their clothing, daring others to do the same. They plunged naked into the water and indulged in horseplay that bordered on the sexy. I felt like a bit of a peeping Tom, but it was so damned joyous down there I almost had the urge to join them. Good Lord, if anyone deserved happiness, they certainly did. Seeing their naked bodies, I shuddered for an instant ... that was the way they were sent into the