There’s a theory that says there are billions of other universes, parallel to the one we live in, and that each of them is slightly different. There are the ones where you were never born, and the ones where you wouldn’t want to be born. There are some parallel universes where I’m having sex with a horse, and ones where I win the lottery. There are universes where I’m lying on the bedroom floor, slowly bleeding to death, and universes where I’ve been elected president, by a landslide. But I don’t care about any of those parallel universes now. The only ones that interest me are the ones where she isn’t happily married, with a cute little boy, the ones where she’s completely alone. There are plenty of universes like that, I’m sure. I’m trying to think about them now. Among all those universes, there are some where we’ve never met. I don’t care about those now. Among the ones that are left, there are some where she doesn’t want me. She tells me no. In some of them, she does it gently, and in others—in a way that hurts. I don’t care about those now, either. All that’s left are the ones where she tells me yes, and I choose one of them, a little like you choose a piece of fruit at the greengrocer’s. I choose the nicest one, the ripest one, the sweetest one. It’s a universe where the weather is perfect, never too hot or too cold, and we live there in a little cottage in the woods. She works at the city library, a forty-minute drive from our home, and I work in the education department of the regional council, in the building that faces hers. Sometimes, from my office window, I can see her putting books back on the shelf. We always have our lunch together. And I love her and she loves me. And I love her and she loves me. And I love her and she loves me. I’d give anything to move to that universe. But meanwhile, until I find the way there, all I can do is think about it. I picture myself living there, in the middle of the woods. With her, in complete happiness. There’s an infinite number of parallel universes in the world. In one of them, I’m having sex with a horse; in another, I win the lottery. I don’t want to think about those now, only about that one, the one with the cottage in the woods. There’s a universe where I’m lying with my wrists slashed, bleeding, on the bedroom floor. That’s the universe I’m doomed to live in until it’s over. I don’t want to think about it now. I just want to think about that other universe. A cottage in the woods, the sun setting, going to bed early. In bed, my right arm is unslashed, and dry. She’s lying on it and we’re hugging each other. She lies on it for so long that I can hardly feel it anymore. But I don’t move, I like it that way, with my arm under her warm body, and I keep liking it even when I can no longer feel my arm at all. I can sense her breathing on my face—rhythmic, regular, unending. My eyes begin to shut. Not just in that universe, in bed, in the woods, but in the other universes too, the ones that I don’t want to think about. I enjoy knowing there’s one place, in the heart of the woods, where I’m falling asleep happy.
I talk too much. Sometimes when I’m talking and talking and talking that moment arrives—right there in the middle of the conversation—when I notice the person next to me has long stopped listening. He may keep up the nodding, but his eyes—they’ve completely clouded over. His mind has wandered, and he’s thinking thoughts sweeter than the ones I share.
Of course, I could take issue with that assumption. I can pretty much argue anything. My wife says I’d get philosophical with a lamppost if I thought the thing had ears. I could’ve argued the point with the guy sitting next to me—but there’s no joy in it. He’s already stopped listening. He’s in another world. A better one (at least, in his opinion it is). And me? I keep on talking and talking and talking. It’s like a car with the hand brake yanked: The wheels lock but it just goes on skidding down the road.
I want to stop talking. I do! But the words, the sentences, the ideas, there’s a momentum to them, it’s impossible to just stop them in their tracks, to seal up the lips and halt the words, right there, mid-sentence. There are people capable of doing it, I know.
Mainly women.
And when they go silent, it makes whoever’s listening feel guilty. It spurs in the listener a yearning, a deep need to lean forward and hug them and say, “I’m sorry.”
To say, “I love you.”
I’d give up an eyeball to be able to do it, anything to have what it takes for that kind of on-a-dime stoppage. I’d make use of that gift, right nice. I’d up and stop speaking next to the girls that truly rate, and they’d just want to hug me, to squeeze me and say, “I love you.” And even if they didn’t actually do it, the fact that they’d wanted to would still be worth something. Worth a lot.
On this specific day, I can’t stop talking next to a guy by the name of Michael. He’s a graphic designer for a Hasidic newspaper in Brooklyn, flying from New York to Louisville, Kentucky, to sit in his uncle’s sukkah. He’s not especially close to this uncle, and not especially keen on Louisville. But his uncle sent him the ticket as a gift, and Michael is just plain wild about the frequent-flier points. He’s got a trip to Australia coming up, and with the points from the Louisville leg he’ll be able to upgrade to Business. On long flights, Michael tells me, the difference between Business and Coach, it’s just day and night.
“What do you prefer,” I ask him, “day or night?”
Because me, generally, I’m the night type, but the day also has something special about it, a radiance. At night it’s quieter and colder, which is a significant consideration, at least for me, living as I do in tropical climes. But at night you’re also liable to feel more alone if you don’t have someone at your side, if you get my meaning … the one that I’m insinuating.
“I don’t,” Michael says, his tone turned sharp.
“I’m not gay,” I tell him. Because I can see I’ve got him stressed. “All this talk about loneliness and nighttime sounds pretty much like textbook gay talk, I know it. But I’m not. I’ve kissed a guy on the mouth only once, and that’s in the whole thirty-plus years of my life, and even that was half by accident. This was back when I was in the army. There was a soldier by the name of Tzlil Drucker in my unit, and he’d brought some hash to the base, and suggested we smoke it. Tzlil asked if I’d ever smoked before, and I said yes, I had. I hadn’t intended to lie, it’s just I’ve got a natural propensity for it. So pretty much when anyone asks me for anything and I’m under pressure I always answer yes. Just—you know—to appease. It’s a reflex that has the potential to complicate things for me, big-time. Picture this: A cop walks into a room, sees me standing next to a corpse, and asks, “Did you murder him?” That one’s liable to end badly. The same cop could also ask me something like “Are you innocent?” In that case, I’d come out of it all right. But really, between us, what’re the chances that a policeman’s going to ask it like that?
So Tzlil and I smoked together, and it was a completely unique sensation. The drug, it just shut my mouth—plugged it up completely. I didn’t have to speak in order to just be. And during it, Tzlil told me that a year had gone by since he’d broken up with his girlfriend. That a year had gone by from the last time he’d kissed a woman. I remember he used that word,
woman
. I told him that I’d never kissed a woman, or even a girl.
“On the mouth is what I meant. On the cheek I’d kissed bunches. Aunties and the like. Anyway, Tzlil stared at me without saying a word, but I could see he was surprised. And then suddenly we were kissing. His tongue was rough and tangy, sort of like if you licked a rusty rail on the boardwalk. And I remember thinking back then, thinking that all the tongues and all the kisses that would ever be mine were going to feel just like that. And I also thought that never having kissed anyone until that day in my life, well, in essence, I hadn’t missed a thing.
“Tzlil said, ‘I’m not a homo.’
“And I laughed and said, ‘But your name is just fantastically gay.’
“And that was that, basically.
“Eight years later, I bumped into him in some random hummus place and when I called him Tzlil he said he didn’t go by that anymore and that he’d gone down to the Ministry of the Interior and changed his name to Tzahi.
“‘I hope it wasn’t on my account.’”
Michael, who’s sitting next to me, has long stopped listening. At the beginning, I thought he was all wound up because of the confusion about me coming on to him. Afterward I began to suspect that he was actually gay, and that I’d insulted him with my story, that it was as if I were saying that kissing guys is gross. But when I look him in the eye, I find neither insult nor anxiety—just a bunch of frequent-flier points accumulating toward an upgrade, toward more kindly flight attendants, toward higher-quality coffee and enough legroom for a man to really stretch out.
When I see this, I feel guilty.
It isn’t the first time I’ve seen that in the eyes of someone I’m talking to, and I don’t mean the legroom thing. I’m referring to the not-listening part—seeing that a person is thinking about something else completely. Always, I feel guilty. My wife says I shouldn’t feel guilty, especially when my talking too much is so obviously a cry for help. She says the specific words coming out of my mouth don’t matter at all, because what I’m really saying at any given moment is simply “Help!” Think about it, she says. You’re there screaming “Help!” and meanwhile they’re thinking about something else. If anyone is supposed to feel guilty, it should be them, not you.
My wife’s tongue is smooth and pleasant. Her tongue is the best place to be in the whole wide world. If it were only a little bit wider and a little bit longer, I’d move in for good. I’d roll myself up into that tongue—I’d be the crab to her California roll, the eel to her eel-and-avocado. I tell you, thinking back to the tongue I started my kissing with and then looking at the tongue I ended up with, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that I’ve really made something of this life of mine. That I’ve managed my own little
combina
of an upgrade.
Truth be told, I’ve never once flown Business Class. But if the difference between that and Coach is anything like the difference between my wife’s tongue and the one in the mouth of Tzahi-Tzlil Drucker, I’d be ready to spend a week living in the coldest, dampest sukkah in the world with the stiffest, most boring uncle for the chance to get that kind of upgrade.
They announce overhead that we’ll be landing in a little bit. I keep talking. Michael keeps not listening. Planet Earth keeps spinning on its axis. Just another four days, my love. Another four days and I return to you. Another four days and, once again, I’ll find it in my heart to shut up.
There was no sound from the engines of the plane. There were no sounds at all. Except perhaps the soft crying of the flight attendants a few rows behind him. Through the elliptical window, Shkedi looked at the cloud hovering just below him. He could imagine the plane dropping through it like a stone, punching an enormous hole that would be sealed again quickly with the first breeze, leaving not so much as a scar. “Just don’t crash,” Shkedi said. “Just don’t crash.”
Forty seconds before Shkedi expired, an angel appeared, all dressed in white, and told him he’d been awarded a last wish. Shkedi tried to find out what
awarded
implied. Was it an award like winning the lottery or was it something a bit more flattering: awarded in the sense of an achievement, in recognition of his good deeds? The angel shrugged. “Beats me,” he said with pure angelic sincerity. “They told me to come and fulfill, on the double. They didn’t say why.” “That’s a shame,” Shkedi said. “Because it’s absolutely fascinating. Especially now when I’m about to leave this world and all, I’d really like to know if I’m leaving it as just another lucky guy or if I’m leaving it with a pat on the back.” “Forty seconds and you kick off,” the angel droned. “If you want to spend those forty seconds yapping, that’s fine with me. No problem. Just consider that your window of opportunity is about to close.” Shkedi considered, and quickly made his wish. But not before taking the trouble to point out to the angel that he had a strange way of talking. For an angel, that is. The angel was hurt. “What do you mean, ‘for an angel’? Have you ever heard an angel talk, that you dump a thing like that on me?” “Never,” Shkedi admitted. Suddenly, the angel looked much less angelic and much less pleasant, but that was nothing compared with what he looked like after he heard the wish.
“Peace on earth?” he screamed. “Peace on earth? You’re kidding me!”
And then Shkedi died.
Shkedi was dead and the angel was left behind. Left behind with the most bothersome and complicated wish he’d ever been asked to fulfill. Mostly, people ask for a new car for the wife, an apartment for the kid. Reasonable stuff. Specific stuff. But peace on earth is one hell of a job. First, the guy bugs him with questions like he’s the AT&T directory, then he has the audacity to put down the way he talks, and to top it off, he lands him with peace on earth. If Shkedi hadn’t kicked off, the angel would have stuck to him like herpes, and wouldn’t have let go till he changed his wish. But the guy’s soul was in seventh heaven by now, and who knows how he’d ever find it.
The angel took a deep breath. “Peace on earth, that’s all,” he mumbled. “Just peace on earth, that’s all.”
And while all this was going on, Shkedi’s soul completely forgot it had ever belonged to a person called Shkedi, and was reincarnated, pure and untainted, secondhand but good as new, as a piece of fruit. Yes, a piece of fruit. A guava.
The new soul had no thoughts. A guava doesn’t have thoughts. But it had feelings. It felt an overwhelming fear. It was afraid of falling off the tree. Not that it had the words to describe this fear. But if it had, it would have been something like “Oh my God!” And while it was hanging there, on the tree, petrified, peace began to reign on earth. People beat their swords into plowshares and nuclear reactors soon began to be used for peaceful purposes. But none of this was of any comfort to the guava. Because the tree was tall and the ground seemed distant and painful. Just don’t crash, the guava shuddered wordlessly, just don’t crash.