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  “I don’t want us to adopt,” Rakefet said. “It’s hard enough to raise a child of your own. I don’t want someone else’s.” She paused. Around us people were screaming, but she looked only at me, waiting for my answer.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t really have an opinion in the matter, and even if I had, this wouldn’t have been the time to give it. I could see how upset she was. “Why don’t we go buy a dog tomorrow?” I finally said, just to say something.

  The scarecrow was glowing bright red now. I could hear a police or television chopper circling above us.

  “We won’t buy,” Rakefet shouted over the noise. “We’ll save a dog. There are plenty of street dogs who need a home.”

  And that’s how we got Seffi.

  We picked Seffi up at the Tel Aviv SPCA. He wasn’t a puppy, but hadn’t finished growing yet. The caretaker said he’d been abused and that nobody wanted him. I tried to find out why, because he was actually a handsome dog, looked like a purebred, but Rakefet didn’t really care. When we came up to him, he flinched as if we were going to hurt him. He trembled and howled the whole way home.

  But Seffi quickly got used to us. He loved us and he cried whenever one of us left the apartment. If both of us left at the same time, he barked like mad and scratched the door. The first time it happened, we decided to wait downstairs until he stopped, but he never did. After a few attempts we just never left him alone. Rakefet mainly worked from home, anyway, so it wasn’t too complicated.

  As much as Seffi liked us, he hated everybody else, especially children. After he bit the neighbor’s daughter, we always had him wear a leash and a muzzle. The neighbor made a big scene, wrote letters to city hall, and called our landlord, who did not know we had gotten a dog. We received a letter from his lawyer, demanding we move out of the apartment immediately.

  It was hard to find another place in our neighborhood, especially one that accepted dogs. So we moved a little south. We found a place on Yona HaNavi Street. A very large, but very dark apartment. Seffi liked it. He couldn’t stand the light, and now he had a bigger space to run around in. It was funny. Rakefet and I sat on the sofa and talked or watched television and he ran around us in circles for hours, never getting tired. “If he were a kid, we’d have given him Ritalin ages ago,” I once said. I was only joking, but Rakefet answered seriously, saying that we wouldn’t have, because Ritalin was invented not for kids but for lazy parents who couldn’t handle their children’s energy.

  In the meantime, Seffi developed a strange allergy. He got a scary red rash all over his body. The vet said he was probably allergic to dog food and suggested we give him fresh meat instead. I asked if the rash could have something to do with the missile attack on Tel Aviv, because although Seffi had no reaction to the booms, he was very nervous when the alarm sounded, and the rash broke out only after that first alarm. But the vet insisted that that had nothing to do with it and suggested again that we give him fresh meat, but only beef, because chicken would be bad for him.

  Seffi liked the beef, and the rash disappeared. At this point he began reacting violently toward anyone who came to the apartment. After he bit the supermarket delivery guy, we decided not to have people over anymore. We were very lucky with the delivery guy. Seffi only tore his calf muscle a bit. The guy didn’t want to go to the hospital because he was an illegal Eritrean refugee. Rakefet cleaned and dressed his wound and I gave him a thousand shekels in two-hundred-shekel notes and apologized. He tried to smile, said in a heavy accent that he’d be fine, and limped out the door.

  Three months later the rash came back. The vet said Seffi’s body had grown used to the new food and that we had to make a change again. We tried giving him pork, but he couldn’t digest it. The vet recommended camel meat and gave us the number of a Bedouin man who sold it. The Bedouin was suspicious, because he didn’t have Ministry of Health permits to sell the meat. He’d make appointments with me on different intersections, always a couple of hours’ drive south. I paid him cash and he’d fill my cooler with meat. Seffi loved it. When I cooked the meat, he stood in the kitchen and barked pleadingly at the pot. His barks sounded almost human, like a mother trying to convince her little boy to get off the tree he climbed. It cracked us up.

  One day when I took Seffi out for a walk, he attacked the old Russian man from the second floor. He didn’t bite him because he had his muzzle on, but he did jump up on him and push him down to his back. The old man got a serious blow to the head and had to be taken to the hospital. He was unconscious when the ambulance arrived. Rakefet told the paramedic he’d stumbled. We became really depressed, knowing that when our neighbor regained consciousness we’d have to move again. Actually, I was depressed. Rakefet was mainly worried that Seffi would be taken away from us and put down. I tried telling her maybe that was the right thing to do. He was a good dog, but a dangerous one. When I said this, Rakefet started crying and turned cold toward me. She wouldn’t let me touch her. Then she said I was only saying that because I wanted to get rid of the dog, because he was giving us a hard time, with his special food, and not being able to have people over or leave him home alone, and that she was disappointed because she thought I was stronger, less selfish than that.

  She wouldn’t sleep with me for weeks afterward, speaking to me only when she had to. I tried telling her that it had nothing to do with selfishness. I’d happily endure all the difficulties if I thought the situation could be solved, but Seffi was just too strong and scared, and no matter how closely we watched him, he’d continue hurting people. Rakefet asked if I’d have our child put down, too. And when I said that Seffi wasn’t a child, he was a dog, and that she had to accept that, we just got into another fight. She cried in the bedroom. Seffi went over and started howling, too, and I couldn’t do anything but apologize. Not that it helped.

  A month later, the Russian man’s son came over and started asking questions. His father had died in the hospital. Not from the blow to the head, but from an infection he caught there. The guy wanted details on what had happened, because he was suing social security. He said there were deep animal scratches on his body, but the emergency service’s report said his father had simply stumbled. He wanted to know if there was anything we hadn’t told the paramedics.

  We didn’t let him in the apartment, but as we spoke in the stairwell, Seffi began barking and the guy asked questions about the dog and wanted to see him. We told him he couldn’t come in, that the dog was new, we only got him ten days ago, long after his father had the fall. He insisted on seeing him anyway, and when we refused again, he threatened to come back with the police.

  That very night we found an apartment for rent in the Florentin neighborhood. It was small and noisy but the landlord didn’t mind the dog. Rakefet and I went back to sleeping together. She was still a bit cold, but the drama with the Russian’s son had brought us closer together again. She also saw that I was standing up for Seffi, and that softened her.

  Then Seffi’s rash returned.

  Our old vet was no longer available. It turned out he was a high-up in the military and was killed on reserve duty, performing a retaliation attack in Syria. Rakefet refused to try to find a new vet, scared he would tell us to put Seffi down. We didn’t want to keep giving him camel meat. We tried fish and meat substitutes instead, but he wouldn’t touch anything, and after he didn’t eat for two days, Rakefet said we had to find a different kind of meat before he starved to death.

  Rakefet crushed some sleeping pills her mother gave her a long time ago when we flew to New York for our honeymoon, and put them in a bowl of milk. From our balcony we saw some cats in the yard approach the bowl and sniff the milk. None of them touched it, except for one thin, red-haired cat. Rakefet told me to go downstairs and follow him, but the cat wasn’t going anywhere. He lay down by the bowl. He didn’t even move when I approached. He looked at me with the most human eyes, giving me a sad but accepting look,
like he knew just what was going to happen and had to go with it because the world was shit. When the cat was completely asleep, I picked him up but couldn’t take him upstairs. I felt the skinny cat breathing in my arms and couldn’t do it. I sat on the steps, crying. A few minutes later I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Rakefet. I never even heard her coming down the stairs. “Leave it,” she told me. “Leave the cat here and come upstairs. We’ll find another way.”

  We decided to try pigeons. On Washington Avenue, right by our house, there were a ton of fat pigeons that the old neighborhood residents liked to feed. We searched the internet for ways to hunt them. There were plenty, but they all seemed pretty complicated. Finally, I bought a professional marble-shooting slingshot at a military equipment store in the central bus station. After a few days of studying and practicing I was quite the marksman. After Seffi ate one pigeon and seemed to respond well, Rakefet and I drank two bottles of wine and fucked all night long. Happy fucking. We felt very, very good, and we felt that we’d earned all that goodness, fair and square.

  Rakefet suggested I hunt the pigeons at dawn, when the streets were empty, to avoid any eyewitnesses. Ever since then, twice a week I set the alarm for four-thirty a.m., go out while the whole street is still asleep, scatter bread crumbs, and hide in the bushes. I’m addicted to these hours, to the gentle, cold air of the morning—not freezing cold, but cold enough to wake you up. I lie in the bushes, listening to music through my earphones. It’s my quality time. All alone, just me, my thoughts, my music, and occasionally a pigeon in my sights. First I hunted only two or three at a time, but now I start getting more. It’s fun, coming home to my wife with my game like some sort of caveman. It’s really improving our relationship, or at least helping us fix whatever broke back when Seffi jumped on the old man.

  When we googled hunting methods, Rakefet found a great French pigeon recipe—pigeons in wine, stuffed with rice. It’s the most delicious thing in the world, and Seffi loves it when we eat the same food as him. Sometimes, just for kicks, I sit next to him on the kitchen floor and we both howl at Rakefet as she cooks our pigeons.

  “Get up,” she always says, laughing. “Get up, or I’ll think I married a dog.”

  But I tilt my head back, close my eyes, and keep howling, and I only stop when Seffi comes closer and lovingly licks my face.

  TO: Michael.Warshavski

  FROM: Sefi.Moreh

  RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: “Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy” query

  Dear Michael,

  Your last e-mail hurt me deeply. Comparing me to Nazi collaborators was inappropriate. And, regarding the question you raised in one of your previous emails: my grandparents changed their surname from “Moalim” to “Moreh” when they arrived in Israel from Iraq. They left their country because my grandfather, who was a fervent Zionist, was persecuted and tortured. So, despite the fact that my roots are not in eastern Europe, my family also fell victim to persecution and suffering. Out of empathy for your mother’s emotional state (and despite the aggressive and hurtful style you chose to write in), I have decided, without consulting with my partners, to host you and your mother in our escape room on the morning of Holocaust Remembrance Day in the hope that attempting to solve the profound riddles and observing the heavenly bodies will help your mother to escape—however briefly—the harsh memories that must certainly haunt her.

  Hoping to see you soon,

  Sefi Moreh

  P.S. I am attaching a photo of my grandfather seated atop an armored vehicle after the liberation of Beit Guvrin.

  FUNGUS

  The skinny guy fell to the café floor. His stomach hurt more than he thought it ever possibly could. A series of involuntary spasms shook his body. “This is what it must be like when you’re going to die,” he thought. “But this can’t be the end. I’m too young, and it’s too embarrassing to die like this, in shorts and Crocs, on the floor of a café that was once trendy but hasn’t been making a go of it for years.” The guy opened his mouth to scream for help but didn’t have enough air in his lungs to let out a scream. This story isn’t about him.

  The waitress who went over to the skinny guy was named Galia. She never wanted to be a waitress. She’d always dreamed of being a preschool teacher. But there’s no money in teaching kids, and there was in waitressing. Not an awful lot, but enough to cover her rent and all. That year, though, she’d started studying special education at Beit Berl College. On the days she was at school, she worked the night shift at the café. Not even a dog came to the café at night, and she earned less than half the tips, but school was important to her. “Are you okay?” she asked the guy on the floor. She knew he wasn’t, but she asked anyway, out of embarrassment. This story isn’t about her, either.

  “I’m dying,” the guy said, “I’m dying, call an ambulance.”

  “There’s no point,” said a dark-skinned bald guy who had been sitting at the bar reading the financial pages. “It’ll take about an hour for the ambulance to get here. They’ve cut their budget down to the bone. They work Saturday hours all week now.” While the man was telling Galia this, he was hauling the skinny guy onto his back, and added, “I’ll take him to the ER. My car is parked right outside.” He did this because he was a good man—because he was a good man and wanted the waitress to see that. Five months had passed since his divorce, and those few words he’d spoken to Galia were the closest he’d come in that period to having an intimate conversation with a pretty girl. This story isn’t about him, either.

  Traffic was jammed up all the way to the hospital. The skinny guy, who was lying in the back of the car, moaned in an almost inaudible voice and drooled on the upholstery of the dark-skinned bald guy’s new Alfa sports car. When he got divorced, his friends told him that he had to replace his family-sized Mitsubishi with something else, a bachelor’s car. Girls learn a lot about you from the car you drive. A Mitsubishi says: Wiped-out divorced guy seeks shrew to take place of last bitch. An Alfa sports car says: A cool guy, young at heart, seeks adventure. That skinny guy convulsing in the backseat was kind of an adventure. The bald guy thought, “I’m like an ambulance now. I don’t have a siren but I can beep for other cars to let me pass, go through red lights, like in the movies.” While he was thinking all that, he floored the gas pedal. While he was thinking all that, a white Renault van crashed into the side of his Alfa. The driver of the Renault was religious. The driver of the Renault didn’t have his seat belt on. The crash killed him on the spot. This story isn’t about him, either.

  Whose fault was the crash? The dark-skinned bald guy who accelerated and ignored the stop sign? Not really. The van driver who didn’t buckle his seat belt and was driving over the speed limit? Not him, either. There’s only one person responsible for that accident. Why did I invent all these people? Why did I kill a guy wearing a yarmulke who never did anything to me? Why did I make a nonexistent guy have pain? Why did I destroy a dark-skinned bald guy’s family unit? The fact that you invent something doesn’t exempt you from responsibility, and unlike life, where you can shrug and point up to God in heaven, there’s no excuse here. In a story, you’re God. If your protagonist failed, it’s only because you made him fail. If something bad happened to him, it’s only because you wanted it to. You wanted to watch him wallow in his own blood.

  My wife comes in the room and asks, “Are you writing?” She wants to ask me something. Something else. I can see it on her face, but at the same time, she doesn’t want to interrupt me. She doesn’t want to, but she already has. I say yes, but never mind. This story isn’t working. It’s not even a story. It’s an itch. It’s a fungus under my fingernail, I tell her. She nods as if she understands what I’m talking about. She doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me. This story is about us.

  TO: Sefi.Moreh

  FROM: Michael.Warshavski

  RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: “Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy”
query

  Thank you, Sefi.

  My mother and I greatly appreciate the flexibility and are happy that we will have the privilege of visiting your escape room, whose riddles you speak so highly of. Without entering into a pedantic argument regarding the justice of my claims, the fact that you were offended justifies an apology. Please accept my apology and, at the same time, my reservations about the unseemly comparison between the persecution of your grandfather in Iraq and my mother’s suffering. To the best of my knowledge, there was no genocide in Iraq and no Jew was led to the gas chambers or the crematoria (I doubt that, at the time, the Iraqi people had technology advanced enough to build gas chambers). I assume that your idealistic grandfather endured many unpleasant experiences in his homeland, but any comparison between them and the horrors of the Holocaust are an indication of insensitivity and ignorance. I am glad that, this Thursday, we will focus on astronomy and not on the history of our people, thereby avoiding additional discord between us.

  Yours,

  Michael Warshavski

  P.S. Thank you for the photograph. Your grandfather does indeed look like a brave and down-to-earth fellow and I am glad he was able to realize his dream.

  Unfortunately, my grandparents, who were sent to Auschwitz, were a bit less fortunate. Since I do not have a picture of them, I am attaching one of the arch-murderer (who was never caught and tried) responsible for their deaths.

  CHIPS

  The first girl I ever kissed on the mouth was named Vered, which is also the name of a flower in Hebrew. It was a long kiss. If it had been up to me, it would have gone on forever, or at least until we got old and shriveled and died, but Vered stopped it first. We were both quiet for a minute, and then I said thank you. She said, “You’re totally fucked up.” And after another short silence, she added, “That thank-you is such a turnoff, you know? We kissed, the two of us, it’s not like I’m some old aunt who brought you a present for the holiday.” And I said, “Don’t be mad, it was just a thank-you.” And she said, “Shut up, okay?” So I shut up. I didn’t want to piss off the first girl who ever kissed me. I just wanted to make her feel happy, but I didn’t know how. She didn’t say anything further, just looked at me a little, and then unbuckled my belt and started to blow me. Just like that, out of the blue, in the middle of the hall in her parents’ apartment. They were out. I still kept my mouth shut. I already knew that I didn’t know how to act at times like this, so I tried to do as little as possible.