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  The phone woke him up. He answered, half asleep. It was the Support Center, a bored female voice this time. “Is everything okay?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” Mickey replied, “everything’s great. It’s just that you woke me up.”

  “I apologize,” the voice said, “you’re being monitored, and your pulse rate suddenly started to increase, so . . .”

  “I was dreaming,” Mickey said.

  “A bad dream?” the voice asked, sounding momentarily less indifferent. “A nightmare?”

  “No,” Mickey mumbled, “just the opposite.”

  “May I ask what the dream was about?” the voice asked.

  “Sorry,” Mickey said, “it’s too personal,” and hung up.

  The next morning, he thought that maybe he’d made a mistake. That maybe he shouldn’t have hung up. They might even be so concerned about him there, at the Support Center, that they’d cancel Natasha. Maybe they’d even cut him off from the application altogether. He didn’t know if he should dial zero now and apologize, tell them again that everything was fine, that he was sorry he’d hung up, that he just wasn’t expecting a call so late at night, that, actually, he wasn’t expecting any call . . .

  The half-closed door that led to Natasha’s kitchen creaked open. Natasha was standing in the doorway, wearing a terry cloth robe, her hair soaking wet. She walked into Mickey’s room with her coffee mug in her hand. “I thought I heard you,” she said, and gave Mickey a wet kiss on the neck. “Here, I made you coffee.” Mickey nodded, didn’t know what to say. He drank the coffee. Without milk. One and a half teaspoons of sugar. Just the way he liked it. Natasha put a hand under his blanket and touched the tip of his erection. Mickey’s hand shook and the boiling coffee spilled onto his hand and the blanket. Natasha ran into the kitchen and came back with a bag of frozen peas. “Sorry,” she said, and put the bag on the back of his hand.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Mickey said, “it’s actually kind of nice.”

  “The burn?” Natasha asked with a smile. “Because if so, I can tie you to the bed when I come back from work, put on my leather outfit and . . . Just kidding.” She gave him another wet kiss, this time on the mouth, checked the burned hand, glanced at her cell phone, and said that she had to run. “I finish at six,” she said, “will you be here?” Mickey nodded. As soon as he heard the front door slam, he jumped out of bed and tried to walk through the door to the kitchen. There was nothing there, just a wall with a picture of a door projected on it, a door that now, unlike the previous weeks, was wide open. The painful burn on his hand and the mug with the yellow sun and RISE AND SHINE! printed on it were still there, clear proof that everything he thought had happened here a few minutes earlier had really happened.

  He dialed zero. The voice that answered him was familiar. It was the tired guy, even though he actually sounded lively now. “Mickey,” the tired guy said as if talking to an old friend, “is everything okay? It says here that last night, your pulse was rapid.”

  “Everything’s great,” Mickey said, “it’s just that Natasha, you know, from the kitchen in the application, this morning she just . . . I know this sounds a little weird, but she just came into my room, physically came into my room, spoke to me . . .”

  “I don’t believe it,” the tired guy said with real anger. “Don’t tell me that they didn’t inform you this time, either. No one called you last night to update you on the trial run of our new feature?”

  “Some girl did call,” Mickey said, “but I was sleeping. She might have tried to tell me and I was just out of it.”

  “I hear you,” the tired guy said, “you think it’s important not to complain. I respect that. Even though you should know that many times, complaints are not just bellyaching, they help us fine-tune the system. But it’s entirely your right. At any rate, they were supposed to let you know yesterday about the new upgrade that enables the ‘neighbor’ in the application to actually interact with the user, mainly verbally and sometimes physically.”

  “Physically?” Mickey asked.

  “Yes,” the tired guy went on, “and that too, for the time being, is completely free of charge. It came from the users. Many of them said that the presence of the ‘neighbors’ aroused an intense need in them for human interaction. But you must remember that it’s merely an expansion of the existing service and that if you feel uncomfortable with it, canceling is not a problem. The ‘neighbor’ will go back to living in his or her room and everything . . .”

  “No, no. That’s not necessary, really,” Mickey said, “at least for the time being.”

  “Great,” the tired guy said, “I’m glad you’re satisfied. We’ve only just started to run with this these last few days, and so far the feedback we’re getting is fantastic. By the way, if you’d like, there’s a way to block the sex with the help of an access code. You know, if you feel it’s inappropriate or that things are moving too fast or you just . . .”

  “Thanks,” Mickey said in a voice that tried to sound unemotional, “for the time being, I have no problem with it, but if I do, it’s good to know there’s an option.”

  * * *

  —

  At night, he dreamed about Natasha and when he woke up, she’d be lying beside him in bed. She slept with her mouth open, like a little girl. Mickey didn’t know what she was dreaming about. Or if she dreamed. Her whole entrance into his room, into his life, was completely unsettling, but in the most positive sense of the word. He still couldn’t remember anything from before, but that bothered him a lot less. In the morning, when Natasha went to work, he would make pencil drawings of the ancient oak tree, and also of the sea, although he couldn’t see it from anywhere in his room, but mostly he tried to draw Natasha. He got better at it with time, and when he succeeded in drawing something that looked especially good to him, he would show it to Natasha, who somehow always managed to compliment him and look indifferent all at once. It was a good time. Questions such as what she was, who she was, why she could move around in the projected spaces while he always remained alone in the room, never came up. It was just a lot of warmth. And hugs. And jokes. Just the feeling that he was not alone in the world flooding his entire body.

  One night, he woke up and saw that Natasha was lying completely awake beside him, looking intently through the window. Under the oak tree and the almost-full moon, the fat girl was lying on a checked blanket. She was stark naked, and the older man with the gray hair was on top of her. The man was moving his hips quickly, up and down, up and down, his eyes were closed, his thin lips clenched, and spread across his face was the expression of someone who’d just eaten something unpleasant. The fat girl’s entire body vibrated. At first she moaned, but the moans quickly turned into sobs. “You think they’re enjoying it?” Natasha asked, almost in a whisper. “It doesn’t look like they’re enjoying it.” Mickey shrugged. “You know them?” Natasha asked, still whispering, and Mickey replied that you might say he did, because this wasn’t the first time they were groping each other right in front of his window. “It’s not a window,” Natasha said, laughing, and hugged him tight, “it’s a wall.”

  Later the arguments began, each one about something else. Natasha said he wasn’t ambitious, that she was the only one who worked, that they never went out. She’d start out shouting and end up crying, while he mostly shut up. At some point, she started coming home later, and then it became routine. Mickey dialed zero to the Support Center and spoke to a woman with a runny nose. She told him that they’d been receiving many mixed reactions to the latest upgrade. Some users got along with the “neighbors,” and some just didn’t. Mickey wanted to ask if there were cases where the “neighbors” didn’t get along with the users. That, at least, was what he felt with Natasha. But instead, he asked if it was possible, at this stage of his rehabilitation, to let him go out of his room, and when the runny nose asked him why he wanted to know and
if there was a problem in his room, he said no, but he thought that if he could go out a little, it would really help his relationship with the neighbor. Runny nose said she’d pass on his request, but her tone was very unconvincing. That night, Natasha didn’t come home at all. She didn’t show up until the next night and got into his bed wearing the clothes she’d worn to work, and they hugged each other. Her shirt smelled of sweat and cigarettes. “You and I don’t get along,” she told him. “I think we need a break.” After that, they fucked as if nothing had happened, and she kissed him and licked him all over, and that was nice, but it also felt like a good-bye.

  When he woke up, she was gone. The wall with the projected window that overlooked the huge oak tree was just a wall again. The second window had also disappeared, and so had the door to Natasha’s kitchen. Four walls, no door.

  * * *

  —

  The man in the brown suit thanked Natasha for the mug of coffee. “I apologize for all my annoying questions,” he said. “I know we’re not talking about an ordinary user experience here, that this is something much more emotional and intimate, but with the help of your feedback, we can improve the service for millions of other users.”

  “No problem whatsoever,” Natasha said with a sour smile, “you can ask me anything.”

  The man in the suit asked Natasha almost everything: how much did it bother her that the “neighbor” was restricted to only one room; what did she think about the name “Mickey,” and in retrospect, would she have preferred to choose a name for him herself; to what extent did the fact that the “neighbor” didn’t know that he wasn’t real contribute to her excitement; and was his lack of memory and independent relationships crucial in her decision to end the service. When he asked her if what had developed between her and Mickey could be called “genuine intimacy,” Natasha found herself tearing up. “He was just like a real person,” she said, “not only in how his body felt. His mind was real. And now that I’ve broken it off, I just don’t know what you did to him. I hope you didn’t kill him or something. If I knew that I was responsible for something like that, I’d never be able to live with myself.”

  The man in the suit put his sweaty hand on her arm in an attempt to calm her, then went to the sink and got her a glass of water from the faucet. She drank it down in one long gulp, then tried to breathe deeply. “You have nothing to worry about.” He smiled at her. “You can’t kill something that was never alive. The most you can do is turn it off, and in the case of the ‘neighbors,’ I can assure you that we don’t even do that. But let’s forget the whole ‘neighbors’ business for a moment,” he said, stealing a glance at his watch, “and return to the basic features of the application, the wall projections of windows that look outside and the door that leads to the additional room—did you have reservations about them as well?”

  * * *

  —

  When you’re in a dark place, you’re supposed to adjust to the darkness after a while, but in Mickey’s case, it was almost the opposite. With every passing moment, the room seemed to be getting darker. He felt his way around, bumping into furniture, running his hands along every inch of the bare walls until he was back at the beginning: four walls, no door. His right hand sailed around the wooden surface of the desk until it found the phone. He pressed the receiver to his ear and dialed zero. The only thing he could hear on the other end was a long, endless beep.

  TO THE MOON AND BACK

  I celebrate the kid’s birthday the day after. Always the day after or the day before, never on the actual date. Always the same shit. Why? Because His Honor the Judge decided that the kid has to be with his mommy on his birthday, even if she’s a bitch and a liar who fucks every jerk who smiles at her at work. Daddy is less important.

  Lidor and I go to the mall together, not for a present—on my last trip, I bought him a remote-control multicopter drone. Eighty-nine dollars in the duty-free shop—eighty-nine!—and they didn’t include batteries for the remote in the box. So we’re going to the mall to pick up batteries, but I tell Lidor that it’s to have some fun. What can I tell him? Not only did Daddy bring his present a day late but he didn’t even check to see if there were batteries inside? No way.

  The bitch. Yesterday I say to her, let me come to the party, just for ten minutes. To give the kid a kiss, take a shot of him with my cell when he blows out the candles, and then I’ll leave. But she starts with the threats and the restraining orders, texts her boyfriend the law clerk while she’s on the phone with me—I can actually hear her tapping—and says that if she sees me anywhere near the building she’ll make my life hell.

  Lidor wants us to fly the drone first and then go to the mall, but there are no batteries in the remote, and I don’t want to tell him that, so I say: First, we’ll go to the big candy store on the third floor, the one with the SpongeBob SquarePants helium balloons and the lady with the yellow teeth outside who yells, “Come in! Come in! Buy candy for the little boy,” and I’ll buy him another present there, whatever he wants.

  Lidor says: The mall’s great, but first the drone. I lie to him, tell him that the mall closes early. Luckily for me, he’s still young enough to believe.

  Three in the afternoon, and the mall is packed. To be with him for his day-late birthday, I had to take half a day off work. Judging by how mobbed the mall is, I must be the only person in this country who works. But Lidor, what a sweet kid, he laughs all the time, never whines, not even when we have to wait in line forever to get inside.

  At the escalator, he wants to go up the down side, for the fun of it, and I go along with him. It’s a good workout for both of us. You have to run as fast as you can so you won’t be dragged down, have to strain the whole time not to fall on your ass. Just like in life. A hunchbacked old lady who is coming down tries to argue with us, asks why we don’t go up the regular way like everyone else. She’ll be in her grave in another minute, and this is what bothers her? I don’t even answer her.

  * * *

  —

  When we get to the candy store on the third floor, the lady with the yellow teeth isn’t there, only a pimple-faced kid, as thin as a chopstick. I say to Lidor, “Pick out whatever you want. But only one thing, okay? And whatever it is, even if it costs a million dollars, Daddy will buy it for you, promise. What does Lidor want?”

  The kid is excited, walks around the store like a junkie in a pharmacy, looks at the shelves, picks things up, tries to decide. Meanwhile, I use the time to buy AAA batteries. Pimple Face doesn’t ring it up on the register, even though I wave the money in front of him. “What are we waiting for?” I ask.

  “For the kid to decide,” he says, and pulls a string of gum out of his mouth. “I’ll ring them up together.” And, before I can say anything, he starts playing with his cell.

  “Do them separately, man,” I insist, shoving the batteries into the bag with the drone. “Before the kid comes over. It’s a surprise.” Pimple Face rings them up, and the cash-register drawer springs open with a ding. He doesn’t have small bills to make change for me, so he loads me down with coins.

  Just then Lidor comes over. “What did you buy, Daddy?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just some gum.”

  “Where is it?” Lidor asks.

  “I swallowed it.”

  “But it’s bad to swallow gum,” he says. “It can stick to your stomach.”

  Pimple Face gives a stupid laugh.

  “You want a present or what?” I change the subject. “Come on, pick out something.”

  “I want that,” Lidor says, pointing to the cash register. “So I can play with Yanir and Lyri, like we have a candy store.”

  “They don’t sell the cash register,” I say. “Pick out something else.”

  “I want the cash register,” Lidor persists. “Daddy, you promised.”

  “I said to pick out something that’s for sale.”

&nb
sp; “You’re a liar,” Lidor yells, and kicks my leg as hard as he can. “Just like Mommy says. You’re all talk.” The kick hurts, and when something hurts me I get pissed off. But today I manage to control myself. Because I love my son more than anything else in the world, and today’s a special day, his birthday. I mean, the day after his birthday. The bitch.

  “How much do you want for the cash register?” I ask Pimple Face, as cool as can be.

  “What are you, six years old?” he says with a crooked smile. “You know it’s not for sale.” He says “six years old” as if Lidor were a moron or something, and I realize now that he’s trapped me. I have to choose a side—either I’m with him or with Lidor.

  “A thousand shekels,” I say, and extend my hand. “We shake on it now and I go down to the ATM and come back with the money.”

  “It’s not mine,” he says, squirming. “I just work here.”

  “So whose is it?” I ask. “The lady with the yellow teeth?”

  “Yes,” he says, nodding. “Tirza.”

  “So get her on the phone,” I say. “Let me talk to her. For a thousand shekels, she can get a new register. A better one.”

  Lidor looks at me like I’m some kind of a superhero. There’s nothing greater than to have your kid look at you that way. It’s better than a vacation in Thailand. Better than a blow job. Better than punching someone who has it coming. “Go ahead, call her,” I say, and give him a little push. Not because I’m angry. For the kid.