the Hunted (1977) (2 page)

That's why I've stayed, Rosen said.

It was something she could already feel, the vitality of the people, their purpose.

It's something, all right, Rosen said, thinking sh
e should see them getting on a bus in Dizengoff Street.

When you consider all that's been accomplishe
d since just '48. It's fan tas tic.

Unbelievable, Rosen said. Maybe she'd have
a cocktail?

Edie Broder hoped she didn't sound like
a tourist. She couldn't help it. It was what she felt , being here, experiencing it in the light of Judaic history, witnessing the fulfillment of a four-thousandyear-old dream. And on and on for several minutes, Edie Broder from Columbus letting out what she'
d been feeling about Israel for the past few days.

Rosen wasn't sure he followed all of it. He nodded, though, paying attention, seeming to enjoy her enthusiasm.

She was kind of sorry now she was stuck wit
h the tour group, when there was so much to see.

Rosen followed that all right. He straightened i
n his chair, waiting.

She would like to see more of how the peopl
e lived and learn what they thought. Maybe eve n stay on a kibbutz for a few days, if that was possible. Talk to the real people.

"How about a drink?" Rosen said. "Or a glas
s of wine?"

"Israeli wine?"

"Of course." Rosen raised his cigar to the owne
r or manager, who was standing inside the cafe. "Th e Grenache rose, Car-mel. Nice and cold, uh?"

The manager came out to them. "Please, yo
u want the rose wine?"

"Car-mel Avdat," Rosen said, in front of th
e tourist lady. "Israeli wine."

"Yes please. For two?"

"For two," Rosen said, and he smiled. See? H
e was patient, very easy to get along with.

Edie Broder leaned toward him on the tabl
e again, holding her arms. "Do you speak Hebrew?"

"Oh, a little. Actually, there's only one word yo
u have to know, at least when you're driving.

Meshugah."

"Meshugah?"

"That's it. It means 'Idiot.' You yell it at th
e other drivers," Rosen said and smiled to show h e was kidding. "You feel they have spirit, wait til l you drive against them."

"Well, I won't have to worry about that," Edi
e said, almost with a sigh. "I'll be on the big red tou r bus."

"I suppose it's comfortable," Rosen said, "but
a little slow, uh? I mean a lot of waiting around."

"It takes them forever, the older folks, to get o
n the bus. But they're dear people and I love them."

"One of them slips and breaks a hip, you've go
t another delay," Rosen said. He eased lower in th e hard chair, getting comfortable. "I think the way t o see Israel is in an air-conditioned Mercedes. Start i n the north, in the Galilee. There's a little town u p there built on a cliff, Sefad, with a great artis t colony. And a kibbutz near there, at Sasa. Com e down to Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. Visit Jericho on the Dead Sea, the oldest city in the world.

Hebron, the city of patriarchs, where Abraham'
s buried. Maybe Ramallah--"

"You make it sound fascinating." Giving hi
m her full attention.

"Spend a week in Jerusalem, then drive throug
h the Negev to the Red Sea, follow the Sinai coast t o an oasis on the southernmost tip, Sharm e l Sheikh." There, he'd gotten it in again. He pause d and looked at her and said quietly, "Why don't yo u let me be your tour guide?"

She hesitated, knowing he wasn't kidding.

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Uh-huh."

"But you must be busy, have things to do," Edi
e said, staring back at him.

"Nothing I can't put off." He hoped sh
e wouldn't laugh and say something dumb, like the y hardly knew each other.

She didn't. She didn't say anything, in fact, bu
t continued to look at him.

Rosen decided to push on. He said, "I've got a
n idea. I'm at the Four Seasons. Why don't we tak e the wine and go sit by the pool, get away from th e commercial atmosphere?"

"I'm at the Park," Edie Broder said after a moment. "Why don't we go to my room instead?"

"Well now," Rosen said, straightening.

"I mean we aren't getting any younger," Edi
e Broder said.

In room 507 of the Park Hotel, at two-twenty i
n the morning, Rosen said, "I'll tell you something.

Nothing surprises me anymore. You know why?

Because I'm never disappointed, no matter wha
t happens."

"You weren't shocked?" A subdued voice coming from the bed. Rosen was over by the bank of dressers in the lamp glow, looking for cigarettes i n his super-brief white Jockeys.

"No, I wasn't shocked. Not at all."

"I was," Edie said. "Hearing myself. I've neve
r done that before in my life. But I thought, It's goin g to happen. I was sure it was because I felt comfortable with you. So I thought, why be coy about it?

Like not kissing on the first date."

Rosen was feeling through the pockets of his safari jacket. Passport, sunglasses, a disposable lighter but no cigarettes. "Listen, I thought it wa s great, except for the last part--'We're not gettin g any younger.' Don't put yourself down like that."

"I'm facing facts," Edie said.

"Fine, but don't use facts as a putdown. We al
l have a birthday every year, fine," Rosen said. "I'
m forty-five and there's nothing I can do to change it , but so what? Why would I want to?" Rose n paused. "I've got a new theory and I don't kno w why--it's amazing--I never thought of it before.

You want to hear it?"

"Sure."

"You believe in God?"

She took a moment. "I suppose I do."

"This has to do with God's will," Rosen said
, "and you either get it right away, what I'm talkin g about, or you don't."

Edie pushed up on her elbow to look at Rosen i
n his Jockeys. "Are you a religious person?"

"No, I never was what you'd call religious."

"But you went to temple once in a while, yo
u were Bar Mitzvahed."

"No, as a matter of fact I never was. But listen
, living in Jerusalem three years--the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions all jammed together there in the Old City--all these holy places, everything directed to the worship of God--maybe some of it rubbed off on me. I started thinking about Go d and what it might do for me. Then I started thinking about God's will and how people referred to it.

Somebody dies, it's God's will. Somebody get
s wiped out in business--God's will. You find ou t you've got cancer or multiple sclerosis--you kno w what I'm saying?"

"I know," Edie said. "It's supposed to make i
t easier to accept those things when they happen."

Rosen was ready. "Fine, but nobody says, a person swings a million-dollar deal, it's God's will. It's always something bad. So I decided, wait a minute.

Why can't the good things that happen to you als
o be God's will? Like making a couple hundred gran d a year tax free."

Yes, and like scoring with stylish ladies who appreciated you and absolutely fucking loved it and knew you weren't going to spread it around or tel l the folks back home in Columbus.

"Or like you and I running into each other." H
e paused, looking toward the open balcony. "Tomorrow evening we'll walk the wall of the Old City, past the Armenian Quarter, and see, across th e rooftops, the Dome of the Mosque bathed i n moonlight." He turned from the balcony. "No, I w asn't surprised, and not because I had you figure d out in any way. But as you said, you knew it wa s going to happen. I did too, and I accepted it a s God's will." Rosen picked up his trousers from th e chair and felt the pockets. "I thought I brough t some cigarettes."

"I don't know if I can handle that," Edie said
, "bringing God into it. I can't say I was thinkin g about God at the time."

"You don't have to. See, what you do, you aim i
n the direction you want to go, or to get what yo u want. But you don't manipulate or force people t o do anything. What I mean is, you have to be hones t with yourself. You're not out to con anybody; yo u let things happen and you don't worry about it.

That's the key--you don't worry. Something happens or it doesn't."

"What about when something bad happens?"

Edie said.

"What's bad? A week later you're telling somebody about it; you're laughing."

"Like if you find out you have terminal cancer."

"Then you're fucked," Rosen said. "No, I'
m kidding. There's nothing you can do about that , right? So why fight it? That's the secret. Accep t what comes and don't worry about anything yo u know you can't change."

"It's that simple, huh?" Edie eased back down t
o the pillow. "Maybe for some people."

"For anybody," Rosen said. "Listen, you didn'
t know me before. I've learned to be patient. I've almost quit smoking. In fact, it looks like I have. I haven't had a Gelusil in almost a year. And no w you and I've met and we're going to have a wonderful time together. . . . You don't smoke, uh?"

"I quit two years ago."

"You don't happen to have a mashed-up pack i
n the bottom of your purse?" Rosen went into th e bathroom and closed the door to take a leak.

It was getting easier to explain his revolutionar
y Will of God theory. A few months ago it hadn'
t sounded as clear or foolproof when he'd brought i t out in the open. Like the time he'd told the lady a t the Jerusalem Hilton about it--in that big, activ e cocktail lounge--their second day together, an d she'd said, "Jesus Christ, I was worried you were a gangster, and you turn out to be a religious freak."

He had put down in his mind: Never talk philos
o phy with tourist ladies. Then qualified it later: A t least never talk philosophy with ladies who stay a t the Hilton.

And don't overdo it with any of them. Edi
e seemed content--why confuse her?--lying in be d with her bare arms and shoulders out of the sheet , watching him as he came from the bathroom int o the lamplight again.

"Were you smoking in there?"

"No, I told you, I don't have any." He looked o
n the low bank of dressers again, catching his reflection in the mirror, the deeply tanned hard body--relatively hard for his age--against the brief white Jockeys.

"I thought I smelled cigarette smoke," Edie said.

"Guess not. . . . Is there any wine left?"

"All gone." Rosen came over and she moved he
r hip to give him space to sit down. "We can cal l room service."

"I think it's too late."

"You don't want the waiter to see me. Listen
, they've seen everything. You can't shock a roomservice waiter."

"I really do think it's too late."

"I can get us a bottle somewhere." He wa
s touching her face, letting his hand slide down t o her bare shoulder.

"Isn't everything closed?"

"If you want more wine, I'll get it," Rosen said
, though he had no idea where.

"Do we need it?"

Quietly, caressing her: "No, we don't need it."

She looked ten years younger in bed, in the lam
p glow from across the room. Her breasts were good , hardly any sag--right there under the sheet--an d her thighs were firm, with no sign yet of dimples , and not likely to develop any during the next te n days.

Edie sniffed. "I still smell something."

"It's not me," Rosen said. "Must be somebod
y else."

"No, like smoke. Don't you smell it?"

Rosen sniffed. He got up from the bed an
d walked across the room sniffing. He stopped.

"Yeah--like something burning." He walke
d through the short hallway to the door, opened it--

"Christ!"--and was coughing, choking, as h
e slammed the door against the smoke billowing i n from the fifth-floor hall.

"Christ, the place is on fire!"

He was coughing again, then seeing Edie Brode
r out of bed naked, seeing her terrified expression a s she screamed.

TUESDAY, TEN-FORTY A
. M
.: Rosen was the Acapulco'
s only customer. He sat with his coffee and pack o f cigarettes in the row of tables nearest the street, a t the edge of the awning shade. Across the square , above the shrubs and palm trees, the facade of th e Goldar Hotel showed its age in the sunlight. Som e of the guests from the Park Hotel had been move d there. Others were at the King Solomon. Mr. Fin e had taken Edie Broder and the rest of the Columbus group to the Pal Hotel in Tel Aviv, to be near the U
. S
. Embassy and whatever attache handled legal matters for American citizens.