A pleasant fellow adorned with a French beard and loafers has been walking around for the past twenty minutes, trying on the benches in the empty plaza.
Get Published on Female First
I sit on the bar at "Café Metuka " and drink coffee. Every time I take a sip, he gets up from one bench and moves on to inspect another. He perches on the edge, slides slowly to the back, leans, glances towards the steps that lead to the Cinematheque entrance and gets up.
Behind me I hear a lively debate about the definition of the term 'a noble physique'. One woman states that only an Arab horse that gallops through the desert dunes can have a noble physique, and therefore she has no great expectations from blind dates. She continues and describes how in her mind's eye she sees a smile stretching above gargantuan yellow teeth, accompanied by a merry neighing. The other one can't solve the mystery either, since according to her "all his pixels were broken" and added that you can never know what animal hides behind the photo of this John Doe. "He has to be blonde with blue eyes and love the good life," she states and adds, "Here he comes, and now we'll know."
I follow the man who wanders from bench to bench with my eyes.
Suddenly the doors of the Cinematheque open and a large crowd flows out.
The man jumps up and positions himself at an observation point close to the stairs. He smoothes his clothes, runs his fingers through a limp mane and eyes each woman who descends the stairs.
I wager:
The thin blonde wrapped in the red shawl? No.
The curvy one propped up on high heels that threaten to collapse any moment, like toothpicks? No.
The tall curly one in the wide jeans skirt that looks nervously about her? Also no.
I give up, but he takes two steps back and begins to follow a redhead with a green chop stick in her hair. She races down the plaza, focuses on herself, doesn't look left or right. He tries to match her speed and shouts to her. She slows but doesn't stop – still not certain that she is the addressee. He widens his steps and catches up to her. They exchange a few shy words, shake hands and point at me. Startled, I embrace my cup and think oh no, what have I done? Then I relax a little when I realize that they also want coffee, maybe even a cake.
In the meantime, silence in the background.
I can't help myself, turn around and see four wide eyes, two tormented girls, one small round man, mousy and bald and a drama that is about to end.
The couple that formed in the Cinematheque sits next to me with black coffee for him and a "Mozart" (that is diminishing fast due to truck driver bite sizes) for her.
The bearded Frenchman takes a breath and opens with some decisive words: "Look," he says, in British accent, "I had tuberculosis but I'm fine now. They removed one lung but I'm really functioning well."
I stare at them dumbfounded due to the unexpected romantic opening.
She raises smiling eyes, chews slowly and listens peacefully.
"Does it bother you?" He finally asks.
"Me –" she pulls the word till its edge and ends with a small question mark, "Me, no! But it must bother you," she states with concern and after a moment she adds, "Can I have more cake?"
Few words About the writer:
Dorit Kedar is the modern wandering Jew. She travels around the world, looking for inspirational places to write.
Kedar's first book, "Lilith: the Jewish Demoness - 1000 Years of Borderline Personality" is a friendly non-fiction book which tells the missing chapter of the infamous demoness Lilith. The book was published successfully in Hebrew as paper book and self-published in Kindle and Amazon.
Currently, Kedar is working on her third book "Komish - A Fake Biography of a Real Woman" a story about a young woman that lived in the 5thcentury.