The Extra

Nineteen

SHE WATCHES HIM CLOSELY as he gathers his tools, detaches and winds up the extension cord and returns it to his tool chest. Then she follows him into her parents’ bedroom, where he puts the reading lamp back in place. And before he takes his leave, she says:

“How can I repay you?”

“Don’t be silly.”

But she insists:

“I’m not being silly. You barely ate my sandwich, and the carpenter is entitled to some sort of gift.”

Even as he waves his hands in refusal, she opens her parents’ emptied clothes closet and shows him her father’s new suit, and the shoes and socks below.

“Ima gave away tons of clothes, my father’s and hers, to the neighborhood charities, but she felt sorry for this suit, and rightly so, because he hardly wore it. Honi is unwilling to wear his father’s clothes, so before this good suit also flies away to some religious creature, you take it. Knowing that it’s you wearing the suit would please him.”

“Please who?” He is shocked.

“Abba.” She laughs. “If he’s still interested in his suits wherever he is now.” She removes the jacket from its hanger with a flourish. “Try it on, don’t be shy. What can happen?”

She expects him to resist, but Abadi, as if hypnotized in the gathering dusk, slips his arms into the sleeves of the jacket, which is too wide for his shoulders, and studies his reflection in the mirror with a mixture of concern and satisfaction. She then grips him by the shoulders and pulls the jacket tighter from behind, to demonstrate how it might be altered to fit his narrower frame.

And though Abadi is embarrassed by the demonstration, he is not averse to the surprising offer. “Yes, maybe, if no one else wants it.”

“There’s no one else.”

“If that’s really so, then rather than have the jacket go to a total stranger, I’ll take it to the tailor and wear it to remember him by.”

“Yes, to remember him by,” she happily exclaims. “But also the pants, because it’s a suit.”

“The pants?” He laughs uneasily. “No, the pants are undoubtedly too short.”

“Says who? At least try. It’s not right to separate the two.”

Now he is upset. This he didn’t expect. Aware of her power, she firmly insists. “Why not? We won’t know if you don’t try them on.” Now he smiles slightly, his embarrassment giving way to comprehension, even excitement, and, still wearing the jacket, he bends over and sheds his shoes, undoes his belt, removes his pants and puts them on a chair, and takes from her the trousers of a man of seventy-five, who a year or two before his death indulged a desire to own a tailor-made black suit of the finest wool gabardine, perhaps to blend in with the black-suited Orthodox of the neighborhood. Although it’s clear that the trousers will be short on him and too big in the waist, Noga persists, and as if she were an artist of needle and thread as well as the harp, she gets down on her knees and shows him how the surplus fabric in the cuffs can be used to lengthen the legs, and then pinches the extra cloth at each of his hips. And deliberately or otherwise, she can feel that her fingers, the strong, precise fingers of a harpist, also know how to arouse desire.

“Here, it can be made narrower. It would be a shame to separate them… a shame to give it away…”

Unnerved by his erection, Abadi seeks a quick getaway. “No, it won’t work,” he mumbles, and wriggles free of her hands, climbs out of the trousers of his beloved late mentor, tries to conceal his tumescence as he hurriedly puts on his own pants and tosses the suit jacket on the electric bed. “No, not this either,” he says, blushing, and picks up his toolbox and says goodbye without a look. And she knows he won’t be back, even if the bolt and hook fall off and the electric bed falls silent.