Tomorrow is another day

An excerpt from my fourth novel "Summer tempest".

'Okay I'm off,' Nehama said quite calmly, right after having collected the car's keys. She rose to her feet and turned to her husband: 'You may hail a cab or walk back home for all I care.' Having said that she turned round and moved towards the front door with a resolute step.

'Nehama?!' Talma called out after a few seconds of utter shock, and rushed after her friend running through the front door that was left open.

Yoske and Ruvke kept sitting still and worried, listening to the excited verbal exchange outside, the opening of the lift's door, its closure and the silence that reigned right after it.

Some ten minutes passed and Talma returned alone, pale and disturbed.

'What has happened to her? What's happening between you two?' She turned to Yoske with a clear note of reproach. 'I went all the way down with her and couldn't persuade her. What could have caused such a behavior?'

'Cut it off Talma!' Ruvke retorted. 'Maybe Yoske himself doesn't know, and if he knows it's between the two of them - he doesn't have to tell anything to you.'

Another short and embarrassing pause of tensed silence fell, and the three of them sat gloomily round the small loaded table - undecided, ignoring each other's eyes.

'Listen,' Ruvke turned to his friend, 'let's get down and I'll give a lift home.'

'Thanks, it's rather critical, I'd better get home as soon as I can.' Yoske replied and rose to his feet. 'Don't worry Talma,' he added. 'We'll settle it down between us, Nehama and me.'

 

'Wow, that was the record of all records,' Ruvke remarked excitedly on coming back. 'How she jumped down his throat! "Hail a cab, crawl back home!" But I guess the climax is over, and he'll see to appease her.'

'Has he told you anything on your way?'

'He didn't tell me exactly what the matter was, but he says that she's behaving like a cuckoo for sometime already. That's how he described it, which means she lais an egg in some forlorn nest and flies away - the results are none of her business. But that was the first time that she's staged such a tricky scene to him. That was all he had to say.'

'That was all he told you? I can't believe it!'

'Well there were a few more unimportant things.' Ruvke admitted against his own will, he preferred to skip it. He feared it might serve as food for thought to his own wife.

'He said that lately Nehama stuck to him like a limpet, afraid he might get involved in some affair under her nose, like that nasty business with what's her name? Ohm, Smadar their new efficient stewardess.' He added and went on right away laughing slightly. 'Thus this trick of hers surprised him and do listen how he described it: "Imagine her sitting in wait for me any hour of broad daylight, like the parents of ateenage girl, waiting till the small hours of night to their only girl, to return from her first party". He burst out with a short embarrassed laugh and a sense of remorse, thinking on their own young daughter Riva. 'Well, I dare say Yoske had a dubious past in these matters, and his marriage with Nehama isn't the best thing since sliced bread. The truth is I was surprised myself, I was sure she has overcame that old affair of his.'

'She'll never forgive him for his love to Erella.' Talma replied with a sarcastic chuckle.

'Come on, it was ages ago! The whimsical Erella, whom everyone almost tried to court in vain.'

'I too didn't like her, but you didn't know her like me, and like Yoske knew her. You don't know what influence she'd over him, and how he broke down when she left him.'

'She left him you say! She never dated him as far as I know. He was your group's instructor, and that was all there was to it.'

'There're many more things which you don't know, but Nehama in spite of the exceptional number she gave us tonight, will never give him up.'

'Okay, they'll get along in the same way they did get along till now, but she could do without that peculiar number of hers.'

Except a slight node of her head, Talma didn't react this time. There was no need to fall to a futile argument. They have just returned from a pleasant trip, that could have been defined as a second honey moon; she had no intention to get on her husband nerves and end up with a quarrel, not even for the romantic problems of her best friend.

'By God that nasty business made me hungry. Get us something light to eat please.'

'What about your diet?'

'Tomorrow is another day, I'll resume my diet tomorrow morning, okay?'

Haim Kadman 2007 " all rights reserved. ©