This Is What I Am

A Short Story on Land

Rita Zimmerman, Rockets Over Tel Aviv, 2023, Oil on linen

Gordon Lewis hasn’t exercised since college. But if you saw him standing outside MacDuffy’s pub, a few blocks from the Clinton Hill Real Estate office, a lean not yet paunched figure, sucking down a Camel Light, you might think he doesn’t look half bad for someone caught in a five-year spiritual free fall. By some genetic miracle, Gordon’s pasty, 29-year-old skin hasn’t soured. Despite the alcohol and the cigarettes and the midday rub and tugs, there is still unharmed youth inside him, perfectly good unspoiled blood waiting to be shaken and stirred in the right direction.

He’s just gotten off the train and strolls residential blocks, sipping a four-dollar coffee. He knows this particular wedge of Brooklyn well. It’s a cash block, he thinks, studying the trees overhead. Prospective homeowners are so predictable. Suckers for names and brands and storied descent. Red maples, silver maples, Norway maples — Gilded Age money trees. From a real estate perspective, there’s no such thing as excessive foliage. White people love vegetation, and will shell out to feel like they’re in a suburb. They live to squeeze babies and jog in the shade and own animals with preposterous origins.

Gordon waits to see if someone will wave at him (personal greetings are lucrative). Across the street a proud brownstone owner rinses stone. Diligent property maintenance. Check. Planters are repositioned one house down. Future herbage. Check, check. A dog walker appears. Triple check. The dog walker is young, female, and wears Alo. Checkmate.

A delivery truck passes slowly, braces for a speed bump. Gordon slurps coffee. The barista used milk instead of cream. His eye lands on a tree he didn’t notice before that messes up his plot average. Gordon recalculates. It’s still about two trees per plot, which means, on the low end, a $100,000 swell in the initial offering price. He sighs. What have I become?

It’s nine in the morning and his coworkers are outside on a bench puffing cigarettes, draining coffees, and sending texts before lunchtime showings. For those who don’t have showings there are other activities. Drinking so much coffee you fall asleep, binging alcohol, saunaing at the local New York sports club. Or stopping by the much-talked-about Chinatown rub and tug.

When Gordon first started at Clinton Hill Real Estate it was a more even split of Anglos and Israelis, but now it’s almost entirely Israeli. Hebrew permeates the office. Ma Coreeeee, Gordddoonnn, Ma Ayanim, achi, meaning “brother.”

They make no effort to speak English around Gordon, and he assumes it doesn’t even occur to them that he doesn’t understand. But Gordon sort of likes it, the not knowing. The not being responsible for the constant fraternal chiming in.

Gordon tries to remember exactly why he chose this Israeli firm. He interviewed at so many places during real estate school, but they were buttoned up and phony. Nowadays people need to think they’re doing something good, that they’re living transformative lives. You don’t become a real estate salesman to remodel your soul, and Israelis understand this better than anyone. When it comes to selling property nothing matters except the deal. The money. The kesef. If you make the sale, you stay. In this business there’s no false sense of morality or deeper sense of purpose. There is no chance of fulfillment. No games. Everyday is stable, dependable avarice.

It’s become hotter in the past 15 minutes. Last night was muggy, gelatinous. A few salesmen jump ship for inside air conditioning. Gordon stretches, finishes his coffee, and considers taking a lead. Is there time to close something before the trip? A quick rental? Not worth it.

The Israelis trash cappuccino cups and crush cigarettes in the empty planter beside the bench. There’s broadcasts of appointments and locations. Leads are exchanged in English and Hebrew, bad ones given to pinker salesmen.

It’s Gordon and Elan outside on the bench.

“You leave tonight?” Elan is saying.

His phone rings before Gordon can answer and Elan’s using his best English accent to solidify an appointment.

“Yep, tonight,” Gordon says to Elan, who’s clearly thinking about something else.

Originally it was Elan’s idea for Gordon to see Tel Aviv, and then everyone more or less pushed for it. The office has been badgering Gordon to go for years. A kind of familial pressure, even though Gordon isn’t Israeli or Jewish. They were insulted when Gordon went to Berlin two years ago instead of Tel Aviv. As if he owed it to them to see their homeland. It seemed too far to travel, he thought. It’s not even Europe. It’s the Middle East, and all the war. Isn’t there a lot of war there?

It’s like Miami, they insisted.

Then I’ll just go to Miami, Gordon had quipped.

It’s different, achi. You need to see this country. The things we do in seventy years. You won’t believe with your eyes.

I’m sure I will.

Gordon’s always found it strange how much they talk about their tiny country, expecting him to give a shit. Does he sit around talking about Wales? That’s where his great-grandparents came from. Wales, now there’s a country. Whatever happened to being soft spoken? Demure. How many conversations has Gordon endured about Israeli tech innovation? If the Israelis didn’t invent it someone else would’ve come along, he figures. Modernization is inevitable. Gordon often imagines how they’d react if he went on a rampage about Dylan Thomas or Richard Burton.

And death shall have no dominion . . .

Gordon lights a cigarette. Elan’s phone is mashed into his ear — it’s only the two of them on the bench. A cleaner muscles through the street, moving trash around. A loose, splayed styrofoam to-go box creeps towards them.

“Floor to ceiling windows, brand new kitchen,” Elan is saying.

Gordon kicks away the to-go box and flips through flight details. An 11-hour trip. Two meals. The plane lands at five in the morning.

“Yes, all new appliances . . . ”

Smoke is exhaled. Gordon groans. What’s he gonna do in Tel Aviv? He Googles “activities in Israel.” There’s pictures of ancient religious sites. Stone walls and domes and camels. Suntanned people wrapped in various fabrics. He digs the cigarette into his mouth and pulls deeply, tries to picture himself there, but can’t. Gordon dislikes all the implied significance, the spiritual earmarks. Religion isn’t a thing he’s ever given much thought. It’s always been an activity or a hobby some people do and others don’t. Needless to say, Gordon doesn’t. He does, however, like falafel sandwiches — fried shit balls — and plans to eat a lot of them there.

Elan flicks through listings on his phone.

“You flying direct?” he asks.

“Yeah. Direct.” Gordon says.

Easy. Yep.

A police car rolls by, flips its siren, and slides through a red. Elan’s saying something about Israeli transit. How to get around. Issssrrrrrael . . . Gordon thinks, drawing out the word that so many people apparently give a shit about. Too many people, in fact. Deadbeats with nothing better to do than fight over real estate. He laughs. A light, forgiving breeze has appeared.

Gordon stubs out the cigarette. He’s sure this trip is a mistake. He’d be perfectly happy working New York’s flaccid real estate market all summer. Taking the occasional beach trip. Demolishing six-packs in front of the TV, spectating slow summer sports. He likes it here in New York. The job is effortless and he’s responsible for very few meaningful relationships. None, in fact. Women come and go on various fast-paced dating apps and bleary-eyed drunken one-offs. Gordon’s got it all. A job, an apartment close to public transit, and a dual-compartment trash can. In other more American cities, Gordon’s weak wrists and bloodless cheeks are a deterrent, clear signs that he can’t change a tire or sire a family. But in New York, his total lack of physical capability beyond the midnight, serial finger-tapping for crosstown sushi and local poon make him a competent, domesticated member of millennial society. Gordon also has a larger than average Adam’s apple.

Gordon trashes the paper coffee cup and relaxes in the air-conditioned office. Most of the desks are rotating, but Gordon has his own. He could be a broker if he wanted, instead of a salesman. He’s had impressive offers to become a partner but isn’t interested. He lives 15 minutes from the office, pulls an easy six figures and manages to save 75 percent of his income. He dislikes acquisition because possession means maintenance. Home owning is overrated, especially in New York. It’s a status symbol. He dislikes furniture and clothing and doesn’t mind throwing away money on cigarettes because their fate is to become smaller. To disappear. To live is to dematerialize. That’s the goal. To move quietly and simply and not bother others.

Gordon clicks through last-minute emails. Follows up with past clients to kindly tell them about his upcoming trip, copy and pasting names of holy sites, rewriting descriptions and inserting fun facts about cuisine. It’s a good way to stay in touch with customers. He finds a colorful blurb from his previous Berlin email blast and changes a few things.

Gordon looks it over. Writing the email makes the trip feel like it’s actually going to happen. There’s a tinge of excitement that quickly vanishes. What was that? he thinks, but squashes it. He hates complicated emotions.

Someone responds to the email blast almost immediately. A woman. Samantha Macon. It’s shocking. In fact, Gordon can’t believe it’s her. Hadn’t he deleted her email address three years ago? They dated for a few months and it ended sadly. The entire thing was sad, Gordon thinks. Sad because it was also, in some ways, good.

Gordon has thought about her since. Quite a bit. Too much, in fact. Especially the time he saw her in passing. She was sitting at a park with some elderly man — a relative — when Gordon walked by eating a bagel. They had agreed to stop speaking, so Gordon didn’t approach, but he did watch her. Samantha. Samantha Macon. She looked different that day. Even from a distance he could tell something had changed. There was less youth. Firm decisions had been made, he gathered. Her brown hair seemed dark, and he couldn’t quite see the color in her eyes from where he stood. The small chin. Gordon remembers wanting to rub his fingers around the sides of her mouth. Gordon’s mouse hovers around the inbox. He looks at the timestamp. It took Samantha less than two minutes to read the email and write back. Incredible. What compelled her to get back in touch? Perhaps enough time has passed that whatever they had is null. He still hasn’t opened the message. Her name there, in the inbox, is painful.

Gordon sold her a condo three years ago. He remembers their first interaction, the first few weeks working together. Samantha was difficult and wanted something very specific: a high-ceilinged duplex in Lower Manhattan. Gordon worked for a real estate company in Brooklyn and didn’t have many Manhattan listings. He tried to refer her but she refused. She was currently living in Brooklyn and claimed to have heard good things about the office. He had trouble believing anything Samantha said. The details were hazy, but he continued showing her listings.

One afternoon, a month into the job, Gordon picked up the phone to Samantha crying, and asked if he should hang up. The call must have been a mistake. A butt-dial.

No, she said, apologizing. The voice on the other end was tentative.

Gordon, she said into the silent echo. Two long sustained breaths perspired into the phone line.

Gordon?

I’m here.

Samantha’s long, damp pauses usually drifted comfortably into questions of bedroom dimensions, mirror to sink proportions, and street noise.

Gordon had just returned home from the office and was unloading a 12-pack into the fridge, cooling his head in the crisp refrigerator air, when the phone rang. The call was more or less an annoyance. He had given up the idea of sleeping with Samantha, sure that she would never actually buy a multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment.

They’d viewed dozens of properties everywhere in the city, but half the time she was too busy to meet, so Gordon sent pictures and videos of interiors — nothing seemed to be good enough for her — and he began to wonder about the money. If Samantha actually had it. The only information he could find was a LinkedIn profile with a single job listing. Samantha had worked at a well-known auction house for two years, but that was four years ago.

I want to tell you something, she said into the phone. Gordon was standing next to the microwave, mindlessly overfilling a chilled pint glass with light deli beer. A baseball game was about to start. It was May and the forecasters predicted a steady drip of acidic New York City rain.

Can I come over? she suddenly said. When Gordon didn’t answer right away she backtracked, something about wanting to understand where he lived. His taste.

It’s okay, Gordon said before another thick pause. There was a humid swooshing inside the phone, as if they were trying to communicate underwater. When the conversation resurfaced, Gordon said his address.

Samantha showed up at Gordon’s door holding an umbrella. He took her rain jacket and they hovered near the entryway exchanging stiff, sedate small talk. Perhaps it was the pattern of the flat oily rain in the window, the slowness of the afternoon, that made everything drag.

She said a few words about his apartment and they watched the baseball game mostly in silence, on opposite sides of the couch, slugging two-dollar lagers.

After the game Samantha fell asleep on the couch. Something made Gordon pick her up and carry her to the bed. He took up on the foldout.

In the morning Samantha was brighter, more talkative, unsure of what happened. She woke up hours before Gordon, anxious, wrapped in his Yankees sheets, and thought about leaving, but liked being hidden from her other world. No one knew where she was. She was finally lost.

Once conscious, Gordon offered her toast and she inspected the plates and silverware very carefully, took a few bites and began to slowly tell him things. Personal things, things she figured he was wondering, and apologized for wasting so much of his time.

Coffee was pressed and Gordon dumped too much cream in her mug and sopped it up with paper towels. He apologized and she apologized and sun leaked through the closed blinds. The air conditioner buzzed from the window and cars ran up and down the avenue outside.

It was almost 10 but the lights were still off in the apartment. Neither seemed to notice that the kitchen looked like dawn. They sat on stools, apologizing for everything, the miscommunication or whatever this was. What was happening? he wondered.

Samantha adjusted herself at the counter where they sat, asking if there was orange juice. When it appeared in a tall pulpy glass, she began to say that nothing was a lie. If Gordon had suspected her of being deceptive or misleading about the apartment search, she was, again, very sorry. It was something else, something she was having trouble describing. When Gordon didn’t pry, she told him about the death of her parents. The massive inheritance she had obtained. The doubt she had in religion, in God, in existence, in herself.

But why are you here? he asked.

I don’t know, Samantha said, swallowing coffee. They were looking at each other, the long water-logged breaths from inside the phone were now in Gordon’s apartment.

I think it’s because you’re not Jewish, she said.

Another email has arrived in Gordon’s inbox. This one is from Marc Nomadsky. He opens the email, scans it. It’s kind and pleasant and meaningless. It’s signed “Best.” This is what Gordon likes. Empty chatter. Pointless conversation. Small talk.

Marc Nomadsky.

Gordon looks around the office. He should really leave. Someone’s texting. An unknown number. A client. He felt fine earlier, but now this. Samantha. He can’t open her email. He also can’t not open it. Hopefully it’s short and flat and he won’t have to think about Samantha Macon ever again. But it’s not. Or at least, her message is suggestive of some sort of contact. Vague contact. There’s a “maybe” encoded in a nebulous invitation to see her. Or perhaps it’s an invitation encoded in a series of maybes.

Samantha apparently moved to Israel two years ago with her husband. But not just Israel, Gordon learns. A settlement. He reads about it online. Samantha lives in a hellish, arid piece of disputed earth called Bat Ayin, famous — reads the Wikipedia page — for terrorism. Samantha says he could maybe, MAYBE, if he has time, swing by.

Swing by a settlement! He grins. That’s a first.

Gordon leans back in the desk chair, throws his hands above his head and sighs. This really fucks the day, he thinks. Samantha moved to a goddamn settlement? She must have met someone and gotten engaged immediately after me.

What is it with religious people and land? The office is filled with people who seem to care about nothing but land, real estate. At this very moment he can see them all clearly, high-strung Israelis motoring between phones, espresso shots, and texts, working deals. What are they hoping for? he wonders. What binds them? What do they hope to leave behind? Land? Fertile Jewish land?

He remembers Samantha talking about it. The land. The need for Jews to own something in the world. There are twenty Muslim countries, she used to say. Why can’t we have a Jewish state? Gordon used to shake his head a lot during these conversations. He didn’t know, and frankly he thought that life couldn’t possibly be so complicated. Isn’t there just humanity? Isn’t that a thing? But she was fixated on future generations. Leaving something behind. Gordon doesn’t consider eternity. He doesn’t consider lives beyond lives or alternate universes. There is no posterity. There are only uptown evening baseball games in the summer, chilled fall mornings, and extended happy hours. There are home runs and strikeouts.

When Gordon dies he hopes to leave behind several sets of well-threaded sheets, one very large smart television, a few mid-century furnishings, and a lifetime of indifferent emotions that may or may not circle the ether on an endless loop, like a tingle that spins through the nose but never manages to induce a sneeze.

Gordon also owns a wok.

The ride to the airport is quick and smooth. He’s two and a half hours early. There are other early arrivals, preflight passengers munching 17-dollar airport burgers. A woman eats a hard-boiled egg on the floor beside an electric outlet. A father disciplines a child in dry, inhumane Russian. Gordon’s searching for a place to drink. He walks up and down the terminal past magazine shops walled with Dramamine, currency exchange vestibules, and overpriced conveyor belt sushi. Shake Shack has a beer tap, but there’s a line. It’s a decent beer list but . . . the line, and he wants to get drunk. He needs to stop thinking about Samantha. Swing by the settlement, he thinks. If you happen to be in the hood . . .

There’s only one terminal bar that isn’t packed. It’s patrolled by a pockmarked male with a massive nose. Gordon plops down on a stool and quickly sinks a lager. There’s tennis on television. Replays, but he knows the results from a series of ESPN notifications. It’s a shame he’ll be missing so many summer sports while away. He really could just stay, he thinks. Exchange the ticket, make something up. The bartender signals. Gordon accepts the refill, licks foam from the top of the beer, and drills it. He’s buzzed now. A few more and he’ll be drunk.

It’s almost 11 when Gordon stumbles out from the bar. He’s once again idling at D23, staring out the window. Plane lights drop in the sky from enormous heights and clunk into the tarmac.

“We will begin boarding shortly,” a voice says.

The trip is fast approaching, but Gordon doesn’t feel like he’s leaving. He catches an unwelcome gust of Chinese food blown in from a nearby Panda Express. Now there’s an unearthing of insentient energy. A slow herd of bodies begin a massive peeling from sticky leather airport seats into the boarding line. He finds a sleeping pill in his bag, dryly slugs it back, and wakes to a stewardess’ voice 11 hours later.

He’s tapped and then shaken.

“Excuse me, sir. Sir. We’ve arrived.” Gordon gathers his things. His mouth is crusted shut, fecal. The plane’s empty. He hears a vacuum. There’s cleaners behind him, murmuring, possibly about him. The stewardess smiles, hands him a plastic cup of cold water, and guides him out of the aircraft.

“Welcome to Israel,” she says.

The shiny airport light hits Gordon hard; he’s drowsy. It’s six in the morning in Tel Aviv and he’s at an airport coffee vestibule, killing multiple espressos, when it suddenly dawns on him that he’s actually in the Middle East. It is sort of awful, he thinks, not understanding. There’s Israelis approaching him in English with cab offers. Gordon shoots one last espresso and heads to an ATM to pull shekels.

He’s outside the airport now. It’s pleasant. Tropical tasting. Gordon unbuttons his shirt. There’s an address on his phone; he flags down a cab. He wants a sandwich. Egg and cheese on a roll dripping with sauce. Hot sauce. Gordon loves hot sauce.

He’s dropped off at the Hilton, the best hotel in Tel Aviv, according to Trip Advisor. It’s on the beach and is beyond lovely, he remembers reading. Lovely, ha. He never uses that word, but the hotel really is lovely. The looking out at the Mediterranean Sea and all the little comforts: the bathrobe and slippers and thoughtful toiletries. Everyone speaks English.

Now he’s sitting 55 floors above the water, sipping arak. Gordon had asked the waiter for the native liquor. There’s complimentary snacks tucked away in the corner of the ocean-view room. Coffee, cheese, sweet cereal. Gordon sighs, looking out at the water, wondering what to make of all this. He checks his phone and sees her name again, Samantha Macon. Macon, Samantha, idling in the inbox.

Bodies dot the sandy shoreline below, speckling the bright sea.

Gordon wastes the rest of the day high above them, steadily drinking, wondering about all the humanity down there.

The next few days are spent wandering aimlessly. Drifting between Hilton poolside lounge chairs and plastic beach recliners. When Gordon’s not eating or sleeping, he lives mostly in the complimentary bathrobe, cruising hotel hallways for crushed ice and vending machines, wolfing ice cream bars, gulping booze.

He spends an entire day in bed paging room service, binge-watching an emasculating Israeli television show about IDF operatives that makes his own life seem extremely pointless. When Gordon conquers both seasons in a matter of days, he wades through a few polite emails trickling in from New York. Most of them are signed “Warmly,” “Kindly,” or “Best.” One woman asks him to touch the wall for her.

For dinner Gordon eats a bloody burger on the 55th floor, glancing up only occasionally to watch the sun’s inevitable drop over the sea. He’s texting someone back, a former client who asks about appreciation. This isn’t Gordon’s area, but a quick Zillow scan answers the question.

Samantha’s name appears again in the middle of his inbox. It’s getting pushed down. If you choose to swing by, Samantha writes, I can send further instructions.

Instructions?

She hopes Gordon will come, but is sure he won’t. Why, Gordon wonders, does she want to see me? He’s dabbing at the swamp of ketchup and mayo with several french fries, sends it down with more icy arak.

Gordon tries to imagine the arid landscape of Bat Ayin and drifts hazily back to the television show. They were mostly in the settlements, he’s pretty sure, and pictures himself as one of those heavily-bearded operatives muscling through the West Bank.

Red juice from the hamburger slab has formed a marsh of salad and potatoes. He’s thinking about a particular episode from the second season . . . Israeli forces are tearing through dirt roads on jeeps. So cool, he thinks. The way it was filmed. Those narrow pathways and little bunkers — so secretive. Once again his phone is out, Googling “Bat Ayin landscape,” and then he punches directions into the keypad.

It’s a half-day trip from Tel Aviv. Multiple buses. He’d have to transfer in Jerusalem.

He sends Samantha a message. A short, cold email that says something in the spirit of: “Fine. I’ll come. Why the hell not. Send details.”

Gordon abandons the last bite of burger and looks out the window where the sun seems to have plummeted into the sea. There was light a minute ago, but now the night is black and the moon is nowhere.

He locks his phone and exhausts the remaining drops of watered-down liquor. The bill is tacked to his room and soon he’ll be at the downstairs bar, with 12-dollar pints of Goldstar.

Gordon regrets finishing the television show so quickly. Now he has nothing to do. It was fun, watching it alone in the room beside the sea view. There’s so many different kinds of lives, he thinks . . .

. . . and I’m living this one.

His phone dings with random texts. New York real estate has slowly, in the last few days, become a phantom. All communication seems to arrive from a series of ghosts who were never all that alive in the first place.

Gordon wakes up much later than planned, trapped inside a hangover. He drags himself to the bathroom, vomits into the shower drain, and stays there for an hour, dry heaving.

Breakfast is easier after the morning purge. He eats through a medley of tomatoes, cucumbers, and soft cheeses. Last night is spotty. He blinks. There were people at the downstairs bar, Americans mostly. Couples. So many couples, and he remembers feeling worse about it than he used to. Being alone. It’s okay to be 30 and single in New York, but not anywhere else.

Gordon pours himself another cup of coffee and studies bus times to Bat Ayin. It’s overwhelming — the trip, but he could be there in three hours . . . with Samantha . . .

. . . Samantha. Samantha Macon. The name still doesn’t feel quite real to him, that it’s somehow back in his life. She wrote back to him last night. Directions. Strange directions to her house, and now he’s wondering if he did send that stupid email he drafted sometime after 1:00 a.m. He’s scouring the outbox, scrolling. Apparently he didn’t, but sort of wishes he had. He wishes it was over. That there was no one out there in Bat Ayin or anywhere else asking to see him.

Gordon’s at the front desk ordering a cab straight to Jerusalem. It’s what rich people do, he thinks: flipping cabs between major cities. Gordon does, after all, have an impressive amount saved. He hates acquisition more than he likes money and doesn’t mind parting with it as long as he isn’t stuck with loose, meaningless possessions. He’s feeling more awake, less bloodless, and sort of excited to be going somewhere. Being in a settlement with Samantha is, without a doubt, the only thing that could have pulled him from bed after a night of heavy drinking.

Now he’s in a cab, reviewing Samantha’s directions. The letting off at a certain bus stop a quarter mile from her home. Then he’s supposed to take a back road through low bushes down a hill until he’s at the back door of her house. No one can see you come here, she writes. And below the text is a hand-drawn map that’s been photographed with arrows and places to stay away from. There’s patches of open, unfenced areas where civilians and IDF soldiers patrol, but Samantha downplays the danger. There are incidents, the email says, but it’s rare.

When the cab pulls into the Jerusalem bus station, Gordon sees the sweaty horde of Orthodox Jews crowding the entrance, piling into the security line. It’s a holiday of some sort, the cab driver says.

Gordon, not liking the sound of it, changes his mind.

“Can you drive me to this address?” Gordon says. The driver looks at the map on Gordon’s phone. Cars pass. They’re parked outside the station, idling.

“Bat Ayin?! Why would you go there?”

“To see a friend.”

“Only crazy people live there,” he says.

“I guess my friend’s crazy.”

The driver sighs, making a real stink. He’s turning Gordon’s phone map over in his thick hands, groaning. Gordon rolls down his window, the air’s much drier in Jerusalem. He’s not sweating anymore. There’s a chill. It’s almost two in the afternoon.

“Fine,” the driver says. “Four hundred shekels more.”

“Three hundred,” Gordon says.

The driver seems surprised Gordon knows to negotiate.

“Three twenty-five.”

“Fine.”

The cab climbs the hills outside of Jerusalem and downshifts, speeding through olive groves and vineyards. Idyllic stone houses freckle long green expanses. It’s a postcard, Gordon thinks. All the white stones.

Ten minutes later they’re breaking for a checkpoint. “The first of several,” the driver explains. “Three maximum, but it’s no problem coming from this side.” The soldier waves them through easily. No words are exchanged, Gordon is barely glanced at.

“You have friend in crazy settlement?”

“Yeah. One.”

“Hope he has machine gun.”

Gordon keeps the window rolled down. It’s early in the afternoon and the sky is filled with thin scattered clouds. It’s the healthiest he’s felt all trip, his head hanging out the window sopping up fast, dry air.

“Are we in the settlements?” Gordon asks.

“We’ve been in for ten minutes, my friend. All of this. Everything you see.”

They’re cruising residential neighborhoods. Israeli soldiers are everywhere, smoking in front of bus stops, hitchhiking, talking on cell phones. Families with strollers idle on benches and street corners.

Gordon begins to notice that they’ve been driving for a very long time now, and that he is very far from Tel Aviv. From the Hilton. From complimentary espresso pods, macadamia nuts, and baklava. The cab rattles up another sharp hill and then blows through a roundabout. Gordon hardly notices the change in scenery. He’s thinking about how to get back, or if he’ll sleep there. He isn’t sure what to expect. The car hurls through strips of restaurants and shops and then they turn onto a dirt road. It’s long and narrow and at the end is a gate.

“Bat Ayin,” the driver says. “End of the line.”

“What’s beyond it?”

“Nothing,” says the driver. “Arabs.”

An Israeli soldier exits the shed next to the gate. A gun hangs from his shoulder. He’s young. Twenty, Gordon thinks. Tan. Very tan. And another equally young, equally male soldier has appeared from behind him to share some piece of information. They look at the plates, then at Gordon in the back seat. Gordon smiles instinctively, which seems to do nothing, and there’s more guttural chatter.

Gordon’s tossing his phone back and forth in his hands, noticing the great mass of rolling hills beyond the gate. It does, he thinks, look ancient. Gordon can’t put his finger on what makes something appear biblical, but this place definitely does. Maybe it’s the trees?

Now the cab driver’s laughing at something. All of them are. The soldiers nod and wave the car through. Gordon instructs the driver towards a street. He’s following Samantha’s map. Tracing a dotted line towards a synagogue. This is it.

“Okay?” the driver says.

Gordon fishes loose cash from his pocket, tips exorbitantly. The trip was nice, scenic.

He walks the perimeter of the synagogue, looking for a pathway. He feels like a spy, sleuthing. Like an operative, edging into low shrubs. A mosquito zaps his neck; he’s too slow to slap it. It’s buggy here. Flies dive in and out of shit piles on the ground. Whose shit is this? he wonders. Cows? He’s reminded of the Wikipedia page, something about Bat Ayin being a sort of ecological hell.

Gordon steps into a clearing where shrubs are replaced by massive rocks. Stones. There’s a view, an enormous wide ravine separating Bat Ayin from what he figures is a Palestinian village. It is an impressive landscape. Dramatic. There’s an extremely steep drop, and anchored into the foot of the ravine is a shack — similar to the checkpoint — where several IDF jeeps sit.

He sidesteps — not wanting to be seen — glancing at the phone. He’s not far now and ducks through a broken, splintered fence until he’s at a farmhouse. Someone passes, a bearded man in a yarmulke. He’s casually dressed, friendly seeming even with the machine gun.

Gordon stops. Is this it? It’s more of a trailer than a house. Birds flap above him, swooping into the gorge.

The man is still watching, waiting.

What do I do? Gordon thinks, marching slowly forward.

He sees the number of Samantha’s house, a dingy trailer 30 yards away and saunters on, ignoring the man’s stare. A door has opened. There’s footsteps. A whisper of his name and Gordon sees her cowering behind the flimsy back door. It’s all too strange, he thinks. A woman he had considered so regal, so refined, reduced to this perilous wasteland.

The door closes him in. A shadow drifts. It’s dreamlike and now they’re in a tiny kitchen where Samantha pours him a cup of water. A refrigerator opens. The light’s washed, stippled.

“You must be thirsty,” she’s saying. “It’s so dry.”

Samantha hasn’t stopped moving. He wants her to stop. He wants to look at her.

“Samantha,” Gordon says.

Samantha hands him a cup. She’s wearing a long black dress that covers everything — even her wrists — and a headwrap. Also, she’s pregnant. Very pregnant. There was no mention of it in the email.

“It’s safe to drink,” she says, trembling.

Gordon sips. The water’s thick and tepid, jaundiced. She calms down. They face each other.

“Tastes terrible,” he says.

Flies and mosquitos streak in and out of the kitchen. There are holes in the screens. Flawed seals in the cheap wood.

“I miss the water in New York,” she admits. “That’s one thing.”

“One thing?!” Gordon laughs. She smiles.

“This place is a shithole, Sam.”

“You don’t move here for the amenities,” she relents. “We’re waiting for our house to be built.”

Gordon crushes another insatiable mosquito into his arm. Blood squirts.

“The checkpoints were interesting,” he notes.

She smirks and says something about it not being as bad as it was. It’s calmed down a lot — the violence— ever since a series of stabbings a few years ago.

“What about the fundamentalist dress code?” Gordon asks.

“This is how women dress here.”

“Jesus Christ,” he says. “Where the fuck am I?”

The entire layout is visible from the kitchen. There’s a love seat and a crib folded into itself leaning against the wall. The most depressing furnishing is a flimsy rocking chair that appears to be dying near a window overlooking a pile of parched shrubs.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she says.

Her face is healthier than Gordon remembers. She’s been in the sun. Less chemical food, perhaps. He’s wondering about her hair, what it looks like under the wrapping. They’re standing by the sink. Gordon sets the cup on the counter.

“What’s with the headwrap?” he says.

“It’s a religious community,” Samantha says, rummaging through a cupboard, muttering something about there being more snack food somewhere, but Gordon’s distracted. He finds photos of her husband on the fridge. He’s dark, leathery — yarmulke-d. He can’t believe it. That people can spend their days here, in this hellhole.

Doesn’t she miss New York? Gordon wonders, thinking about his apartment, his bed. His Yankees memorabilia. Waking up to a city cracking with noise. Cars and drilling and deli sandwiches. Mindless chatter with bodega cashiers and cab drivers. The swiping of the MetroCard. Tennis and drunken one-offs.

“This is a settlement though, right?”

“It’s a religious settlement,” she says. “Didn’t you read about it?”

“I did. A bit.”

“Women have to be married to live here.”

“Jesus Christ. I didn’t read that part,” he says. “So where’s your husband?”

“In China. For work.”

“Oh.”

Samantha runs a hand over her stomach. They’re looking at each other, silent in the muted kitchen light. There’s a strange electric humming from somewhere in the trailer that cuts in and out.

“I guess I’m glad I came,” Gordon says.

“I’m happy you came, too,” she says, so quickly that Gordon doesn’t quite believe it. The comment is followed by a long, agonizing pause in conversation.

“Can I hug you?”

She shakes her head.

“No.”

They’ve steadily, unconsciously ambled into the paneled space between the living room and kitchen.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” she admits.

“You invited me!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d actually come. I didn’t think it through.”

“And I drank all night. I was so fucking hungover,” Gordon says, tightening a fist.

She unleashes an enormous frustrated sigh.

“I’m sorry, Gordon. I don’t know what I wanted out of this.”

“Whatever,” he answers. “Now I can say I’ve been to a settlement.”

They’re in the living room now. It’s barely lit, subdued. Gordon thinks he hears a gunshot somewhere but doesn’t mention it. Bug tape dangles above the love seat.

“The thing is, I’m not supposed to be alone with a man who’s not my husband.”

“So tell them I’m gay.”

Gordon plops down on the love seat, hoping she’ll join him, but Samantha’s hovering distractedly near the window, glancing out every once in a while, crossing and uncrossing her arms. She leaves him there on the love seat slapping mosquitoes, anxiously wondering what’s going to happen. When she returns with a plate of cookies his face rushes with blood. This isn’t the scenario he imagined. He thought it would be much different somehow. That she wouldn’t be pregnant. That she would have some news about a divorce and they would jump back into their usual game of sex in strange places. That was their thing for a while: Brooklyn bar bathroom hopping. Pulling up skirts and dresses in tight scummy stalls, laughing about it afterward.

Gordon looks around the lifeless living room, taking notice of all the potential ledges they could conceivably fuck on. There are few.

“Why did you even email me?” he asks her.

They’re munching cookies. It’s less awkward now, but there’s so many unanswered questions. Gordon wonders how she looks under the dress. He’s seen plenty of pregnant pornography.

“When you sent that email I realized I wanted to see you. That’s all. Someone from my past life.”

“How did it happen though? Moving here?”

“It was always the plan.”

“Moving to a settlement?!”

Samantha shakes her head. The outside temperature must have dropped. It’s chillier inside the trailer, getting steadily darker outside. There’s an orangish glow poking into the room. Sunset.

“Would you stop that?” Gordon says.

“What?” she responds.

“You keep looking out the window. It’s making me nervous.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, pawing at another cookie. “I’ll stop.”

Gordon feels sorry for her. This a trap, he thinks. Someone manipulated her, sold an ideology. A brainwashing has taken place. She’s the same. She’s normal.

“You completely stopped talking to me,” he says to her.

“I was married,” she says, pulling up the sleeves on her dress revealing two bony wrists. Her eyes are welling, puffy with tears. Gordon’s surprised, but not shocked. There was something strange about their entire relationship, but he told himself he wasn’t emotionally invested. Certain neighborhoods were inexplicably off limits during the three months they dated. They never saw each other on weekends, and she had two phones.

Samantha explains that she was living on the Upper West Side with her husband. She did inherit a lot of money and her parents did die. She wasn’t lying about that. But she wanted to escape. At the time she thought she wanted to leave her husband, and the apartment would be a first step towards independence.

“Why didn’t you?” Gordon asks.

She’s looking down, holding the half-eaten cookie in one hand, catching loose tears with her sleeve. Unable to answer the simple question.

“Because, this is what I am. This is what I am, Gordon.”

Samantha’s crying now, pinching the cookie. He has tried to touch her several times, more or less innocuously. Slight brushes of the arms and knees. Testing. But finally, she relents. It’s too much for her, she admits. The settlements. The living in constant fear. The community watchdogs. The patrolling. “There’s a machine gun in the bedroom,” she says. They keep it loaded. She’s afraid of someone killing the unborn child.

“But you believe in it?” Gordon asks, taking her hand. Samantha doesn’t pull back this time. She’s leaning against him on the love seat. Their limbs touch; he’s rubbing his hand on her covered head. Her body’s warm, and Gordon wonders what it must feel like being pregnant and alone, imprisoned in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, constantly fighting. Hated by the world.

Samantha rubs Gordon’s hand over her stomach.

“I think she’s sleeping,” she says.

“It’s a girl?”

“Yeah. I don’t feel kicking.”

They sit there for an hour barely speaking, feeling the weight of each other’s bodies. There’s a swell of emotion inside Gordon he doesn’t quite understand, or care to analyze. This is the most time he’s ever spent with a pregnant person.

When Samantha falls asleep, he adjusts and she wakes up. They’re curled together — coupled — not unlike before. Gordon, feeling restless, begins to unravel the cloth, the wrapping, piece by piece from her head.

She stirs.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see you,” he says.

“Gordon . . . ” Samantha says, readjusting. “I’m married.”

“You were always married.”

She pulls crust from her eye, looks at him. Twilight has fallen and a dry chill sweeps through the trailer. Gordon continues to unwrap the hair covering until it falls to the floor. Light brown hair flops onto her shoulders and Gordon grabs a handful. He can’t help himself, something has overtaken him.

“See?” she says. “Hair.”

He’s inhaling the strong unwashed odor released from inside the headwrap. Gordon wants to kiss her, and starts to lean. He thinks he loves her. He’s positive he loves her. This is how love feels, he’s sure. Gordon’s avoided it his entire life without knowing exactly why, but this is a moment, he thinks. This is a moment he’ll remember.

Samantha bends back to avoid him.

“You should go soon,” she says. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. You’ll have to catch the bus. It’s getting late.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Samantha is once again looking out the window, wondering what would happen if someone saw them together. She would be tossed from the community, shunned and name-called. When Gordon stands up Samantha takes hold of his hand, presses it to her mouth, and kisses it.

“Seeing you wasn’t a mistake,” she says. Her phone’s out, flipping through bus times.

“But I know we’ll never see each other again.”

Gordon nods. It’s true.

When Gordon’s outside the trailer he walks to the edge of the rocky cliff and looks out at the ravine. There’s a long, deep path leading to the IDF encampment. Jeeps idle. Plumes of smoke rise from a village on the other side.

Noah Rinsky is the creator of @oldjewishmen and the author of the bestselling humor book, The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around. His personal Substack is Father’s Milk.