ArtFlow

He noticed her because she was reading in a place nobody reads — standing in line at the post office, completely absorbed, moving forward automatically when the line moved without looking up. He was there to pick up a package he'd been ignoring for three weeks. He almost said something. He didn't. That night he thought about it more than made sense for a thirty-second encounter with a stranger. He wasn't sure what he would have said anyway. Nice book? He didn't even see the cover. He just remembered the way she held it — with both hands, like it might try to leave. He told himself he'd never see her again. Tel Aviv is big enough for that kind of promise.

Three weeks later she was sitting two tables away at a café on Dizengoff. Same posture, different book. He recognized her immediately — the way she held it gave her away. This time he had more time to look. She was younger than he'd thought, or maybe the same age and just less tired than most people. She had coffee she kept forgetting to drink. He sat with his laptop open and wrote nothing for an hour. When she left she walked past his table close enough that he could have said something. He didn't. He watched her go and felt the specific frustration of someone who keeps missing their own moments.

Carmel Market on a Friday was nobody's idea of a romantic setting — too loud, too crowded, too many people with agendas. He was buying tomatoes. She was arguing politely with a spice vendor about something he couldn't hear. She won the argument. He could tell by the way the vendor laughed and gave her extra. Their eyes met for exactly one second. No recognition on her face — or maybe recognition she decided not to act on. He looked away first. When he looked back she was gone into the crowd. He bought the tomatoes and went home and wrote about it, which was what he did with everything he didn't know how to handle.

The fourth time he decided that if there was a fifth time he would say something. This was the rule he made for himself walking home on Rothschild at midnight, slightly tired, slightly frustrated with himself for being the kind of person who needed rules to do normal things. He didn't know her name. He didn't know anything about her except that she read with both hands and won arguments with spice vendors and existed in the same city he did with suspicious frequency. It was probably nothing. Cities do that — fold people into each other's paths without meaning anything by it. But he made the rule anyway. Fifth time, he would say something. He just needed one more chance.