Page 62 of Analysing Her Assets

She also went over her sister’s contract.

Tally’s warehouse deal was fair, even a bargain, but it wasn’t cheap. It required a substantial loan. The monthly installment on the loan would send her father into serious overdraft territory unless Tamar paid the difference. Her current salary wasn’t enough, she would have to have a significant raise, i.e., become chief analyst. She could say no. But then she would be denying her sister a huge opportunity, and she couldn’t live with herself if she did that. She would just have to learn to enjoy owning her own brand. If only she could ignore the horrific statistics on fashion designers going bankrupt.

Gideon blocked the narrow one-way street with his Toyota. He got out, looking smart in blue jeans that hugged his thighs, and a striped golf shirt.

“Hey,” she said. He seemed serious, preoccupied even. “How was your weekend?”

“Hi, give me,” he said and loaded her luggage. “It was horrific. How was yours?”

“Same,” she answered and got a small smile.

He strapped Giddy and Shemesh in, each at their respective windows.They were silent while navigating out of Tel Aviv. She didn’t make conversation, wondering at his somber mood.

“The dogs’ boarding is in a dairy farm.” Gideon broke the silence after twenty whole minutes. “We’ll drop the dogs off, eat there, and then go on to Eilat. The thing is, there’s one more stop I need to make, in Beer Sheva.”

“Why are we stopping in Beer Sheva?” His hands gripped the steering tightly.

“It’s nothing. I just want to look at a house,” he said. It was not ‘nothing.’ She wished he’d said more, that he’d confide in her. But she didn’t press him.

Both dogslolled their tongues excitedly when Gideon rolled down the windows and they got to stick their heads outside andfeel the wind in their faces. At first, Tamar was anxious, her parents had always warned her about stickingher hands outside of a driving car. Apparently, this rule of caution excluded dogs.

“Can I plug in my phone for music?”

Gideon nodded.

Mary J. Blige crunked it up with her family affair, and then Benzin shouted that ‘to be alone is to be free’.

“Shemesh likes my music,” Tamar said. Shemesh barked excitedly. It got her another smile from Gideon. The mood in the car lifted considerably. She wondered what made him so tense but didn’t ask. She also didn’t ask where he was all weekend. He seemed so distant. Wrapped up in whatever was bothering him.

They arrived at Beer Sheva and he maneuvered to a small nondescript street in an upper middle-class neighborhood with small well-tended one-story houses. He parked the car and stayed seated, clearly waiting for something. Teenagers swarmed the suburban street. Groups of chattering girls made the most of the dull uniformed school’s T-shirt by wearing colorful jeans and bright sneakers. Boys were punching each other, taking small bursts of runs.

“Right, here they are,” he mumbled, and his back straightened. She followed his stare. Two boys, aged around fifteen and twelve. Theelder was a handsome boy. She could already tell that girls would flock around him. He smiled good-naturedly as he held open the front yard’s small gate for his brother. Tamar gasped. Gideon glanced at her, his mouth twisted in a bitter version of the boy’s smile.

“Is he your cousin or something? Are you related?” she asked. “Why are we sitting outside?”

“Fuck,” Gideon said, the profanity on his lips so rare that she gasped again. “Let’s go. Are you hungry? I’m hungry.” He reversed violently down the street, Giddy and Shemesh barking in concert, and then U turned, heading to the highway.

The dogs' boarding slash dairy farm was a thirty-minute drive south of Beer Sheva. Gray-green low bushes dotted the ochre plains on both sides of the road where signs warned of crossing camels. After five minutes of silent driving, Gideon inhaled and exhaled.

“I apologize for my outburst. Let’s eat and talk.”

He veered to the left onto a narrow, poked asphalt trail. Two small caravans were parked next to an open structure housing the goats and a semi-closed building with nirosta containers. Gideon’s car was the only one in the small parking lot. The small farm was on a hill, where the winds were December cold and relentless. The vast stretches of the Negev, rolling hills and open skies, were seemingly at their feet. They leashed their dogs and stepped out. Tamar zipped up her coat and let the crisp wind ruffle her hair.

The owner, Anat, was in her late fifties, an open-faced woman, tanned and fit. Her blue eyes twinkled as she looked at Giddy and Shemesh, who immediately took to her. She patted and talked to them, explaining the ways of the board to dogs and humans together. There was an open stretch behind the kennels dotted with various ladders, slides, empty barrels—a large dogs’ playground. Giddy and Shemesh burst out to the vast playground barking, sniffing, and getting acquainted with the other boarders.

The dining area was nearly empty but for three young women wearing sportswear. Listening to their chatter, Tamar gleaned that they arrived here running from the nearby kibbutz. She was hungry but looking at the firm buttocks and slender backs of the women, she ordered a mixed cherry tomato salad with a small bowl of raw tahini on the side.

“Excellent choice,” Anat said. “I mixed the tahini with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. You’ll like it. Here, rye bread on the house, eat, you look pale.”

The women eyed Gideon as he came from the bathrooms, running a wet hand through his hair. One of them, a striking brunette, smiled at him, but he ignored her. Tamar reminded herself how much he liked her curves when they were making love in front of his mirror. She smeared a hefty layer of butter on her bread and ate. Gideon nibbled at hischeese plattermechanically.

“Gideon... you said we’d talk?” she probed. His silence unnerved her.

“Knafeh?” suggested Anat. “We make it here, with our own goat cheese. No rose water.” Tamar was dying for it, but she snuck a look at the three joggers who were stretching, getting ready for their five kilometers jog back. Gideon stared right at them, but he didn’t smile at the brunette. He looked blank.

“Yes, thank you,” Tamar finally told Anat, who looked knowingly between Gideon, Tamar, and the women. Tamar blushed. She shouldn’t care what Anat thought.

“We’re just sharing a ride to the company’s offsite. We’re not a couple,” she said. Anat smiled and nodded. Gideon started, and his back straightened.

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