“Do you have any other ideas for a location?” Mark asked anxiously.
Dafna turned to Gadi, and he thought for a minute and said, “I know where.” He led them back out the gate, and then turned left, following the wall of the old city eastward. Very soon, they were in a secluded area, poorly lit and covered with thick bushes. He stopped in a deserted corner, more or less concealed by several olive trees. “Will you have enough light here?”
She surveyed the spot and nodded. “It’s perfect. I’ll just get my stuff ready, and then we can start.”
She pulled a camera and a large flash out of her big canvas bag, and began to make adjustments. Mark understood that the moment had come for him to get his stuff ready. Gingerly, he stepped out of his sandals. He looked at Gadi, who was circling the olive trees, and then at Dafna, fiddling with the settings. Fluidly, he unbuttoned his shirt and chucked it on the ground. He slipped out of his pants with scarcely a thought. All that remained was the final frontier of his underwear. It was then that from out of nowhere, a rush of panic surged through him, as if he were waking from a dream, disoriented and unsure what was what. With a final, optimistic gesture, he put his hand to the waistband, but his fingers collapsed; he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t sure exactly why; just a few moments earlier he had been eagerly preparing to expose himself, to the wall, to Gadi and Dafna, to passing strangers, to the world. “Um, sorry but I don’t think …”
His workmates glanced up at him, perplexed. “I mean, I can’t do it. I thought I could, but… well I guess I’m not the modeling type.” Dafna frowned, the frown of the frustrated artist. Gadi bit his lip smugly.
“It’s ok. I’ll do it.” Gadi spoke quietly, but in a way that communicated that he, as opposed to Mark, was a serious person. He then proceeded to undress: sandals, shirt, pants, and indeed, underwear, all coming off carelessly. He walked towards the rugged wall, as natural as a man about to step into his bathroom shower. Mark looked over at Dafna, to check the impression this was making on her. But she was already working; trying different angles, playing with the lens, figuring out where to position herself. “Just tell me how you want me,” Gadi called out cheerfully.
Unwanted sexual connotations came into Mark’s head, and as he watched them, he realized that it was probably worse than watching them have sex. Dafna was giving directions, telling him how to stand, what to do with his arms and hands, where to turn his head. She posed him facing the wall as if trying to climb it, crawling beside it as if trying to break his way in, sitting on the ground gazing up at it. And he was working with her, doing what she told him, offering weird suggestions of his own.
Mark watched them for a while before he started back. Cold breezes blew through his shirt, cooling the sweat on his neck. He walked quickly, striding down Jaffa road with his head down and his hands jammed stiffly in his pockets. He walked that like that all the way back to Mount Scopus, stopping only once, to peer through the store front of an old photography studio. The primitive wooden cameras were covered in dust, and the children’s smirks and bride’s coy glances seemed to him as doomed as dead butterflies, pinned into a collector’s album.
A car sped by leaving a trail of red light and noise in its wake. As he drew back to stare after it, he thought he saw a man trapped in the window’s dark glass, gazing up at the flickering stars. He turned away for only an instant, but when he looked again, the image was gone.
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