The Impostor

I am a lesson in paradox. I feel one thing, then I feel the next. They don't always have to do with each other. I stand in my shabby clothes on the balcony in my fancy apartment. I stick out like a sore thumb, as I look down on the Prada mothers walking their sporty strollers. They see me in the elevator, with my flip-flops, wearing the Bedouin sharwal I bought in Sinai, and wonder how a twenty-six year old can afford to live here. Well I can't. Not really, that is. I can barely afford my beers.
Yaffa is renting me this place. She can afford it. We came here together one Friday, and she stepped out on the balcony, sniffing the air. "There's a lovely ocean breeze," said the realtor, and Yaffa smiled. Snapped her fingers, and made it happen. Out of thin air, and I am no longer living with two roommates in Florentin.
Yaffa was a client of mine. Or her dog Freddie is. Was. Never mind. Anyway. First thing I remember about her is her hideous sunglasses. She came into the shop one day, July, I think, said she was late for a meeting and could she leave Freddie with me even though his cut is not till one o'clock. Freddie is a dear, looked up at me with his droopy pink eyes, I said yes. Sunglasses moved up and down, she held out the leash, and smiled. I couldn't see a thing behind those glasses of hers, but she had a great smile, like a waterfall of diamonds. "What's his name?" I asked, and she said "Freddie."
"As in Mercury?" I said, kneeling down to scratch his ears, but she was already gone. A slight smell of perfume was in the air, and I remember actually sniffing the dog, and saying: "all right, doggie, sunglass lady smells nice but you sure don't. Let's give you a bath." Who knew, right?
She came back that day but I was already gone: Freddie had been my last client and I left him with Dror at the shop. I remember him watching me (Freddie, not Dror) as I untied my bicycle and waved goodbye. He's a really cute thing, that little monster. A hell of stinkbomb, but cute.
I think I must have worked at that shop for about three months before she first came by, but I had never seen her before. Another two months passed until she came again - "Freddie's jumped in the lake at the park. See if he's got any other beasts riding his fur." When I looked at her questioningly - "parasites. See if he has parasites." And then she became a regular. I've never had a client like this woman. A week after the cut she came back: "the shampoo you used was fascinating. Let me have a box of them." (I swear, that's what she said: fascinating. Who says 'fascinating' about a smell?). She started coming every week: a new collar ("this old one is rancid"), some light food ("Freddie's been constipated."), and finally, "what's your name?"
This took me by surprise. All I knew was her last name. Someone at the store had said: "did you order the food for Mrs. Rom?" and that's all I knew. She would come, say something about Freddie, and disappear, sunglasses bobbing, perfume flailing behind her, trying to catch up with her as she left.
"I'm Ella." I looked away, suddenly very intent on getting Freddie up to the cutting table. She didn't usually stay, never mind go into the cutting room. "Ella." She repeated. "I'm Yaffa. Yaffa Rom." Perhaps this should have meant something to me, as she paused. When I didn't say anything else, frowning, as I stroked Freddie's neck with one hand and grabbed the shaver with the other, she said: "you do a great job with Freddie. Perhaps you'd like to help me with Annette."
"Sure, bring her in." Freddie was impatient and wriggling around on the table. Seeing his mistress in plain view reminded him he had better things to do.
"I can't. Can't get her in the cage. Persians are stubborn. I thought about sedating her, but I can't bring myself to do it."
"I don't do cats." This was not easy; it was a small room, and I wasn't used to people standing in there with me.
"Oh." I heard her sigh softly. "That's too bad."
I looked at her. She had taken off her sunglasses, and her eyes were a surprise. They were a light green, almost lime-colored: unnatural. But they had soft edges and looked straight at me, like open arms reaching out.
"Well, I'd better leave you to it," she said, pulling her shoulder bag on her white linen jacket. As she turned to leave, I noticed a layer of short gray dog hairs dusting her back: she had leaned against the other table. "Wait," I said, anchoring Freddie to the bar, wiping my hands on my jeans. I grabbed a sticky roller from the shelf, and tried to unwrap the cellophane covering. She turned to me, half smiling those diamonds of hers, waiting. I finally tore the damn thing open with my teeth and held it out to her. Without saying a word, she turned her back at me. I hesitantly reached out, made a half-hearted attempt and rolled the thing up and down her back once or twice.
"Have you got it all? Serves me right for wearing white to a pet shop." I suddenly realized that she always wore white: I had never seen her in anything else.
"I think so," I said.
"Thank you," she said, straightening up, "you're very kind. I'll be back for Freddie in an hour."
"Or two or three," I muttered, under my breath, as her heels clicked out the door.
I gave Freddie the works that day: shampoo, cut, clipped his nails, and even got Dror to clean out his butt glands. I was disappointed when an hour later a dirty young man came in to claim him. He must have been a driver or a servant of some sorts: he couldn't be her son, with the dirty hair and the cigarette tucked in his ear. Not the diamond smile lady with the white clothes and the perfume. Yaffa. Did she even have a son? She was about my mother's age, I suppose, in her fifties or so. I wondered what she had looked like when she was younger. Those eyes, and that diamond smile. On a younger face.
For the next few weeks, the dirty boy would come around, sometimes with Freddie, sometimes alone. He would always have a note with him, and consult with it, before asking for a new dog bowl, "one of those chew toys with the tassel", or "some of those juicy treats". After several such visits, I could no longer take it. The bored look on his face as he read out her requests, as if it didn't matter whether Freddie ate dead mice or chopped liver. "I need a 15 kilo bag of Pro Diet," he said, looking miserably at his bicycle. "Would you like this delivered?" I asked, innocently, and it was like a wiper on a windshield: his dirty face immediately brightened, and he blurted out the address.
I took Dror's Subaru, with the embarrassing dice hanging from the mirror and the peeling "Doggy Style" logos on the doors. Her neighborhood was not too far from the shop: a line of tasteful white buildings, sniffing down on the traffic, reaching up to the sky. I parked between a Lexus and a BMW, and dragged the sack of dog food out of the trunk. Checking the address against my note, I crossed the street.
"Rom" said the label by her apartment number. I pressed the button and was startled as it immediately buzzed, as if someone had been waiting by the intercom. I opened the door and walked into the biggest lobby I had ever seen. "When in Rom," I smiled to myself, the dog sack echoing behind me as I walked, praying that nobody was watching me. You never know, with these high class buildings.
The floor in the hall was carpeted, like in a hotel. I pressed her doorbell but couldn't hear anything. Then I realized that my heart was pounding so hard, I wouldn't have heard anything anyway. The door clicked open, as if on its own doing. I walked in slowly, into a white tiled living room with immense windows, looking out on all of Ayalon. The jumble of cars in the terrible traffic was a silent display, as if pretend.
"Ella," she said, and the first of many tiny chills crawled up my back. "How nice of you." I turned, and saw Yaffa Rom standing there, eyes, lips. Her hair was wet and combed back: I was embarrassed. She was wearing a loose-fitting caftan of white, and I had come into her home, this rich woman's home.
"I've brought you the food," I said unnecessarily, gesturing. I started searching the room with my eyes: the crumpled sack of dog food was so unseemly in this museum of white and glass.
"Sit down," she commanded, and turned away, leaving me no choice. "Would you like a drink?" she called, her voice hanging in the air, then falling over me like a velvet drape.
"OK," I said, out of habit more than anything. "Water would be fine."
"I certainly wasn't going to offer you wine at this time of day," she smiled, coming back into the room with a pitcher of ice water and two glasses on a tray.
She sat by me on the white couch, and I wondered if my jeans were clean. I smelled like dog hair, dog shampoo, dog pee: she smelled like sprinklers on a chopped lawn. Her eyes were on me, and I looked away, staring into my ice cubes as if they could jump up and freeze us both.
"So how long have you been working at the store?" she asked, stretching her ankles out idly.
"Oh, a few months." I wondered how long I had to stay.
"And you only wash the dogs? Do you learn how to do that sort of thing, or did you learn it on the job?"
"I'm actually a student of Psychology at the University. I only do this for the money. My sister used to do it too, she taught me."
"A student of psychology? Do you believe in that? Listening to people for money?"
I looked at her.
"It's not about-"
"I know. I'm teasing. Human nature interests you. That's lovely. I have some wonderful books for you to read. You do read psychology books, don't you?"
"I suppose. I'm only first year. It's a lot of theory."
"So what would a psychologist say?" she suddenly sounded like someone else. She was serious. Her diamonds were hidden away: her lime eyes intent, focused on mine.
"About what?"
"About you coming here, when you don't do deliveries, and you don't do cats."
"I was curious."
"Curious about what? Annette?"
"Just curious." She hadn't moved, but I could have sworn that she was suddenly sitting much closer to me.
"And are you still curious?" she asked, her voice softer.

I stand on the balcony, feeling one way, then the next. They don't always have to do with each other, the feelings that come and go. The ocean breeze strokes my face, gently as a lover, then disappears, scorned. Yaffa says that I'm just young and full of hormones, and slaps me playfully on the behind, telling me not to change. And why would I. She's taught me so much.

After that fateful day, when courage came to visit and made me step outside my soul, I became Yaffa Rom's lover. I don't remember much of that first time, except that there were many to follow right that week. And since. Our lovemaking is intense, urgent; surprisingly energetic for a woman of fifty-six ("fifty four, my darling, always fifty-four"). Her lime eyes wash over me like sea mist, refreshing and damp. Her diamond smile is addictive: I am almost sorry to see it go. "Yaffa Rom," I whisper to her as I fuck her, knowing that elsewhere this name opens doors, draws attention, but here it's just two words to breathe hotly into her ear.

"Are you ready?" I snap out of my reverie. I am still on the balcony, my coffee's grown cold. Dror pads up behind me, kisses me on the back of the neck. I feel his unshaved chin bristling against my skin. "We need to go. Uzi's waiting with the movie; they won't start till we come."
And as we leave: "I don't like this floor. D'you think the old bitch would give you parquet if you asked nicely enough?"