The Others by Sarah Blau (e reader for manga txt) 📕

garish sub-tone. With those giant, bee-stung lips she could afford that blood-red. I, with my thin lips, stay a mile away from dark shades. They make my mouth look like a shrivelled and shrunken raisin.

“He’s really cute, that Micha, isn’t he?” she asks and flashes me a smile, which I do not return.

That liar showed his cards that very evening.

He stepped out of my bedroom, carrying his bandaged hand like a wounded soldier. On his way to the living room, he paused in the hallway and stared straight ahead. My heart sank. I knew he wouldn’t miss the painting, the one I’d foolishly forgotten to take down before he arrived.

“The Witch of Endor,” he read the cursive script at the bottom, and his face turned sombre. I doubt any man would be happy with this painting. The Witch of Endor is depicted there at the peak of her power, mid-air, her wavy hair flowing in the wind, with an almost obscenely giant broomstick sticking out from between her legs.

“Looks a lot like the painting hanging at Dina’s house,” he said, eyes still fixed on the broomstick. “Same painter?”

“Not at all. And they look nothing alike,” I replied. We both knew I was lying.

“And doesn’t the woman in the painting look a little like your friend Ronit?”

“Ronit? She might have looked like that years ago.” Any mention of Ronit’s name ruffled my feathers, not to mention that I didn’t appreciate the comparison. Not one bit.

“I’m talking about how she looked two days ago, when I saw her.”

“But you told me you didn’t see her. You lied to me!”

He just stood there, wearing his smug grin. But he didn’t surprise me, not really. Deep down I knew he met with her, knew it from the way he talked about her, the way his eyes shone.

Like Lilith before her, Ronit always left a trail.

And now she’s sitting in front of me, languidly flipping through a magazine, her smile stretching wider with every page she turns. Her teeth are perfectly aligned, giant pearls, as if they were lasered and polished an hour ago. Obviously, her image is splayed across the magazine’s glossy cover under the declaratory headline, “I was Dina Kaminer’s best friend.”

The deranged photographer decided to photograph her holding a baby doll, and the equally deranged editor chose that photo for the cover. She was sitting on a chair, dressed as a Madonna, her face beaming at the doll in her hands. At least they didn’t have to glue it there. As if shedding her signature seductiveness, her expression is soft and wistful, her eyes radiating fake maternal tenderness. She reminds me of someone, but I just can’t remember who.

If I was wondering what kind of relationship she and Dina maintained after college, the article provided me with the delightful answer: a tenuous one, if any. The journalist’s sycophantic questions were met with anecdotes and vignettes from our time on campus, including one about our graduation party, not including that particular fancy dress party, and the obvious clichés about “kindred spirits” and “sisters in the struggle.” She looks at her own photos transfixed, holding the magazine closer and further away from her beguiled gaze, as if she would chew and swallow it whole if she could.

I feel like telling her that not once in her entire lagging career as an actress had she been awarded a cover, and that she had to wait for her “best friend” to be murdered to finally get one. But I remind myself that lurking behind the dark red lipstick are those giant teeth of hers, just waiting to bite.

Like Dina, Ronit has barely changed, providing further proof that women without children get to keep their youthful appearance. Stop hunting for evidence, it’s a fact and that’s that. The black, unruly shock of hair is still here, in all its former glory, towering above the same thick eyebrows and the deep dimple in her chin. She looks smoother somehow, as if her body has been vigorously plucked. But other than that, it’s the same body, slender and toned, with those same liberated and sensual movements that make whoever’s sitting in front of her cringingly aware of their own body.

I remember I used to think her extravagant sexuality compensated for some deficiency, maybe even arctic frigidness, but unfortunately, I was proved wrong. Naama was the one who taught me there were no surprises in that area, “Our mind-numbing lecturer won’t suddenly turn out to be an animal in bed, and you won’t catch Meira the librarian at a swingers party. What you see is what you get, and someone who oozes sexuality oozes it for a reason.” Noticing my disappointed expression, she added, “It’s okay, I’m not a big fan of Ronit’s theatrics either. She’ll probably grow out of it in a few years.”

It’s a shame I can’t tell her that despite the considerable passing of time, she hasn’t grown out of it. As proof, she’s now sticking her finger in the little bowl of honey and licking it, her tongue the same vermilion as her lips.

She leans closer to me, and I pick up a funny, sweet smell. Gone is the subtle lemony scent of her Blue Lagoon, the perfume she wouldn’t let any of us buy because it was “hers.” Whatever the brand, her new smell is exotic aggression. And maybe every age exudes its own special smell, and what we thought was the scent of her Blue Lagoon, was just the intoxicating fragrance of youth itself.

A few years ago, one of the Israeli late-night TV shows hosted Eighties’ icon Samantha Fox. She looked fabulous (childless, what else), and the thrilled host told his next guest, who had been blindfolded, that he had to guess the person sitting beside him. I remember the guest being led to the couch where Samantha was sitting. He took one sniff of her neck and promptly announced: “Well, young she ain’t.”

The fortyish-year-old Samantha gave her