If Saud knew that his studio was adjacent to a Hamas safe house, he’d never let on. The bomb struck neatly, but failed to fuse correctly—or so Evita had later been told—penetrating one additional wall to explode in Saud’s kitchen as he was preparing a celebratory dinner to mark their sixth month of love.

Evita had been crushed. She had never been a political creature, yet when Israel claimed Saud to be a terrorist, and thus a legitimate target, any residual affinity for her homeland was lost. She cursed Israel. She cried for a month. Even her husband, dolt that he was, noticed something amiss. He did what he could, more than once pulling down a second tumbler from the wet bar and offering a shot of whiskey to “dull whatever ache that’s found you.” Evita supposed he knew, in a general way, the source of her unhappiness, but if there was anger or pity she could never discern it amid his despairing nature.

Then a new man came into her life. He called himself Rafi, and said he was from Netanya, but she thought he might be Syrian. Perhaps even Hezbollah. Evita didn’t care. She listened to his stories of other Arab boys, like Saud gentle young artists and scholars who had nothing to do with Israel’s war yet were imprisoned and shot and vaporized all the same. From there, the rest was a small step for a woman of advancing age who had married misery and lost love. What began as an off-the-cuff suggestion by Rafi spurred her mind to action. Without asking who she might be aiding, Evita told him she wanted to hurt Israel. She told him there was nothing she wouldn’t do.

This Rafi had put to the test.

Evita was still at the open closet when her husband came into the room. She pulled her most dreary house frock from the rack and held it in front of the mirror.

“I thought you were going out to lunch,” she said.

“Yes, soon. The boys will wait,” he said, using his preferred term for the revolting band of sixty-something alcoholics with whom he spent most of his day. “What about you? Are you going out?”

“I may go to the market later,” she said.

“Get me some cigarettes, would you?”

He stripped off a filthy T-shirt and threw it onto a pile of the same.

Evita watched him disappear into the bathroom. She hoped he’d brush his teeth. Around the corner she heard him pissing, then a pause, and the toothbrush starting working. When he seemed done, rinsing and spitting noisily, Evita did something that surprised her. Pretending not to notice his reappearance, and with the dreary house frock in hand, she let her nightdress drop to the floor. She put her shoulders back and arched gently with a pile of worn cotton around her ankles. Sensing his pause, she turned to look.