So I called her. I had the feeling she’d understand, but it didn’t really matter to me anymore if she didn’t. I wanted to talk to her. She picked up after the third ring, with a fresh morning voice. I pictured her waking up in her house up north, on a bed covered in snow. I told her everything. About the grilled cheese and the trial; Sakal and Korczak; the beating and the weapon. She asked me to slow down, to explain. She lingered on the details, led me inside my own words, and I gave into the softness of her speech.

She listened until I had nothing more to say, and then reassured me almost without words. With gentle breaths. She said she’d look into it, that she knew people who would do something about it, that they wouldn’t let this kind of behavior just blow over.

“If I have to, I’ll even call Carmela Menashe, the military reporter,” she announced. “The fact that Yanai’s an idiot doesn’t mean he deserves this.” She made it clear it might take her some time, but she promised to do whatever she could.

“Can you hang in there?” she asked, and I almost said that for her I could do anything.

“Yes,” I replied.

“You’re brave, that’s good.”

And despite all the horrible things that had happened the previous night, I found myself boarding the bus with a smile that couldn’t be wiped off. I took a seat in one of the back rows and put in my earphones without listening to anything. I imagined her voice while falling in and out of sleep. About an hour before we reached Tel Aviv, Sakal appeared at the front of the bus and sat down beside me.

“That old woman won’t stop talking.”

I felt my blood coursing faster and faster through my veins. I tried to appear indifferent.

“What are you listening to?” he asked while shoving his bag beneath his seat. I pretended I didn’t hear the question, and after a few moments he gave up. Sakal tilted his head to the right, looking at the old woman sitting in the opposite row. She was rummaging through two overflowing grocery bags, mumbling that she couldn’t find her glasses. He bent forward, lit up the floor with his cell phone screen, and reemerged from the abyss with a pair of black-rimmed glasses, handing them to the woman.

“Bless you,” she said. Sakal smiled and went back to staring at the seat in front of him.

“I’m not the giant asshole you think I am,” he said.

“What?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“I know what you think of me. I used to be like you once.”

“Like me?”

“A kid. I didn’t think these kinds of things happened.”

I didn’t respond. We made eye contact for a brief second.