When I returned to the storage room, I didn’t feel comfortable listening to Nurit’s thoughts. I even tried going without for two and a half hours, but I couldn’t take it. I had to know what she thought about the whole Benny thing. So I told myself I’d turn the radio on just for a moment. I heard her yelling to herself that it was a fucking catastrophe. That everyone was probably thinking the same thing. That we truly were an ugly couple. That she wished I wasn’t so indifferent. That she really loved me, but the sex wasn’t as great as she had first thought. And that she didn’t understand why I always had to pop into the shop whenever we sat together. That maybe if she knew what I was doing in there, she’d understand me a bit better. I tried comforting myself that it was okay, that everyone had bad thoughts sometimes. But when I went over the data, I saw there was a 23 percent spike in her negative thoughts about me. It wasn’t that there weren’t any good ones. They were even the majority, 70 percent, but I couldn’t focus on them considering all the bad stuff I heard. Among all her thoughts, one really stuck out—that if by the age of thirty-four I still hadn’t been in a serious relationship, maybe there really was something wrong with me. And out of sheer frustration, I started thinking not-too-great things about her too. That she really was kind of ugly, and not that smart, and that sometimes I got the feeling that all the amazing facts she recounted in her mind about countries were less than accurate. And that very day, I found myself directing all these nasty remarks at her, like the ones she used to hurl at me. For instance, that her jokes weren’t that funny, or that she looked older than her age. And these weren’t just petty, frivolous comments, but verbal jabs aimed directly at her sore spots. I didn’t even need the radio to know I was hurting her feelings. Eleven times she wondered why I was doing it to her, and the problem was I wasn’t too sure myself.

A few days later we met during our lunch break, but didn’t say a word to each other. We remained silent for seventeen minutes and forty-six seconds, until she asked, “What’s going on?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why are you being like this?”

I saw her body stiffen in pain in front of me. I’m not sure why, but it only pissed me off more.

“Because you’re lying to me,” I said. “You think there’s something wrong with me.”

“I never said anything of the sort.”

“But you thought it, didn’t you?”