The passion with which he spoke reminded her of herself at sixteen, when she had finished reading Che Guevara’s biography and swore allegiance to the communist revolution, an oath she broke two weeks later when she started working at McDonald’s. “So let me guess,” she said skeptically. “Right then and there, you decided to delete your Facebook account, promised yourself you’d start living an authentic life, and since you were already in the mood, bought one of those self-help books.”

“Quite the opposite,” he replied. “It just made me realize how far I could stretch the lie.”

She didn’t understand. He turned his gaze to the wall. She couldn’t be sure, but assumed he was looking at the poster that hung there: “Join a gym. Not tomorrow. Today.”

“Are you living the life you wanted?” he asked.

“Yes,” she lied.

“Then there’s no point trying to explain.”

Once again they sat in front of each other in utter silence. She glanced at the clock on her phone while he fished a hundred-shekel bill out of his pocket and put it on the table.

“Please, don’t tell anyone we met,” he said, got up, and walked out of the café. She didn’t try to stop him. Instead, she went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror; her mascara had smudged under her left eye. She stuck out her tongue and laughed, then thought to herself that she had to start working out. Maybe volleyball.

She managed to make it to the final lecture, something about hi-tech corporations and regulation. She sat down in the back row and closed her eyes, recalling that when she was little, she used to close her eyes and feel as if the whole world disappeared along with her.

5.

IF IT WEREN’T for the photo, they probably never would have spoken again. Two hours later, when she logged into Facebook, she saw what he had posted. Michael stood there in a blue coat, smiling and pointing at a sign in German behind him. For a moment, she thought it was an old photo that had popped up in her feed, but then she noticed it had been posted twenty-seven minutes ago. The location—Germany—appeared below, along with a status that left little room for doubt: “If I spotted a spelling mistake, does that mean I’m finally a local?”

The facts didn’t add up even when she tried her hardest to make them, but eventually she decided to let it go.