“I’m sure. Would you like us to escort you back to your treatment, Mrs. Zamir?” The receptionist smiles, and she knows they’re onto her. They know.

“Yes,” she replies submissively. “Perhaps if you could just tell me first where the bathroom is?”

“Of course. Here on your left.”

Ruthie nods in gratitude and takes a left, then backtracks toward Amichai’s door, opening it. The receptionist yells out something, but she ignores him. She enters in big strides, sits down on a soft white armchair, and fixes her gaze to the floor.

“Close the door, it’s fine.” She hears Amichai’s decisive tone, followed by the sound of the door shutting. She looks up, meeting his eyes.

4.

HE LOOKS ALMOST OLD, and yet barely changed. Most of his hair has turned white, but his skin is still smooth and taut. She’s never seen him in a suit before, but his posture is as steady and calm as she remembers. He looks at her and says into the receiver, “I have to take care of something here, I’ll get back to you in a sec.” He hangs up and stares at her.

“Been a while,” he says.

“Indeed.”

He asks how she’s been doing. She says well.

“Tea or coffee?”

“Nothing,” she replies.

“How was the treatment?”

“What can I say, all this technology of yours is very impressive,” she says and wavers, biting her bottom lip.

“Everything all right, Ruthie?”

“I’m tired, Amichai,” she sighs. “I can’t.”

“You can’t what?” he asks, leaning forward and extending his hand to the middle of the table. She recalls that strange ability of his, to express empathy and aloofness at the same time.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she says, turning her focus to a bookcase. Neat and tidy. She thinks about the house they shared in Haifa, in the early days of their relationship. How they slept on the floor for nearly a month because the mover disappeared along with their boxes.

“Ruthie, I’m not sure I’m following.”

She thinks about the house they moved into afterward in Ramat Gan. And their trip to Jordan. Thinks about their son, who’s still stuck in her head, under the waterfall. She tries to stop all these memories from resurfacing, and can’t.

“Get it out of me,” she says.

“Get what out?”

“The memory you planted inside me. Erase it.”

“What memory, Ruthie? From the treatment just now?”

She nods.

“What’s in it?”

“What difference does it make? I don’t want anything in my head. Don’t want anyone poking around there.”

She sees he doesn’t know what to make of her. That he’s sure she’s gone mad. She knows him too well. “It’s not that simple, Ruthie. We can’t just erase it, the technology still—”

“But I don’t want it,” she shouts. “Enough, I don’t want it.”