He glanced at me. “Do you mean it?”

“Mean what? Spending the rest of my life with you or killing you if you hurt me? I mean both.”

At last his smile was large and genuine. “Now that sounds like the Cynthia I know and love.” He broke into musical laughter. “Now I feel so good.”

I continued to caress his thigh. “These stupid people … it wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

He shrugged. Light had returned to his eyes. “So we learn to live with ignorance.”

“Exactly. And let’s be happy it’s now and not fifty years ago. What the heck? Every relationship has sticky points.”

“Even relationships with God. Like Avraham Avinu and his ten trials.”

“Sorry,” I told him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Abraham. His faith in God was tested by ten trials.”

“Oh, like Hercules?”

“Who is Hercules?”

“He also had trials.”

“He was Jewish?”

“Greek. Anyway, go on. What happened to Abraham?”

“Avraham lived when Nimrod was the leader of the civilized world. A sound ruler, but a cruel man. He did avodah zarah … idol worship. Avraham believed only in Hashem. Nimrod put Avraham through ten trials to test his faith in God. I forget all of them, only each one grew in severity, and the last was trial by fire. Nimrod threw Avraham into a furnace.”

He stopped talking.

I said, “And I take it that God saved him.”

“Naturally. Otherwise there is no Bible.”

I waited for him to continue. But he didn’t. I giggled. “Is this a shaggy-dog story?”

“A what?”

“A shaggy-dog story—a story without a punch line.”

“No, not at all. I’m saying that if a relationship is strong, it survives anything. I think that is you and me.”

My hand was still resting on his knee. “I think so, too.” I moved my fingers to between his legs.

He gasped. “If you do that, I will crash the car. Already your father looks for a reason to shoot me. This will be his excuse.”

“Stop that! He loves you!”

“Nonsense! I have sex with his daughter: He wants to shoot me.”

I smiled, noticing he made no effort to pull my hand away. By now, he was hard: I loved making him hard. Then I retracted my hand and sat back up in my seat.

He groaned. “You are so cruel.”

“Koby, do you have any idea where we are?”

“No, it is all unfamiliar. But if we find a motel, I think we should stop.”

I smiled.“I think we took a wrong turn.”

“In a metaphysical sense, there is no wrong turn.”

“Yeah, but we’re in a physical world, so how about we retrace our steps.”

He smiled, but then his eyes narrowed. I was attuned enough to his nuances to recognize residual resentment. He was still smoldering. He said, “You know, in Israel, there aren’t these racial problems.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not in Israel, we’re in America. Welcome to the melting pot!”