As for Rafi, a year earlier he and his wife had decided to open their relationship of twenty-three years. They had a good and loving marriage, the heat between them had remained, and still they had arrived at the decision together, with the desire for growth and new discoveries. At first Rafi was unsure if he would ever want another woman. He thought he might be like his father, for whom his mother had remained the main force in his life, and to whom his father had remained entirely dedicated. And then, while at a residency abroad, Rafi slept with a much younger dancer from Korea, with whom he thought he was in love, until he met another from Thailand who blew his mind. When he returned home, the Thai woman broke things off from Bangkok, and after some weeks of pain, there was a very young French woman, then two or three Israelis. Meanwhile, during that time, his wife went to the beach with their children, and while they played in the waves with the dog, she met and fell in love with a man fifteen years younger than her.

Rafi and his wife had not made any rules before they started. To make rules about freedom had seemed antithetical; either that, or they had been too impatient to hold the dreary, diplomatic conference that would have been necessary to establish such rules. But very quickly it had become clear that the absence of rules led to enormous pain, and though love can be mutual and shared, pain only ever happens in a place of radical aloneness.

During the tumultuous period that followed, both Rafi and his wife, Dana, had often called her to talk. She had heard the story from both sides, or the two different stories, which as the weeks passed came to resemble one another less. She’d had to be careful not to share with Rafi what Dana confided in her, and not to share with Dana what Rafi confided in her, which became more difficult and exhausting as their stories diverged, and the pain and anger on both sides became greater.