Free The Last Rain by Edeet Ravel

you come to our kibbutz?” he’d offered and was aware of the blood flowing in his reproductive veins.
    “I want a kibbutz of Hebrew speakers,” she’d said, mentioning a few near the Syrian border.
    “Are you busy tonight?”
    “Yes, but maybe another time.”
    But Joy didn’t vanish forever; here she was now in Haifa. And she remembered him!
    “Do you have a place to stay here in Haifa?” His thoughts worked quickly with the acumen of a wolf.
    “Yes, the kibbutz I’m on has a house on the Carmel.”
    “Are you free tonight?” he asked, remembering the last time he was rejected.
    “Yes.” She smiled and he carried her heavy knapsack. He was very happy. He seated her in a café and asked her to wait ten minutes so he could put on clean clothes and tell Rubin about his change of plans. He hurried up the stairs. Rubin lay on his bed in underwear and undershirt and read the Palestine Post while waving away the flies with his other hand.
    “Rubin, I have a fabulous girl waiting for me. If you want to come with us, hurry.”
    He didn’t even raise his eyes from the newspaper. “Ha ha,” he said.
    “Okay,” Nat said, trying to hide his relief. “You don’t have to come.”
    He hurried to shower. He couldn’t find the leg of his pants as he raised them from the dusty floor. Rubin started to notice that something was up. He lay down the newspaper and leaned on his elbow in amusement. He saw that Nat wasn’t joking, grabbed his clothes, applied Brylcreem to his wild curls and ran after Nat, buttoning his pants and shouting, “Wait for me, wait a minute!”
    Nat introduced Rubin to Joy. Rubin gave an amazed look, as if to say, Where the hell did you manage to find such a charming creature? Her face was like pale petals surrounded by black hair, her exposed legs were lovely, her full body rustled under her thin summer dress, radiating naughty adventures.
    They walked along the neat streets lined with trees and decided on supper at the Balfour Cellar. Leo the barman played favourite oldies like Frankie Laine crooning “Jezebel.”
    They questioned her. She had come to Israel because her parents were Quakers and she was interested in peace, she told them.
    “You want to help the Arabs, no?” Rubin was agitated, chewing his liver with an open mouth and unabashed enthusiasm.
    A ghostly shadow passed for a moment in her eyes.
    “We don’t make any distinctions in providing our services,” she said. “The kibbutzim interest me as a way of life, as a way of achieving harmony on the basis of mutual help.” She cut her portion with deliberation and delicacy, like a girl from a good home.
    As she munched on her french fries in the murky basement, she began to shower them with questions. What sort of work do they do? What are their roles apart from their regular workday? How many are they? How far are they from the border?
    Nat tried to stifle his suspicious nature. His answers were measured, but Rubin, who had already managed to drink a few glasses of whiskey, and who was also drunk on Joy’s stunning beauty, spoke freely. In any case, he always jokingly claimed that any information extracted from them was completely useless to anyone. Maybe he was right. From the minute that she learned he was in charge of “security”, that he was a former Air Force Pilot who’d received a Silver Star, her eyes and ears were tuned only to him.
    Rubin and Nat worriedly split the bill. When they emerged from the basement bar to the street, which glowed with neon lights, a few army officers greeted her. She left her companions for a few seconds, and had a quiet exchange with her military acquaintances. Rubin and Nat, themselves former soldiers, mused again on the attractions that beautiful girls exert on high-ranking military men.
    She sat between them at a movie, laughed out loud, and licked a popsicle with her scarlet tongue. She thanked them from the bottom of her heart and refused to let them accompany her home.
    The two