‘
Morning!’ Josh put his happy head around the door of their bedroom at some indecent double-figured hour. ’So. Jerusalem! When are we off?’
Dov and Jackie groaned as one and pulled their pillows over their heads; Josh crossed the room and pulled the curtains wide open, revealing another dazzling Tel Aviv day.
‘Come on - I’m already packed. I’ve looked up the train timetables - you two schleppers could be ready in, what, an hour? Two, I s’pose, if Dov has to do his hair.’ Josh chuckled without malice, for once. ‘Journey takes about an hour and a half.’ He read from his phone; ‘‘The comfortable and leisurely train journey through the Judean Hills is a great introduction to Israel and an experience in itself as you're riding the historic Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway of 1892.’ There you go, mum - you can write about it! Make a change from the best bars to score coke in, eh? Or threesomes!’ He leered with a loathsome joviality. ‘OK, l’hitraot!’ He left, slamming the door in a horribly hearty way for the first time, rather than the usual hateful one.
‘It’s like Kevin the Teenager,’ Jackie moaned, turning her back to Dov and sticking her bum into his groin.
‘Is that the mass murderer kid in that book?’
‘No, it’s not, Einstein. You really don’t read, do you?’
‘Why bother? A picture paints a thousand words. Especially mine.’ He pushed back at her. There was nothing like a fuck to see off a hangover.
‘Kevin the Teenager was this awful kid on this TV sketch show, very like Josh, just miserable all the time, hated his parents. Then he finally had sex - and the next day he came down to breakfast like, I don’t know, Ronald McDonald.’
‘What - all fucked up like a freaky clown?’ His erection took a moment to think about it, and didn’t like what it came up, or rather down, with.
‘No! Just happy all the time. Because he’d finally got some.’
‘Yeah, but he said last night they were gonna wait till they got to Jerusalem. Jeez! Imagine how unbearable he’s gonna be if he’s that hyper on a snog!’
‘Why on earth does he think we’re just going to up and go to Jerusalem anyway? Does he mean a day trip?’
‘By the bags-packed bit, I’d say no. Though he did say that just he was packed, not that we had to, so maybe he just wants to be near his nutty settler squeeze rather than hang around us like a horny chaperone all the time.’ A devious thought struck Dov suddenly - the thought of breaking Juliet and Juliet up for keeps, before it got any further and he still wasn’t allowed to watch - and with it his erection felt like the chief cheerleader. He pushed in closer to her, opening her legs with it. ’But…you know, the kid could be right. Maybe we’ve outstayed our welcome here…photographically speaking…’
‘DOV! LOOK!’ Jackie sat up and pointed at the window. ‘It’s TEL AVIV! You could walk down any street and take a dozen brilliant pictures!’