"Look at all the people who come down the steps each day to the Kotel. Why do you think they come here? Because they are happy? Look at us. Homelessim”

Would they charge per word? Or just per line? She types Dear G-d.

Delete. Delete. The cursor moves backward, blink-blink-blink, erase, erase.

Who used dear anymore, outside of high school letter-writing assignments?

And G-d…

What did that mean, anyway? Dear Higher Power. Dear Question Mark. Dear Mystery. Dear Loving but Rather Well Hidden Father?

Delete. Delete.

Just the Question.

And for ten dollars — she clicks on the credit card box, fills in the three-digit-code in the Google pop-up — and her message is on its way to the Western Wall.

  

All year, Mikhail bows his face and shoulders toward the ground. Sweep, sweep, gather. Sweep, sweep, gather. In Jerusalem, the garbage is all about liquid. The tops of beer bottles. Coke cans, crushed at the waist. Neviot water bottles that crackle and implode even as you swallow. In the summer, iced coffee cups, straws still sticking out the top. In the winter, hot cups with the black-and-red slogan.

Twice a year, before Succos and Pesach, Mikhail’s head does not bow to the floor, but tips upward. Toward the blue, pale at first, growing opaque with heat, rippling into purple at the day’s close. Upward toward the Western Wall. The garbage is not about liquid, now. It is about prayer.

Mikhail bends down and picks up the paper from the ground. Twice a year, before Pesach and Succos, he is joined by a cadre of volunteers to clean the Wall, extracting tiny papers from between the stones, making space for more. It is hard work. His arms ache from the unaccustomed stretching. Most of the notes simply fall away when he sweeps over the stones with a broom, but some cling to the crevices. Two years ago, they brought him a long stick with a pincer on the end, for the stubborn prayers. He still hasn’t mastered the timing: when to open the pincers, and then, what is the right second to close it over the note. Most times, the papers end up raining down on him, so he must bend and gather them up from where they litter the bright, hot stones of the Plaza.

Now, he clasps his hands together behind his back and lifts them slightly, so his back arches. It helps the ache for a moment or two. The pincer-stick is hard on him. He prefers the broom. It is a special broom, used twice a year, kept in a little plastic shed on his porch. He uses it only for the Wall. It feels right, somehow.

“Hinei. Kach.” One of the Wall women thrusts a cup of water into his hand.

“Hot today,” she says, nodding, as if that will cause him to take more care.

He drinks, gratefully. “Yes.”

Some years, they clean the Wall in September, when the evening coolness can be detected at four. This year, it is August still. The heat forms a haze around anything that moves so you find yourself blinking and trying to focus and then blinking again. Sweat trickles down his back.

“Maybe rest a while?”

He snorts. “You think you are my mother?”

She shrugs. “And why not?”

“My mother has been in a Russian grave more than twenty years.”