Malky stepped out of the elevator into the lobby and smiled at her husband. “This is awesome, thanks so much.”

Kivi had surprised her, saying he was going to daven Minchah and coming back to the hotel with their old babysitter, a Weissenstern girl. There were so many Malky could never remember their first names.

Malky had easily put an exhausted Mendy to sleep, and she and Kivi had prepared to go out alone.

It had been a long day, and they walked comfortably through the streets, allowing the cool of the evening to wash over them. They lingered in front of the tiny art gallery on King David Street where Malky’s parents always shopped, Malky peering in and wondering out loud if Amos was in and if she should go say hello. They walked in to the lobby of the King David Hotel and Kivi showed her where Deutsch from his dirah had camped out when Obama had come to visit, in the hopes of getting a selfie.

“Malk, the guy wore an American flag T-shirt and cap and waved like a madman for two days.”

“Did he get the picture?”

“Nah, he ended up settling for a selfie with one of the security people, he was all tzubrochen. Good times.”

They paused to observe a sweet young bochur who was clearly there on a date, his tie made too tight, as he furtively looked around the lobby for the girl he was meant to meet. Kivi wished him a jovial “hatzlachah” and the color drained from the bochur’s face.

They left the hotel when a tall Yerushalmi with gold-rimmed glasses and a silk caftan seated himself near the fireplace, just across from them, and looked at them intently, as if trying to remember something. “Malk,” Kivi said, “that guy comes to your father every year and he’s wracking his brain trying to remember who we are. Let’s beat it.”

They walked on, feeling the promise in the streets, dreaminess and soft laughter and music rising from gardens and out of open apartment doors that made it difficult to imagine a return to reality. Malky stopped to admire the elegant curve of the street lamps. Kivi commented that the softly dancing trees also seemed to be holding secrets, like everything else in the city.

Kivi found himself wondering if this conversation was real, or just a reenactment where both of them reached back into the past to the easy dialogue of just two years earlier, when life was simple and they could speak this way, all intent and opinionated about nothing at all.

It was like being on a date, each of them speaking prepared lines, walking the tightrope between easygoing and deep.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 745)