At this time of year, it’s much too steamy in the office

“Really,” says Bathsheba. “I thought I spotted you standing by your window, with your sword aimed at me.”

To which I explain, “I could not see a thing through the glass. It became cloudy, or something. At this time of day, even though it is only the beginning of summer, it’s much too steamy in the office.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve had it with men.”

I can find nothing to say, and perhaps there is no need to. She can tell, can’t she, how desperately I ache for her.

“My life is scandal-free at the moment,” she says. “It feels nice for a change.”

Which brings me back up to my feet, because thinking about her reputation, the reputation of a soldier’s wife, makes me hot all over. 

I have no idea who her husband might be. More precisely, I do not want to figure it out. All I know is this: when he is away serving the country, serving me, this woman must have found her own way to compensate. Loneliness is a steady companion, one that ugly women can rely upon. Not so for her. 

And she must see—even through my royal garb—how hard I am becoming. She is in hot water—but I am the one boiling over.

“Give me that towel,” she tells me, as if I were her servant.

And I say, “What—”

And she says, “The towel. Yes, that one. Quick, give it to me.”

And with that, she rises up from the frothy surface. 

I wipe my eyes. How shall I begin to describe her? In the patches between the soapsuds, her skin seems to glow. The rays of the setting sun are playing all over her creamy flesh: first one nipple, then the other. 

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and make them brilliantly fresh"

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Summertime... And the livin’ was easy

She scribbled something for him inside his paper napkin and, taking a quick peek, he found her name, her phone number and a little doodle of a heart. Both Leonard and Lana got up to leave at the same time: halfway through dessert. 

Little did he know that a week from now they would be sitting at the front row of the music center hall, holding hands and absorbing a heavenly soprano voice that filled the air with Summertime. She would know to tell him that George Gershwin found the inspiration to write this aria in a simple Ukrainian lullaby, and Leonard would believe her. A month from now he would rent an apartment, and they would be moving in together. 

But at this moment—on his way out, just about to open the door for Lana—he knew one thing, and one thing only: he was walking on air. So elated was his state of mind, so grand was his happiness, his heart swelled in him with such a powerful pulse, that nothing else mattered. 

Catching sight of the host winking an eye at the other guests, and hearing some muted giggles behind his back, all that left absolutely no impression in him—none whatsoever. He ignored that wink and those giggles, and closed the door. 

The whole thing flew right out of his mind until a full year later.

One Year Later.

Leonard ate his breakfast glancing, from time to time, at that note that Lana had left for him. He was torn between a need to unfold the paper and an urge to crumple it. Either way, he found himself suddenly with the realization that now was the first time in a long while—a full year, in fact—that he was alone. Completely alone. A certain feeling was throbbing in his heart—something between relief, anger, sadness and above all, amazement that she was gone and he was free. 

Leonard turned on the record player and sank into the sofa, determined to spin away the hours to the tune of cheerful melodies. He kicked off his slippers, stretched his legs across the top of the coffee table and closed his eyes, so that the sight of things would not distract him from listening. 

The room disappeared. It was Summertime. 

His ears started moving at the sides of his head like agitated seismographs, registering every minute reverberation, every note. On the inside of his eyelids, space started to sway around him, gently at first. It was marked by intervals, time intervals that flowed from the lyrics and swept over him, opening and closing in an increasingly complex sequence.  

Summertime. It reminded him of their first date, and of the time that passed since then. True, Lana was a good companion. He loved her. He could find nothing to complain about. 

And the livin’ was easy... 

For a whole year, she accompanied him dutifully to the Opera. And yet, time laid bare the fact that she was bored to tears sitting there, trying to entertain herself somehow by studying the costumes, the lighting, and the scenery—everything that for him was secondary. Only now did he realize that her proclaimed love of music was as real as the blond streaks in her hair.

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Ghosts arise out of debris

Perhaps I need less caffeine

To deal with Friday the Thirteen

A mass of black clouds hangs over me

Ghosts arise out of debris

The strike of thunder, lightning glare, 

I'm jittery, it's such a scare

The only thing that soothes me

Is reading At Odds with Destiny 

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Double, double misfortune, trouble 

Burning coal and blackening rubble

Let the blood in my caldron boil

Feed the flames... Oh, such a toil!

Tonight it's Friday the thirteen

I'm a witch... Boy am I mean!

Listen, dear, no need to fret

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We won and it's all your fault! Thank you

Thanking you--yes, you!--and all my readers and the guests of my recent event, Call to Arms, for your support. Your vote counted, and our romance boxed set, A Touch of Passion (containing 12 amazing romance novels) has just won:

This is the announcement from The Romance Reviews:

We are pleased to inform you that the book, A Touch Of Passion by Uvi Poznansky; Mimi Barbour; Elizabeth Marx; Tamara Ferguson; Regina Puckett; B. J. Robinson; Suzanne Jenkins; Laura Taylor; Cynthia Woolf; Lisa Gillis; Traci Hall; Donna Fasano, is the winner for the category Anthology!

Carole
The Romance Reviews

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What inspired The Music of Us?

Natasha, the renowned pianist suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's in my book Apart from Love (volume I and II of the series, woven together) kept coming back to haunt me. Her character was not an easy one to develop. The primary challenge is that she has no voice. She is utterly silent, which makes her son Ben hope—at first—that she can be reached, that he can, somehow, save her. 

“There is no way to tell if she has heard me. Her gaze is fixed, as steadily as before, on the same small pane of glass, through which the sun is blazing; which makes it hard to figure out what she sees out there. 

I push forward, aiming to view it, somehow, from her angle, which at first, is too hard to imagine: 

In my mind I try, I see a map, the entire map of her travels around the world. A whole history. It has been folded over and again, collapsed like a thin tissue, into a square; which is suspended there—right in front of her—a tiny, obscure dot on that window. 

And inside that dot, the path of her journey crisscrosses itself in intricate patterns, stacked in so many papery layers. And the names of the places, in which she performed back then, in the past—London, Paris, Jerusalem, San Petersburg, New York, Tokyo—have become scrambled, illegible even, because by now, she can no longer look past that thing, that dot. She cannot see out of herself. 

She is, I suppose, confined.”

My novel, The Music of Us (volume III in the series) gives voice to her.

“Once I find my way back, my confusion will dissipate, somehow. I  will sit down in front of my instrument, raise my hand, and let it hover, touching-not-touching the black and white keys. In turn they will start their dance, rising and sinking under my fingers. Music will come back, as it always does, flowing through my flesh, making my skin tingle. It will reverberate not only through my body but also through the air, glancing off every surface, making walls vanish, allowing my mind to soar.

Then I will stop asking myself, Where am I, because the answer will present itself at once. This is home. This, my bench. The dent in its leather cushion has my shape. Here I am, at times turbulent, at times serene. I am ready to play. I am music.”

This novel starts out at 1970, when she starts to succumb to her illness, and goes a generation back, to 1941, the time that she and Lenny first fell in love. This is their story.

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What are you planning to make of yourself, young man?

Over the mantle hung three formal family pictures. When Natasha came back from the kitchen I asked her about them. 

At once, her Mama cut in. “My daughter comes from a long line of musicians,” she said, in her heavy Russian accent.

“Mama,” said the girl. “I can speak for myself.”

I pointed at the first picture. “Who’s this?”

“This,” said Natasha, “Is my great grandfather, the famous Abraham Horowitz, who graduated from the Kiev Conservatory at the turn of the century. He rose to stardom rapidly and toured from Moscow to Rostov-on-the-Don, where he was often paid with bread, butter and chocolate, rather than money, because these were tough times.”

“And this?” 

“This is Joseph Horowitz, my grandfather. He aspired to become a violin player, but his hand was damaged for life, when the riffraff attacked him during a pogrom in Odessa. So instead he became a music teacher. Later, he developed a method, a unique method to memorize long passages of music, by practicing the notes back to front.”

“And this,” she said, reaching up to touch the third picture, “this is my Papa, Benjamin Horowitz. When he came to the states he became a conductor. Meanwhile he took that method one step further. Instead of the traditional way of playing through the passage repeatedly, you would commit it to memory, or rather to your subconscious mind, by means of performing it every night before falling asleep—without holding the instrument in your hands.”

“A spendthrift, that’s what he was,” Mrs. Horowitz blurted out all of a sudden.

“Now, Mama, don’t start!” said the girl.

“Who’s starting?” the older woman threw her hands in the air. “I’m already in the middle of talking!”

“Then please, please stop—”

“What, I’m not allowed to tell the truth? The only inheritance your Pa left us is a dream, the dream of you becoming famous one day, and oh yes, how could I forget, also a bunch of heavy loans on the house, without any means of paying them off.”

“Why complain so much, Mama? It was fun for you, wasn’t it, while it lasted—”

“Which wasn’t too long, the way he gambled away his money! By the time his illness started, we were already hopelessly in debt.”

“Mama!”

Undeterred, Mrs. Horowitz shook her head, which in turn shook her bird-nest style hairdo. “Years earlier,” she said, “before he asked me to marry him, everyone was so, so very impressed with his talent. They predicted such a bright future for him. Where are all of them now?”

“But Mama,” said the girl, “what does the bright future he had in the past have to do with the present?”

“It has everything to do with here and now. You,” said Mrs. Horowitz, turning upon me, “yes, I’m talking to you! What’s your idea of the future? What are you planning to make of yourself, young man?”

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