The Eleventh Happiest Country

Roi's old friend from the army, Tal, had been an actor before he got religious and now he wanted to make another film and wanted Roi to do it. An action flick. Tal checked with his rebbe in B'nai Brak and it was all right.

"Whoa, man. Looking like that?" said Roi, waving at Tal's face—the beard, the peyis spiraling down over his ears, the black kippa. They were at a café on Sheinkin. It wasn't certified kosher but you couldn't traife up espresso beans.

Tal had an answer ready right away. He said the movie would be about a former con man who'd found God but was dragged back into crime by his former con man buddies to do one last heist. So he does. It goes wrong and he goes to jail. Or maybe it goes right and he makes off with a pile of stolen cash. Tal hadn't figured that part out yet.

"How can you make a flick like that?" Roi said. "It would have to have some cheesy ending where the guy sees the light again and gives it all back and comes to his knees in repentance. It'll be terrible. Shit. I can't direct shit like that."

"No, no," Tal said. His eyebrows were thickly bunched in concentration. Roi hadn't noticed before how hairy Tal's eyebrows were. Maybe because now there was so much additional hair in the same neighborhood. "It'll be a real heist movie with a real heist movie ending. Prison or victory. The fact that the guy's religious will have nothing to do with it. He'll just be like all the other scumbags and thieves, only with"—he waved at his face—"this." He paused. "What?" His dark eyes looked hard into Roi's. "I'm not asking to film my life questions. No deep meaning here. I promise."

________

Roi didn't believe him but he didn't have much else going on and Tal was a good friend. Also a good actor. Really good. The Americans were about to recruit him and make him into a star but then Tal disappeared into some yeshiva or other. But before that you could tell Tal was onto something. When everyone else in workshops was protecting themselves and not wanting to get in touch with their inner murderers or thugs, Tal, with no acting classes at all, threw himself into it whole hog. A woman, a dog, a Nazi, a prissy British schoolmaster, he was totally there. So there it practically killed him. He felt everything. And was everything. He could be an eggplant or your conniving uncle or psychotic cousin. It got to be too much. Totally permeable. Eight, nine films. It was after that that he got religious. He said if he was going to feel everything in the universe, maybe he should try feeling God. Roi wasn't crazy about religion but he thought Tal had a point. It didn't cost him anything and was better than drugs or another trip to India or a psychiatrist. The only side effects were the dark clothes and the hair.

Also, Roi had to admit, Tal looked much better these days. He'd put on needed weight and the little flecks of gray in his beard gave him some nice dignity. Though removing the tattoo had hurt. Roi was there and saw. It had been on Tal's upper arm, a small anchor with a coiling rope, like in American sailor movies. Very popular. Which is what the guy in Goa told them when he sold Tal the design, the two of them decompressing in India after the army like all the other hollowed out Israelis looking for a shred of bliss. About Tal's tattoo Roi liked to say that he was there for both the installation and the teardown.

________

Roi called up a couple of producers he knew in north Tel Aviv where the money lived and said he had an amazing project but couldn't say who was attached but that...