Just before dawn

The two junkies were gigglers, and outsiders wishing they could take part.

There wasn't really all that much to take part in. The two waitresses were exhausted after working their 12-hour shift, and no matter how sexy a waitress, at the end of a waitressing shift there's not much in a waitress' mind except a bath and sleep.

In any case, the two junkies bought a box of burekas, which both hot or cold at 6:45 in the morning after a night of working in a bar, is not exactly the most appealing of gourmand items with which to seduce a waitress after a shift. They were all sitting at David and Leon's place on Bograshov.

The cafe is possibly the last place in the city where it's possible to get a cup of coffee for under three shekel, and it's open before the last of the night-time joints is closed, so it's perfect as a last stop on the way home after a long crawl through the night.

The two junkies had come into the bar after the two waitresses had started putting up the chairs and wiping down the tables.

When they came in, the blonde English girl scowled. She had been a volunteer on a kibbutz for almost three years, and now was working in the bar to save up for a trip to India. The raven-haired Israeli girl who had been in Los Angeles for three years of high school, shook her head 'no, no, no,' but it did no good. The junkies took their seats at the bar. The waitresses and the barman and the kitchen worker had plans to go to David and Leon's, and now the two junkies were taking up space at the bar, making telephone calls at 5:30 in the morning to whoever junkies call that time of day, wasting the waitresses time because neither of the junkies was about to start drinking beer with a squirt of cheap local vodka, which is the specialty of this particular bar.

One of the junkies was very tall, and the other was very short, but neither had a moustcahe so nobody could have described them as Mutt and Jeff, and they didn't have any elan at all, so they weren't exactly Butch cassidy and Sundance. It's also not clear that they were junkies, in the sense of needles and smack. They were wearing t-shirts, and their arms looked clean, but they were definitely under the influence of something and the waitresses knew them well enough to call them "the junkies."

They two junkies left the bar after their phone calls, so the waitresses quickly cleaned up and locked up and started walking up Trumpeldor past the cemetery, their footsteps and quiet conversation the only sounds in the city. At the gates to the cemetery they stopped to look at the mass grave for the cholera victims, the first people buried in Tel Aviv. When the group reached David and Leon's, the junkies were already sitting at a table, so the people from the bar sat as far away as possible.

The two junkies were stoned on something -- "probably Ecstasy," said someone. "That explains the giggling. Junkies don't usually have the strength for so much giggling." The two junkies made crude and lewd remarks and then one of them went to their car and brought out a box of burekas, to offer to the English girl.

"Is very good," he said, making the offer. "But not as good as me. And I much good him," said the junkie, pointing to the English waitress' friend, the dishwasher.

The English girl's friend was not quite sure what to do, since he had only been in the city about a month, following the girl from the kibbutz when she decided she had to raise the money for her trip to India.

In any case, he wondered if he was supposed to get up from his chair and say something to the junkie passing the burekas around and making rude remarks to the two girls.

"No, all you do is ignore them," said the dark-haired girl. "And don't take a bureka unless you want a cannonball in your stomach.

David, or maybe it's Leon, has a pronounced limp from a long ago war, and Leon, or maybe it's David, is a very short man with slightly crossed eyes.

They are open from dawn until noon, and they have regular customers whom they remember even if the regular customer hasn't been in the place for a long time.

Leon, or maybe it was David, limped out to the sidewalk tables with coffees for the four bar workers and when the junkies asked hinm for coffee he looked at them and stared at them and then smiled at them and said nothing and went back into the cafe. The two junkies laughed at that.

After a few minutes, they got up and went to their car. The short one offered one more lewd remark and the tall one giggled one more time, and then they drove away.

A few minutes later, the first bus of the day rumbled up Bograshov, which meant that the waitresses and the barman and the dishwasher could get home without having to take a taxi. They broke up into pairs, the English girl with the dish washer and the dark-haired girl with the barman, and stood at the corner of Pinsker and Bograshov, talking about their plans after they woke up or before they went to sleep, when Leon limped out with two coffees for the two junkies.

"They're gone," the dark-haired waitress said. Leon said nothing and started back inside.

"I'll have them," said the dish washer. "We're not going to sleep yet, anyway," he explained. So he and his girlfriend sat down and had another round of coffees before they went to do whatever it is that people do when they finish working when everybody else starts work.

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