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her relations with Shlomi, the latter rose from the sofa, took a few steps, walked past her, went outside, and called her to come and see something, this time at the bottom of the garden. The red worms had multiplied and fattened in the compost heap. She hurried over and expressed exaggerated admiration for the compost and the size of the worms, whatever it took to stop him sulking and to moderate this negativity of his.
    AFTER SHE HAD EXPRESSED such enthusiasm for the work of the worms, Shlomi smiled his good smile at her and she breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sulking and he wasn’t cross with her, he was simply absorbed in himself, as people sometimes were absorbed in themselves, he explained to her on his own initiative without her asking. She sat down on the old sofa and Shlomi went to fetch his latest photographs. One of his photographs had once been published in The Voice of the South for twenty-seven dollars.
    Shlomi was not only an idealistic organic farmer, but also a gifted photographer, and he was trying to get into the journalism market in the south of the country. This time he dwelled only onhis latest photographs, especially of the floods in the Negev, and Lirit sat on his lap and said:
    “How lovely,” and “That’s amazing,” and “This one is to die for.”
    “Tell me,” Shlomi asked his girlfriend, and shook her off him because her embrace was a little suffocating and he felt hot, “do you think I could offer these pictures to the Gates of the Negev local council as a calendar? That means hundreds of dollars. What I’ve got here isn’t only the floods, in other words ruin and destruction. Take a look at this one . . .” He showed her a close up of flowers. “And this one . . . and this one . . . I think we’re going to have a fantastic spring this year, by the way.”
    “If not Gates of the Negev, then some other local council,” said Lirit. “A person would have to be an idiot not to take them.” She stood up, changed into her smoking clothes, and went outside, accompanying the entire process with facial grimaces that related to her conversation with her mother shortly before.
    She knew that her mother wanted her, when the day came, to inherit the factory and continue the tradition, and she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to, but in the meantime no need had arisen for her to express any wish in the matter. Her mother was a strong, healthy woman. It only annoyed her that Dael showed no interest in the pajama factory, and that it was so clear to their mother that she was the one who would take command of the family concern while Dael was expected to charge ahead. The guy had already acquired a profession in the army, not like her, who in her army service had only learned how to grab hold of collapsing people a minute before their bodies hit the floor or some piece of furniture.
    And indeed, Dael had organized a future for himself after the army. The day after his discharge he was going to fly straight to Hollywood and become a paparazzi to the stars. Judging by his success as a sharp shooter, the Hollywood stars were in for a big surprise. Dael thought that after he made his first fortune from his photos he would open a school right there in Los Angeles forpaparazzi photographers, who would have to pass strict tests in order to be accepted, and whose year-long studies would cost them tens of thousands of dollars.
    THE NIGHTY-NIGHT pajama factory had been founded by Audrey Greenholtz, Mandy’s mother, in the middle of the sixties, soon after the two of them arrived in Israel from the former Rhodesia, when the child was eight.
    For years Audrey held to the opinion that the factory should serve only the ultra-Orthodox population, since the ultra-Orthodox population was the most stable thing in Israel. Any deviation from this target population would spell the end of the factory, in the opinion of its founder.
    Difficult life circumstances had made Audrey Greenholtz into a fighter