Solomon, the man who runs the Crepe-Café de Paris at the Poughkeepsie Galleria, has never been to Paris. He may go there someday, he says, but just now he is content to stay where he is. “Then why choose crepes?” I sometimes ask, on days when business is slow and there is nothing else for us to talk about. “Why de Paris?" I pronounce the word as Solomon does, Pareez. At this, Solomon takes a long drag on his cigarette – though smoking has been prohibited at the Galleria for as long as I can remember – and replies, “I wanted this place to be different.”

In this, at least, Solomon has succeeded: there is nothing like the Crepe-Café in the Galleria food court. I cannot quite put my finger on the reason why. In no way does it resemble a Parisian cafe, despite Solomon’s effort to equip the tables with salt and pepper shakers in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. I mentioned this to him once. He did not appear concerned, dismissing my comment with a wave of his hand. “Did you ever go to Israel?” he asked. “I will tell you what it is like here – it is like the Dead Sea. But Dead Sea – this is no name for a café.”

“How is this place like the Dead Sea?” I visited there once, when I was a child. I wanted to tell Solomon this, to show him that I would understand.
“Chayim!” Solomon called to the only customer in the café, the Israeli boy who worked at the kiosk across from the food court. “Kate wants to know why we are like the Dead Sea. You are the expert, you tell her.”

Chayim laughed aloud, spraying flecks of mushroom and cheese crepe onto the aluminum table. “I tell you why,” he said. “Your food is too fucking salty!”

Chayim is “the expert” on the Dead Sea because he has been selling its products for over six months. For eleven hours a day, he lurks near his kiosk and pounces on passersby, smothering their hands in Dead Sea salts before they can refuse. Chayim wears gauzy Indian shirts that expose the dark hairs and the gold Star of David on his chest. Before arriving at the Poughkeepsie Galleria, he worked in a mall in Durham, North Carolina, and before that in Laramie, Wyoming. “And before that, Gaza,” he says smugly when he tells his story, which is approximately each time a girl enters the café. In the Israeli army, he fought in a combat unit, he tells them in a grave tone. It was very, very dangerous. He is lucky to be alive.

Occasionally, a girl is sufficiently impressed to give Chayim her number. He then spends his following few lunch breaks calling her from his cell phone. The girls never answer, but Chayim always leaves a message: “It is Chayim, the soldier. Call me.”

I glance at Solomon and roll my eyes. He looks down, flipping crepes vigorously, refusing, perhaps, to conspire against a fellow Israeli. His hands and arms are streaked with pink scars. I cannot stop staring at them as he works.

I have been the only waitress at the café for nearly a year. Occasionally, when things get busy, Solomon may try to hire additional help, usually girls, just out of high school, or college students looking to make some extra cash. But they always leave within a month or two. The work is too hard, they claim, they are on their feet all day, and the pay is ridiculous. They deserve better. Though they might have stayed longer, they confide to me, if Solomon were less surly and unfriendly. I nod, I know where they are coming from. Sometimes entire days go by in which he does not say a single word. But I am not yet ready to leave this place. It is as if I could continue to arrange and rearrange packets of sugar and Sweet ‘N Low on tables forever, placing the salt shakers in their correct position. I could continue serving customers their Crepes à l’Ognon, and continue to smile, actually caring for a moment whether or not they enjoy them. Because, it seems to me, Solomon and I share some kind of understanding. I’m just not entirely certain I know what it is.

Of course, this could all be in my head. I know virtually nothing about Solomon, not even his last name. He has always managed to avoid even my most direct questions. Likewise, he asks me nothing about myself. I would like to believe there is a reason for this, but it is more probable that he simply doesn’t care.

Nevertheless, when customers come in, I chat with them loudly, so that Solomon might overhear. People often tell me I look familiar. It is possible, I reply, I have lived in Poughkeepsie my entire life. I went to Vassar College. I majored in English.

“And after college you had trouble finding a job…” they say sympathetically.
“No,” I reply. “It was easy. I applied here and got hired the next day.”

The customers nod with baffled looks on their faces, but pry no further.

“I’m so sorry,” a woman rising from her table apologizes to Chayim as he slams into her. He waves her away and collapses onto a chair.

“So fucking polite,” he shakes his head in disgust after she leaves. “Always please, thank you, I’m sorry. In Israel we say what we feel. We tell the truth.” He lights a cigarette, ignoring the reproachful looks of the other customers.

I continue doing what I’m doing. I have heard this speech many times before.

“And so shallow,” he turns to me and grins, perhaps expecting a pat on the head for knowing the word. His front tooth is chipped and protruding in a way that infuriates me. Despite myself, I respond.

“If America is so bad, what are you doing here?” I ask.
“Money,” Chayim replies simply. “Americans are stupid, they will buy anything. Your life are empty so you fill them with things. And food. That is why you are all so fat.” He puffs out his own ample stomach so that the button of his jeans digs into his furry navel.
“You’re so full of shit,” I sigh.
Chayim sucks on his cigarette and says something to Solomon in Hebrew. Solomon laughs. I try to listen in on their conversation, dredging up knowledge from my few years of Hebrew school. It is not enough.

There is a girl sitting alone at a table. She is the only customer in the café. I have seen her type a thousand times before. Frail, oblivious. She is picking absently at a Crepe Suzette.

Solomon is looking at her. He reaches for the bottle of Grand Marnier and raises it to his lips, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, not taking his eyes off her for a moment. I notice the soft part of his arm is white and free of scars.

The girl’s long, pale fingers fiddle with the salt shaker. She turns it upside down, watching in fascination as a stream of salt pours from the tip of the Eiffel Tower onto the table. She draws little designs in the white mound that is left behind.

I suppose I will have to clean it up, I think, and am filled with inexplicable hatred for her. It doesn’t seem fair, somehow.

Chayim enters the café. He notices the girl, too, but this is not unusual. He walks over to where she is sitting and begins to talk to her. She engages him, but I can see she is just being polite.

“You want to give me your number?” he finally asks her.
“No, thank you,” she says.
“Then I give you my number,” he insists and writes it on a napkin, signing his name with a flourish.

She takes the napkin and smiles at Chayim. She rises from her chair and walks away, leaving her half-eaten crepe and the pile of salt on the table behind her. I do not even have to check to know that she has not left a tip.

I turn to Chayim. “She’s never going to call you, you know,” I say. “I don’t know why you bother.”
“You are probably right,” he shrugs, “but still, she might.”
I shake my head.
“Anyway, it is not important,” he says, “I am leaving soon. Going home.”
I am surprised by how much this news affects me. “Why?” I ask.
“The money is shit now,” he replies, “It’s too cold. And besides, the girls here,” he gestures at the table where the girl had been sitting. “They are very nice, but they are not serious.”
Solomon laughs, he has been listening. He says something in Hebrew.
“What did he say?” I snap, as if Solomon can’t hear me.
Chayim grins. “He says she is beautiful, but her tits are too small anyway.”

When he leaves, I will be alone here, I think. I feel I must grab at something, take something before it is too late. I sit next to Chayim and whisper, so Solomon will not hear me.

“So I have a question,” I say. “What’s the deal with Solomon?”
“The deal?” he doesn’t understand.
“Where did he get all those scars on his hands? Was he injured in the army?” I know my question is inappropriate, but with Chayim, it doesn’t really matter.
Chayim shakes his head. “The army? Solomon was never in the army.”
“Why not?” I ask. “I thought everyone went to the army in Israel.”
“He told them he was crazy,” he says. “He said he would try to kill himself if they made him go.”

We both look over at Solomon, who is pouring out batter for a crepe and singing softly with the radio.
“He’s not really crazy,” Chayim continues, “Just afraid.”
“Weren’t you afraid to go to the army?” I ask.

Chayim nods and takes a drag on his cigarette. After a long pause he says, “In Israel it is very hard. Here in America, it is easy.” I wait for him to say more, but he does not. I wonder if he would have, had his English been a little better.

“You should come to Israel one day,” he says, finally. “Come to see the real Dead Sea. It is beautiful.” He takes a napkin and writes his number on it, and hands it to me. Then he gets up and goes back to work.

“I was there one time, you know,” I say, feeling my voice echoing, whining. Solomon is not listening. I want to shake him, Listen, I want to scream.
“I was there, at the Dead Sea. I was ten years old. I went with my grandmother.” Solomon continues to stare at the oil sizzling on the hot plate, he does not hear me, my voice is being drowned out in something much louder.
“She’s dead now, she died of cancer.”
“That sucks,” he says. I am angry, so angry, but I let it go. I was stupid for having said that. Grandmothers die all the time. Something else had happened to him, probably, something much worse.

“The water is very salty,” my grandmother had told me, “So salty nothing can live in it. But you can’t drown in it, either – everything floats. Go in, it will sting like hell, but you can’t come to the Dead Sea and not go in the water.”

I ran into the sea, expecting to bounce on top of it like an inner tube. I was not prepared for the shock of the water. It was warm, like urine. It burned, attacking scratches I didn’t even know I had. I cried out, but stayed there. I had never felt anything like it.

My grandmother, who was still standing on the beach, called to me and pointed at a woman floating on her back. “Look at that,” she laughed. Directly in front of the woman, two pale beach balls were bobbing up and down, almost completely above water. It took me a minute to realize that they were her breasts. “That’s how you can tell they’re fakes,” my grandmother shouted.

My grandmother had no breasts at all. She’d had them removed years earlier when she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. She did not go in the water, because she was embarrassed to be seen in a bathing suit.

When I finally got out of the sea, my skin was oily and smooth. Once I rinsed the salt off of my legs, I could no longer remember where the scratches had been.

At the end of the day I am getting ready to go home, and Solomon calls my name.
“Wait,” he says, “I have a question.”
“What is it?” I am eager to respond, despite everything.
“Do you think you are going to stay for a while?” he asks.
“I’m going home now,” I answer, pretending not to understand.
“No, I mean, do you think you will keep working here.”
I nod. “Probably.”
“Why, don’t you want to travel or something? See the world? Go to Paris maybe?”
“I like it here,” I shrug.
Solomon does not look up, but I can see he is smiling. “Of course you do,” he says. “It’s a wonderful place.”
He holds out his hand, and I am momentarily confused. I take it clumsily. His palm is sweaty, but his grip is surprisingly powerful. He lets go. “I will see you tomorrow,” he says.
“Yes,” I reply, though it wasn’t a question.

As I leave the café, I pass the kiosk where Chayim is still working. He has latched onto an elderly woman, and is vigorously rubbing her fleshy palms with lotion.
“It will make them very smooth, like a baby,” he is saying. She looks at him strangely, as if unused to being touched, but leaves her hands in his.

For the past year Karen Marron has been living and writing in Manhattan. She lived in Israel for eleven years, and is receiving an MA in Creative Writing from Bar Ilan University.