Danger at the Dead Sea, the final chapter

[This is the third and final installment of an adventure I had while traveling to Israel in March. Keep scrolling down if you want to read parts 1 and 2, or click the 'travel' category at right.]

“WELL?” I glared at the Russian stalker. I had deduced he was a low-level mobster used to glomming on to lady tourists—such as Kitt and myself—staying at this tacky but stiff Dead Sea hotel compound. 

“Slikha, slikha.”  The man put up his hands, in a cool, mock surrender.  He took a few steps back into the hallway. ‘Slikha’ means ‘sorry’ in Hebrew, but his demeanor  only said: ‘Can I have my three-way now?’

His arrogance angered me. (Typical perv!  They all think they’re god’s gift.)  With a wide stance and hands on my hips,  I stared him down—like how I imagined Barbara Stanwyck might do in an old Western—as he continued to back away from the door of our room. The more distance  there was between him and me, the more I was able to convince myself Kitt and I could take him. 

I could feel Kitt right behind me. 

“Kitt, you got the bottle?” I whispered.  If we had to attack him, I wanted to be sure we had something hard to crack over his noggin.

“Right here,” she murmured, slapping it in her hand.  

“Get lost!” I bellowed. “Get moving! You big creep!” 

“Uh….yeah,” Kitt offered. “Go away!”  She sounded about as intimidating as Tinker Bell in a cage fight. 

I gave her a look, and was met with a sheepish grin that said, ‘Hey, sorry….this kind of thing doesn’t usually happen back home.” 

He finally turned his back to us and walked—unmistakeably briskly—down the hall toward the staircase leading to the lobby. Apoplectic and beyond any rational thought, I followed him.  

“Jessie!” Kitt’s voice trailed after me. 

I ran down the four flights of stairs to the lobby…but the stalker was nowhere to be seen. He must have exited on one of the preceding floors.

 I marched over to the front desk where the African conceirge was still speaking in hushed tones on the phone.

“There’s someone following us,” I interrupted. “We have a stalker outside our room.  He won’t leave us alone. We’ve been calling you and calling you and….”

The guy looked up at me, surprised. He ended his call and rose from his seat. “What is this?” He said in broken English. I noticed he still had a gun in his holster. “Stalker?” 

“Yes, there is a a stalker outside of our room and….”

 As I relayed what happened we walked together toward the staircase.

As we began climbing the stairs, we met the mobster on his way down.  He still had the same placid look on his face, like he didn’t have a care in the world.  

“That’s him!” I pointed right at him. “That’s the guy!! This is him!!”  I thought, now would be a perfect time for you, concierge, to grab your gun from your holster and SHOOT HIM IN THE LEG OR FOOT, or something.

All three of us were in the lobby now. The two men began speaking in Hebrew, clearly neithers native tongue. 

Kitt joined me. When I caught her eye, we couldn’t help but stifle a laugh, despite the severity of the situation. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was: ‘This is so…..cool. We are having an adventure.”

I couldn’t decipher what was being said, but their body language told me exactly what was going on.  The young concierge appeared conciliatory, almost regretful, while the mobster reacted with dismissive exasperation.  I imagined the following exchange taking place:

Concierge: “Sir, I’m very sorry to inconvenience you, but these two ladies have kindly requested not to be date-raped by you this evening. Perhaps I can interest you in the keys to 7B instead, where two female Bulgarians are staying? Again, my apologies.” 

Mobster:  ”And to think I was going to waste my Slavic passions on these two American hussies! Psshwat!  Be gone with them.”

He turned on his heel and stormed out the door into the night. 

The concierge turned toward us. “Everything is alright now. Em, what time do you check out tomorrow?”

We made our way back to our room, and opened the bottle to celebrate our “win” over the Russian mobster. We drank to our success, basking in the knowledge that it is possible for a couple of American nitwits to psych out a more powerful adversary. Had we hid in our room, waiting for him to tire of knocking, or waiting for someone to come to our rescue, we would probably still be there, trapped and helpless—and way more fearful than we were now. 

Still, it was a restless remainder of the night. We were convinced a gang of mobsters would kick down our door  in the middle of the night, ready to exact revenge. Kitt slept with the empty bottle of wine while I kept my shoes on—you know, just in case I had to make a jump for it over the balcony. 

The End.

Tagged as: Dead Sea