The Matchup

‘Going on a whirlwind, round the world tour?” the mover asked me as he packed up my china.

I explained that I lived in Israel. And since the next tenants for my condo in Chicago wanted it unfurnished I had to pack up and store everything.

Because he was my mover he did not ask the kind of probing, Talmudic question that this situation begs, namely: If I am living in Israel for nearly two years already, why don’t I just up and ship everything to Israel or sell it off?

Good question.

But he did ask about my china.

 ‘Where was I?”

Which was really another way of saying, “What in the bleep was I doing?”

I asked myself these questions through my haze as I lay prone on a couch in the living room of an Israeli couple I barely knew.

 We met at a bar in Tel Aviv. I was covering an event for work and he was a volunteer for the organization I was profiling.

According to my version, I was standing on the sidelines, mustering up my courage to approach strangers, when he approached me. Relieved that the “quotes” were coming to me and that I didn’t have to ask for them, I proceeded to pull out my notebook and pepper him with questions. All in the name of work, of course. 

The thing about “Greenberg,” the latest movie by my most favorite filmmaker, Noah Baumbach, is that I’ve dated that guy. Not Baumbach, unfortunately. I should be so lucky. But the character, Greenberg, played by the king of on-screen neuroses, Ben Stiller.