Oh, Tel Aviv, you crazy, intense, awesome city. It's a quarter past 2 a.m. and I've just gotten back to my hotel, after walking to Rothschild and back, packed sheruts and dozens of cabs passing me both ways. And the night clerk has let in at least two more people since I sat down.

I'd meant to visit a dance club or three for the sake of a character I don't yet know well enough, but by the time I left the hotel at midnight, I still hadn't gotten supper, and I'm cranky when I'm hungry. So I ended up at Benedict, for fried egg balls in three-mushroom sauce and peach champagne and a large capuccino, and dozens of possible stories just a few feet away from me, never mind outside on the boulevard and down the street in the ice cream stores and burgerims. Women in tall boots and short skirts, some of them on Allenby benches deep in conversation. The smell of bad weed, the surge of a parking lot argument, the weaving of partiers who had had too much. Me striding past slower pedestrians, bikers and motorcyclists zipping and zooming past me. The six pomegranate halves a bodega owner squeezed into a plastic cup for me, the last half splashing his entire counter in a burst of purple-red. The bookstores in Russian, Spanish, and Hebrew. A madwoman at a crosswalk. A man walking his dog. The sky so beautiful with its light and saturated greys. The November night air deliciously cool and not yet cold.