You're drunk, and the cold feels like something else, as you stagger out of her basement apartment, barefooted and bloodied. "Damn it", you think, "she should have listened when I told her to keep her mouth shut."
The book in your hand is already falling apart, but you do your best to keep the pages from scattering in the wind. "Just once more", you tell yourself for the seventh time now, when behind you, just a bit to your left you hear the click.
Applicants must be at ease accepting criticism, take being misinterpreted and misunderstood with aplomb, have a high threshold for stress, and be comfortable making life or death decisions. Extensive knowledge of world history, politics, philosophy and religions required. Executive experience preferred. Must be multi-lingual, able to multi-task, and have advanced problem solving capabilities. Work schedule is for 6 days a week.
Interested applicants may leave their curriculum vitae at any synagogue, mosque, church, temple, ashram or ancient grove.
I had a dog named Shorty once. I got him from the pound, because they said they were five minutes away from killing him. Shorty
had one eye, a coat of about 7 different colors, and his back legs were
just a little longer than his front ones, making him look like he was
always in the mood to play. My friend Meiron said he looked like Frankenstein’s dog. When
I went to pet Shorty for the first time, he took a bite out of my left
hand, but he must not have liked the way I tasted, because he never bit
me again. When
we took him to the park on Saturday afternoons to play Frisbee, he
would always chase other people’s soccer balls instead and pop them,
and when a lady soldier was bending down to get something out of her
backpack, Shorty bit her on the ass. He
must have liked the way she tasted, because he didn’t let go for a
really long time, even though she was screaming, and it took her
boyfriend, Meiron and me together to pull him off. Meiron said we were probably the first people in the history of Independence Park, to be kicked out and told never to come back.
When I met Neta at “The Moon” one Friday night, it was love at first sight. Three days later she moved in, with a footlocker full of her CDs, Books and clothes. When
I picked her up from work on Tuesday night, we came home to find her
locker pried open, her CDs scattered and scratched, her books torn to
shreds and her clothes piled in the four corners of the apartment: one
pile had been shit on, one pissed on, one vomitted on, and on the last
pile was a very tired dog, sound asleep on his back.
“It’s him or me,” said Neta.
When we took him back to the pound, the lady smiled at me, took the leash without a word and led Shorty into the back. As we walked out into the bright afternoon sun, we heard her say “Poor thing, we were starting to wonder how long you'd be away this time”.
Never one to give up easily, you slowly ease your left, then right foot into your own mouth and swallow. Now, if you can just manage to get your legs down, you think, the rest will be a breeze, you’ll show them all, and you slurp at your knees, but you can’t seem to make any headway. Your back is on fire, and your jaw, throat and stomach feel like they’re going to burst. Tommorrow, you tell yourself, tomorrow you’ll show them what happens when they tell you "impossible”.
The song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” comes on the radio, and it reminds you of her, and on the movie screen of your mind, you see her sitting alone on the corner of her mother’s bed, listening, like you are, to Gali Atari, and moved, like you are, because it reminds her of her childhood in Israel.
Fade to flashback she’s lanky and nine, sun tanned, pigtailed, sandaled and shorted, and her brother, Tzion, is there; carelessly they’re devouring enormous yellow and red summer peaches that drip down their chins and stain their shirts. Though you're not there, she looks at you and smiles a drippy smile, the peach’s stone apparent beneath her cheek.
As the song ends, she’s there once again, sitting at the foot of her mother’s bed: neck bent, head down, face obscured by that mess of curls, waiting for something to begin.
Let’s just say, the bus you’re on goes boom, and you survive, not only survive, but you’re totally fine, like, not a scratch on you… now, let’s just say, all around you, everyone is dead, there’s no way they’re still breathing, and let’s just say, you’re walking through the corpses, and instead of blood and guts all over the place, there’s half a woman lying by your feet, and hanging out of her torso, where her guts should be, there’s a bunch of CDs and a Walkman, and there, to your left, is the chest of some kid popped open like a pan of jiffypop, and where his heart and lungs should be, there are two slightly deflated soccer balls, and a Sony PSP, and over by what used to be the front of the bus, you see what used to be the driver, and he’s got a book sticking out of his chest… so you pick up the book and open it, and amidst all the sirens, and the smoke, and flashing lights, you sit down on the street and you read, and it says “Let’s just say, the bus you’re driving goes boom…"
When Fidget was in kindergarten, his teacher gave him his nickname because he couldn’t sit still. He kicked his feet through naptime, drummed his fingers through story time, and, rather than coloring in his coloring book like all the other children, he’d play rockets and missles with his crayons.
When Fidget was 22, he won a trip to London by being the millionth customer to walk into a supermarket, and when he visitted Sotheby’s, unable contain his fidgetting, he accidentally bought Queen Anne’s sleigh bed for 93,000 dollars at an auction.
When Fidget went to a benefit dance for Hadassah, he met his future wife, Na’ama, who thought he was funny because, even though he was sitting on his own, he seemed to be enjoying himself, dancing in his seat; when she introduced herself to him, she told him how impressed she was that even though he was there without a date, he seemed to know how to have a good time by himself, not like all the guys who just stood around, lined up against the wall trying to look cool.
Every night in bed, Na’ama would think that Fidget wanted to make love, because he would shake his leg against her; she interpretted it as him reminding her of his presence, and not wanting him to feel rejected, she’d start to stroke his thigh. Six months after they were married in Cyprus, their daughter, Miri was born.
When the terrorists broke into their house, they hid in the attic; While the terrorists went room to room, shooting their guns, throwing handgrenades, Na’ama held her hand over their daughter’s mouth, and Fidget sat crosslegged, holding them both tightly, but his left foot was free to fidget.None of this was in the brochure they give you, but I guess it’s true what they say, you really can get used to anything, like how wherever you look, just on the fringes of your vision, everything goes all fuzzy like, and it's really only real the moment you reach for it or something, otherwise, it's just like a projection or something, and I mean, other than that, it looks pretty much like my old place, except, you can’t find anything good on tv, only Nora Ephron movies and Disney cartoons, and even watching boxing is pointless, because at the end of the game, both guys win and all they do is hug each other, and you can’t get really hot charif on your falafel, no matter how much you put, it’s just never that hot, and even though I threw myself on a grenade to save a bunch of the guys in my unit, the girls around here are never that impressed, so I haven’t gotten laid since I’ve been here, but at least the beer’s cold, and like I say, when it comes down to it, I guess you really can get used to anything.
“It’s the speckled white ones that send you into the next world” says the candy lady with the pretty blue eyes. You hold the little wood box in your hand. It’s made to look like a miniture orange crate, and it’s full of different colored jellybeans.
“What do the purple ones do?”
“That’s a mystery” she says, “I’m only allowed to tell you about the white speckled ones".
You take your candy home, and the first one you taste is like a trip to New Mexico; small octagons appear on your ceiling in vibrant shades of silver, yellow and white, and you go through them. There’s a vague taste of blue corn tortillas to this one, you think.
Back at your kitchen table, you choose the next one; its surface looks like liquid opal, and you think to yourself, how could the plain white speckled one be more special than this? Tentatively, you taste it, and you’re sitting in a movie theater in Pittsburgh, Pa., and it’s 1943. There’s smoke swirling around your head, and Micky Rooney is just about to lay one on Judy Garland, when you feel a Jujyfruit hit the back of your head. You turn around, and see your microwave flashing at you.
Now you're convinced you have no choice, and you pick up the white speckled one, and pop it into your mouth. When the neighbors complain about the stink, the super breaks down your door, and when they find you on the kitchen floor, you’re still smiling, with a chunk of meteor sticking out of your forehead.
When Daddy died, Grandma moved in. Since she had a hunched back, she couldn’t sleep in a bed like normal people. Instead, she sat in our old easy chair in the corner, so that she wouldn’t be in the way. As Mom and everyone grieved, she sat. She sat through summer, when we had a blackout, and the air conditioning stopped working and it was 100 degrees in our apartment, and she sat through fall when we had company over for the first time since the funeral.
One day Grandma said, "I feel like this chair is swallowing me", as little by little she became smaller and smaller.
When I asked Mom, she explained, “it’s just her scoliosis; she used to be much taller, but that’s what happens. You just shrink. Plus, she doesn’t eat much.”
One day, when we were doing spring-cleaning, Mom handed me a broom and told me to go sweep the living room. When I got over to the corner where Grandma’s chair was, she wasn’t there.
“Where’s Grandma?” I asked. Mom came into the room, with her yellow gloves, carrying her bucket and sponge, and wiped a stray hair out of her face with the back of her wrist. “I don’t know,” she said, “she must have gone home or something.”
I sat down in Grandma’s chair. It was much cushier than I’d remembered it. I leaned on the handle of the broom and cried. She never even said goodbye.
Tragedy affords us the illusion that we’re being ultra honest with ourselves; someone close dies, and immediately, we transform into some sort of hybrid between a philosopher, super hero, and poet. We compose virtual tomes of universal and undeniable truth. We even seek to martyr ourselves on the altar of understanding and compassion. But we’re assholes, aware as we are of all the inherent glory in it.
Last night my brother in law died. When we went to the apartment he’d been staying in, we found his wallet, cellphone, keys, slippers, clothes, and a half crushed, half smoked pack of Marlboro 100s. It was in truth, the Marlboros that were the saddest thing to find: something so personal, and so disposable: a half smoked pack, from a half lived life.
Today, I cleaned my apartment;
Boxes of books shipped from my past address long ago
found places on already crowded shelves,
and dust that’d hibernated
like wintery bears,
I evicted from cave-like corners.
The papers I’d meant to file
last year
the year before
last weekend
now all neatly away.
And with my feet on the coffee table I looked around
appreciating my newly steril surroundings
and then realized--
It’d been the mess with which I’d kept such good company.
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