Fly Already Page 13

  After she blew me, we fucked on the plastic-covered living room couch. After I came, we waited a few minutes and fucked again. She didn’t come either time. She said it was okay, that she never comes, but that she likes it anyway. Then she said she was thirsty, and I brought a glass of water from the kitchen for both of us. “This is your first time with a girl, eh?” she said, and stroked my face. I nodded. “That’s really kinda cool,” she said. “That thank-you was totally . . . in another second, I would’ve thrown you out of here. But the fact that it’s your first time is really kinda cool.”

  “My mom always says that ‘thank you’ are the only two words in the language that can never hurt,” I said.

  “So let your mom blow you,” Vered said, and smiled, and I thought, “What a day. My first kiss. My first blow job. My first fuck. All on the same afternoon and all slightly miraculous. I was nineteen then, a soldier, which is late for a first kiss, maybe even for a first blow job. But I felt lucky. Because even if it took time, it had all finally happened, and with a nice girl who had the name of a flower.

  Then Vered said she had a boyfriend. She said she didn’t tell me before we kissed because a kiss is no big deal, even if there’s a boyfriend, and she didn’t tell me when she blew me because my prick was in her mouth. Anyway, when she finally did tell me, she also said that she hoped I wasn’t offended or anything, because I look like I’m a little too sensitive. I told her that I was surprised, but not the least bit offended. Just the opposite, the fact that she had a boyfriend and still slept with me was even a little flattering. She laughed and said, “‘Flattering’ is a big word. I have a boyfriend, but he’s a shit, and you . . . right from the first kiss I felt you were a virgin, and—what can you do—there’s something cool about a virgin.”

  She told me that when she was a kid, her parents used to send her to camp during vacations, and at camp, after supper, the counselors used to toss giant bags of chips into the air and everyone tried to grab them in midair. “You have to understand,” she said while stroking the five hairs that had grown on my chest, “there were enough chips for everyone, and we knew that, but there’s nothing like that feeling of ripping open the bag and being the first one to eat from it.”

  “So now that I’m open,” I said in a slightly choked voice, “I’m not worth anything anymore?”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Vered said, “but let’s just say that you’re worth a little less.” I asked her when her parents were coming back, and she said not for another hour and a half at least. I asked her if she would agree to have sex with me again, and she slapped me. Not really hard, but enough to hurt, and said, “Don’t say ‘agree,’ say ‘want,’ you asshole.” And after a second of silence, she said, “You’re like a camel, eh? You think that when you leave here there’s a desert waiting for you outside, and who knows when you’ll find water the next time.” She took my prick in her hand and said, “Don’t worry. It’s not a desert. Everyone fucks in this world and everyone’ll keep fucking. Everyone. Even you.”

  After we fucked again, she walked me to the door, and after she opened it, she said, “If you meet me by accident at a falafel place or in the movies or at the mall with my boyfriend, don’t pretend you don’t know me, okay? I hate when people do that. Just say hello, the kind of normal hello you say to someone you know from the scouts, okay?” I asked her if we could see each other again, and she stroked my face and said I shouldn’t be offended, but she couldn’t because of Asi and everything. From that, I understood that her boyfriend’s name was Asi.

  I didn’t plan to cry, but I did, and she said, “I’ve never met anyone as weird as you.” I told her that I was crying with happiness, but she didn’t believe me. “It’s not a desert out there,” she told me. “You’ll see, you’ll fuck your head off.”

  I never saw her again after that. Not in the movies. Not at a falafel place. Not at the mall. But if she ever happens to read this story, I’d like to thank her again.

  TO: Sefi.Moreh

  FROM: Michael.Warshavski

  RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: “Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy” query

  Dear Sefi,

  I would like to thank you again for taking the trouble to open your escape room this morning especially for my mother. In general, the riddles were enjoyable, even if they were a bit too easy (how many planets are there in our solar system—really . . . ) But the last one, the room which (if I understood correctly) was supposed to resemble a flying saucer, was frustrating and annoying. An escape room cannot presume to be based on astronomical truths and, at the same time, consider the existence of aliens to be a proven fact. It is no wonder my mother could not solve the riddle, which frustrated and saddened her very much. Furthermore, I warmly recommend that you turn down the air-conditioning in the room. It is supposed to be a journey to outer space, not the North Pole.

  With thanks,

  Michael (Warshavski)

  HOME

  It started when little Hillel was almost two years old. Yochai would try to drop him off and leave him at preschool, and little Hillel would yell, “Home! Home!” and hurl his body onto the cold floor, still yelling, “Home! Home!”

  The teacher would tell Yochai to ignore it, to just leave, and Yochai, who from childhood had been one of those kids who did exactly what the teacher said, would take his bag and go.

  The yelling started in preschool but continued at friends’ houses and at his grandparents’ homes, where there was no teacher around to supervise. Yochai caved in instantly, put little Hillel on his back, went out to the car, and drove home. Sometimes a grandmother would complain that they hadn’t even eaten the leek patties she’d made or seen some cousin who was on his way and would be there in just another few minutes, but Yochai didn’t even stay to listen. As he flew down the stairs, he’d say over his shoulder, “If we make him stay, it’ll only get worse,” and disappear. In his heart, he knew Hillel would calm down in a minute or two, the way he did in preschool, but there was something in those screams that fit perfectly with Yochai’s wishes. And it wasn’t that home was so great: their apartment was two and a half rooms in the older, northern part of the city, the kind of place that, in the newspaper for-rent ads, always included “renovation needed,” at the bottom. Which didn’t keep their landlord from demanding $1,800 a month, and getting it. Maybe because of the really good location. Central but quiet. Except for those nights when a woman who lived in the next building screamed.

  The screaming neighbor’s bedroom window was opposite theirs, and when she screamed, you couldn’t sleep. “Rip me apart,” she’d shriek. “Fuck my brains out!”

  “What kind of person says things like that?” Hodaya would whisper angrily. “It sounds like a punk beating someone up, not like a woman making love.” “Maybe she’s not making love?” Yochai tried to defend her. “Maybe someone’s just fucking her real hard?” The sounds she made didn’t really sound like lovemaking, but more like wild shrieks of pain and pleasure that woke up everyone in both buildings. Even though none of the neighbors mentioned the screams to him, it was clear they were disruptive to everyone. It was as if those screams were a kind of pogrom that terrified the entire street, causing everyone to stay quietly in their apartments until the danger passed. Yochai really wanted to talk to someone about it but was embarrassed. Everyone seemed to be embarrassed. But there was a clear reason for Yochai’s embarrassment. It was because he and Hodaya had nothing at all to scream about, so that whenever the woman screamed, it felt like a protest against their much less creative sex life. And it wasn’t that he hadn’t tried to learn things from her. He really did want to fuck his beloved Hodaya’s brains out, but somehow everything with them was much tamer and more controlled. “Only animals have sex like that,” Hodaya had once said about the neighbor, and a few days later, when Yochai and Hodaya were fucking, Yochai tried to imagine he was a bear or a tiger or a dog, but apart from the fact that he
bit the back of Hodaya’s neck, which made her very angry, nothing changed.

  Hillel also woke up when the neighbor screamed. Yochai knew because he saw him standing in his crib, listening. But the screaming never made Hillel cry; he just stood and listened, fascinated. When the fucking was over, he would lie down again, murmur unclear things to himself, and fall back to sleep.

  It happened on a rainy winter day, when they came back from preschool. When Yochai opened the door, Hillel ran past him into the living room and looked around: he looked at the toy chest filled with half-broken plastic and electronic toys. He looked at the awful paintings they’d had to hang on the living room walls because they were painted by Hodaya’s late brother. He looked at the tired, threadbare kitchen floor mat that looked like the lone survivor of a terrible floor mat holocaust. Hillel threw his tiny body onto the cold floor tiles and yelled, “Home! Home!” At first, Yochai tried to argue. To explain that they were already home and everything was okay. But it didn’t work. Not only because Hillel didn’t listen but also because, in his heart, Yochai himself wasn’t really convinced. That sad apartment wasn’t really a home, and to say that everything was okay was an exaggeration. Yochai very quickly found himself picking up the boy, taking him to the car, buckling him into his booster seat, and starting to drive. “Home! Home!” Hillel kept screaming, and Yochai, trying to smile at him through the rearview mirror, said, “Daddy’s looking for it.” They drove up the coast to Herzliya but didn’t find anything on the way that was even close to a home, and they didn’t turn back until Hillel tired himself out from screaming and fell asleep.

  When they returned, a small miracle happened and Yochai found parking right in front of the building. Just as he took Hillel gently out of his booster seat and put him on his shoulder, he noticed that the woman from the next building and the guy who fucked her brains out were standing on the sidewalk, looking at him. They were both carrying full plastic bags from the supermarket. “What a sweetie,” the woman whispered, putting her bags down on the sidewalk. She bent forward to caress Hillel but stopped before touching him. “It’s okay,” Yochai said with a smile, “you can touch him, he won’t wake up. He’s a sound sleeper.” The woman stroked Hillel’s curly hair, and the boy trembled slightly in his sleep. That was the first time Yochai saw her close up and not just as a moving shadow on the balcony. She was thin and had terrible skin, and her face seemed set in a smile. “Is he your youngest?” the guy who fucked her brains out asked. He was almost completely bald and looked twenty years older than her. “He’s our only one,” Yochai apologized, “for the time being.” The guy who fucked her brains out said he had four with someone who didn’t talk to him anymore, and the oldest one was in the army already. “There’s nothing better than kids,” he said, running his hand over the little hair he had left.

  The neighbor and the father of four went off, leaving Yochai standing with Hillel in his arms, looking at the lighted window of their living room from the outside. He knew that Hodaya had already come home from school and must be very worried. Only now did he realize that when he carried the screaming Hillel to the car with him, he forgot to take his cell phone. She must have tried to call him. When he went inside, she’d be angry, but she’d forgive him soon enough and cry and tell him how frightened she’d been that something happened. It really was wrong of him to take Hillel like that without letting her know. If it had been the other way around, he would have been scared, too. Hillel had slipped down a little in his arms, and Yochai pushed him up higher on his shoulder and walked toward the building entrance. The air smelled nice after the rain, and Hillel, pressed up against his body, felt just like a hot water bottle. Yochai allowed himself a long moment on the dark street, then took a last deep breath before he continued into the lobby.

  TO: Chief.Department.of.Rational.Species.Study

  FROM: Field.Agent.SEFI

  RE: Escape Room—Destroying evidence of extraterrestrial presence

  After five months of genetic surveillance and examination of visitors to the escape room under my management, it has been decided to cut off all contact with the species under discussion. The last encounter with the earthling known as “Warshavski” tipped the scales absolutely. The same aggressiveness and arrogance we saw during previous observations were evident in the aforementioned native with menacing force, and as I point out in the attached report, if those patterns of behavior are commonplace in the rest of the species, an open relationship with them might result in the end of our species. All evidence of extraterrestrial presence at coordinates 66:22:14 (local name “Rishon Lezion Meadows Shopping Mall”) has been destroyed, and I am starting my journey back to the mother planet.

  Molecularly yours,

  Field Agent SEFI, solar system

  PINEAPPLE CRUSH

  The first hit is the one that colors your world. Save it for the evening—and any piece of trash flickering across your TV screen will be riveting. Puff it at midday, before you get on your bike, and the world around you will feel like one big adventure. Smoke it as soon as you wake up in the morning, before your coffee, and it’ll give you the energy to crawl out of bed or dive back in for another few hours of sleep.

  The first hit of the day is like a childhood friend, a first love, a commercial for life. But it’s different from life itself, which is something that, if I could have, I would have returned to the store ages ago. In the commercial it’s made-to-order, all-inclusive, finger-licking, carefree living. After that first one, more hits will come along to help you soften reality and make the day tolerable, but they won’t feel the same.

  I always take my first hit at sundown. The after-school program where I work is half a mile from the beach, and I finish at five, when Raviv’s sweaty mother, who always gets there last, finally comes to pick up her snot-nosed second-grader. That leaves me time to run errands, if I have any, then to grab a coffee on Ben Yehuda or HaYarkon, and mosey over to the promenade. That’s where I eagerly wait for the sun to kiss the sea, the way a kid waits for his good-night kiss, the way a pimply teenager slow-dancing at prom waits for his first French kiss, the way a wrinkly old man waits for a wet peck on the cheek from his grandchild. The second the sun starts reflecting off the water, I pull out the joint from my pack of Noblesse cigarettes and light up.

  I smoke that joint quietly. I try to be in the moment, to feel the breeze on my face, to take pleasure in the colors of the sky and the way the sea sizzles in the red sunlight. I try, but I can’t really do it, because as soon as I take the first puff, my mind starts letting in all kinds of thoughts about how it was a mistake to call that first-grader Romi “poop face,” because the little snitch will tell her bitch of a mother about it, and she’ll go straight to the principal. And about how the tall, skinny second-grade teacher is nicer to me than the other teachers are, always smiling and asking how I am, so maybe something could happen there. And also about my rich asshole brother who keeps working over Mom to make her stop helping me out with my rent, like it’s any of his business. I always try to lose those thoughts and not waste the best hit of the day on them, and sometimes I can do it. But even when I can’t, I figure if you’re going to think bad thoughts about your brother, you may as well be high while you’re doing it.

  Life is like an ugly low table left in your living room by the previous tenants. Most of the time you notice it and you’re careful, you remember it’s there, but sometimes you forget and then you get the pointy corner right in your shin or your kneecap, and it hurts. And it almost always leaves a scar. When you smoke, it doesn’t make that low table disappear. Nothing except death can make it disappear. But a good puff can file down the corners, round them off a little. And then when you get whacked, it hurts a lot less.

  After I finish smoking, I get on my bike and take a little spin around town. I watch people. And if I see someone really interesting—and that someone is almost always a she—I follow her and make up a little story: The person
who just got yelled at over the phone by the tanned woman I’m following is her younger sister who’s always making eyes at her husband at Friday-night dinners; the pint of ice cream she picked up at the corner store is for her spoiled brat of a son; and the drugstore stop is for the Pill, so she doesn’t accidentally have another spoiled brat. After that, if the weather’s decent, I plunk myself on a bench on Ben Gurion Boulevard and smoke a regular cigarette, and I sit there as long as the high or some bit of it is still going. When it completely fades, I jump on my bike and head back to my apartment to the TV, to Tinder, computer games, trance music.

  For four years, I’ve been taking my first drag at sundown. Barely missed an evening. There were a few anomalous puffs that managed to convince me to light up earlier in the day, but nothing major. And that is something that a suggestible, addictive personality like me can certainly be proud of. More than one thousand puffs on Frishman Beach at sunset. More than one thousand uninterrupted puffs until she came along. With her “Excuse me?” so soft and gentle that even before I turned around I knew she would be ugly, because pretty girls don’t have to try so hard to be gentle: people do whatever they want anyway.