The Girl on the Fridge: Stories (11 page)

Wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and cowboy boots, Itzik sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window. The sun was shining out there. He felt like a jerk. Happiness was supposed to arrive today. His sources had just informed him about it five minutes ago, and here he was, sitting on the bed like an idiot, not doing a thing about it. He thought back over the last time Happiness had come—how his father had opened the door for it, just like that, and how Itzik himself, a pale-faced little boy, had sat there at the kitchen table making paper collages, not afraid of anything.

He started to tremble. “It can’t get in,” he whispered. “No matter what.” If only he could keep it from getting inside, everything would be okay. He lunged at the dresser and started pushing it toward the door. Once he’d blocked the entrance completely, he got out his hunting rifle and began shoving the cartridges into it. This time, he’d be ready. Not like at his parents’ house. Nobody was going to turn him into a grinning zombie who loved daytime TV and García Márquez, and kissed his mother every chance he got. “Where’s my flak jacket?” he yelled to no one. “Where’s my flak jacket, son of a bitch.” He rummaged frantically through the cabinet under the sink till he found it, then put on an undershirt and the jacket. Next he stuck the ice picks and Stanley knives into the fireplace, with the blades pointing straight up. If they’re so smart, let them try the chimney. He’d teach them a thing or two about Happiness. Five years he’d done at Club Med. Five years, damn them to hell. With the girl he loved, with sex both oral and anal, with money to spend like there was no tomorrow. He’d had it real bad. He knew it for what it was. If Grandma hadn’t died, he’d still be there now.

The first to arrive was Opportunity. They always sent her in first, like some goddamn Bedouin scout. Probably figured she was expendable. She knocked at the door, then tried the handle, which was electrified. The shock stunned her to the ground. That’s when Itzik broke the window with the rifle butt and stuck the barrel out. “Think of something nice,” he muttered through clenched teeth and pressed the trigger. “Think of something nice, bitch, all the way up to Heaven. I’m not giving in without a fight. I’m not my father. I won’t let you drag me away in some van festooned with Walt Disney characters and a shit-eating grin on my face.” He pumped another slug into blank-faced Opportunity just to be on the safe side.

Suddenly he remembered what Greenberg had said about the fast one they pulled using cable TV. Son of a bitch. Here he was, sitting around like a jive rookie, with his back to the Family Channel, as if he’d never heard about what NBC did to the Depression Underground in Seattle back in ’87. How stupid could he be! He spun around and fired another one into the TV, a split second before Cosby kissed Lisa. “Gotta stay cool,” he muttered under his breath. “Gotta stay cool, no matter what happens.”

He was just beginning to focus on Somalia when he heard rustling in the bushes. It was Sheer Enjoyment with the take-away pizzas and the porn magazines, inching her way along the hedge. He couldn’t quite get her in his sights. But she didn’t try to get any closer.

“Hey, babe, I hate my pizzas cold,” he screamed. But she didn’t even answer. The helicopters were overhead now, with their enormous loudspeakers booming techno hits and schmaltzy crooners at top volume. He put his hands over his ears and concentrated on Holocaust Memorial Day, on women with a breast cut off, on homeless people shivering in the New York winter. He did have a hint of a smile on his face, but the music remained on the outside. Still, there was something going on. It all seemed too easy. The helicopters. Sheer Enjoyment not making a move. It had to be a ploy. “The roof, damn it,” he blurted. “It’s got to be up on the roof.” He took a few potshots through the shingles. Something fell down the chimney straight onto the spikes. That was Success! She was holding a packet of winning lottery tickets. Itzik doused her with gasoline and threw his Zippo into the fireplace. The body caught fire instantly. Along with the winning tickets. The flames lapped them up long before they had a chance to spread through the cabin. Smoke was filling the room, mixed with another smell, the fragrance of hot corn on the cob, of old-fashioned ice cream, of Mom tucking him in at night. Gas. He crawled along the floor, trying to get to the gas masks. AIDS, he thought to himself. People abusing children all over the world at this very moment. Children. So sweet, I’d love to have some of my own, and a wife. Who loves me. Being tortured in the Security Service dungeons—he tried. No way. The smile just kept spreading. Threatening to swallow him up. Three emotions he couldn’t quite make out were taking over, removing his flak jacket, wiping the number off his arm with saliva. Replacing his “Why?” undershirt with a “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” one. Don’t lose hope, it’ll work out, he said, trying to cheer himself up as they dragged him outside. She’ll be there, waiting for you. You’ll have an amazing future. You’ll have an APV minivan. So intense was the anticipation that his knees were turning to mush. You’ll have it so good, you lucky son of a bitch, you don’t know how good.

By then the tears in his throat had dried up. The trees outside were all green. And the sky was bright blue. The weather was just right, not too warm and not too cold. A van covered with
Simpsons
characters and mortgage ads was there already, waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

When Nandy Schwartz, the German pole-vaulter, cleared the six-sixty mark on the second try, he wasn’t thinking about anything. There was a lump in his throat the size of a billiard ball, and as his eyes followed his outstretched feet passing over the bar without touching it, he struggled hard to keep from crying. He sank into the mat below and was surprised at the enormous tears choking him while the announcer compared his record to that of the legendary Bob Beamon. “Everyone here today has just seen a piece of history,” the mega-phones crooned, and Nandy Schwartz, the only person in the stadium who hadn’t really seen it, held his arm high for the cameras.

Nandy’s answering machine had no outgoing message. It just beeped with laconic arrogance—which didn’t stop the Kellogg’s people from leaving three messages.

“Raising the bar” was their suggestion for the new campaign, starring Nandy. “Eight vitamins instead of six!”

Four hundred and ninety thousand dollars in the bank. Nandy didn’t hear the messages. He happened to be in the shower stall, curled up in a fetal position on the tiles, letting the hot water scald his back. The steam seeped from his boiled pores as if from a rusty kettle while he lay there with his thumb in his mouth, urinating into the stream of water, watching the yellow urine swirl toward the drain. Those 490,000 dollars could fix him up, except that unfortunately he was already fixed up in his split-level five-room apartment in northern Bonn. Down on the tiles a piece of history was cooking away, sucking the memory of many triumphs from a thumb. Money, fame, and health aside, he’d had sixty-three girls, each with her own story. Some with more than one. If he wanted to raise the bar any higher, he’d have to find a professor at least fifty-four years old, and if he wanted it lower, he’d need a retard under sixteen.

“Son of a bitch,” the fat guy muttered and banged his fist on the bus stop bench. Vladimir kept looking at the pictures in the newspaper, taking no notice at all of the words around them. Time was moving slowly. Vladimir hated waiting for buses. “Son of a bitch,” the fat guy said again, loudly this time, and spat on the sidewalk close to Vladimir’s feet. “Are you talking to me?” Vladimir asked, a bit surprised, and looked up from the paper to meet the fat guy’s alcohol-glazed eyes. “No, I’m talking to my ass,” the fat guy yelled. “Oh,” Vladimir said and went back to the paper. In it was a color picture of piles of hacked-up bodies in the city hall square. Vladimir continued to browse his way to the sports section. “Damn right I’m talking to you, asshole.” The fat guy got up and stood over Vladimir. “Oh,” Vladimir said, “that’s what I thought at first, but you said—” “Forget what I said, you dirty Arab.” “Russian,” Vladimir said, quick to hide behind the branch of his family not presently under attack. “My mother’s from Riga.” “Sure she is,” the fat guy said unbelievingly. “And your father?” “From Nablus,” Vladimir admitted and went back to the paper. “Two diseases in one body,” the fat guy said. “What are they going to think of next to steal our jobs.” There was a picture in the newspaper of charred Kurdish midgets popping out of a huge toaster, and the inquisitive Vladimir was sorry for a moment that he’d sworn not to read captions.

“Get up,” the fat guy said. Vladimir finally reached the sports section he was so eager to get to and saw a picture of a black player hanging from a basketball hoop. Vladimir couldn’t resist the temptation and peeked at the caption: “Frustrated Fans Demand New Blood.” “I told you to get up,” the fat guy repeated. “Me?” Vladimir asked, “not your—” “Yes, you,” the fat guy said. Vladimir got up. The black guy in the picture had played two seasons with North Carolina College before getting hanged on a Tel Aviv court, so Vladimir learned as he stood up, violating another one of his principles. It was five o’clock and the bus still hadn’t come. In his radio speech, the Prime Minister had promised rivers of blood, and the fat guy was a head taller than him. Vladimir kneed him in the balls, then smashed him with the iron crowbar he’d stashed in the newspaper. The fat guy fell down and started wailing, “Arabs! Russians! Help!” Vladimir gave him another whack on the head with the crowbar and sat back down on the bench.

The bus arrived at 5:07. “What’s with him?” the driver asked, jerking his head in the direction of the fat guy, who was sprawled on the sidewalk. “He’s not coming,” Vladimir said. “I can see that,” the driver said, “but shouldn’t we help him or something?” “He’s epileptic,” Vladimir said. “Better not touch him.” “If he’s epileptic, where’s all the blood coming from?” the driver asked. Vladimir shrugged. “From the Prime Minister’s speech on the radio.” He put his monthly bus pass in his pocket and sat down in the back next to an old man wearing a beret and glasses, doing a crossword puzzle. “Bulbul,” the old man said. “A songbird (six letters),” Vladimir recited loudly. “Who’s talking to you, you dirty Arab?” the old man said. “Border Patrol policemen’s favorite statement/question (twenty-eight letters, not including the apostrophe),” Vladimir said without hesitation. “Not bad for a
schvartze
,” the old man mumbled admiringly. “I love crossword puzzles,” Vladimir said, lowering his head modestly.

When they reached Vladimir’s stop, the old man took off his beret and tore out the string that dangled from the back of it. “Here, young man, a gift from me,” he said, handing Vladimir the hat. “Thank you, Gramps,” Vladimir said, took the beret, and hopped onto the sidewalk. The bus pulled away, and Vladimir instinctively tossed the hat into the green trash can and dropped to the ground. The explosion came a few seconds later, showering him with garbage.

He hurried to the marble-façade building where he lived with his family, took the stairs two at a time, and reached the roof panting. Grandma Natasha was sitting in the tent watching public service announcements on TV. They were showing a blond model in a bikini doing the backstroke in a river of blood flowing along Arlozorov Street. “She’s not a real blonde,” Grandma Natasha grumbled, pointing at the model. “She has it bleached.” Vladimir’s mother came into the tent carrying a laundry basket. “Where were you?” she asked angrily. “We’ve been looking for you all morning. Those antipollution lunatics crucified Grandpa in the central bus station.” Vladimir was picturing himself fucking the TV model. “I want you at the funeral, not like at your father’s, when you ran away, do you hear me?” He didn’t care if her hair was bleached, he liked her. “Vladimir? Are you even listening to me?” Getting mad, his mother started cursing in Russian. “Are you talking to me?” Vladimir asked and looked at her for a minute. “No, I’m talking to God,” his mother said and went back to cursing. “Oh,” Vladimir said and went back to watching TV. They were showing the bottom half of the model’s body now. The shiny blood flowed around it without sticking to it. There was a caption and the city’s logo above it, but Vladimir was able to resist the temptation and avoid reading it.

The gods had their dignity. When they got here, everyone wanted to help them: the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, the Housing Ministry. Everyone. But they fended for themselves. They came with nothing, they asked for nothing, they worked like Arabs and were satisfied. And so Mercury wound up in deliveries, Atlas in moving, and Vulcan in a garage. Venus came to our office. She Xeroxed.

I was going through a rough patch. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was alone, completely alone. I was desperate to have a great love. Usually, when I’m in that state, I take up a hobby—painting, the guitar, whatever. Then, if I can get into it, it makes me feel better and I forget that I don’t have anyone in the world, but that time, I knew no macramé course could help me. I needed something I could believe in. A great love that would never go away, that would never leave me. My therapist listened with interest and suggested that I buy a dog. I left my therapist.

Venus worked from eight-thirty to six, sometimes later, Xeroxing reams and collating them into neat stacks. Even in that position, sweaty and bent over the machine, wincing against the flashing light, she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to say so, but I couldn’t get up the nerve. In the end, I wrote it down on a piece of paper and left it on her desk. The next morning, the note was waiting for me, along with fifty copies.

Her Hebrew wasn’t great. She was a goddess, but she was making seven thousand shekels, pretax. I know because once, when I was down in Accounting, I looked at her paycheck. I wanted to marry her, I wanted to save her. I was positive she could save me. I don’t know how I did it, but finally I asked her to a movie. The girl chosen by Paris as most beautiful of the goddesses smiled the gentlest, shyest smile you can imagine and said yes.

Before I left the house, I looked in the mirror. There was a zit on my forehead. The Roman goddess of beauty and I are going to a movie tonight, I said to myself, the Roman goddess of beauty and I are going out on a date. I popped it and toilet-papered off the greasy blood. Who are you, pathetic mortal, that you want to buy her popcorn, that you dare put your arm around her in the shadows of a cineplex?

After the movie, we went to get a drink. I was hoping she wouldn’t talk to me about the plot. I had no idea what had happened on-screen. I’d been looking at her all through the movie. We talked some about the office and about how her family was adapting to Israel. She liked it here. Of course she wanted more out of life, that would come, but in the meantime it was just so good to be here she had no complaints. Oh, God, she said, touching my arm, you have no idea what an awful time we had, back there.

Driving her home, I asked if she believed in God. She laughed. If you’re asking whether I know that he exists, she said, then the answer’s yes. Not just him, a whole bunch. If you’re asking whether I believe in him, then no, definitely not.

Before I knew it we were at her house and she’d already popped the car door. I cursed myself for taking the short route. I wanted so much for her to stay with me a little longer. I prayed for a miracle. For the police to stop us, for someone to kidnap us, for something to happen that would leave us together. Already out of the car, she asked me up for coffee.

She’s sleeping now, next to me, in bed. Lying on her stomach, her head sunk into the pillow. Her lips move slightly, as if speaking to herself silently. Her right arm is curled around me, her hand resting on my chest. I try not to breathe more than I have to so my chest rising and falling won’t wake her up. She’s beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Perfect. And pretty nice, too.

Tomorrow I’m buying a dog.