The Girl on the Fridge: Stories (2 page)

At the end of the show, I pull a rabbit out of the hat. I always save it for last, because kids love animals. At least, when I was a kid I loved animals. That way the show ends on a high note, at the point when I pass the rabbit around so the kids can pet it and feed it. That’s how it used to be. It’s harder with kids nowadays. They don’t get as excited, but still, I leave the rabbit for the end. It’s the trick I love best. Or rather, it used to be. I’d keep my eyes fixed on the audience as my hand reached into the hat, groping deep inside it till it felt Kazam’s ears.

And then “A-la-Kazeem—a-la-Kazam!” and out it comes. It never fails to surprise them. And not only them, me, too. Every time my hand touches those funny ears inside the hat I feel like a magician. And even though I know how it’s done, the hollow space in the table and all that, it still seems like actual magic.

That Saturday afternoon in the suburbs I left the hat trick to the end, the way I always do. The kids at that birthday party were incredibly blasé. Some had their backs to me, watching a Schwarzenegger movie on cable. The birthday boy wasn’t even in the room, he was playing with his new video game. My audience had dwindled to a total of about four kids. It was especially hot that day. I was sweating like crazy under my magician’s suit. All I wanted was to get through it and go home. I skipped over three rope tricks and went straight to the hat. My hand disappeared deep inside it, and my eyes sank into the eyes of a chubby girl with glasses. The soft touch of Kazam’s ears took me by surprise the way it always does. “A-la-Kazeem—a-la-Kazam!” One more minute in the father’s den and I was out of there, with a three-hundred-shekel check in my pocket. I pulled Kazam by the ears, and something about him felt a little strange, lighter. My hand swung up in the air, my eyes still fixed on the audience. And then—suddenly there was something wet on my wrist and the chubby girl started to scream. In my right hand I was holding Kazam’s head, with his long ears and wide-open rabbit eyes. Just the head, no body. The head, and lots and lots of blood. The chubby girl kept screaming. The kids sitting with their backs to me turned away from the TV and started to clap. The birthday kid with the new video game came in from the other room and, when he saw the severed head, gave a loud whistle through his fingers. I could feel my lunch rising to my throat. I threw up into my magician’s hat, and the vomit disappeared. The kids were ecstatic.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I kept checking my gear. I had no explanation at all for what had happened. Couldn’t find the rest of Kazam either. In the morning, I went to the magicians’ shop. They were baffled too. I bought a rabbit. The guy tried to sell me a turtle. “Rabbits are played,” he told me. “Nowadays it’s all about the turtles. Tell them it’s a ninja, they’ll freak.”

I bought a rabbit anyway. I named it Kazam too. By the time I got home, there were five messages on my machine. All job offers. All from kids who’d witnessed the performance. One kid actually stipulated that I leave the severed head behind just like I’d done at the party. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t taken Kazam’s head with me.

My next gig was on Wednesday. A ten-year-old in Savyon Heights was having a birthday. I was stressed out all through the show. I couldn’t get in the zone. I fucked up the Queen of Hearts trick. All I could think about was the hat. Finally it was time: “A-la-Kazeem—a-la-Kazam!” The penetrating look at the audience, the hand into the hat. I couldn’t find the ears, but the body was the right weight. Smooth, but the right weight. And then the screaming again. Screaming, but also applause. It wasn’t a rabbit I was holding, it was a dead baby.

I can’t do that trick anymore. I used to love it, but just thinking about it now makes my hands shake. I keep imagining what terrible things I might wind up pulling out of there, the things waiting inside. Last night I dreamed I put my hand into the hat and it was caught in some creature’s jaws. It baffles me how blithe I used to be about sticking my hand into that dark place. How blithe I was about shutting my eyes and sleeping.

I’ve stopped performing altogether, but I don’t really care. I’ve stopped earning a living, but that’s fine too. Sometimes I still put on the suit when I’m at home, for kicks, or I check the secret space in the table under the hat. That’s about it. Apart from that, I pretty much stay away from magic tricks, I pretty much don’t do anything. I just lie awake and think about the rabbit’s head and the dead baby. Like they’re clues to a riddle. It’s as if someone was trying to tell me this is no time to be a rabbit, or a baby. Or a magician.

I was knocking down a wall.

All women reporters are whores and I was knocking down a wall. It was already something like four months since she’d left. At first, I thought all that manual labor would calm me down, but meanwhile it only upset me more. The wall I was knocking down had stood between the living room and the bedroom. So the balcony was always behind me. But I remembered. You don’t have to see to remember. I remembered how we used to sit there at night.

“Look,” she’d said, “a falling star. We have to make a wish. Come on,” she’d said, kissing me on the neck, “wish for something.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, “I’m wishing.”

“What did you wish?” she asked and tightened her arms around me. “Won’t you tell me? Come on, tell me.”

“That it’ll always be like this, like it is now.” I stroked her hair. “A breeze. The two of us together on the balcony.”

“No,” she said, pushing me away, “that’s not a good wish. Wish for something else, something just for you.”

“Okay, fine,” I said with a laugh, “don’t rush me. An FZR 1000. I wish for a Yamaha FZR 1000.”

“A motorcycle?” She looked at me, shocked. “You get a wish and you ask for a motorcycle?”

“Yes,” I said. “What did you wish for?”

“I’m not telling,” she said, hiding her face in my sweater. “If you tell, it never comes true.”

But if you don’t tell, maybe it does. Two months later, she moved to Tel Aviv to work on one of the big dailies, nothing like the local rag in Hadera. She didn’t say a word, one day she just disappeared. Her parents wouldn’t give me her address. They said she didn’t want to talk to me. “Why not?” I asked her father. “Did I hurt her feelings? Did I do something to her?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “That’s what she told me to say.”

“Tell me, Mr. Brosh,” I said, getting angry, “you think it’s normal that your daughter and I have been going out together for two years, and all of a sudden, just like that, for no reason, she doesn’t want to talk to me? You don’t think I deserve an explanation?”

“That’s not fair, Eli,” her father said, leaning on the door handle. The whole conversation was taking place at the door to their apartment. “It really isn’t fair,” he said, running his hand over his bald head. “I’m not the one who left you, you know. I never did anything bad to you, right? I don’t deserve for you to be taking that tone.” He was right. That’s all there was to it. I said I was sorry and left. Suddenly, he looked so forlorn. From then on, I tried to get to her through the paper. But they wouldn’t give me her home number, and she was never at the office. So I left a message, I left a thousand messages, but she didn’t call. A few months later, I started renovating.

People were screaming. Between one blow and another on the wall, I suddenly realized that people were screaming outside, not far from my house. I went outside. Near the intersection, thirty meters away, two people were lying on the road, and a woman was running toward me, yelling, and a man in a green woolen hat was chasing her. When there was maybe ten meters between us, he caught up with her and grabbed her by the hair. Suddenly, I saw the tip of a knife sticking out of the front of her neck. And blood, gallons of blood. She fell to her knees, the man twisted her arm behind her back, and the blade just disappeared. She was lying on the sidewalk now. And the guy with the knife was looking at me, moving slightly toward me, but slowly. I wanted to run away, but my feet just wouldn’t budge. He kept coming closer, taking little, hesitant steps as if we were kids playing tag. And the whole time, I kept saying to myself, “Something’s not right here. Why’s he walking so slowly? I mean, he ran after that woman like a madman. Here I am in my slippers and he’s holding a knife twenty centimeters long. What’s he afraid of? Why doesn’t he come up and stab me?” And then I saw him step off the sidewalk onto the road, trying to walk around me very, very slowly. I watched him, half aware of the sledgehammer in my hand, a five-kilo sledgehammer. I took a step toward him and whacked him on the head.

He wasn’t moving. I sat down on the sidewalk. The grocery guy came over with a Coke. I put my hand in the pocket of my sweatpants to pay him. He grabbed it and wouldn’t let me take out the money. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s on me.”

“Come on, Gaby,” I said, “let me pay.” But he insisted and wouldn’t let go of my hand. “So put it on my bill,” I said, backing down. I was thirsty and wanted to get things settled before I started drinking, while I was still in a bargaining position.

“Okay, okay,” he said, “I’ll put it on your bill.”

The photographers got there first, even before the police. On motorcycles, two on a Honda 600F and one on a Harley. With their long hair and tattoos, they looked just like Hells Angels. “Would you hold the hammer like this, like you’re threatening him, for a picture?” the guy with the Harley asked me. I said no. “Are you sure? It would be much stronger, in terms of visuals.”

“Fuck the visuals,” Gaby said. “Want something real? Get him in front of my store.”

After that, the police came, then the newspaper reporters. All reporters are whores.

They came from all the papers. I wouldn’t talk to them. They came from TV and from radio too. I didn’t even tell them no, I just held up my hand and turned away. The TV people went over to Gaby and almost everybody else followed them, except the guy from
Ma’ariv
, who wouldn’t get off my back.

“Hey you, four-eyes,” I yelled to one of the newspaper reporters who was trying to shove his tape recorder down some police detective’s throat. “Come here.” The guy with the glasses left the policeman midsentence and rushed over. “You’re from
Yediot
?” I asked.

“Yeah, I am,” he panted, trying to turn the tape recorder on.

“Hey, how come you’ll talk to him and not me?” said the nudnik from
Ma’ariv
.

“Because I feel like it, okay?” I was losing my patience. “Because your paper’s shit. What difference does it make why? Please. Leave me alone.”

I gestured for the guy with the glasses to follow me to the edge of the crowd, but the
Ma’ariv
guy was like glue. “It’s because of their circulation,” he said in a hurt voice. “It’s just because of their circulation, you egomaniac. You wanna play it big-time, eh? So all your buddies can see what a hero you are? You macho shitwad, you murderer, you make me puke.” He spat and left.

“Okay,” the guy with the glasses said, “first of all I want to ask you—”

“First of all, you listen,” I said. I took the tape recorder out of his hand and pressed Stop. “Go to your editor now and tell him I’m ready to give you an exclusive. An exclusive, got that? I won’t talk to TV, or cable, or
Ma’ariv. I won’t talk to my grandmother.
But only if—”

“We don’t pay,” said the guy with the glasses. “It’s a matter of principle. We never pay for access.”

“Listen to me for a second, you moron,” I said. Now I was pissed. “I don’t want your money. I just want to pick the interviewer. Understand what I’m saying? Tell him I’m ready to be interviewed, but only by Dafna Brosh.”

“Brosh,” said Glasses, scratching his head. “The new girl? She isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“She does the interview. Tell him.”

“Excuse me,” Glasses said, “I know this has nothing to do with it, but did you happen to read my exposé on the circumcisers’ cartel?”

“Dafna Brosh,” I repeated and left him there.

To get to my apartment now, I had to walk through a huge circle of people who were standing around Gaby. They were shouting and screaming, and he was standing there in the middle, waving his hands. It looked like he was having a pretty good time. Two soldiers from the army radio station with mikes in their hands had come a little late and were trying to push their way into the circle but couldn’t. One of them, the taller one, got an elbow in his face from the cameraman of one of the foreign networks. He started bleeding from the nose, his eyes welled up, and tears came streaming down. I decided to head in the other direction and get to my building through a parallel street. “Egomaniac!” the
Ma’ariv
guy yelled at my back.

She came. I knew she would. In a black miniskirt. She’d bobbed her hair. “Want some coffee?” I asked, trying to sound calm. “Should I put on the kettle?” She shook her head, sat down at the table, and took a mini–tape recorder out of her bag. There were large pieces of plaster scattered all over the table. With the half-knocked-down wall in the middle of the room, the place looked like a bomb site. “Sure?” I asked. “I’ll go put on the kettle.”

The head shaking got sharper, more nervous. “An interview,” she said, and the words came out as if she were choking, “I came for an interview.” She put the tape recorder on the table.

Interview A

—Why?

—Am I allowed to ask exactly why you left me?

—Don’t shrug your shoulders. Answer me. The least I deserve is an answer.

I don’t want to hurt you. Definitely not now. There’s no point in it.

—Hurt me, damn you, hurt me. It can’t be worse than what you already did.

Because you’re a nobody, okay? Because you’re a nobody. Because you don’t want anything. Nothing. Don’t want to know anything, don’t want to succeed at anything, don’t want to be anything. Just to sit on your ass and say how good we have it together. Good is doing things, trying to achieve something, but you? You don’t even know how to dream. You’re not a person, you’re nothing. The only thing you’re capable of doing is sitting on that balcony with your arms around me, saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I’m not a teddy bear, you know? I’m not a Barbie. And unlike you, I have slightly bigger ambitions than sleeping in.

—Do you still love me?

—Do you love me a little?

—Did you ever love me?

—Hey, cut it out, don’t cry. I’m stopping. I stopped. Look. Go ahead and ask your questions.

Interview B

—What were you doing on the street at the time of the incident?

Nothing.

—Were you on your way somewhere?

No. I wasn’t on my way anywhere. I just heard yelling, so I went outside to see.

—And the hammer?

I whacked him on the head with it. God, when I try to remember that, it seems really distant, like something in a movie.

—Yes, but why did you have a hammer in your hand?

Because of the renovations. I’m knocking down the wall between the living room and the bedroom.

—Did you get a good look at him before it happened? Could you see his face?

Yes, his face was kind of chubby. He had these big brown eyes, like yours. And he pursed his lips, like something was wrong. Like he was constipated, in pain.

—What passed through your mind when you whacked him with the hammer?

Nothing.

—Don’t say nothing. You thought something.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

—I talked to Gaby from the grocery. He told me that the Arab didn’t get anywhere near you, that he was afraid when he saw you with the hammer, that he tried to walk around you, to get away. But you still smashed his skull. You could’ve waited, you know, you could’ve just stood there and he would’ve gone away. At least that’s what the Eli I knew would’ve done. I was thinking of you.

We heard the sound of a motorcycle outside. “That’s the photographer,” she said. “His name’s Eli too.”

“What kind of bike does he ride?” I asked.

“Since when do I know anything about motorcycles?” she said, laughing.

“Just asking. I thought you might know.”

“An FZR 1000. He has a Yamaha FZR 1000, the one you wished for.”

“You know, if I hadn’t told you then, I’d have one too.”

“I know,” she said and smiled. “I’m sorry.”