Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

I decided to go back home. Skip out on my shift. No one at the café had seen me anyway.

The apartment was empty. Osher had left. She’d emptied out the ashtray, rinsed it, and put it in the drying rack with all the coffee mugs she’d used at night. A closer examination of the apartment revealed that her toothbrush was also gone, and the clothes she left there for when she stayed the night. Her teddy bear was gone too, and her pillow, which she couldn’t sleep without and even took with her when she went on a trip to the US.

There was no question about it: Osher had left, without any explanations or apologies. Just like that. What a crappy world. After four years together you’d think you deserve a warning—but nothing. I wanted to yell, I wanted to scream loud enough to shatter the windows. I wanted to kick and punch, break and smash—but that’s childish and silly. I sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette. I felt all the anger that was bubbling and sizzling inside me begin to cool down and slowly congeal and harden into determination. I decided that this world, which had taken Osher away from me, did not deserve to have me in it. And not only that—I would not suffer alone. If this kind of shit could just hit me out of nowhere, without any warning, then it would have to hit someone else too. I was going down, baby—and I was taking a few assholes with me. Woo-hoo!

Max walked in, eyed me from head to toe, and said I looked wet. He had this talent, Max, for stating the obvious.

Max is my roommate. Sometimes people think we’re brothers, because he too is one of those tall, skinny guys who look like they’re about to topple over. I don’t know how anyone could think that. We don’t look anything alike. Max is a sound man, and he does customer phone support for a credit card company. And almost every Saturday he goes to a rave in some forest. I think he comes back high on molly, but we don’t really talk about it.

I told him Osher left me. Max said that was too bad, we seemed like a great couple and he was sure we were going to get married. He asked me if I threw her out. I said she was the one who dumped me, and she didn’t even tell me why, she just said she was done. Max’s eyes glazed over. He stared into space and said he could really relate to that, that he’s also done, and he feels like things can’t go on this way, that something needs to change in a big way soon. It’s not like Max to talk that way. I expected him to be on my side.

I blew off Max’s bullshit. Usually he’s awesome to talk with. He knows how to listen, which is an important quality that lots of people don’t have. He gets things, and he has a good head on his shoulders. He’s really a great roommate. He didn’t deserve it, that whole tragedy that happened to him afterwards.

Right from the start I made up my mind that nothing was going to get in the way of my depression. I’m a serious guy. Everyone says that about me. So when I say nothing, I mean nothing . I settled on a daily routine, and for the next month, despite all the insanity going on in our place, I tried not to deviate from it.

It went like this: I’d get up at twelve-thirty on the dot every day and make myself some Turkish coffee, no milk. I’d make sure not to brush my teeth or even rinse out my mouth first. I’d sit down at the kitchen table and drink my coffee. I’d spread out a white sheet of paper and crumble all the weed I wanted to smoke that day. When I’d finish the coffee, I’d put my cup in the sink. I had a rule against washing cups. I was only allowed to do it when I was completely out of clean cups, and even then I’d only wash one, just so I’d have something to drink out of. When I couldn’t be bothered, I wouldn’t even do that. I’d just empty out the old coffee grounds and cigarette butts, flick out whatever was left with my finger, then pour fresh coffee into the same cup.

After the coffee I’d empty out five Winston Lights and make my spliffs, then smoke my first one with another coffee. Then I’d go down to the corner store and buy a new pack of cigarettes and a large bottle of Coke. I’d come home, go into my room, and lie down in the dark with my eyes open. I’d lie on my left side until two-thirty and think about what a whore Osher was for leaving me, and how much I hated her and felt like killing her. At two-thirty, give or take ten minutes, I’d turn over onto my right side and think about how much I loved her, and how, if she wanted to get back together, I’d take her back with open arms, and how much I missed her. At four I’d watch The Bold and the Beautiful . Then I’d channel surf. If there was anything interesting on, I’d watch it. If not, I’d turn on the light, open up my datebook at the end, where I wrote down phone numbers, and think about who I could diss today.

My voyage downwards to the depths of despair and depression had a few upsides. The main one was that I didn’t give a fuck about anyone. I just didn’t care. This evil world, which had taken Osher away from me just like that, without any warning, didn’t deserve my caring. I felt that as long as I was wallowing in the dregs, no one else had any right to be happy—and if they were, then yours truly was going to put an end to it. And I’m talking especially about the assholes who’d insulted me or humiliated me. There seemed to be a lot of them, come to think about it.

I’d go through the list and try to pick someone. It was really hard: so many attractive options. My finger was on Dori’s name when the phone rang, and it was Gross. I’d missed three shifts, and he thought maybe I was sick or something was wrong. He was worried about me, the angel. I told him nothing in particular was wrong, I just didn’t feel great. Gross didn’t get mad. He was really nice, in fact. He asked if I had a fever and if I’d been to see a doctor. I told him dryly that what I had, no doctor could cure. Gross snickered and said, “Oh, so it’s that kind of disease. I get it. What’s her name?” “Osher,” I told him, “and it’s incurable.”

Then his voice got kind of formal and he said I could have let him know ahead of time, ’cause I really screwed up his shifts and he had to beg people to fill in the gaps. I told him he could get his fudge-packing friends to fill up his gaps, since all they did was sit there all day eating for free and trying to hit on me when I waited on their tables, and they never tipped, and his coffee sucked. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to tick off Gross. I must have hit a sensitive spot, because he yelled that he hated my guts and he was sick of all these cocky assholes who’d moved to the city two minutes ago looking down their noses at him. He yelled so loud that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Then he said that if I came anywhere near his café he’d throw a glass at my head and that he’d use his connections to make sure I never worked in this town again, ever. I hung up on him in midsentence. I took a red pen and put a thick check mark next to his name and number. I grinned to myself: my sweet revenge on the world, for what it had done to me, was moving along.

Max asked what all the yelling was about. I told him I just got fired from Café Gross and that I was newly unemployed. He shrugged his shoulders and went to make us some instant coffee. When the water boiled and he poured it into the cups, he realized we were out of milk, so he went down to the store.

And that’s when Max had it.

Call it an accident, a prophetic revelation, an epiphany, a hit-and-run, or a cosmic event. Doesn’t matter. What really happened at that moment, on Shenkin Street, corner of Ahad Ha’Am, no one has yet been able to truly explain.

What’s certain is that there was a long, black Chevy Caprice Classic driven by a wealthy contractor, a short Mitsubishi Pajero SUV driven by a very tall young woman with short-cropped red hair who was so beautiful it hurt your eyes to look at her, and there was Ahmed the junkman with his cart. The first to recover from the accident was Tony, Ahmed’s lame donkey, who sat up on his ass and started shouting: “ Alte zachen! Alte zachen ! Old stuff! Fridges, cabinets, washers…. Alte zachen !” Then the young woman and the contractor got out of their cars and started screaming at each other in a rabid fit of hatred, and their faces turned bright red and contorted with rage. The SUV and the Chevy were crumpled against each other, and there was shattered glass all over the place. Total loss. The furniture on Ahmed’s cart had toppled out onto the road. Ahmed himself sat on a broken oven that had landed on the sidewalk, held his head, and sighed, “ Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Oh Dear God, I’ve lost everything, I’ve lost everything…. Ya Allah ….”