§
My father had not gotten used to the fact almost three weeks in that I wasn’t going to get a summer job. Since Barbra had arrived, he’d said at least once a day: ‘I don’t know of a job where a kid just sits on his trap hole and reads.’
‘My butt’s not a trap hole,’ I answered.
‘Right. The trap hole’s your mouth.’
‘Nope. The trap hole is actually the crack in the system.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ my father sighed. ‘Semantics and hijinks aren’t going to get you into law school – you know that, right? One day you’re going to have to learn to be employable just like the rest of us.’
I laughed. My father thought I wanted to be a nutbag surgeon like him? I wasn’t going to take Barbra to the fucking cn Tower, like he suggested. And I wasn’t going to drag her through bird shit in High Park like my mother thought I should. All I wanted was to stay in our house. Wait for night. I wanted to psychically lure her back up to my room and beg like a Jew-boy to start all over again.
Can I show you where I get Kafka? I sent my über-polite text down to her in the basement.
After a few minutes Barbra texted back yes.
I sent her the address of Abacus and a link to a story I’d just read about Kafka’s tuberculosis.
The next day I waited for Barbra outside the bookstore at noon. She was late. I kept checking my phone. I knew she’d dropped off Abigail a few hours ago. I thought maybe I shouldn’t have sent her that tuberculosis story. I should’ve sent her something more sexy, relevant.
Finally, in the warping hot sun, I saw her walking toward me, teetering a little. She definitely was not walking in a straight line. But she arrived right at the same time as Jim the owner and his dog.
‘Uh, this is Barbra, our exchange student,’ I said to Jim, clearing my throat, trying to do the right kind of introduction.
‘I went to the wrong park this morning,’ Jim said, nodding at Barbra. ‘Apparently, no dogs allowed. The parents got security cameras. This is the town we’re living in now.’
Jim opened the door for us. The bookshelves floor to ceiling all seemed to cave inward. I wanted to explain the layout to Barbra, but she just wandered away while Jim kept on talking about canine surveillance.
After a few minutes, I excused myself from Jim. I wondered if he could tell what was going on between us. I’d spent hours and hours with Jim talking about Kafka.
I found Barbra in US History. ‘My mom gave me her credit card. She said to buy you anything you wanted.’
Barbra shrugged. Her breath smelled like wine.
‘I’ll be in European Literature,’ I told her. Since when had she been drinking? ‘You want to come? See the Kafka?’
‘Nah, bruh, I’m good,’ Barbra said.
I left her, eyes pink, holding on to the bookshelf. Jim played some kind of talk radio station. I wanted to tell the whole world that I’d sucked on her tits. My mother’s credit card was my father’s credit card. Did she drink this much in Israel? Was that why her uncle had sent her away?
I touched the spine of The Last Temptation of Christ. For some reason that book always appeared – like, not just at Jim’s – no matter what bookstore I was in. Day-drinking, I knew, signified a problem. Jim didn’t have Amerika. I shuffled back to the Civil War stacks. Barbra wasn’t there. I went around the corner to Black Studies, then to Feminism.
‘She went down to the basement,’ Jim called out.
My shoelace caught on a splinter in the floorboard. The staircase down was too narrow. Open walls with pink fibreglass. The basement had a hanging trampoline ceiling. It was even more labyrinthine than upstairs and smelled like the glue of papier mâché.
I found Barbra in the Jewish Studies section, squatting at the shelf closest to the floor. All the books on the top shelves in this section were encyclopedia sets with embossed gold Hebrew letters, touching each other by threads.
‘What are you finding down here?’ my voice boomed.
God, if my father wasn’t present, why did I have to sound like him?
Barbra had a big stack of books between her sandals. I saw each one of her moon-coloured toenails.
She passed me up a book that weighed at least five pounds. ‘Heard about him?’
‘I hated Hebrew school. I know nothing down here.’