Barbra came at me. I really did not want her to see me like this. I needed my bearings. I needed my meds. I did not want to be here with her and him. But Barbra kept coming at me, arms open, and led me like Lot to the furry bedspread.
‘Please,’ she whispered, leaning in to my ear. ‘Remember what I said?’
When? At home? Did she mean her real name?
KZ: Women only tell the truth in their prison diaries.
SZ: Women shall lead us to a place of no more wandering.
The Queen of Sheba didn’t get anywhere with King Solomon. Ka-Tzetnik died of starvation, alone. Sabbatai Zevi languished in prison. Darfuris in limbo. Leila Khaled will not return. God, I had to get out of this fourteenth-floor chamber. I forced myself out of her slippery hands. I evaded the bed where he frigidly lay. I launched myself backwards at the door, centrifugal, scuttling.
‘Don’t let him leave!’
The schmuck leapt up at me, military-style. The first thing I saw was his belt-buckle flint.
‘Get the fuck off me, man! Tell him to stop it!’ I screamed.
I felt his breath toxic, excited. He liked being rough. Queen watched as the schmuck bound my wrists with duct tape, black sheen.
§
On top of the mountain, strapped up to the headboard, my eyes stayed on the knife they kept passing between them. My mouth had been taped, my hands pulled to the ceiling. I was strung up to the dome, tied with the pulleys. Her knife had a rust-coloured edge, a carved wooden handle. I watched her, squint-eyed. Last rays of red sun filtered in. I remembered her, half-naked, smashed in my old room. Barbra, teenager. I’d sucked on her tits. The headboard felt medical on my bare ass.
KZ: We got your back, bruh.
SZ: Chin up, follow through.
Spit bubbled and pooled behind the duct tape. I thought, if she was in charge, she wouldn’t hurt me again.
Reality and phantasm, gurgled KZ, they’re the same.
SZ: Yeah, dread and hope – plus a little nooky – fuels all stories.
Please, you guys, stop distracting me!
I tried, as her captive, to memorize her face. Sleek spherical forehead, cat tongue on her lip. Lips rubbing together, her stern way of being. I stared at the titles of the books on her shelves. Most were Hebrew, but one pile in English had Krasznahorkai, Hoffman, and Shishkin.
The ceiling buckled at the light fixture like it was holding hot water. The only door out of this room had been locked and bolt-chained. Fourteen floors up in this ancient apartment. Barbra paced in her sack dress, scratching her arms. I wholly believed she would not hurt me again.
KZ: But everyone, bruh, undergoes suffering.
Seven years ago, after I was taken to the hospital, Barbra showed the police her cut-up left breast. Barbra told the police that she was afraid. Barbra called my mother in Portland to say I’d abused her. I had to confess our knife play to the cops.
‘God, what did I teach you? Did I not teach you? You can’t take your stuff out on a girl!’ cried my mom.
I shook my head in my hospital bed. That was not what happened!
My mother couldn’t look at me. She did not believe me.
I bubbled spit into my tape. Barbra took off her rosecoloured sack. I felt my cock pulse. She had on a black bra and pink panties. I wanted to suck on everything.
I got seventeen stitches in the hosp
ital that night.
I heard myself breathing sloppily like a dog. I was constricted. I did not understand to what I’d consented.
Was I here for a modern-day Jew-boy sacrifice?