John grabbed the sheet off the bed from behind me and wound it around himself. He was blinking wildly. ‘What’re you worried about? Get that look off your face. C’mon, they’ll think you’re a whore. All men think a woman alone at night is a whore. For fuck’s sake. You gonna cry now? Don’t be a baby. Fuck. You’re not a baby anymore. You’re the one who wants this.’
‘Does the bus run all night?’
John started laughing. ‘You’ll find a way home! Go back to your mommy and daddy. Go back to your little life.’
John poked my shoulder to get me moving. I heard him exhaling hard. I was looking around on the floor for my bag.
When I finally got all my stuff together and was walking to the door, John stayed close behind me. He was making pissed-off breathing sounds. For a second I was worried he was going to push me down the stairs.
‘She thinks it’s all just going to end when she wants it to?’ John opened the front door so hard that it banged the wall and sprayed plaster. ‘You finally getting the fuck out of here, huh?’
I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t look at John’s face. I ran down the stairs and heard the door slam behind me. I stood outside on the porch for a few seconds, swallowing hard, sweating under my hair. I heard a huge crash upstairs. I thought John must’ve kicked in the TV.
Fleeing through the dark streets, I kept hearing his voice: ‘All men think that a woman alone at night is a whore.’
I thought she was brave in the dark in her high heels, standing tall while I was running. She could face the thing that wanted to lodge itself inside her.
Adi was sitting on my bed like a man.
‘You scared me! Where were you?’ I’d been getting myself ready in the bathroom. Red cheeks, red lips, hair in pigtails. ‘You we
re here the whole time? Aren’t we working? What are you doing? You’re not dressed. It’s late.’
Adi was hunched over. Her foot was sticking out over the straps of her shoe. The top part, the bridge, was swollen like a little anthill.
‘I have to go home.’
‘What? To Volgograd?’
‘No, Jamaica.’ Adi started laughing. Her foot looked infected. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before.
‘No. Where are you going? Tell me.’
‘Israel. Wanna come screw some Hasids with me? They like the Russian pussy.’ Adi shoved her hands in her lap. ‘Fuck, I always forget you’re not Russian, Mirushka!’
Adi was shaking, she was white, that anthill on her foot.
‘What’s going on, Adi? Come on, can’t you just tell me?’
‘Exodus.’
‘Is he going with you?’
‘I told you to stay away from him!’ Adi shouted. ‘He hates you because he still hates me.’
I got nervous. Adi was grinding her teeth.
‘Gio said to me, Mira, that you are a Jew.’
Adi looked at her feet. The hurt one wouldn’t move.
‘Yeah? So what?’
A car beeped outside. Adi dragged herself to the window.
‘You are a Jew.’ She was grinding her teeth and cracking her jaw. ‘I can’t believe it!’
Then Adi turned from the window without looking at me. She hobbled toward the door past me, shifting her weight from the bad foot to the good. I tried to stop her but she used her elbow in my chest.