‘You stay away from me, Jews,’ she hissed, and limped out my door.
After six weeks of hanging out with her every single fucking night she was dissing me now because I was Jewish? Fucking God.
I went to the window and waited to see her in the lot. After a few seconds, Adi stumbled out the back door. Her arms were rigid by her sides. There was no car. No one was waiting.
God, it made me sad that she was so fucked up. Adi swayed side to side, picking at something on her cheek.
Then a small white car drove past the club. I watched Adi wave her arms and run to it. She ran like a goat, dragging her clod. She leaned down into the driver’s window.
‘Adi!’ I screamed through the screen. ‘Wait! Don’t go!’
But Adi had already skipped around the car to the passenger side. The car flashed its headlights up at my window.
‘Wait!’
I couldn’t see Adi and I couldn’t see who was with her.
I raced out of my room past the heaps of old sheets. I thought maybe Adi and Gio were actually going somewhere together. Even though I didn’t believe she had ever been to Israel. And I didn’t believe she had ever had kids. I knew she wasn’t going home either.
A few cars in the lot of the club were idling, soft: regulars wanting to be the first inside.
Adi and the white car were gone. I stood alone. Someone beeped at me.
There was this slimy low voice in my head that was saying without thinking: Love will be different for you.
It will be different between a Jew and a Jew.
HALLUCINATION
After my second shift of the night, when I was already undressed and ready for bed, a guy started banging on my door. It was the guy I hadn’t seen since the day me and Adi moved in, that landlord with the brushed-back hair.
‘Famous Mira,’ he said as he entered my room.
My tongue felt thick and full of sleep.
‘No comment?’ The guy laughed. He had the accent of Adi, of Gio, of everyone here. I would’ve kicked him if I’d been wearing something under my nightshirt. ‘Now that your best friend’s gone, you find out how things work around here.’
I crossed my arms over my chest. I looked on the floor for some leggings or a skirt. I had wondered when someone was going to say something to me about living upstairs without Adi. I’d always given her my money for the month and I hadn’t paid yet since she had gone. It had been just a week. I wanted this Russian lord out of my room. I couldn’t find anything to cover myself.
‘Thirty percent goes to the office each time you bring a fuck to your room. I don’t care how much the fuck’s given you either. You get a hundred and you bring down your thirty.’
I thought it was thirty-five. Adi told me it was thirty-five.
‘What about the hundred and fifty for phone and laundry?’ I asked.
The guy started laughing through his nose. ‘Me and that crazy bitch go a long way back but she got you good, all right.’
The guy scratched his scalp and stared at my crotch. ‘What’s a girl like you’s doing here anyway, I’ve got no idea. But they seem to like you. Thirty percent and you stay as long as you like. Keep the one-fifty, princess.’
My breath smelled and I opened my mouth. The guy made sure I smelled his too. The stench of us together was milky.
I barely felt myself running to the bed. Cream thickened down the walls of my throat. Why’d Adi do that? Why’d she steal my fucking cash? I did that sucking. I earned my fucking keep!
Adi, fuck you. Fuck you, Adi.
The door clicked and he left. Finally I was crying.
It was that time of night when light wants to break but dark wants to stay. There were hundreds of bugs flapping in circles on my screen. My hands and feet were still tingling from fucking. That last guy did it so hard my cunt was pulsing like a phantom. I had to go outside and get some air.