Adam (6 page)

“God, I cannot wait to leave this fucking place,” said Casey.

“Really?” said Adam. “It seems pretty cool to me.”

June snorted. Adam grimaced.
People with bull nose rings should never snort.

Casey continued, “Ugh, you have no idea. I have to listen to two sets of nasty sex happening twenty-four/seven on both sides of my walls—”

“Nasty
straight
sex,” interjected June.

“Plus the food is making me fat. Plus I hate everyone.”

“You don't hate
me!
” said June.

“I don't mean I hate everyone at
school
,” said Casey. “Mainly just everyone on my floor. Did you know most buildings don't even have a thirteenth floor? 'Cause it's unlucky, you know? This floor shouldn't even exist.”

“You should have signed up for a Carman suite like I did,” said June. “But, whatever, at least we're rooming together next year.”

Adam noticed Casey flinch almost imperceptibly.

“I'm just ready to start living in the real world already,” said Casey. “Enough of this sheltered-bubble stuff. It's, like, we're nineteen—we shouldn't have to be signing people in, checking in with the fucking RA about everything. And I'm sick of not being able to drink in my room.”

“I'm gonna spend the whole fucking summer
baked
,” said June.

Adam glanced at Casey. He knew she didn't like smoking pot either. They'd bonded over it at least a million times.

“Hell yeah!” said Casey, knuckle-bumping June.

Traitor.

“Let's get the fuck out of here!” said Casey, and she jumped off the bed.

***

It took two trips to load all of their stuff into the cab that was waiting for them at the corner of Amsterdam and 117th. June made a big show of rolling her sleeves over her shoulders and acting all chivalrous carrying Casey's heavy things—“Hey, lemme get that one.” “Put that down! I got it”—and didn't even thank Adam when he in turn carried down all of June's heavy shit. The cabdriver didn't want anyone up front, so the three of them squished in the back with all their stuff that didn't fit in the trunk. Casey in the bitch seat.

Adam had only ridden in a cab a couple times in his life. The idea of it freaked him out. You're supposed to get in a car with a total stranger and just trust that they'll take you where you want to go? All your life it's
“Never get in a car with a stranger, never get in a car with a stranger,”
then, all of a sudden, you're in New York and it's
“Get in a car with a stranger!”

Casey and June were blathering on, oblivious, but if their driver—who was currently conspiring into a headpiece in a language Adam couldn't understand—decided he wanted to kidnap them and rape the girls (or at least Casey), it would be up to Adam to stop him. What kind of surveillance did they have on these cabs anyway? Were they connected to a GPS in some headquarters? Adam imagined a clean office with a friendly white man monitoring the cabs on a computer system. He realized if their cabdriver looked like the white man he imagined in the office, he probably wouldn't feel nervous right now. That thought made him uncomfortable though, so he decided to think about something else. He looked out the window at all the old brick buildings going by—there were barely any brick buildings in California. It was because of earthquakes.

After a long drive through different neighborhoods and over a bridge, the cab pulled up in front of the apartment in Bushwick. Adam, Casey, and June piled out, unloaded their stuff from the trunk, and dumped it onto the sidewalk. Casey paid the driver and the cab sped off.

This was their building: 206 Scholes Street. A bunch of tough-looking guys were sprawled out on the front steps, drinking and smoking, listening to music. Adam saw them looking at him and felt dumb standing there in a huddle with Casey and June and June's five-foot-tall pink flamingo lamp.

“I'm supposed to call the landlord,” said Casey, taking out her cell. “He said he'd meet us with the keys.”

Adam looked over at the guys on the steps again.

“I like your lamp,” one said to him.

Adam looked away.

Finally, Casey spotted a Hasidic man hustling up the street toward them—his long black coat and curly hair things flowing behind him.

“That's him,” whispered Casey. June and Adam nodded. For some reason it seemed like you should be quiet around a Hasid. Adam remembered the man he'd sat next to on the plane this morning. Maybe Hasids were going to have some special significance in his summer in New York. It gave the whole thing a biblical gravity. God was working with him.

“Hello,” the Hasid said to Casey, and then to Adam, “I am Jacob.” Adam shook his hand.

June offered her hand. “I'm June.”

“I do not touch women; it is my religion,” answered Jacob.

June glared at him.

Adam was impressed Jacob could tell June was a woman.

“You have three keys,” continued Jacob, taking out a key ring. “The front door to the building and a top and bottom key for your door. Very safe. I will give you these, but any additional copies you must make yourself.”

“Do you know a place around here that makes copies?” asked Casey.

“I only know a place where I live. The Hasidic neighborhood.”

“We could go there,” said Casey. “I wanted to buy a menorah anyway . . .”

Jacob's face lit up.

“You are Jewish?!” It was as if he'd just heard the most marvelous news of his life.

“Well, half,” said Casey. “Our dad is Jewish. But we celebrate Hanu—”

“Not Jewish.” Jacob cut her off. His face retracted to cold and businesslike. He handed the keys to Adam and abruptly walked off, disappearing around the corner.

“
Of course
he gives
him
the keys,” said June. “What is he, sixteen?”

Adam wondered if he should start referring to June in the third person all the time too.

“I'm seventeen.”

“Yeah,
huge
difference.”

Adam ignored her. He hoped they did go to the Hasidic neighborhood to get the keys. He'd always been curious about Hasidic Jews. He'd never really understood the difference between them and Orthodox Jews until his class read this book
The Chosen
in ninth grade. It was by Chaim Potok—a name he and Brad had become obsessed with and repeated nonstop to each other for about two weeks—
Chaim Potok, Chaim Potok
—the
Chaim
coming out like they were hawking loogies. The book was about this Orthodox kid befriending this Hasidic kid and realizing how weird and sheltered the Hasidic kid's life was. The Orthodox kid's dad was a Zionist, which the Hasids were really against because they didn't believe in Israel—they thought only God should be able to create the homeland. This was the part that struck Adam the most—he'd always assumed the more Jewish you were, the more into Israel you were, but it was actually the opposite with Hasids. He wondered if maybe the girl he was supposed to meet in New York was a redheaded Hasidic girl. Their love would be tragic and revolutionary like
Romeo and Juliet
or
West Side Story.
It would end with Adam being gunned down outside the menorah shop where they first met, the redhead throwing herself on his twitching, soon-to-be-lifeless body. All they ever wanted was love.

Casey and June were gathering up their stuff and Adam followed. They said some awkward
hey
s to the guys on the steps, dragged everything into the foyer and then up the stairs.

“You know why Hasidic people all look so weird and sickly like that?” said June. “It's because they're inbred. They can only have sex with each other.”

Adam gave her a look.

“I can say that because I'm Jewish,” said June.

“You're only half, too!” said Casey.

“Yeah, but I'm the
right
half!” said June.

“The inbred half,” said Adam.

Casey laughed.

June scowled.

“I heard they can only have sex through a hole in a sheet,” said Casey.

This idea complicated Adam's redheaded Hasidic girl fantasy. Or perhaps improved it . . . He would be the first guy to have sex with her without the sheet. Her mind would be blown.

Casey undid the two locks on their door. Number 9F.

“Ta-da!” she said.

The apartment was disgusting. Adam had always thought of Hasidic people as especially clean and fastidious, but apparently that didn't transfer to the apartments they rented. The floor was covered in trash—nasty trash, like leftover food. Mouse shit was scattered everywhere, and the molding looked chewed on. Spastic flies buzzed in the windowpanes.

“So it's a little messy,” said Casey. “But it's
ours
, guys. It's all ours.”

Adam grinned at her. The place was their mom's worst nightmare, and that made him love it. “I think I just heard Mom scream from three thousand miles away,” he said.

“I think that was someone being shot outside,” said June.

“Fuck, we should really clean it up before Ethan gets here, though,” said Casey.

“You mean Craigslist?” said June.

Casey ignored her and June blushed. The Craigslist joke was apparently over.

“He might be really neat or something,” said Casey. “What if he decides he doesn't want it!”

“No!” said June.

“We should start cleaning immediately. We can't lose Ethan—he's
perfect!
”

“I
know.
”

For a couple of lesbians, Casey and June sure were obsessed with this Ethan.

“I'm kinda starving,” said Adam. “Is it OK if I go get something to eat real quick before I start cleaning?”

“Typical,” muttered June.

Adam indulged a quick fantasy of punching her in the face.

“Sure,” said Casey. “Just go to any corner store. They're called bodegas, and they all make sandwiches. And the best part, the sandwiches all come with American cheese—the kind we love that McDonald's uses.”

***

Adam made his way past the guys lounging on the front steps again. He gave them the slightest hint of a nod that could be interpreted as friendly, if that was the right thing, or non-existent, if that was the right thing.

He stood on the sidewalk and looked around. So this was
New York.
It was a sentiment he'd conjured up about five times already since getting off the plane, but it still felt fresh and exciting, and he wanted to keep the feeling going for as long as he could. He started off in a random direction in search of a deli.
Bushwick Avenue
, he noted, looking up at the street sign. He imagined himself two months from now, this street as familiar as anything, comforting instead of strange.

“Boy! I'ma beat the shit out of you!”

Adam whipped around. A fat, balding woman with her hands on her hips was staring him down.

“E-excuse me?” said Adam.

“You get the fuck back in here, or I'ma beat the shit out of you. You think I'm playin'?”

Adam started to shake his head no when he realized the woman was looking past him at a kid on a Razor scooter. The kid grumbled and rode toward his mom. She grabbed the kid's arm and yanked him off the scooter.

“Ow!” he screamed.

Adam glanced around to make sure no one had seen him think the woman was talking to him. He went to cross the street—the light was green—when
HONK!
a car screeched in front of him. He jumped back to the safety of the curb. The traffic light switched to the red-hand sign, and several people barged past him into the crosswalk, barely looking.
What the hell?
Adam hustled after them.

Across the street was a shabby-looking store called E-Z Stop. Adam peeked his head in, and, behind the shelves of canned food and cleaning supplies, sure enough, there was a little sandwich counter. He went in and stared up at the menu.
Ham. Turkey. Salami. Liverwurst.
Liverwurst? The only time Adam had ever heard of liverwurst was in the book
A Wrinkle in Time
, which he'd never bothered to finish. In the book, some kids had made a liverwurst sandwich in the kitchen late at night, and then some fantastical stuff had started to happen that bored him. Adam wasn't even sure what liverwurst was, but, for some reason, right then it seemed like the most delicious thing ever.

“Ah, a liverwurst sandwich, please?” he said to the guy counting money behind the register.

“Liverwurst?”

Maybe you weren't supposed to order liverwurst.

“Uh-huh,” said Adam.

“Everything on it?”

Adam had no idea. What went on a liverwurst sandwich? He didn't want to do it wrong. “Uh, just the liverwurst.”

Another man appeared behind the meat counter and slapped together the sandwich while Adam paid the first guy. He took the sandwich outside and had just unwrapped the paper when two girls wearing giant sunglasses, threadbare tank tops with visible bra straps, and short shorts strolled up to him. The blond one had a cigarette in her hand.

“Hey, do you have a light?”

Adam did not have a light. But he brushed his hand across his front pocket, acting as if he were checking anyway.

“Sorry.”

“No problem, cutie.” And the girls flounced off.

Adam's face flushed. Was something like this going to happen every time he stepped out of the apartment? A thrilling prospect, if it wasn't so horrifying. He quickly turned back to his sandwich. “Liverwurst” was a thick wedge of grayish stuff squeezed between the bread. Adam was going in. He took a giant bite, and it was salty and creamy and smoky all at once. Amazing. Liverwurst was officially his new favorite food. His cell phone dinged in his pocket. Continuing to cram the sandwich into his mouth with one hand, he pulled out his cell with the other and read the text from Casey.