Peep Show (17 page)

“Look at my neck,” she says.

When I face her, she unbuttons the top of her shirt and pulls it back, revealing her collarbone.

“I don't see anything.”

“Come on, look.” She taps a reddish circle on her skin, a few inches from her ear.

“What happened?” I ask.

She laughs again, mouth wide, and slaps me on the arm. “It's a hickey, dum-dum.”

“Oh.”

And there it is. She pushes her fingertips into it and it disappears for a second. Ryan is his name, a “nineteen-year-old,” she tells me. “He helped me cut my hair.” Poor Peter Rabbi. Oceans upon oceans of Orthodox Judaism just pumped for years into this girl's bloodstream and what
happens? Some Irishman with an electric razor is sucking on her neck.

She laughs, slouched in her seat, still touching her wound. “Turn right,” she says.

We drive past a yeshiva and it turns out to be a school for Lichtiger boys. I pull the car past the building and immediately see a familiar face. “I know that guy.”

“You know
which
guy?”

“That guy. Right there, on the lawn.”

“It's Yussi,” she says. “He's been to my house a hundred times, don't pull over.”

“I won't, I won't.”

I drive up to the corner and make a right. “I have to ask him. Stay here,” I say. I park, get out and run back to the school and up to the group of boys. They glare at me, all turning at the same time, to see the stranger on their sidewalk.

“We've met,” is what I say. “Yussi? Right? We met at the Danowitzes?”

He steps closer to me, lightly bumping the shoulders of his peers as he approaches me.

“You're David,” he says.

“That's right. That's right, I'm looking for my sister. Have you seen her?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn't know she was here.”

“I was told Kingsford. They may be staying with someone.”

“With who?”

“I wish I knew.”

His eyes widen when he looks over my shoulder and I see all the boys doing the same. “I speak Yiddish,” Sarah says, and I turn to see her. And just as they all hear a girl's voice, they look away in unison, like a flock of penguins. One of the boys says, “
Ya fe na ne
,” and holds his heart.

“Vart den ir numen is Devoria Arbus.”
Just Sarah speaking makes them roar and scatter, pounding each other on the backs. Yussi can't stop looking at her haircut.

I give him my phone number written on a paper scrap from my wallet and Sarah walks away toward town, as if she's not with me. In the car I drive around but don't see her. Fifteen minutes later I find her back near the school on the same street I parked on. She looks relieved.

“You should have just stayed in the car,” I say.

“Some of them don't speak English,” she says.

“Yussi does.”

“How am I supposed to know? I don't talk to him.”

“Now he's gonna go tell your parents you were with me, Sarah.”

“I know, I know. Who cares?”

“I'm taking you back,” I say.

“Do you want to find her or not?”

“And what if I find her, Sarah? What then? Whoever she's with will see you. My mother, for example.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Now Yussi knows. You should've waited.”

“He's not a jerk like that.”

“I'm taking you home.”

“
You
don't have to be afraid, David.
I
do.”

“I
am
afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of Hasids. Of getting caught with you in my car.”

I drive back to Vincent before rush hour and we don't say a word the entire ride. I drop her off in the same spot and she's upset with me, pouting and slamming the door. I watch her walk back through the trees, ducking as she did earlier.

“Good-bye,” I yell through the window, but she doesn't look back.

I
N THE HOSPITAL
my father, Brandi, and Leo are all listening to the doctor talk about chemotherapy. The mood afterward is depressing, even dire, as Brandi tries to rally the silent room with some cheer she knows. “B aggressive. B-E aggressive. B-E-A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E.” My father seems comfortably giddy or on some drug, I don't know. He tells Leo and me to go home and we end up at a triple feature a few blocks from the Imperial.
Spawn of the Vampire: Daughters of Dracula
is first. Leo's so happy when he sees the marquee. He starts to tell me the plot and can't wait to get inside the movie theater. It turns out the film has started but we buy tickets anyway. The huge double balcony theater looks out on a gigantic movie screen. I lean over the railing. People are throwing popcorn and talking back to the actors. The movie itself is horrible. It looks like someone
made it in his own backyard. Leo just roars at parts, especially those meant to be dramatic. The next movie is
Mother Juggs and Speed
and the third is a grind-house flick called
Eat, Fuck, Kill
. If escapism was the goal, I think it worked. But when the movies end, nothing's really been skirted and walking out of the theater and into the light of day makes me wish I were back in the dark.

The Imperial is empty when we get there, not a person in the audience and not a sole upstairs in the live-peeps booths. A girl named Lana is alone in the store with two customers and I watch as she attempts to sell them each a six-foot blow-up doll called Lu-Lu Lips. They both cackle as one of them puts his thumb inside her O-shaped mouth. A group of already drunk Japanese salary men walk in. Sal starts the music for them—“Love to Love You Baby”—and announces a new dancer. She looks much older than the others and swings a fluffy purple boa around her neck.

“Who hired that girl?” says Leo.
“Jocko?”

Jocko walks down from the sound booth.

“Did you hire that old lady up there?” says Leo.

“Yeah,” he says. “What's wrong with her?”

“She's
old.
”

“She's not old. She said she was thirty.”

“She's a
hundred
and
six
, Jocko, look at her.”

“David, Leo, Jocko,” says Ira behind us. He's wearing a maroon Adidas jogging suit and brown loafers. “I'm calling a meeting. Now! Up in the office.”

We all follow him upstairs and are greeted by two girls
on the couch. The person closest to me is a tall blond with sallow cheekbones and nothing on but a pearl-colored teddy and white boots. The other is a redhead with giant, basketball-shaped boobs in a torn mesh cat suit. She's eating from a bag of popcorn.

“What do you think?” says Ira, “Stars, right? Okay, Leo, David, Jocko, meet the girls who are gonna help us get things started.” He faces the girls and they laugh and he laughs and when I look at Leo he's smiling and nodding and lifting a movie camera from behind the desk.

“What's your name?” Ira says.

“Auburn.”

“Awburn?”

“Yeah.”

“Ya danced on the strip before?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“The Exotic.”

“The Exotic Circus?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever do anything like this before?”

“No, but I wanna,” she says, and laughs some more.

“Perfect,” says Ira, “that's just what we're looking for.”

Leo holds the camera out to me but I don't take it.

“I have to go,” I tell him.

“What the hell are you talkin' about?” Ira says. “You're workin' tonight, right?”

“I don't feel well.”

Leo hands the camera to Jocko. He hits the on button and starts to shoot Leo.

“Get that off me,” Leo says, his giant palm held out. “Quit it, Jock!”

He points it at Ira next. A film of a man staring at me as he eats some prostitute's popcorn. “I need you tonight,” Ira says. “You took off twice last week.” When he sees the camera on him he tries to swallow quickly and grins like he's at a bar mitzvah. “Oh, hello, hello . . . aim it over there, at the girls. Girls, do your thing. The director is ready. Say
action
, David. Say
action
!”

“Action.”

Jocko points the camera at the girls and they step closer to each other. Auburn drags the back of her hand across the other's breast. It is quiet in the room as all of us stand there, gawking. The girls start to kiss.

“Tell 'em what you want 'em to do,” Ira says.

Silence.

“David.”

“You do it,” I say, and walk to the door.

“Hey!”

The girls stop and the blonde one wipes saliva from her lips. Ira walks over to me. “Your father gave you a chance, David, to do the deal with Abromowitz. Didn't he?”

I nod.

“Didn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Who fucked it up? Right!
You
fucked it up. I got a
fifteen-thousand-dollar peep-show system and not one usable porn flick. Whose fault is
that
?”

“I know, I should've—”

“What do you got? Dildos, lots of 'em, that's what you got. How many you sold?” He's stares at me with rage in his eyes. “Forget that. What eighteen year old kid in his right mind turns this job down? The boy doesn't want to do it, Leo. Good. Fuck it.”

The girls are both glaring at me.

“What are you, a faggot?”

“No.”

“Good, I didn't think so. Now prove it and take the camera. You're the pro, remember?”

The phone rings on my father's desk and Ira lunges for it. “The Imperial . . . What? Yeah, yeah, here.” He holds the phone out to me. “
Take
it. It's for you.”

“Hello?”

“Is this David?”

“Yes.”

“This is Yussi.”

“Yes, yes, hello, thank you, thank you for calling.”

“Leo? Bring your big ass over here and help me move the couch,” says Ira.

“I talked to my friend.”

“Does he know my sister?”

“Awburn, come here.”

“Yes, but he had a question.”

“And what's your name, honey?”

“Dot.”

“What's the question?”

“He wanted to know if you were related by blood.”

“Sit together over here and Leo, you stand here. Give me the camera. Where's the on button?”

“I'm her
brother.
I'm her real brother. Please tell me where she is.”

“What is it that you want from them?”

“What did you say?”

“I'm wondering what you want from them.”

“They're my mother and sister. They're my family, what do you mean, what do I
want
from them?”

“You work in a theater, David. Yes? A theater where?”

“Now, Awburn, I want it to start out like you're friends but you're mad at each other.”

“What difference does that make? I'm asking you a favor.”

“Say something like, ‘Hey, why are you late?' and then slap her on the arm. Yeah, like that, not hard, you're friends but you're a little angry . . . Good.”

“Try Kingsford.”

“Kingsford? Okay. Where in Kingsford. Yussi? Hey!
Yussi?
” He's gone. I slam the phone and the receiver slips and crashes to the floor.

“What're you doing?” Ira says. He's on his back with the camera perched on his stomach. I walk past Leo and the whores and down the stairs. In the toy store I call my father's room at the hospital. No one picks up. The phone is right
next to his bed but just rings and rings. Ira's on the stairs. “Come over here for a second,” he says, so I hang up and run out of the theater and keep building up speed to Broadway, where I turn right and just tear ass through the maze of people and their blips of words and I'm able to run for blocks and blocks without the slightest thought of stopping because the human body is a remarkable machine that's controlled by billions of nerves and brain cells and I use them to see my mother's face in the scatter of my view and to smash my fist into Yussi's big-ass shnoz.

When I stop I can't catch my breath so I sit on a fire hydrant and watch myself die in the reflection of an OTB window. I hate my mother. I hate my mother for hating me. Tell yourself I'm not here, just pretend I'm not here and you'll be sure to find redemption, you bitch. I walk into the phone booth and call the hospital again. Brandi picks up.

“Hi, get over here.”

“What? What happened?”

“Deb's here.”

“What?”

“She's here. Debra's here. Get over here.”

The hospital security won't let me up until someone in the room picks up the phone. Six rings, seven rings, and Brandi says, “Hello?”

When I walk in Brandi's standing with a nurse. And sitting there, next to my sleeping father, is the girl in black with long brown hair. And I am good in my heart and lungs and can taste a breeze of relief that I am no longer in this
freefall alone. She's here, with me, just as she was on the beach.
I want you to come home
,
David
. I clap my hands as I approach her and Brandi and the nurse both
shhhush
me. Debra sees me and smiles but pulls her chair closer to my dad.

“May it be your will,” she says softly, “my God and God of my fathers, to grant that he lie down in peace . . . and that he rise up in peace. Let not his thoughts upset him, nor evil dreams, nor sinful fancies. May my family ever be perfect in your sight. Grant him light, lest he sleep the sleep of death; for it is you who gives light to the eyes. Blessed are you, O Lord, whose majesty gives light to the whole world.
Shema Yisr'ael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
Here O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.
Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Laolam Vaed
. Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.”