KZ: Shhh, man, shhhh. Stem your rage.
SZ: You have to stay cool or they’ll lock you away.
My first thought: She’d been attached to that thing.
My next thought: The schmuck was the head of a sex-trafficking ring.
My third: That metallic, hooked headboard was his system of abuse.
‘Welcome to my pad,’ Barbra said. ‘Let me get you a drink.’
My bag dropped on the ash-coloured carpet.
KZ: Don’t let her get the upper hand.
SZ: From orphan girls, thy fruit is found.
In this fourteenth-floor pad, it occurred to me that I’d been duped. Barbra and the schmuck practised straight-up, military-grade S/M! He was her pimp. I wanted to die. I wished I’d been brainwashed in Toronto like all the jsa men.
Relax a little, KZ counselled.
SZ: See if you can melt into the feminine, man.
‘No!’ I blurted.
The schmuck looked at me and laughed.
‘Who is he?’ I yelled. ‘Tell me, is he’s your fucking pimp?’
‘You came all the way here to ask me this?’ Barbra said.
Wrong move, we told you, scolded KZ.
SZ: Yeah, you gotta stop with the hatred of whoredom, my friend.
Hot teardrops trickled down from my armpits. One oblong-shaped window cut to the acid-blue sky. I squeezed my eyes shut. I reopened them. Beside that bed were shelves filled with books and cups and magazines.
‘Relax,’ Barbra whispered, staring at me.
I tried to take stock of the situation. That silver hooked headboard wrecked my peripheral vision.
Barbra handed me a glass of red wine in a disposable cup. I watched her strut to the window and open it with one arm. I saw the sheen of her neck hairs. The chemical field of the sky. Her dipped spine and ass underneath the potatosack dress. I wanted to see her bend over and spread. I wanted to pull up that dress. I wanted to pull down her panties and fuck her.
Is this really what you came here for? my mother said.
He was summoned, said KZ in my defence.
SZ: The Queen helps all Jew-boys get their bearings, get ahead.
I was scared of myself. Scared of pushing her out.
‘I need to find a hostel,’ I rasped. ‘Just somewhere to sleep.’
Barbra spun around, spilling wine on the floor. ‘But you just got here. We haven’t even started yet!’
I had a wrecked gut and a bad case of the voices.
‘I need to go, I need to feel better,’ I said.