At the hospital later, my father appeared. He was bloodless, pacing, on the phone with my mom. When I opened my eyes again, she was there right with me.
‘She’s being deported,’ my mother whispered, lips droopy.
Later, somewhere at the foot of my cot, I heard Bornstein
pronouncing in stone to my parents: Lucky she was too drunk to find the jugular vein.
§
I could piss even though I was tender and swollen. There was one tiny nick. It just felt like a stitch. Some lump that slid near the back rim of my dick.
Take yourself to a hospital, Jesus Christ! my father yelled.
Self-care is the boot of female power, my mother said.
Radio silence from my two mystical buddies.
Barbra and I were now completely in sync.
And there was that other voice now. I called her TZ. The uncircumciser, the perverted survivor, the refusenik, my reinstated queen.
Barbra handed me a pair of white harem pants. She already had on a pair of her own. We were both garbed all in white. Loose pants, no pain. It was the middle of the night, three hours from dawn.
The schmuck was stretched out under the sheets like a corpse. He’d fallen asleep while I was examining myself in the john. Barbra searched through her purse and the schmuck’s army pants. Her whole face was slick. Sweat dripped down her temples. She pocketed a wad of his shekels. She gave me the knife from on top of her books.
‘He won’t follow us,’ Barbra whispered. ‘Take it. Then we’re done.’
Barbra shook the blade at me, blurry.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Snuff him out, man,’ she whispered. ‘This is what I need done.’
Barbra eyed me, musk pouring, knife out to his body. Smeared hotel walls. A bad man on the bed. I was nicked. I got lucid. This was a new kind of thinking, not hermetically sealed. TZ had cut me symbolically in order to let real thoughts in. I thought of hoisting his corpse out of the pentagon window. False flag, palm tree, my unfettered head.
The knife dripped in my hand like an elephant’s tusk. We were both pouring sweat, no air in this box. But the window was open. She planted the handle. My soiled hand grasped it. The uncircumciser’s blade.
One flappy arm glued over both the schmuck’s eyes. His grey dick under there, a stunt bat, a problem. Her silvery hooked headboard loomed to my left.
‘Do it,’ she whispered.
Cold in my harem drop crotch. The knife slipped in my squeeze.
‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’
‘Yes, you can do anything.’
SZ said KZ returned: Bruh, this is re-happening.
There was no easy fix. The whole world is backwards. Persecution endures, persecution remains. She was behind me all slick, needling into my back.
‘He’s my captor,’ she whispered. ‘He’s tormented me.’
I saw her in my living room, goose-flesh tongue on slimy white neck. Anointed in musk. Submissive, seductive. Do it was her anthem. Undo was hers, too.
I plunged the knife down once into his thigh. It was chicken meat. In-out. Schmuck jerked like a board. I hit a vein. His eyes glistened. I let the blade free. Blood spurted out in an arc. In-out. His legs were meat. I stared at the slit that I’d made. The schmuck yanked a rubber pulley from the headboard. He started tourniqueting.
Somehow she was running us out of the room. Somehow my legs moved. Christof was awake. I kept feeling the plunge. Like a mother banging meat. In-out. There was gristle. Bare bulbs. My mouth felt like wallpaper glue. I was attached to her jog in the hallway. We thumped down the stairwell, each floor another rung.