The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (24 page)

His father stared after him as he departed.

“Oh, America, what do you do to our sons?” the rabbi asked piously of the electric lights on the ceiling.

David was seated in the barber’s chair, examining his looks in the mirror. At times he thought those good looks were all that he had. Izzy Michel, the hair-designer and proprietor, spoke to him from behind, trimming his wavy hair, carving an even crater on the top of the head to accommodate his black yarmulke.

“Have you found a bride yet?” Izzy was a good guy, but all the complimentary rumor-spreading services he provided deserved vindication. David thought, “Whatever I tell him now will spread throughout the two thousand plus members of the Syrian-Jewish community of Brooklyn, New York. But what the hell, let ’em all know.”

“I’m not going to get married.”

“What?” Izzy Michel gasped and then he burst out in shameless laughter, “And what do you think you are going to do?”

David looked at Izzy gaunt but trendy figure in the wall mirror. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? How are you going to make a living after your dad kicks you out of his three-story villa on Ocean Parkway?”

“Don’t know.”

“You got no education, no profession. What can you do? Work for minimum wage and live in a basement?”

“I really don’t know, Izzy.”

“Why not do what they want you to do? You can’t lose.”

“The rabbi and my dad keep telling me that. Unfortunately, I see things differently.”

“Whatever light you see marriage in, staying a bachelor you’ll have to face a grim reality that has no future for you. Unless—”

“I know what you are going to say.”

Izzy Michel finished trimming the top of David’s head.

There was a good-looking woman sitting in the barber chair next to David’s. She was in her early thirties, but mooning into the mirror like a teenager. David knew her vaguely – she was the wife of one of his father’s many friends. She fidgeted on the chair, clad in a long skin-tight skirt and top that overexposed her breasts in an unorthodox fashion. David remembered Rabbi Klum’s words about Syrian wives’ total fidelity. She caught David’s glance and rewarded him with a big iridescent smile full of whitened teeth and glossed lips, preparing to speak to a promising bachelor.

“Dave, have you met my daughter Julia? She’s sixteen.”

Julia? Oh yes, a silly little girl with Dumbo ears. She had flirted shamelessly with David at the opening of his father’s new pickle factory. This marriage could easily be brokered without the rabbi’s help. His father’s money would pave the way.

“Yes.”

“She’s a good girl, Dave. She adores children.”

The mother’s attention span was a second long. Not waiting for an answer, she turned to her cell phone and spoke quickly to someone or another, “I’m going to order a salmon wrap next. Then I take the kids to the movies. My schedule is packed. Can you imagine, I have absolutely no free time? Tomorrow? Appointments with two doctors, working out, Julia’s birthday preparations, my facial.”

Izzy Michel whispered in David’s ear, “These J.A.Ps only pretend to be busy to hide the fact that they don’t have anything to do all day long.”

It was then that David had the revelation. He was thrilled by the sheer chutzpah of it. One moment he was looking at his image in the mirror, the next he disappeared into it. He was on the threshold of overthrowing a three-thousand-year-old system, which the rabbis claimed to be the greatest in the history of the human race. “How many Syrian women pass through your business each day?” David asked.

“Well, all of them come here sooner or later. I’m damn lucky to have their lucrative business.”

“But you wouldn’t mind making even more money, would you?” David winked slyly at Izzy’s reflection.

Izzy Michel placed the scissors on the counter and began to brush off David’s shoulders, sweeping cut hair onto the floor. A Mexican woman with a broom was approaching from the far corner.

“Look, nothing illegal, David. I’m not taking part in anything that’s not kosher.”

“What about being a go-between?”

“Maybe.”

Turning to the matchmaking mother on the right, David said, “I would really love to meet your daughter Julia. I haven’t stopped thinking about her since the last time I saw her.”

She raised her heavily made up eyes, “What did you just say, David?”

“I said I want to meet your daughter, Julia.”

Syrian-Jewish houses occupy thirty square blocks, stretching from West 1st to East 19th Street, and from Avenue M to Avenue X. They are some of the most expensive prices in Brooklyn, created by a low-key community of very rich people. Just two blocks away, across McDonald Avenue, you enter a different neighborhood where Russian, Arab, and Chinese immigrants live side by side in the mutual harmony of complete ignorance of each other’s way but with the common goal of the American Dream, where house prices drop by roughly a half.

David crossed McDonald Avenue with the rampaging silver train above and rented a one-bedroom apartment with a queen-sized bed. The success of his future enterprise relied heavily on Izzy Michel’s oratorical skills, which Izzy honed to perfection talking to women round the clock on the job. His staff would help to provide alibis for missing wives.

The first problem was to escape the persistent eyes of curious friends. Syrian women formed a spy circle. Everyone spied on someone else and then spread her accumulated data to the others. At times there would be up to a dozen women spying on the suspicious activities of one wayward wife. Rabbi Klum endorsed these clandestine activities, striking fear into the hearts and souls of those who yearned to transgress, coercing them to abandon their sinful thoughts and sublimate their desires through jogging, shopping, or gossiping.

Of course it was a matter of Judaic law that prohibited a husband from having sex with his wife a week before menstruation, a week after, while she was pregnant, during holidays, while he was on a work assignment or after having visited his mistress.

David’s customers would park in front of an old brick building, walk through Izzy’s place, head towards the manicurist, vanish through the back door into a prearranged taxi. David would be waiting just a few blocks away in his new apartment.

The door stood ajar and Bat Sheba lightly shoved it open. She timidly walked into the candle-lit room. David, clad only in Calvin Klein boxers, was seated on the armchair, looking at her intently. She stood still for a second and then automatically began to turn to exit the twilit room as quickly as possible. David raised his hand and said, “The dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual doesn’t exist. Judaic law was originally designed to curb human excess, until finally it has curbed human nature. I am here to set you free.”

Bat Sheba stood still. Slowly she lowered her eyes and stared at the appetizing bulk between David’s legs.

“To resolve the crisis of denied pleasure within the religious community of Syrian women, this house was opened. For the first time in three thousand years you will get the kind of sex that you have been lacking. Not for the purpose of procreation, but for the sheer pleasure of it. You will not be betraying your husband, but rather the system that enslaves you both.”

Bat Sheba came closer – David’s words and a growing bulge beckoned to her – life-long restraint abandoned. “Come undone, Bat Sheba.”

“What if Schwaki finds out?”

“He never will. It will be our secret, Bat Sheba. Izzy Michel who sent you here has no idea what this is all about. There are only two people in the whole world who know. You and me.”

Her eyes were shining. She touched her breasts and slid her arms down. She came closer and embraced David. She had entirely lost control over her decision-making.

Sublimation knows many tactics and techniques. Linda’s was a mainstream, widely acclaimed, obsessive profusion of diets. She tried them all, she went from “plump” to “super-skinny”, and eventually cut her daily ration to five pieces of grilled tofu and two glasses of filtered water. Her limbs shook from malnutrition, her skin was ashen, her hipbones protruded far beyond normal, and her mind raged with vivid hallucinations. In order to choke her sexual hunger, she suppressed it with hunger for food. She would pick up her tofu from a kosher vegetarian café on the way to David’s bed, where her activities required some extra nourishment.

Once when her order was delayed, David called her cell phone to ask why she was late. “Either come right now or not until tomorrow.” He knew Syrian women tended to always come late, and he wanted to train all of them to keep to his schedule.

Linda steered madly through the neurotic traffic of New York. When she arrived, she began to see monsters in David’s little bedroom. They were naked men dancing around a hellish pyre, fallen angels eating fire and disgorging yellow flames upon the heads of female apparitions. Anti-rabbis blessed the copulating bodies, packing their souls into crocodile-skin bags and sending them to purgatory via UPS. Corporate backers were advertising and selling contraception. Unlicensed doctors treated venereal diseases.

“Are you OK, Linda?” David asked from the bed.

Linda was shivering violently.

“I’m hungry, Dave. My husband and I are going to Hawaii this week.”

“Where’s your husband now?”

“Probably with some Gentile hooker.”

Making love like it was the last time in her life, she screamed so loudly, bottles of beer were exploding in the apartment below. She was insatiable. In her taste for loving she was gluttonous. Three thousand years of tradition was being shattered one thrust at a time.

The next day she sent her friend, Vivian.

Vivian was a dragon woman. She didn’t have to carry a gun, it was in-built into her retina. She took it for granted that she would be the ruler in David’s kingdom.

“I’ve seen you before. You are Syrian, aren’t you? Why aren’t you wearing a yarmulke?”

David patted the mattress, “Sit down and count out your money. It’s $300 for the first time. I’m sure your friend has already told you.”

Her eyes exuded acid, it dripped on the carpet and burned dime-size holes in it. “What will your mother say when she finds out?”

David spoke gravely, imitating his father’s intonation, “Remember, there is no way back once you’ve started. You will notice changes occurring in your perception of the world on a daily basis. You will see things that you have been taking for granted in a totally different light.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have four children, right? You have to remember that you will be excommunicated if you are found out.”

Vivian was a big woman. Like her skinny friend, she had tried many diets with no success, however her plumpness was healthy and natural. To protect her self-esteem from the Syrian women’s smirking ridicule, she built up a virtual combat wall. She made her husband buy her a SUV the size of a tank. She drove it around her twenty-block perimeter with the spite of an adder, the spirit of a tiger. Vivian exercised totalitarian control over her family, as she did with all who served her, from waiters to nannies. She was in this world to command and to be obeyed. That was her line of defense against derisive attacks about her weight. This tactic seemed to work everywhere except in David’s kingdom.

“Get undressed, unless you want to have sex in your clothes,” David said.

Vivian fidgeted on the bed uneasily looking at the unorthodox gigolo.

“Get undressed,” David repeated.

“You know what, forget it. I’m going home,” Vivian bluffed arrogantly and jumped to her feet.

“Too late,” David said with a gentle smile.

Vivian blushed. Her eyes downcast, acid-free, softened up. She was a boss no more. David stood up, shedding his clothes on the move, and approached.

Rent-A-Romeo’s customized Juliet was sitting at the family table congratulating herself on her community-acclaimed success at dancing and singing. David pretended to listen carefully and squeezed out smiles here and there, praising his chosen bride. His Father couldn’t help but be content, despite David’s conviction that his father had never been content about anything in his entire life. Of course the patriarch had to mask his true character at moments of common celebration. Thinking about his clandestine business activities, David concluded that the capitalist acorn never manages to fall far from the tree.

Suddenly Julia spoke with ambition, as if mimicking some pop song, “Dave, I’m not like those girls [yeah, right, but then who ARE you like], not vulgarized, digitized, cashed in. I have a heart and soul and I treasure them above all else. I’m not just another plaything to use, abuse, and discard. I believe in G-d. I adore children [wasn’t that what her mom said? How touching!] and I will always adore my husband and be faithful to him. I will look at no other man and will desire no other man [how can she be so sure?]. I’ll be your only one. I’ll be everything to you, lover, housewife, partner, friend, mother of your children. I want you to love me for who I am, and in return I will be everything to you, your whole world.”

Julia finished her speech and turned back to her food. Silence reigned over the table occupied by David, his parents, and Julia, the center of all attention. Abel hmmed theatrically. No one budged, mulling over Julia’s outspokenness. Abel had to take this awkward situation into his own hands armed with the commonest of platitudes, “David is so lucky to have you as a bride (at which Julia blushed and nodded) and you will be the best wife this community has ever known.”

David rose to leave. Abel spoke to him, “Where are you going?”

“I have some urgent business to attend to.”

David’s mother complained, “This is so impolite.”

“I know,” David said bluntly and promptly excused himself, in order not to complicate matters further. As he was opening the door he heard Julia say, “I love you, David.”

For the first time in many days, David couldn’t find words to give a sensible reply.

Ruth was hyperactive. She caught that special New York insanity from her peers. She had to be in many places at the same time to manage all her commitments. She tried hard to stretch space and time, believing them to be of elastic nature, using white and black magic, a Ferrari twelve-valve engine, her long legs, and a cell phone. She could afford to spend no more than ten minutes at a time in David’s secret apartment.