Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories by Etgar Keret, Nathan Englander, Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston Read Free Book Online Page B

room he discovers notebooks and textbooks lined in flowered paper. There’s a math book, and a box of colored pencils, and a little metal compass with an eraser shoved on the point. His mother comes over to chide him. “This isn’t the time for homework. Come and eat. Hurry up, chop-chop, before all the vitamins escape from the salad.” Avishai sits at the table and eats in silence. The food is delicious. He’d been surviving solely on takeout and cheap restaurants for so many years, he’d honestly forgotten that food could taste this good. “Daddy left you money for your after-school program.” Mommy points to a sealed white envelope resting on the little hall table next to the rotary phone. “But I’m warning you, Avi, if you pull the same stunt you did with the model-airplane club and change your mind after one class, you’re better off telling us now, before we pay.”
    Avishai thinks to himself: It’s just a dream. And after that he says, “Yes, Mommy,” because even if it is just a dream, there’s no need to be impolite. He thinks to himself: If I just will it, I can wake myself at any moment. Not that he knows what, exactly, you do to wake up in the middle of a dream. You can pinch yourself, but that’s generally used in the opposite situation. Pinching is what you do to prove you’re already awake. Maybe he could hold his breath, or just say to himself, “Wake up! Wake up!” And maybe if he simply refuses to absorb everything around him, if he casts doubt, it’ll all suddenly melt away. In either case, there’s no need to stress. He might as well eat first. Yes, after dinner is probably an excellent time to wake himself up. And when Avishai really gets to thinking about it, even when he’s done eating, it’s not exactly urgent. He can go to his after-school group first—he’s honestly curious which one it is—and later, if it’s still light out, he can play a little soccer in the schoolyard. And only when Daddy gets home from work, only then will he wake up. He could even stretch it out another day or two, until right before some especially hard exam. “Now what are you daydreaming about?” Mommy asks, stroking his balding head. “So many thoughts spinning around behind those big, round eyes of yours, just looking at them makes me feel tired.”
    “I was thinking of dessert,” Avishai lies, “wondering if you’d made Jell-O or chocolate pudding.”
    “What would you like there to be?” Mommy asks.
    “Pudding,” Avishai says, all playful.
    “It’s already waiting,” his mother says happily and opens the fridge. “But if you change your mind, Jell-O is just as easy. It won’t take a minute to make.”

UNZIPPING
     
    It began with a kiss. It almost always begins with a kiss. Ella and Tsiki were in bed, naked, with only their tongues touching—when she felt something prick her. “Did I hurt you?” Tsiki asked, and when she shook her head, he quickly added, “You’re bleeding.” And she was, from the mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he started a frantic search in the kitchen, pulling ice-cube trays out of the freezer and banging them against the counter. “Here, take these,” he said, handing her some ice with a shivering hand, “put them against your lip. It’ll stop the bleeding.” Tsiki had always been good at those things. In the army he’d been a paramedic. He was a trained tour guide too. “I’m sorry,” he went on, turning paler, “I must have bitten you. You know, in the heat of passion.” “Never——ind.” She smiled at him, the ice cube sticking to her lower lip. “No——ing ha——ened.” Which was a lie, of course. Because some——ing had ha——ened. It isn’t every day that someone you’re living with makes you bleed, and then lies to you and says he bit you, when you distinctly felt something pricking you.
    They didn’t kiss for a few days after that, because of her cut. Lips are a very sensitive part of the body. And later,