The Girl on the Fridge: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

day,” she asked, “you don’t know what it was in her childhood that made her leave you?”
    “She didn’t leave me,” Nahum corrected her. “We broke up.”
    “Broke up, whatever,” Ogette said.
    “It’s not ‘whatever,’” Nahum insisted, “it’s my life. For me, at least, those are significant distinctions.”
    “And to this day, you don’t know what event in her childhood started all this?” Ogette continued.
    “It wasn’t any event,” Nahum corrected her again. “No one started anything—no one but you here now.” And after a short silence, he added, “Yeah, it had something to do with the refrigerator.”
    Not Nahum’s
    When Nahum’s girlfriend was little, her parents had no patience for her because she was little and full of energy, and they were already old and worn-out. Nahum’s girlfriend tried to play with them, to talk to them, but that only annoyed them more. They didn’t have the strength. They didn’t even have enough strength to tell her to shut her mouth. So instead, they used to hoist her up, sit her on the refrigerator, and go to work. Or wherever they had to go. The refrigerator was very high, and Nahum’s girlfriend couldn’t get down. And so it happened that she spent most of her childhood on top of the refrigerator. It was a very happy childhood. While other people got the crap beaten out of them by their big brothers, Nahum’s girlfriend sat on the edge of the fridge, sang to herself, and drew little pictures in the layer of dust around her. The view from up there was very beautiful, and her bottom was nice and warm. Now that she was older, she missed that time, that alone time, very much. Nahum understood how sad it made her, and once he even tried to fuck her on top of the refrigerator, but that didn’t work.
    “That’s an awfully beautiful story,” Ogette whispered, brushing Nahum’s hand with hers.
    “Yes,” Nahum mumbled, pulling his arm back. “An awfully beautiful story, but it isn’t mine.”

World Champion
    In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I brought him a gold-plated navel cleaner with FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING inscribed across the handle. It was a toss-up between that and Axis of Evil—Axis of Hope . I spent a long time going back and forth. My dad was in a good mood all evening. He was the life of the party. He showed everyone how he brushed his navel clean, and he trumpeted like a happy elephant. My mom kept telling him, “Come on, Menachem, give it a rest.” But he didn’t.
    In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, the tenant who lives in the upstairs apartment decided he wasn’t leaving, even though his lease was up. “Look, Mr. Fullman,” he said, hunched over a dismantled Marantz amp, like a butcher. “In February I’m off to New York to open a stereo lab with my brother-in-law, and I’m not about to move all my shit out just to move it again in two months.” And when my dad told him the lease was up in December, Electronics Man went right on working as if nothing had happened and said in the tone you use to shake off one of those door-to-door guys asking for donations to a worthy cause, “Lease-shmease, I’m staying. You don’t like it? Then sue me,” and stabbed his screwdriver all the way through the amplifier’s guts.
    In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I went with him to see his lawyer, and the lawyer said our hands were tied. “Settle,” he suggested, rummaging through his drawer in a desperate search for something. “Try to get another three, four hundred out of him, and leave it at that. A lawsuit, you’ll get an ulcer, and after two years of running around that may be all you get.”
    In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I asked him why we don’t just go into Electronics Man’s apartment at night and change the lock and dump all his stuff in the front yard. And my dad said that was illegal, and I shouldn’t even think about it. I asked if it was because he was afraid, and he said no, just realistic. “What’s the