Peep Show by Joshua Braff

now. There is another girl in the room but I cannot hear her or see her. This is a new section of the girl’s dorm that was built over the winter, along with a new synagogue and the boy’s dorm. The building I’m in has ten three-person rooms and mine has a viewof the Tree of Life, a huge cyprus that leans out over the outdoor sanctuary. I am thirsty. I’m back now and I have some water. I still feel the tingling in my legs from the drive. We got here and no one on the campus was awake except for Rabbi Fleeter who was in the recreation room playing foosball by himself. He looked very happy to see us and even asked about you. I hear so many crickets outside, like grains of sand on the beach, millions and millions of them rubbing their wings together at the same time. I am tired. I can’t stay awake. Sarah should be here tomorrow morning. I like it here much better when she’s here and I’m sad are dorms are different. The crickets don’t sleep, I guess. They are like Rabbi Fleeter.
    Brandi walks in my room with another present. “Open it,” she says. Inside is a book of photographs by various photographers. On the cover is a black and white portrait of a woman looking longingly to her right. It’s by an artist named Dorothea Lange.
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œHappy graduation!” Brandi says.
    My father smokes his brains out in the doorway. “Hey, Mr. Graduate?” he asks.
    Brandi takes the book from me. “Look at this page,” she says, flipping to find it.
    â€œYeah?” I say.
    â€œTomorrow’s Monday,” he says.
    I nod.
    â€œReady to go to work?”

Monday
    A N ELECTRIC SAW CHEWS THROUGH a piece of wood in two-second bursts. It sounds like
reeee
! The bullet-fire hammering of small metal tacks goes on for hours. They use what’s called a nail gun.
Wopboom! Wopboom!
The Imperial Theatre. Monday. I write it in the notebook. Day one. Pretty boring. Me and Jocko sit out in front and wait for the van to arrive from the Strap-a-Long. A regular who Leo calls Fat Albert saunters up to us and asks if we’re open.
    â€œJust the bar,” I say, and steer him toward Broadway, to another strip joint. He heads off to the corner, scratches his butt for a second, and comes back. “Thought you were renovating,” he says.
    â€œWe are,” I tell him. “But the bar is open.”
    Within a half hour, each of the regulars is in their chosen seat, drinking through the sounds of table saws anddrills and dust everywhere. Back inside for a break, I shoot three rolls and just know the pics will be filled with movement and story. One old guy that Leo dubbed Grandpa Munster wears the cutoff fingers of surgical gloves on his thumbs and index fingers. He says it’s for counting cash. In this light his cheekbones form sallow, deep grooves that appear like hinges to his jaw. His girlfriend is an elderly ex-dancer named Babs. Every day she wears a black leotard that shows her bony ribs. When she kisses me hello—her idea—her breath and skin give off a mothball scent that triggers depressing thoughts in my brain. Couple that with the Dewars and Vicks and you’ve got Babs. My favorite shot of her is the one in which I caught her applying lipstick, in preparation of being photographed. The excitement in her eyes is raw, as if I just hired her to relive her past, to be the girl she once was. Liberace is in the picture too, helping her pick the right shade. He’s a veteran of “Two Wars,” who hardly speaks until his third shot of Sambuca. After that he brags about the “whores” he slept with the night before and usually asks Leo to smell his fingers. Merv Griffin is a very fat and pimply alcoholic in his early thirties who insists he’s a nephew of Betty Gravel. Mr. Green Jeans has a purple skin disorder on his right cheek and ear and is constantly asking me if I’ve read novels I’ve never heard of.