The Girl on the Fridge: Stories by Etgar Keret

curious neighbors appeared at their windows. The entire street froze. The only sound to be heard was the rattle of dice. “Double,” the backgammon monster cried a third time, now in a whisper, then touched its clenched fist to the yarmulke on its head and cast the dice against the side of the board in total concentration, as if aiming at some invisible target. Even before the dice had settled on the board, Lior knew he’d lost. “Four-four,” the monster said. “You owe me a candy bar.” It got up and went to stack the tomatoes.
     
    “I’m not at all happy that our Liori is spending his whole allowance gambling,” Lior’s mother complained. “Would it hurt him to go to an after-school activity? Sarah’s Yaniv plays the accordion, the Stein boy is learning computers. And my son has to spend his afternoons playing primitive games with a criminal who sells fruit and vegetables—”
    “Ziva, you’re exaggerating,” said Lior’s father, interrupting her diatribe. “David’s a religious man, not a criminal, and I can’t see anything wrong with every now and then playing a game—”
    “No? Not a criminal? To take a naïve little boy’s last penny? And that scar that covers half his face—what, you think he got that shaving?”
    “Really, Ziva, it’s a fair and friendly game. For God’s sake, don’t blow it out of proportion. They only play for candy bars, after all.”
    “If it’s so fair, then how come Lior never wins…”
    And once again she was off.
     
    To anyone else, it would have seemed an unremarkable day. Bright sun, light breeze, nothing out of the ordinary. But Lior knew the day was special. The dice in his hand kept whispering six-six, and the pieces aligned themselves on the board exactly the way he wanted. A woman came into the store and asked for cucumbers. “No cucumbers,” the backgammon monster told her. “We’re closed.”
    “What do you mean? You have piles of cucumbers here, and it’s only five o’clock—”
    “Lady,” the backgammon monster shouted, the vein in the middle of its sweaty forehead threatening to burst, “we’re playing now. The store is closed.”
    “My son’s coming home from camp today,” the woman ventured, “and he loves his cucumber soup, especially in this heat—”
    “Closed!” the monster repeated, staring hard at the board. As it did so, it unconsciously fell to stroking the handle of the watermelon knife at its left.
    “You’re right, Mr. Zviti,” the woman conceded. “It won’t kill him for once to eat a schnitzel. These kids today are spoiled.”
    She left. The dice rolled on, doing whatever Lior wanted, and a new smell wafted in the air above the fragrances of onions and kohlrabi. It was the smell of victory.
    “Double,” Lior piped in his shrill voice, waving his fists in the monster’s scowling face. “Double,” he repeated, giving the obedient dice their command. For a second they spun irresolutely, as if contemplating rebellion, but thought better of it and came to rest. “Five-five. Triple win,” Lior said. “You owe me three candy bars.” Then he got up and went to eat a plum.
    “Watch the store a minute,” the monster said and went out the door, its shoulders stooped. When it returned it was just plain David, holding three candy bars in his hand. “Today you got lucky. Don’t get used to it,” David said. But no vein-in-the-forehead or touching-the-yarmulke tricks would ever help again. The backgammon monster had been vanquished.

On the Nutritional Value of Dreams
    I woke up in the middle of the night, startled to find the Geshternak eating a dream I was having about you. Furious, I jumped out of bed and punched it in the nose as hard as I could. The Geshternak dropped what was left of the dream, but I didn’t stop hitting it. Even when it crawled under the bed and lost its shape, I kept punching that ungainly shadow. Finally I stopped. Exhausted and sweaty, I gathered up the remnants of the dream. It