The Girl on the Fridge: Stories by Etgar Keret Page A

didn’t leave much, just the black sweatpants you were wearing, your effortless grin, and a certain contact between us, I don’t know what kind—maybe a hug. The Geshternak had eaten everything around it, leaving only that, naked. I was left sprawled on the floor, desolate and silent, in nothing but my boxers and a layer of sweat. Hours of patient sleep, waiting for the dream to come. And now—nothing, worse than nothing, just a single drop of the taste of a vanished ice pop dripping into my mouth. A faint whimper came from under the bed. It was the Geshternak. First I thought it might be in pain—after all, I’d really walloped the shadow—but there wasn’t an ounce of pain in the sobs. I tasted the Geshternak’s tears, which were flowing along the bedroom floor, and they were sweet on my tongue; the Geshternak was crying with joy, and its tears attested to the wonderful taste of the dream, which was making every bit of its nonexistent body tremble. Its sobs told me about those long nights it had waited under the bed, empty, feeding only on fragments of my dreams. Nauseating dreams of boredom and apathy it had no choice but to chew on slowly; dreams of pain, loss, and fear it tried to destroy so I could sleep; dreams that so often stuck painfully in its throat. Every night, the Geshternak swallowed hour after hour of indifference and suffering, leaving my sleep smooth and dark, and tonight, it finally got its reward. Its painful hunger was satisfied, and for a while, it had experienced the alternative to emptiness. Its body knew more than nothingness. It was almost sunrise, and my partner’s shadow hand slid out from under the bed and pointed to the middle of the room, to the bits of the dream I still had left—sweatpants, a smile, an intoxicating, elusive touch—and the fading fingers of the shadow seemed to be saying, “Here, my friend, there’s some good left for you, too.”

Monkey Say, Monkey Do
    “Have a banana,” she begged. I don’t want to.
    “Come on, sweetheart. Show the nice man how you eat a banana.” Let the nice man eat the banana. I’m through with this, for good.
    “Excuse me, Dr. Gonen, but this is completely unacceptable. Dragging me all the way out from Sydney just to watch him sitting there in his cage with his eyes shut, shrugging his shoulders. My time is very precious, you know, and I won’t have it wasted on one pretext and ano—”
    “I’m sorry, Professor Strum, I have no idea what’s gotten into him. It looks as if he may be upset by all this commotion. He’s not used to strangers. If you’d just please wait outside for a few minutes, I know I can get him to respond.”
    Don’t be so sure, honeybunch. Don’t be so sure.
    “Five minutes,” he says, and I hear him walking away. “Five minutes.” The door shuts, and a key turns in the lock.
    “Please, lover,” she says, stroking my fur. “Talk to the man, show him how smart you are.” Her hand is touching my balls now, and my penis begins to stiffen. But I don’t open my eyes.
    “Really, sweetheart,” she says and goes on stroking. “Do this for me. Otherwise they’ll close down the project…”
    Silence.
    “…and then we won’t be able to stay together anymore.”
    So we won’t. I’ve got my pride, haven’t I? The strokes come faster now. It feels so good. But I don’t open my eyes, don’t say a word, don’t give in.
    “The five minutes are up, Dr. Gonen,” comes the voice from behind the locked door. I open my eyes just a crack. She notices, stops stroking and brings her face up close.
    “If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll have it,” she whispers. She removes her barrette and lets her hair down. It falls to her shoulders. She runs her fingers through it. She’s an attractive woman.
    “There are lots of professors around here who’d love a chance to saw your head open and look inside your brain,” she says. “I’m through with you. From now on, you’re all