Mike and Nahumik(in that name Humik had been known to his past friend) met in a small restaurant, in a side street, not far from Columbia University. Nahumik’s eyes were wet from excitement. Mike was a cool guy, and boasted that he had been already a week in Manhatten and found another Israeli. He was dwelling with that friend, whose address he had received from his father’s cousin in Israel. Mike said that he would like to work as a cab driver – but for the time being he would be a carrier. His friend promised to let him arrange him a fake Taxi Driving license: “Tomorrow we will be moving furniture,” he tried to talk English, bad English, “and drive to Bronx with truck. You join, Nahumik. “
The shared small room was in North Manhatten, and the dwellers were satisfied that nobody was paying attention to them. The room was very dense, but they found a corner for Nahumik ‘to put his folded corpse on’- as they said. But what would they do in the long evening?
“I invite you” said Mike, “to go out with us to some club with a bar. Some Israeli singer girl will have a show there.”
“Maybe she is as young as ourselves,” explained the other guy, who was a cleaner of offices, washing floors with acid liquid named “Disin-fect” so he said, which had a sharp smell like any disinfection material, that would pain your lungs. But the guy was satisfied: He had found a divorced woman of forty (he was 21, after an army service in Israel)- who fell in love with him. He was earning some hundreds bucks a month, which could hardly cover his expenses for hiring the room and food; but his sweetheart was assisting him with additional three hundred bucks. ‘That’s not bad’ – he said in English, ‘taking into account also having sex. We do it only in daytime… No, I don’t sleep with her, as she has yet to get her divorce document from the Court. We are meeting secretly changing meeting hours, to confuse the enemy. We hire a hostel’s room for an hour time – four times a week. It’s a low cost hotel.”
“If you want,” turned Mike to Nahumik, ”You can also begin working in Izaac Langerman’s cleaning Office. But it depends on your decision to live here in New York.”
“I am afraid to clean the sky scrappers,” answered Nahumik, “Cleaning the window glasses there makes me sick.”
“He is right,” said the other guy, ”That’s a very professional work, causing dizzyness. Only blacks are capable for that. I mean – those who are NY born, as they were used to look down from the fiftieth floor. Maybe some Japanese can also do it.”
“Yeah,”confirmed Mike,“Nahumik had been heights’ frightened also as a boy. He would hesitate to climb to my parents’ apartment on the second floor. Remember?” he asked Naumik.
The Israeli Show in the Club, that the guys were driving to, took place in a ‘half Industrial-commercial’ area, out of the city’s Skyscrappers. Sometimes you could hear there a yell of police cars.
“But the cops know,” said Mike to Humik, “that our place is neat. No quarrels, no shooting, no drugs. The audience will be consisting of New Yorkers- old Jews and young Israelis like us.”
“You’ll find foreign tourists, so I heard,” said Mike’s roommate.
The three young men arrived to the ‘Israeli Show’ by a cab.
CHAPTER 5
To America and Back Page 4