The Escape Artist by Judith Katz

Author:Judith Katz [Katz, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612940380
Publisher: Bywater Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was as quiet as can be in Madam Perle’s kosher whorehouse, the shutters still closed, only the faintest sunlight squeezing through the blinds. The cats on the street had stopped howling, the parrots in the courtyard clicked their beaks and claws, and all the women were fast asleep. All but we two, locked in one another’s arms. Me, Sofia Teitelbaum, most tasty morsel on the menu at Talcahuano Street 154, this month’s most valuable nafkeh, earner of the most pesos per minute, spitfire, whore most likely to bite back when slugged in the stomach or punched in the mouth. There I was with you, the escape artist Hankus Lubarsky, a man no longer in these desperate arms.

I have said many times that I planned to extort you. I was, after all, a whore with some years practice, a quick study who knows a golden opportunity when one falls down drunk on the floor in front of me. Get me out of here is what I imagined I’d tell you, take me with you the next time you go. And when you asked me how did I think you, a woman dressed like a man, could do more than I, a woman dressed like a slut, could do for myself, I was going to beg you to buy me, trade me for a week of magic show profits, rescue me with your quickest wits. Because what I had on you was huge. Huge. Once Tutsik Goldenberg and his thug cronies got wind of the fact that their wunderkind Hankus Lubarsky was a woman in disguise, you were no better off than I—and even more despised. You, too, would know the feel of a fist against the eye, a hard shlang shoved up the toches. One-two-three boom, and all one had to show for it was an asshole full of kosher cum, and then they spit on you besides.

Before Madam Perle passed on her awful news, I spent my afternoons idly scheming. Now that I knew for a fact that my days were numbered, I became obsessed with how I would trap you, trick you into showing me your secret self, seduce you into opening your shirt for me, and then at my mercy you would be.

One night, two weeks after Pesach, yes almost exactly three years since I first set foot on the slippery ground of Buenos Aires, such an opportunity fell into my lap.

Perle Goldenberg had left Buenos Aires on a mysterious business trip. I knew just where she was because now that she had trusted me with some of her affairs she trusted me with all of them. I found myself in the horrible position of being Madam Perle’s best girlfriend, her new secret confidante. She still spoke to Ruthie and Marianna as if they were her closest friends, but I, I was the one who knew everything. I felt greatly burdened by this, but also thrilled, as if the old Perle had welcomed me home, as if

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