Eight Encounters with Sue

by Shay Aspril Published in Issue #22 Translated from Hebrew by Ruthie S. Almog

DeathLoveTel Aviv

As you slowly climb the stairs, something tells you that this is the last time you’ll be seeing Sue.

The daughter called you a few hours ago, and even though it was the first time you had ever spoken on the phone with her, you recognized the voice at once. She said that Sue was asking for you. You procrastinated a bit, but after a few minutes, you left the clinic and got into a cab with mud-streaked leather seats. You asked the driver to let you off at that building over there, the one you had passed from time to time in the last few years while running some errands in Tel Aviv. You used to stand across the street or sit in the café opposite the apartment, the one that went under and in its stead a vegan restaurant sprang up. Among the dried-up old ladies sipping coffee, who were eventually exchanged for the rail-thin younger generation preferring tofu and rice curry, you would look out at the window, that hadn’t changed in all these years. You knew that behind it sat Sue, sometimes supine, thinking about her son, and staring at his picture, sometimes with the daughter, who is now opening the door, expressionless. She looks different than when you met her the first time, a few weeks before, when she came knocking at your door, her hair dripping wet from the rain.

You touch the daughter’s shoulder and catch the scent of cigarettes butts emanating from her. During...

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