The apartment was too small to provide even a modicum of privacy. There was the bedroom for the brothers, the living room, where their mother slept, Karen’s closet, a tiny bathroom, and a kitchen, all wedged into forty-three square meters. All in ochre. That perhaps had been white at some point in the distant past. Or red. It didn’t matter. Everything a bit—run-down. The curtains were closed, the living room reeked of booze. The brothers sat on the sofa looking like a man and his puppet. The larger one good-looking, the little one strange-looking. They were watching YouTube videos of people who glued their foreskin shut with superglue. Their brains were already irrevocably damaged by constant stimulation. The TV was also on, with the sound muted, showing catastrophic reports from Japan, which had just been hit by a massive tsunami. The idiots made jokes and Karen stared, frozen, as old women squatted on a hill and gaped at their wildly romantic coastal town where a container ship had been washed in. The two dumbfucks Karen was supposedly related to squealed with delight. Fatalities. There were fatalities. Maybe they’d show a corpse. It never ceased to amaze Karen how many hours the two of them could waste just staring at something or other. Or drinking alcohol and talking nonsense. And how little time they devoted to things that might have made human beings out of them. Like reading something or even bathing. One of them noticed Karen and yelled at her to get them a snack. Karen knew there was no point in arguing and set bread and margarine out in front of the two morons. The older one kicked her, perhaps because he didn’t approve of the quality of the proffered food. Karen fell to the floor. The younger brother screamed with laughter. Poor bastards, Karen thought. The brothers were bored with the emptiness in their heads, with the disastrous effects of the hormones that made them feel like they were the rulers of the world. Testosterone kept them from seeing themselves realistically for what they were, two young men without any prospects for a decent life. If you believed the statistics, one of them would be dead in a few years. The other would probably succumb to a gunshot wound soon enough. Unfortunately the date of their demise wasn’t fixed. Until then, they’d hunker down here with the spliffs that were supposed to calm them down.

Karen stood up at the moment her mother arrived home after a double shift. With burning eyes and tired of all the idiocy.

Just die already,

Thought

THE MOTHER

ETHNICITY: Black

RELIGION: Catholic

ATTRACTIVENESS RATING: 4

POLITICAL ORIENTATION: tired

HOBBIES: sleeping

HEALTH STATUS: abuse of tranquilizers, onset chronic stress-induced depression, cavities, osteoporosis

As she stood in the entry hall and looked into the living room.

And suddenly remembered. Karen’s mother saw herself standing in the entry hall on another night, years before. The big difference was—