Intelligent Beavers, Apartment Searches, and Kidney-Trading Hubs

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If you've ever gone on an apartment search before, then I’m willing to bet you probably have some sort of pulse, and require, among other things, shelter. But you likely do not know what it's like to respond to a suspicious ad on Homeless claiming to be renting out a private house with a front yard in a neighborhood that, according to the map, consists exclusively of large apartment complexes, let alone to actually visit this sort of place. I do, and here’s the lowdown: It was a genetically mutated freak of urban planning that resembles something like an architectural miscarriage that is hands down the most bloodcurdlingly disturbing nightmarish excuse for a shelter all five of my senses have ever come into contact with simultaneously.

But according to the guy renting it out, it was, in his words, “Nechmad.”

Normally, upon seeing an ad renting out a "house" for the suspicious sum of 2000 shekels a month, a consumer with the brain capacity of at least a very intelligent beaver would scratch his head, flap his tail and say, "What's a private house doing sandwiched between large apartment buildings only costing 2000 shekels a month? Could it be a primordial scar protruding from the depths of the Earth’s crust that some guy is trying to rent out as part of some sadistic bet?" Then he’d go build a dam. But not me, because I'm arguably denser than the surrounding zoning plan and beavers have been known to best me in chess matches. Also I can’t build dams.

So, properly seduced by the low price, I called the guy on the ad, and he forwards me to a friend of his named "Avram" who is supposedly showing this thing to prospective beavers like myself. Avram offers to pick us up in his "car" and bring us over to the "house" that only costs "2000 shekels a month" and is happily and suspiciously sandwiched on all sides between buildings 500 times its size. I say, "OK," and I call my wife and say something like this really fast: "I called a guy about this house in Kiryat Ono and its 2000 a month and he says he'll pick us up tomorrow afternoon in his car and he also offered-us-candy-and-wanted-to-know-if-we-had-any-kidney-problems-that-we-know-of-and-what-our-blood-types-were doyouwanttogoseeit?"

So she says to me, as if I didn't know, "Rafi, you know how much I love you, but you're going to get us kidnapped and sold into slavery."
"No, I have a contingency plan in case that happens."
"And what is that?" she says.
"It's a really really good one.” You have to know how to calm down females. It's an art. Like fingerpainting.

Being the adventurous woman that she is, she decides to trust my bluntly-honed masculine intuition and get in the car of a stranger to a house that may or may not be a black market organ-trading hub.

Anyway, after a few minutes a small white car pulls up and I say, "Avram?" and he says, "Yes," and we get in, I shielding my kidneys as I bend over to get in the front seat. He drives us about 5 minutes south, and we pass several apartment complexes and pull into this empty dirt field at the end of which is a 10-foot-deep ditch. At the bottom of this ditch I can see the top of a roof-looking thing consisting of boards sticking out of the broken-off slab graffitied with the words "Bialik 17" on the hacked off section, the sight of which reminds me immediately of Mila 18, the house where the rebels of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising made their headquarters and last stand against the Nazis. I tried to think a little more positively, but the best I could come up with was Mila 19.

In a last ditch (pun intended) effort not to go near the site, I started walking in the other direction, but Avram was insistent on actually showing me Bialik 17. Avram leads, and she and I follow. The first thing I say to her, out of hearing range of Avram, is, "Try your hardest not to cry until we get out of here." As we get closer to the front door, it is dawning upon me that if we actually rented this place, we would have to lie to our friends about where we lived because if they actually came over for a Shabbat meal, they'd think we were the administrators of a modern leper colony.

Now I'm all for administrating leper colonies, but as he unlocks the chain to the door and it starts creaking and we step into this thing, I realize that I wouldn't live here if he PAID me 2000 shekels a month AND let me have first dibs on the kidney stockpile. The door opens, and I half expect the schizoid cat lady who's been squatting here for the past 15 years to come screeching out of the front door and fling multicolored inbred rabies-infested pregnant cats at my face.

We go in, and the smell reeks of abandonment and ghosts of dead pets, but it was probably just old kidneys. I suddenly realize that if there is indeed a portal to North Korea, this must be it. We want to ask him if he's joking about renting the place and that I'd rather live at the 125th street subway station at Harlem and drink the leaking train radiator water.

We leave, he drives us back, we get out of the car, and seriously contemplate burning all of our clothing and being disinfected by one of those remote controlled robots that inspect suspicious objects left on Ben Yehuda.

But all ended well. We found a place, and it’s nice. And the best thing is that between the two of us, there consists, at present, at least three kidneys.

Nechmad.