The women are in their early thirties or late twenties. Both remain nameless. Their parents have died in separate car accidents. They live alone—a small apartment in Tel Aviv, a larger one bedroom in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. One has a brother who sends her money from their parents’ estate (“about twenty-eight million seven hundred and fifty-five thousand US dollars,” we’re told, without ever learning what the parents did to become millionaires). The other is an only child with a vague circle of distant friends. They have self-destructive habits: The woman in Brooklyn believes she’s dirty and performs elaborate skin-sloughing rituals that are described as painfully and painstakingly as they must be to experience. The Tel Aviv woman likes to do heroin “about once a month.”
