Edison For Beginners

It was a strange, magical almost transcendental episode that happened. So much so that when I speak to Tomas Szelazek, my ex roommate, I still ask him if he remembers this dream like story or, depending on the point of view, this LA black hole.
Tomas and I lived in the same place and one of our roommates was leaving. So he decided to celebrate his farewell party in a Downtown club called Edison. Edison is one of those retro clubs with 20's neo-decadent Moulin Rouge decoration. The burlesque strip tease shows they have there try to get your mind off the dipshits in Armani suits who frequent the place but they only remind you that for as much as they spent on the interior decoration you are still in a titty bar.
Me and Tom always had a peculiar relationship because he grew up in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn but he was born in Poland. So that made him a sort of a foreigner in his own country, someone who could come off as an American be popular with the Pepperdine boys we lived with but at the same time understand what it is to come to this country and start a new life. Sometimes his parents would visit the house where we lived and his mom would wake up early just so she could leave her son (all of us really) an amazing chicken soup. For a couple of hours our kitchen was a piece of Warsaw, a piece of Europe in the land of the wild Californias.
That Friday night Tom's girlfriend wanted to leave the Edison earlier and so the three of us walked up to the first floor of the club so we could exit the building. While we were waiting for the rest of the gang to come up the stairs and for Tom's girlfriend to finish texting, me and Tom saw two hassidic Jewish boys that couldn't have been more than 16 years old (they had peyote but no beard). I thought there was something off with this image but they walked straight to Tom and asked for the time. Tom told them the time and one of the boys said "You are from Dyker Heights, aren't you?" Tom was speechless, so I decided to approach them "Hi..." I said and one of them told me immediately "You are Sephardi aren't you?" They guessed the origins of Tom and I without even exchanging a greeting. And then they walked down the stairs to the club. "Do you know them?" Tom asked me but "Did you just hear what I heard?" was my prompt question.  Nothing made sense, their presence there on a Friday night and their crystal ball conclusions about me and Tom. Whenever I see Tom I always ask him if he remembers this episode. Probably they were lost, probably they weren't even religious Jews, probably they were angels, and in that case they were at the right time time at the right spot. There aren't a lot of angels at the Edison because the interior decorator made the place look like hell.