Russian Spring (47 page)

There was a long moment of silence. Shandra slowly unwound herself from her squat, rose, sat down on the couch beside him. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Bobby said, beaming at her, feeling the warmth of her thigh pressed against his.

“You’ve actually hitchhiked across the country?” she said. “That was very brave, people just don’t do that anymore.”

“They don’t?” Bobby said innocently.

Shandra laughed. She snuggled closer to him. “You really
are
a European, aren’t you?” she said.

Bobby threw up his hands, shrugged, and in the process managed to drape his arm on the couch back around her shoulders without quite touching her. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure that one out,” he said. “In Paris, I felt like an American, but in New York and Washington and Miami, an American was the last thing I wanted to be. . . .”

Shandra leaned even closer. He could smell the jasmine perfume of her, feel her heat. “And now that you’re here in Berkeley?” she said, placing a gentle hand on the top of his thigh.

“Now that I’m here, I like it just fine,” Bobby whispered, letting his arm slide down the couch back. Shandra fitted herself into the crook of his arm; without knowing quite when it had happened, Bobby realized that his entourage had melted away, leaving him alone with this gorgeous and apparently willing creature.

“You have a room here, do you not . . . ?” Shandra suggested.

“Hi, Bobby!” a female voice piped brightly. Bobby looked up and saw Eileen Sparrow standing over them. Oh shit!

“Uh, hi, Eileen . . . ,” Bobby muttered guiltily.

“Don’t let me
disturb
you,” Eileen said dryly.

Jesus! “Uh, we were just . . .”

“So I see,” Eileen said. “Cute, isn’t he?” she said to Shandra, without a hint of malice. “And he gives pretty good
head
too, I taught him how.”

Bobby felt that he must be turning scarlet.

Eileen laughed. “Where’s your European
sophistication?
” she said, and laughed again.

Shandra laughed too.

“You . . . uh . . . don’t mind?” Bobby stammered.

Eileen made a great show of gazing around the room and licking her lips theatrically. “With all these
men
here?” she exclaimed. “Come on, Bobby, this is
Berkeley!
” And she sashayed off, blew him a kiss over her shoulder, and was gone.

Though it took him four more days to nerve himself up to make the dreaded phone call home, the Sunday afternoon after the party was when Bobby Reed realized that he had long since decided that he was going to go to college here in Berkeley no matter what his mother said.

Shandra Corday had been wonderful in bed indeed, at least from his limited critical perspective, but that was not what caused Bobby’s
great revelation. Indeed, Shandra had made it quite clear to him afterward that this was just a nice little adventure for her, as, if he was honest, it had been for him; she was seeing three other men and was not at this point in her evolution looking for the love of her life.

“This is, after all, Berkeley,” she told him in the morning, and they both had a friendly little laugh over that.

No, what did it, strangely enough, was the phone call from Eileen Sparrow that came while he was still in bed with Shandra. Marla Washington opened his door and, without raising an eyebrow or missing a beat, told him he had a phone call. Bobby pulled on his pants and took it in the kitchen.

“Hi, Bobby,” Eileen’s voice said brightly on the other end of the old-fashioned audio-only American phone. “Have a good time?”

“Uh . . .”

“
I
had a wonderful time, I met this guy with millions of muscles who
fucked my brains out!
”

“Why are you telling me this, Eileen?” Bobby stammered.

“Why to thank you for inviting me, of course!”

Bobby didn’t know what to say to that.

But Eileen Sparrow, as usual, was not at a loss for words. “Well, that’s not exactly the whole truth, Bobby,” she said when he didn’t reply. “I mean, you were so
silly
last night, I mean you acted like I was your
mother
or something! I just wanted to set you straight, I mean, I really wasn’t pissed at you at all, truly, truly, I wasn’t. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bobby said, quite touched.

“I mean, you don’t owe me anything, and I don’t owe you anything, so please, please, just have a good time and don’t be so
uptight
about it. We’re young, we’re horny, it’s only like
natural
, and this is—”

“I know, I know, this is
Berkeley!
” Bobby said, and they both laughed.

“Well, I gotta go now, Bobby,” Eileen said. “Mr. America has another
hard-on
, would you believe it?”

“Have fun,” Bobby said, and, somewhat to his surprise, he realized that he meant it.

“Oh don’t worry, I
will!
’Bye!”

And that was the moment of revelation, as Bobby stood there in the kitchen, with Karl and Cindy pouring themselves coffee from the communal urn and Shandra Corday upstairs in his bed, and Eileen Sparrow off somewhere in bed with someone else, but enough of a real friend to have called him to set his mind at ease.

This was where he belonged. This was a time and a place and a feeling that he never wanted to leave. He would go to college at
UC
Berkeley. He would major in history, and maybe he could go to grad school here too, and get a job teaching at the university like
Nat Wolfowitz, and with luck, he could stay here in Berkeley forever.

Finding the courage to call Paris was something else again. Mom would go through the roof. The deal was that he was supposed to come back to Paris and go to the Sorbonne in the fall, and Dad had had to get into some pretty bad stuff with her to get him even this trip. Things had not been so terrific between them when he had left, which was maybe one of the reasons he hadn’t called home at all yet. And now . . .

Bobby put it off, and put it off, and put it off, but finally, late at night after another losing poker game, when he knew he would catch his parents at the breakfast table, and fatigue had fogged his brain sufficiently, he found himself walking into the empty kitchen and dialing Paris before he had complete awareness of exactly what he was doing.

Maybe they’ve left already
, he told himself as the phone rang once, twice, thrice.

“Hello?” said his father’s voice on the other end.

No such luck
.

“Hi, Dad, this is Bobby.”

“Bobby! Where the hell are you? We’ve been worried sick! Sonya, it’s Bobby, pick up in the bedroom!”

“I’m in Berkeley, Dad, I’m sorry, but—”

“Robert!”

“Hi, Mom—”

“Where on earth are you?”

“He’s in Berkeley, Sonya.”

“Why haven’t you called?” Mom demanded. “Not even a postcard!”

“And what’s wrong with the picture? Our screens are blank.”

“This is
America
, Mom, ordinary homes aren’t wired for v-phones, remember?”

“But the decent hotels certainly must have—”

“I’m not staying in a hotel, I’ve got a room in this great house, with wonderful people, it’s real cheap, and I can stay here as long as I want, so it’s hardly gonna cost you
anything
for me to go to
UC
Berkeley, except for tuition. . . .”

There, it was out, and done.

“Oh no you’re not, Robert!” Mom snapped.

“Oh yes I am! My mind’s made up, and you’re not gonna change it. I’m going to Berkeley!”

“Not on our money, you’re not, Robert,” Mom said. “Not one
ECU
, not one ruble, not one dollar!”

“Sonya!” Dad exclaimed.

“He’ll forget about this nonsense as soon as he runs out of money.”

“Sonya, he’s got a right to live his own life, we can’t blackmail—”

“This is all your fault, Jerry Reed! I
knew
we should never have let him go to that madhouse in the first place! No money, Robert, you’re coming home, and you’re going to the Sorbonne!”

“Never!” Bobby shouted. “I’m staying here.”

“We’ll see how long you last supporting yourself and paying your own tuition. . . .”

“I’ll . . . I’ll get a job!” Bobby stammered.

“I’m sure there are endless jobs in California for eighteen-year-olds with no experience that pay enough to send you through a capitalist university,” Mom said sarcastically.

“I’ll . . . I’ll join the Army! They pay for four years of college in return for four years’ service.”

“Bob!”

“Go ahead, Robert,” Mom said knowingly. “That’s one silly bluff I’m quite ready to call.”

Bobby forced himself to think coldly.
Play the cards
, he told himself.
You don’t have much showing, but they can’t be sure what you’ve got in the hole
.

“Have it your way, Mom,” Bobby said in as cool a tone as he could muster. “I can always deal
drugs
, they bring back marijuana in body bags from the South American war zones, did you know that? I know the guys who are doing it. No one goes broke dealing dope in Berkeley. . . .”

“Bob!” Dad shouted in a horrified voice. “For God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid! I’ll get you the money one way or another, I promise!”

“Jerry!”

“Goddamnit, Sonya, you want your own son dealing
dope?
You want to see him rotting in some miserable jail for twenty years?”

“I won’t have it, I won’t have you blackmailing us like this, Robert!”

“Now the Politburo is calling the Supreme Soviet a bunch of Commies?” Bobby snapped back.

There was the sound of a receiver hanging up.

“Promise me you won’t do anything foolish, Bob,” Dad’s voice pleaded. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you back when I’ve convinced your mother to listen to reason. But please don’t do anything stupid, let me handle it, okay?”

“Okay, Dad,” Bobby said. “But I’m serious. I’ll do whatever I have to to stay here. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you, Bob,” Dad said woodenly. “Just wait for my call before you do anything.”

And after Bobby gave him the number, he hung up, leaving Bobby alone in the empty kitchen in the dead of night, wondering what he would
really
do if his bluff was called.

Two days later, Mom and Dad called together. It was really strange. “The three of us have got to work this out as a family instead of fighting with each other,” Dad said in a weird pleading tone of voice.

“Your father and I have worked out a compromise,” Mom said, sounding strangely distant. “You come home to Paris for college, and you can spend your summers in America.”

“No,” Bobby said.

“Please, Bob,” Dad pleaded. “You’re making things very difficult.”

“I’ll spend my summers in Paris if you pay for me to go to Berkeley,” Bobby countered.

“I
told
you this was futile, Jerry!” Mom snapped angrily.

“Bob, please, your mother and I—”

“I thought you were on my side, Dad! All that stuff you were always telling me about America ever since I was a little kid—”

“Bob—”

“—it was all a lie, wasn’t it? You never believed a word of it!”

“You know that’s not true! If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be in America in the first place!”

“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said in a week, Jerry Reed!”

“Sonya!”

“Don’t Sonya me!”

“Please, Bob, can’t you see that your mother and I—”

“Classes start here in ten days, and if I don’t have the tuition money by Monday, I’m going to have to borrow the first installment from my dealer friends and start pushing drugs to pay it back or they’ll stuff
me
in a body bag!”

And he hung up on them and let them think about it.

Finally, late Sunday night, Bobby got the long-awaited call from his father. Dad sounded weary, and distant, and strangely defeated.

“All right, Bob,” he said tiredly. “I’ll be wiring you the money tomorrow.”

“Hey, that’s great, Dad, that’s just great!” Bobby exclaimed. “How did you manage to convince Mom?”

There was a long silence and then an audible sigh on the other end of the line. “That’s . . . that’s between your mother and me,” Dad finally said. “You know . . . she really
does
love you, in her way. . . .”

“She sure has a funny way of showing it.”

“Yeah, well . . . love isn’t always easy, Bob,” Dad said sadly. “Love isn’t always right either. Sometimes, well, people who love each other hurt each other, like . . . like . . . Well, someday, if you’re not so lucky, maybe you’ll understand. . . .”

“Are you all right, Dad?”

There was a long pause. “Just terrific,” Dad said hollowly. “Haven’t a care in the world. . . . You take care, Bob.”

“Uh, yeah, you too, Dad,” Bobby said uneasily, and that was the way the conversation ended, with his jubilation soured, at least for the moment, by feelings of vague guilt for he knew not what.

Bobby’s somber mood didn’t last much past breakfast. He went over to
UC
Berkeley to fill out his matriculation papers, spent the afternoon wandering around the campus, went back to the house, called Eileen and Shandra to tell them the good news, and before dinner, the money arrived from Paris. He won forty dollars at poker that night, cashed the draft from his father the next morning, paid up his tuition in the afternoon, had dinner with Eileen, made love, spent the next night with Shandra Corday, and by that time, the strange way Dad had acted on the phone was quite forgotten.

Until two days later, when Marla Washington handed him a letter that had arrived in the mail. “All the way from Russia!”

It was from Franja. His Russian was still good enough for him to read the Cyrillic on the stationery. It was a Gagarin University envelope. The letter lay heavily in his hand like a very cold and very dead fish. Franja had never written him a letter before, and somehow he had the feeling that this was not going to be a pleasure. And when he took it up to his room to read it in private, it was even worse than he had imagined.

Dear Bobby: