Troika (23 page)

H
ere’s all you need to know about the way this fucking country works. If you’re rich, people assume you’re telling the truth and they give you a free pass. Maybe ’cause they figure you’ll give them something in return or maybe they figure if you made it big then you’ve got to be on the up-and-up. Who knows? But if you don’t have money, if you’re nothing more than some poor spic stripper, then you’re pretty much fucked. If you’re just an immigrant who shakes her tits for a living and they catch you standing over the body of a crippled rich chick who happens to be the wife of the guy you’re fucking, then you got motive
and
opportunity and you’re screwed. And they could hook you up to the best lie detector in the world and you’d pass it perfect, straight A’s, and still there’s no way you’re walking.

It’s five in the morning and I’m in the fucking Tombs. There’s four girls in my cell, bull dykes every one of them. Fat as shit with
ink all over, their ugly mugs pierced and dressed up in denim and flannel shirts like they just raided Paul Bunyan’s closet. And yes, Julian, wherever the fuck you are now, I know exactly who Paul Bunyan is and I know he’s not real, just a myth. Though some people think he’s a composite of several real people. Anyway, I have interests that go beyond today, that go way back and into the future and all over the world, you patronizing fuck.

These dykes, they’ve been eyeing me, acting all tough, but they better back the fuck off. ’Cause in the mood I’m in right now, I will go Cuban on their ass and it will not be pretty.

I
awake in a private room in Mount Sinai Hospital. I am alive. And yes, I am relieved. Julian sits by the side of my bed. He holds my hand.

“Welcome back,” I say.

“You, too.”

“What’s the damage?”

Julian surveys my body, from my toes to the top of my head. “A fractured rib, split lip and your nose got banged up, but nothing permanent. You’ve got some contusions on the lower legs, your hip, and a pretty bad concussion.”

I pause to consider my injuries, then hold my right arm up to the light. An IV is taped to my forearm, just above the wrist. “Could have been worse,” I say.

“That’s for sure.”

I slowly lower my arm to the bed. “Where’s Perla? Is she okay?” I ask, concerned.

Julian appears surprised by my question, my tone. “Perla? They took her away.”

“Who took her?” I ask, not sure what he is talking about.

“The police. They took her away, arrested her.”

“Perla?” I try without success to push myself up with my arms, but I am too sore, too weak. “She’s been arrested?” Of the several potential outcomes, Perla’s incarceration is one that I selfishly had not considered until after the fall. “You’ve got to get her out, Julian.”

“Get her out? Why would I get her out?”

“Because it wasn’t her fault.”

Julian rubs my shoulder in a manner that borders on condescending, and if I weren’t so injured and so paralyzed, I’d smack him in the face. “You’re not thinking clearly, babe. Why don’t you close your eyes, take a nap.”

“Julian, listen to me. She didn’t do anything wrong, nothing at all to harm me. I did it. I hurt myself on purpose, rolled myself right off the side of the bed. It was Perla who came to help, Julian. Perla. And if it wasn’t for her . . .”

Julian places his palm over my eyes, priestlike, as if he is delivering last rites. “Take a nap, sweetheart.”

“Get her out now, Julian. Get her out.” I close my eyes and imagine Perla’s incarceration. I see her standing alone in a cell, frightened and confused. I wonder if they let her keep her clothes, her sandals. Or if she is being further degraded by some horrible orange jail uniform. I see Perla kneeling before me the first time we met: her tears, her supplication. I recall her kindness in the park, the little girl with the cotton candy—and my rot sickens me.

I lift my arm and again look at the IV and its network of tubes, needles and tape. I inhale the oxygen through the tube in my nose. I try to push myself off the bed, but Julian places his hand on my shoulder and guides me back down.

“There, there,” he says. “Just close your eyes.”

I am exhausted, cloaked in a fatigue so dark and dense that I am losing sight of Julian. “Now,” I plead to a form that is now nothing more than a tenuous blur. I close my eyes and fall into a fitful, febrile sleep.

I wake up several hours later wrapped in damp bedding. The clock on the wall says that it is nine in the morning. His head down, trying to sleep, Julian sits by the bed. When he sees that I have awoken, he smiles and reaches for my hand, careful not to pull on the complex system of tubes that run in and out of different parts of my body. I look around the hospital room, and it takes me some time to recall where I am, to recall the conversation that Julian and I had earlier in the evening—but once I do regain my mental footing, I am again gripped with shame and the need to right my wrong.

“Okay, Julian,” I say, grasping his hand as tightly as my depleted state will allow. “Now listen to me clearly, and no superior shit from you this time. My mind is fine, just fine. I’m groggy, obviously, but I’ve got my wits.” I give Julian a steady look to convey seriousness. “Go ahead, ask me anything.” Unprepared for my challenge, Julian hesitates—and before he can produce a question, I offer proof of my clarity. “How you proposed to me?” I look to my left hand and see my rings, partially swallowed by the engorged flesh. “On a raft going down the Delaware River, just north of New Hope, when we got stuck on some rocks.” Julian smiles. “That was a dangerous place to pull out a ring,” I remind him, and he nods in agreement. “The meal that Irina always made on your birthday? Her
best
meal? Brisket with boiled potatoes and carrots, drenched in gravy. And that soup
with the mushrooms, the olives, the cabbage. I’m blanking on the name of it, not because my mind is messed up, but because it’s Russian.”

“Solyanka,” he says.

“Solyanka! Of course. You need more? How about that awful stomach bug you got on our honeymoon—I
knew
those scallops were bad—and how you spent a good two days on the . . .” He holds up his hand to stop me from continuing. “My mind’s clear, Julian.” With the index and middle fingers of my left hand, I tap my temple. “Crystal clear.”

Julian has no choice but to concede that my thinking is sound and it is this understanding that terrifies him—because this means that I have told the truth about Perla, about my involvement in this mess. As if he does not recognize me, he removes his hand from mine and leans back in his chair.

“You did this?” he asks.

“I did.”

“You tried to kill yourself?” Julian is now confused, and I know that his confusion will soon convert into rage.

I reach for his hand—but it is too far away, and Julian, unraveling before me, does not appear eager to close the gap. “I prefer to call it existential indifference,” I say. Julian stares at me, exasperated. I wiggle my hand, imploring him to touch me. Reluctantly, he rests his hand on top of mine, but now there is no enveloping curl of the fingers, a slight difference in physical contact that, to me, is worse than no contact at all. “It’s complicated,” I say. “Maybe I hate myself. Hate myself for fucking everything up for us.” Julian shakes his head as if to deny my culpability. “And part, I guess, was to see what kind of girl she really is, what kind of girl you fell for.” I lick my lips, then chew on the inside of my mouth to get the saliva flowing. Julian reads these signals and, with his free and trembling hand,
lifts a glass of water to my mouth. I take a few sips and continue. “And maybe,” I admit, “maybe I just wanted to be damn sure I was leaving you in good hands.”

Julian looks disgusted. He slams the cup back on to the table, causing me to flinch. “You almost killed yourself to see what kind of girl she is? To test her character?” Yes, I nod. “There’s easier ways to do it, you know.” With his fist, he pounds his thigh. Once, twice, three times; his face twists from the pain. “And I
told
you what kind of girl she is!” His fury, as expected, has now surfaced. “And what about
her
? What about what you did to Perla?”

I wince. I slide my hand out from under his and place it over my chest. On the way, the nasal tube glides across my right ear. I brace myself for the unbearable sensation that will ripple through my ear. I wait. But to my astonishment, I feel nothing other than the normal sensation of a piece of plastic gently stroking the skin. The brain rewiring.

I
got these bull dykes lined up all docile on the far wall. I tell them you step across this line—and I draw a fake line with my foot in the middle of the room—you take one step across this line and we are having problems. Now, there’s no way they could really be afraid of me, every one of them a good two hundred pounds, but I’m hoping that maybe something about the way I say it makes them think I’m not worth the trouble.

But then one of them, the fattest one of all and the only blonde in the bunch, she takes a big step over my imaginary line. She looks at me for a second, sizes me up and asks what’s wrong, sweetheart, in a deep voice that sounds like she’s been smoking unfiltereds her whole life. Then she shrugs her shoulders and takes a step backward, over to the other side of the line, just to show me she gets to decide where the line is and who gets to cross it. And she smiles—I can’t tell if it’s sweet or evil—and says why so confrontational, sweetheart?

Well, for some reason that’s the moment I give up on the
tough little Latina
act, ’cause right here, in this cell with these huge dykes, that’s all it really is. An act. So I say if you really want to know, truth is I’ve had a bad fucking day. And I start to cry a bit, which I don’t think is a good idea in jail, and I rub my foot back and forth over the fake line like I’m erasing it.

The dykes stare at me and shake their heads. Next thing I know, a guard comes by the cell and screams my name, says Perla, you must have some big sugar daddy looking after you, ’cause you’re free to go. Well, I got no idea how I’m free, but I’m not asking any questions. Just get the hell out of this place as fast as I can. I turn to the dykes and they line up and start walking toward me. And I’m thinking there’s no way they’ll beat me up right in front of the guard, is there? I look at the guard and give him the
hurry up
sign with my hands, and he just smiles ’cause he doesn’t give a shit. And I’m thinking this day just can’t get any worse. It makes getting fingered a walk in the fucking park. The dykes form a circle around me, and they’re so big and broad that I can’t even see the guard.
Here we go
, I’m thinking, and I put my head down and wait for the first punch.

I feel a hand on my shoulder, a big hand. And then an arm around my back, and another. And I realize what’s happening. I’m not getting shivved. Turns out I’m getting a group hug. And one of them whispers in my ear with the sweetest, most feminine voice. And where did
that
voice come from? She says sister, time to let go of all that anger. And also time to take a chance. Maybe do something different, mix it up.

I put my arms around the women next to me, not
around
really ’cause they’re so big, but on their backs. We stay like that for a few seconds, maybe ten, and then they step back and leave me standing there all exposed. One of the women calls out to the guard and screams
she’s all yours, motherfucker.

They make me do some paperwork on the way out, give me back my wallet, my keys, my cell phone and my Hello Kitty bag—stuff they let me take when I got arrested. I check to see if those fuckers stole my money, but sure enough it’s all there. That’s a surprise to me, ’cause you get arrested in Cuba and they steal all your stuff. And the only reason I know that is ’cause I had a cousin who got arrested for fighting in Havana and they stole all his stuff.

I stop in front of a window and use it as a mirror, straighten myself up with a bit of lipstick and brush my hair. For normal me, I look like crap. But for Perla-who-just-got-out-of-jail, I look damn good. And then I’m out in the lobby looking around, and sure enough Julian’s standing there looking like shit, looking like he’s the one who just spent a night in jail. I walk right up to him and give some real serious thought to punching him in the mouth. But instead, I say how’s Sophie doing? And he says she’s hurt pretty bad but she’s going to be fine in a few weeks.

And before I can make him apologize to me, he says baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. He says my wiring’s all fucked up, has been since I’m a kid, and sometimes I look at a picture and see something that’s not really there and then I go blank. And sometimes there’s a huge disconnect between what I see and what everyone else sees, a gap so big that it’s hard to explain.

I think about that for a second, how maybe the eyes are getting information from all sorts of places, not just what they’re looking at, but places deep inside a person, and how that can change what you see, how you see it.

I smile and give Julian a little peck on the cheek. And then I make a tight fist and punch him in the face, right across that Irish boxer nose of his, hard enough to hurt but also ladylike.

I wait until he straightens himself up, gets over the shock, and then I say I want to see Sophie. Now.

A
t this moment, I am a man at peace. My rage appears to be in a period of remission; my ferocious ambition has, for the moment, abated and has permitted some sort of strange and vast contentment; and tonight, for the first time in years, I’m not afflicted by the ache of my childhood. I’m sitting at a corner table with Roger, Petrov and Volokh, and the restaurant reminds me of Frankmann’s place in Siberia—mahogany paneling, brass rails and Oriental rugs. Perla is with us, too, and she sits between me and Roger. Perla and Roger adore each other, and their burgeoning friendship is beautiful to watch. We are at a midtown restaurant, a fancy one chosen by Petrov, and we are celebrating my addition to a list of the wealthiest people in the city; it’s a good thing, I guess, to qualify for such a list, but a bad thing to actually be on it.

My friends have given me a gift in honor of my accomplishment. It is a plaque—silver on cherry wood—and on it the following words
are inscribed:
I
’
M A RICH DOUCHE BAG
. I love this gift. I hold it up to the light. Read it, read it out loud, my friends exhort. I relent. I’m a rich douche bag, I proclaim. And my friends howl and hold their glasses up to toast both my success and their joy in my success, their pride in me. They are also toasting the honesty, the integrity of our friendship that grants them the freedom to mock me. Most people I meet these days subordinate themselves to my wealth, obsequious to the point that I feel disconnected. But not so with my inner circle, my core. To be mocked is to be accepted, to be equal. So right now, I am at peace.

Sometimes, though, I get depressed. And when I get depressed, which happens intermittently, I find myself attaching to a negative narrative. Or maybe it’s the other way around; maybe I get depressed because my narrative turns sour. Either way, my negative narrative goes something like this: my father was an adrenaline junkie who was so reckless, so ego-driven that he got himself killed, depriving me of a father and my mother of a husband; my mother was a heroin junkie and prostitute who abandoned me; I watched my mother give Krepuchkin a blow job; I murdered a man; I lost my best friends for almost twenty years; my wife got paralyzed, and I believe that, despite what Sophie maintains, I played a role in that; I’ve been an angry man, violent and intolerant; I have at times suffered from feelings of inadequacy; I broke my marital vows and took up with a stripper; and I am so obsessed with financial success that there never seems to be enough money to fill the void.

But when I fall into this narrative, there is always my inner circle to set me straight. Personal narrative, one of them will invariably say, is a choice. You can go with that story, the one with the junkies, the blow jobs and the shitty orphanage, or you can tell a different story—just as truthful, but a lot more uplifting.

The positive narrative goes something like this: my father was a
brave and powerful man who supported me and my mother and inspired an entire village; my mother suffered when the love of her life died, and, in her desperation to care for me, she made many terrible mistakes; my mother’s addiction was not a result of weakness or moral failure, but of disease; my mother rebuilt her life and saved me, heroically, from the orphanage, sacrificing her own dignity for her child; I was blessed with the opportunity and the will to kill the man who degraded my mother, and God exonerated me accordingly; she cared for me every day thereafter and, when she could go no further, put me in the hands of a good man; that man, Frankmann, instilled in me toughness and guile and positioned me to survive, to prosper; when I arrived in America, I was cared for by a loving couple who, despite their age and accumulated fatigue, provided me with a safe home and a fine education; I fell in love with Sophie, a spectacular woman who has tried in the most creative and unusual way to liberate me from the burden of my culpability; I have Roger, tough and loyal; I have earned many fortunes; I amassed enough money and corrupt connections in Russia and the States to get Petrov, Volokh and their families over here, carrying the good parts of my past into my present; my past is thus selectively over, as I have the freedom to choose what stays and what goes; I have choices; I love; I am loved.

As I sit in this restaurant, my story is overwhelmingly positive. Is it possible for a life to be more beautiful? I cannot imagine it ever being otherwise. But I know that there will be a time when the story shifts, when I shall again be seduced by negativity and view my life through a corrupted filter. That is when my rage will resurface, when the impulse to kill justly may, given the opportunity, return. What will trigger such a shift, there is no way to know. It could be something huge, an existential threat to me or someone I love. Or it could be something so trivial that I cannot explain its impact: a
reminiscent scent, the peculiar angle of the wind, a branch of deadened ivy. And when that happens, as it absolutely must, I shall fight for the strength to change my tune. Perspective, for me, is a constant battle.

Sophie enters the restaurant. She glides toward us in her wheelchair, and we all rise to greet her. Tonight, she is transcendent. She appears comfortable with her place in the world. Nice plaque, she says. You
are
a douche bag.

I would say that for the first time in years, Sophie is truly happy. And for the first time since the accident, we are both happy at
exactly
the same time.