Troika (7 page)

“It changes the price,” Julian said, waving the duck leg excitedly.

“Precisely! It creates an imbalance, an inefficiency that the seller can take advantage of. And in this specific case, our rich, unknowledgeable, arrogant, alcoholic dacha owner pays
what
for the wine?”

“He pays even more.”

“Yes!” Frankmann raised his glass. “To scarcity, to need, to knowledge,” he toasted. Kira and Julian looked at each other and raised their own glasses. Kira tapped the edge of her glass against Julian’s, and the sound created by the contact of the fine crystal reminded Julian of a flute—one perfect note from a flute. Kira smiled at the boy. He blushed and wondered if he would one day marry a woman as pretty and as a kind as Kira. Frankmann rolled up his napkin and tossed it to the table. He smiled at his dinner companions. “Shall we have some dessert?” he asked. “Yes, yes,” he continued without waiting for a response, “let’s have some dessert and celebrate.”

Frankmann waved his hand and quickly caught the attention of the waiter who had sold the books.

“Gregori,” Frankmann yelled, “sweets for my friends!”

Frankmann had a soft spot for artists, so with respect to the painter, he didn’t use scarcity, need and knowledge to his advantage. Rather, he paid the young man a full, fair price for the books. Frankmann also provided him with a job and a free room on the wharf with perfect light and unobstructed views of the sea. He gave the man what every painter needs: enough money to eat and a room with a view.

I
’m at the club and I’m having a terrible time. And one of the reasons I’m having a terrible time is ’cause Schultz is out on disability for a couple of months, hurt his back throwing a guy out of the club. There’s a new bouncer filling in, Slick’s his name, and he’s anything but. He’s a sick bastard who’s always pressuring us girls to give him head for good shifts. Now there’s no way I’m giving a blow job to a guy like Slick, bareback no less, so now there’s no one looking after me when I get a rough customer. On top of it, work is slow ’cause the season’s almost over and the snowbirds are pretty much done and gone back up north. The locals still come around, but they tip like shit and no way you’re ever gonna get them in the Champagne Room.

The other reason I’m having a terrible time is ’cause I broke up with a guy yesterday, the first sort-of boyfriend I’ve had in two years. I mean, I’ve gone out on dates here and there and even slept
with a few guys, and except for Julian I always feel awful the morning after, really awful. But this is the first one I’d say was a steady thing. It’s hard, of course, for a girl to have a good relationship with a good guy when she does what I do for a living. Like I said, there’s slim pickings at the club ’cause all the guys are either married or real old or beyond creepy, and the rare guys like Julian, even if he wasn’t married, the guys who seem to have everything a girl could want, well, even those guys are so complicated that there’s just no hope.

You could even say the ones that seem the most desirable are actually the
least
desirable. They have everything going for them, but there’s some flaw, some tiny flaw that no one can see, that maybe they don’t even know exists, and it’s this tiny flaw that’s so huge, so unfixable, so powerful that it brings everyone down with the man. Or maybe they know it exists and they use it to their advantage like some secret weapon. The scary thing is that sometimes it’s that flaw that makes you want them in the first place, which is something I don’t understand about human beings. Why is it that the flaws draw us to a person? You’d think it would be just the opposite.

So when girls who work at law firms, car dealerships or insurance companies are finding their husbands right there in the workplace, that’s not going to happen for a stripper, at least not for a stripper like me. This one I was seeing, his name’s Derrick and I met him at the car repair. I was there getting a new muffler, which turned into a new muffler and a new clutch and a new transmission and ended up costing me three thousand dollars. And I’m sure they saw a pretty girl and thought here’s an easy mark, ’cause I never once just walked into a mechanic looking for one thing and not walked out with three completely different things.

I’m standing there while the mechanic is tapping away on the calculator and there’s a customer who pulls his car into the garage.
It’s a nice car, a clean Toyota without a single scratch on it, and this guy gets out and says he needs an oil change, and how much is it gonna cost? Turns out the mechanic gets a call and goes in the back to take it and this guy walks right over to me. He points to my car—I have a cute Mini, British racing green—and he says those your wheels? Yup, they’re mine, and it looks like I’m about to spend a few thousand bucks to get it working again. Well, he holds out his hand and says Derrick, good to meet you. Now, some girls go for a type, a physical type, and other girls don’t have a physical type but they got a personality type. And then there’s others who don’t have a type at all, just take whatever’s in front of them. In some ways those girls got it easy, not all hung up on finding perfection, just recognize a relationship for what it is, someone to get through this life with, a companion to help pass the time and share the costs.

I’m the complicated type of girl who’s got both a physical type
and
a personality type, which causes me one problem after the next, and Derrick doesn’t fit the bill on either count. First off, he’s got fair skin and blond hair, short and curly—and blonds, they’re just not my type. Probably it’s ’cause I’m Latin and every man I grew up with in Cuba had dark hair and dark skin and that’s all I ever knew. But then again, I have a Colombian friend and she loves blond guys, says she’s sick of the men from her country and that she wants something completely different.

Second thing is I like real smart guys with a certain kind of humor, clever and not too obvious. And I like a guy who makes fun of me but isn’t really making fun of me, who’s got the confidence to mock the little streak of white hair in the back of my head that’s caused by some pigment problem I’ve had since I’m a kid. And what’s really weird about it is that dye won’t stick to it for long, which a customer once told me has something to do with the thickness of the hair’s cuticle. So I just keep it white.

Third time I saw Julian, he puts his fingers around the tuft of white and lifts it up to the lights and says damn girl, my baby looks like a skunk, a smoking hot skunk, but smells like lily of the valley. And that made me smile, made me feel less self-conscious about the streak, made me proud of it actually. So when Derrick points to the mechanic and says to me I’m not sure why they call them grease monkeys ’cause I sure don’t see any bananas around here, I know that we’re not dealing with a genius.

But I laugh anyway, and I do it by instinct. The fake laugh comes natural to me ’cause that’s all I do at the club, make a man feel like he’s smart and funny and attractive. And it’s real hard for me to turn off the acting when I’m out of the club, getting harder and harder as the months pass, until sometimes it feels like there’s no difference between Perla at work and the real Perla. It’s like those actors from
Apocalypse Now
—that was my dad’s favorite movie—the actors who were playing maniacs on the set and sure enough they become maniacs
off
the set, so much that it didn’t take a damn bit of imagination for them to get into character, and no way to get out of it.

Derrick asks for my number and I figure what the hell, it’s been months since I’ve been on a proper date, and I doubt Julian’s ever gonna turn into something real, what with him being
married
and all. Derrick seems like a real nice guy at first, picking me up for dinner, opening doors and buying me perfume and sweet little gifts. Now, I’ve seen this sort of thing before and sometimes it keeps going ’cause what you’ve got is a real nice guy, a gentleman who really cares about you. But other times it’s really a guy who’s insecure and afraid you’re going to leave him—and this is his way of feeling safe, like he’s got you under control. I keep on the lookout for that type of guy, and sure enough that’s exactly what happens with Derrick.

He starts out real nice, and him being so nice is the only thing that gets me over the fact that he’s not as dark and as smart as I like
them. After a few weeks I start seeing the signs, and the behavior’s so predictable it would make you laugh if it weren’t so scary. It always starts out with something small, like your car’s a bit messy today baby—and maybe he runs his finger across the hood, looks at his dirty finger, waves it in the air all disapproving. Then maybe one night he says you sure you want to wear that color lipstick? I don’t think it complements your eyes, baby. Shrugs his shoulders, all innocent, and says just trying to help.

Then one night he picks me up for dinner and I’m feeling extra-sexy, lost three pounds and just got over my period so I’m not feeling bloated anymore, and I put on a real short skirt and a little top with spaghetti straps and high heels, not the fuck-me pumps I wear at the club, but pretty damn close. And when I open the door, expecting him to give me a big hug and a kiss, he gives me a scowl instead and says get back inside and put on something decent, something so you don’t look like a cheap slut.

Well, I’m an expert on the cycle of abuse, which is nothing to be proud of, and I can write a paper on it. There’s the setup phase, which is where they’re causing little conflicts, chipping away at your self-esteem, and that’s exactly what this comment about my outfit is doing, trying to make me feel cheap. Then there’s the abuse phase, that’s when you get slapped across the face or they pull your hair or they fuck you when you don’t want to be fucked. Then the reconciliation phase, when they tell you they’re sorry, that it’s never gonna happen again, and they’re showering you with gifts like you’re on a honeymoon. Then the setup starts again. Maybe they say your new haircut looks terrible or you got thick ankles, which I don’t but they say it anyway. And the cycle repeats as many times as you let it.

Like I said, I’m an expert on abuse, but I’m a slow learner. I had to go through this three or four times before I started recognizing the patterns, before I realized that while the guys were bad and abusive,
I had to take some responsibility, ’cause what was I doing always getting involved with men who act like this and what was I doing waiting so long to get out. So as soon as Derrick tells me to go inside and change, I go inside like he says and lock the door. I yell through the door to Derrick. I scream we’re over, now please leave. But instead of leaving, Derrick pounds on the door, starts kicking it, screams let me in you fucking whore, you let me in or I will cut you the fuck up.

Now, I’ve been in this situation too many times already, the wrong side of this door so many times that I’m starting to feel tired, exhausted way down deep, and wondering more and more about my choices. Most of the time I don’t think this had anything to do with my dad’s death. I like to think that everything would be exactly the same, the same crappy boyfriends and the same crappy job, ’cause it’s hard enough for me to deal with the loss, but I couldn’t bear it if his death made this happen. If there’s that kind of cause and effect, then it means I dishonor him every day. And that’s too much shame for me. But if I’m real honest with myself, and that’s not something I like to do, then I’ve got to admit that everything started going downhill the day he died.

Derrick kicks the door. Open the door, whore! My mother’s not home, so I pick up the phone and call Dino, that’s Carolina’s Dominican boyfriend, and he’s messed up. I say Dino, there’s a man on my front steps with blond hair and a bad sense of humor, and he’s threatening to kill me. Well, that’s all Dino needs to hear, ’cause he has too much rage, from the steroids and from something that happened to him when he was a kid, and he’s always looking for an outlet, and the more righteous the better. He’s over at my place in five minutes, and I look through the hole and watch him get out of his car and walk toward the house all pissed off and focused. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds before Dino comes up fast
behind Derrick. Dino grabs him, slaps Derrick across the neck so the guy can’t breathe. And the beating begins. After a few punches, Dino takes a quick break and smiles at the door like he knows I’m watching. He throws me a kiss. Through the door, he says I got it under control, baby. Best not to watch.

I take a seat on my couch, flip through a gossip magazine and try not to listen, try not to get up and look through that peephole.

So that’s why I’m feeling terrible today. That and I’ve been missing Julian, which I’ve got no business doing.

J
ulian sat in the plane, his eyes open, his cheek pressed hard against the cold window. On the boy’s lap, its lid lifted, was the box that held his few precious possessions: the photograph of his parents, a yellowed newspaper article with a picture of a boot in the bloodied snow, the immigration papers purchased by Frankmann, a photo of the adoptive parents he would soon meet, a copper cross, his toy tank. And at the bottom of the box, clipped together, were his mother’s birth and death certificates—the beginning of a life and the end of a life separated only by one holy card.

The boy looked down to the box and withdrew the card, revealing the image of Saint Anna of Kashin. Nervously, he flicked at the corner of the card. He recalled his mother’s funeral: the frozen earth, the metal blade of a shovel snapping in half, the gravedigger pouring buckets of hot water over the ground, the bearded priest in a
black
skufia
—flakes of dandruff on his dark cassock—handing the holy card to Julian.

Julian ran the edge of the card under his left thumbnail and examined the icon, focusing on Saint Anna’s face. There she was, standing by a still river, a tree, a castle, Jesus Christ in an amber cloud above, unfathomable loss apparent in her eyes, her gaze to Christ projecting rage, mistrust and yet, Julian sensed, some willingness to believe in Him, to believe that there was, despite the death of every person she had ever loved, some divine and glorious plan.

The plane hugged the Long Island shoreline, then swerved downward and to the right in such a jerky manner that Julian dropped the holy card into the box and snapped the lid shut. The old woman in the next seat, a stranger to Julian, noticed the young boy’s anxiety. She reached over and placed her hand over his. Julian was startled, surprised by the unexpected warmth of her corrugated skin with its wormlike veins, and he could not decide if she sought to comfort or to be comforted. But rather than withdraw his hand—his natural instinct—he permitted the contact, pleasurable and reassuring. He braced himself as the plane continued its steep decline and then flattened out for the final approach to the airport.

These maneuvers—the dip and the leveling off—revealed a new line of sight to the west, and it was then that Julian for the first time saw New York City: pointed tips, impossibly high, piercing the umber, summer smog; a trio of freighters making their way upriver past Gravesend; a flash of sunlight, like the white blast of a firecracker, off the surface of Jamaica Bay below. He withdrew his hand from the woman’s and pressed his forehead against the window. Considering the image before her, recalling with a painful throb her own child at this same age, the woman waited for a moment and then repositioned her hand so that it rested on Julian’s shoulder.

“Is this it? The United States?” he asked in Russian, without turning around. The woman, a German, did not understand and thus could not answer. Instead, she squeezed the boy’s shoulder.

The touchdown was so smooth that Julian was unaware the plane had landed, and only after he noticed a truck keeping pace on the tarmac did he realize that he was no longer in the air. The plane approached the gate and made a series of short lunges that, in what resembled some odd communal ritual, propelled the passengers forward, back, forward, back, forward, back. Julian exited the plane with his box and his satchel, the German woman sticking protectively close. Outside the gate, they were greeted by an immigration officer who escorted the boy—and the concerned woman—through customs and out into the hall where welcoming families and friends awaited.

Julian held up the photograph of his adoptive parents and showed it to the woman and the officer. As Julian searched the crowd, he wondered if he would always need a picture to identify the most important people in his life. The woman pointed to an elderly couple, somewhat older than the photograph suggested. They resembled the couple in the picture—both short, narrow-shouldered and wide in the waist—and were dressed in unremarkable clothes: the man in a well-worn gray suit, shiny in the elbows and the knees, and the woman in an unflattering floral dress that was too loose even for her pudgy physique. This woman, too, held a photograph. And when she saw Julian, she pointed to the picture and raised her hands as if she were a surrendering soldier.

The German woman and the officer guided Julian to the couple. Frightened by everything—new people, a new country, a strange language—the boy stood before them. He extended his hand in their direction. “I am Julian Pravdin,” he declared in Russian.

The woman stepped forward, leaving her husband behind. Rather
than shake the boy’s hand, Irina leaned down and wrapped her arms around him in a slow, deliberate manner. “We’re happy to have you,” Irina whispered. “Frankmann has sent me another gift.” She withdrew and turned to her husband, who looked unsure, trepid, as if it were the first time he had ever come so close to a child. Their own children—two daughters now in their late forties—had left home nearly thirty years ago, and it had been decades since they’d lived with a child of Julian’s age. Irina grabbed Oleg’s elbow and pushed him toward the boy.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Julian said with a formality he had perfected at the orphanage.

Oleg sighed at the sight of his new responsibility—and he wondered if his debt to Frankmann would ever be repaid. “Pleasure to meet you, too,” he said, stiffly shaking Julian’s hand.

After the official completed the required paperwork, the German woman gave the boy a kiss on the cheek and moved to her awaiting family. Julian watched her leave, watched with longing as her children and grandchildren embraced her. He turned back to Oleg and Irina, who walked him to a large American sedan in the parking garage. Julian marveled at the car, with its soft cushions and an illuminated dashboard that was unlike the small, austere Moskvitch and Zhiguli so common in Siberia. Oleg drove and, except for the occasional gasp when her husband glided out of the lane and then jerked the car back into its proper place, Irina sat silently in the passenger seat. The route to northern New Jersey took them through Queens and its endless landscape of semi-detached homes, down through the Midtown Tunnel, under the East River, then ascending to the eastern edge of Manhattan.

Unaccustomed to driving in the city, Oleg made a series of unwise and strange decisions that took them on a route so circuitous that it resembled the winding nonsense of a child’s Krazy Straw: up
Third Avenue to Seventy-second Street, east along Seventy-second, down Second Avenue, west along Sixty-sixth Street to a transverse that cut through Central Park and then south on Columbus Avenue. But rather than continue straight down Columbus, then Ninth Avenue—a clear path to the Lincoln Tunnel and, on the other side of it, New Jersey—Oleg veered left onto Broadway, toward Times Square.

Irina turned to her husband. “Wrong turn,” she said, unable to contain her frustration any longer. “Again.”

Oleg gripped the wheel. “This one was on purpose,” he said.

“On purpose? Now we’re stuck. Why would you get on Broadway?”

Oleg lifted his right hand and, with his thick thumb, pointed to Julian in the backseat. “To show him the lights. After everything, the boy deserves to see the lights.”