Eve in the City Read online

  “Why did you pick me, anyway?”

  He took it the wrong way.

  “I did not pick you for nothing, missy.”

  “No, I mean for working here. Why did you offer me this job?”

  Brandy came back with an order.

  “Just a minute.” Viktor held up his hand like a traffic cop. “You were trembling and desperate and reading the Employment section of the newspaper upside down, as I recall.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean why me? Everyone else here is pretty.”

  Nora was still sitting, sipping her drink, looking right past me, through the wall, through the dirty window, to the junkyard garden in back.

  “I need a Long Island Iced Tea,” Brandy said.

  “Go to your station,” he snapped.

  “My station?”

  Maybe I just wanted to be scared. Maybe that was the attraction, if there was one. There was this anger in Viktor, bristling like the hair on his shoulders or his stupid mustache, and I was the one who made it come out. It was my specialty.

  “I suppose,” he actually considered, “I chose you for your gamine quality.”

  “My what?”

  “Shit! Doesn’t anyone in this country receive an education? Because you look like a boy, of course.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks a lot.”

  “Where I come from, that is high praise.”

  “Where do you come from, anyway?”

  He would never tell. I had assumed it was Russia, but once he corrected me. It was one of those “former Soviet republics.”

  “You could not pronounce it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Someday,” he threatened, scooping ice with his hand.

  I watched him. He knew more than I did. About life. I could learn from him. Steal his knowledge. If he didn’t steal something of mine, first.

  But what if our dreams are aware of each other? What if they interact, inhabit a World, just as our waking moments do? Then there would exist a true “night life” of fear and fantasy, memory and premonition, ruled by laws so unknowable it would be wishful to call them laws at all. A parody of day. Or maybe its blueprint.

  A truck went by with no back, a big open cube. It slowed. A man inside pushed out bales of something. They landed softly, tumbled a few feet before coming to a stop. Another man, in a knit cap and a long white robe, emerged from a newsstand and gathered them in. He frowned, seeing me reach into my pocket for money, then took out a razor and slit the plastic strip. The papers, no longer under pressure, rose. I took one. The newsprint was cold and fresh. I peeled back the first page.

  “What you looking for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, checking all the sections.

  A murder? A rape? A dream?

  I had this composition book, the kind kids used for school, with that black-and-white speckled front. I bought it to write letters, but when I opened it saw I had made a mistake. It didn’t have lines. It was just blank pages, more like a sketch pad. Still, I tried.

  Dear Mother,

  That was usually as far as I got, words slanting across the open space. This time I went further:

  I was going to write you. I was going to begin, “No, I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth,” but now, looking around, I think maybe I have.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “So whenever she opens a present and says something, the maid of honor writes it down. Like, ‘It’s just what I wanted,’ or, ‘It’s beautiful.’ Then, when the shower is over, they give her the list, and those are the things the bride is supposed to say to the groom on her wedding night.”

  We all nodded. Except Viktor.

  It was Brandy’s birthday. We had stayed, the four of us, after work. At 5 A.M. there was no place else to go. We brought things. I was very proud of my contribution. Viktor had scooped himself some but wasn’t eating.

  “It’s called trifle. I got it from a recipe, sort of. Except I couldn’t find raspberries. So I had to substitute.”

  “Substitute what?”

  “Frozen artichoke hearts.”

  Brandy was sitting with her shoes kicked off. For once she wasn’t flipping her hair like she had this private wind to contend with. She was tired from the night’s work, the center of attention but not really up for it. It made her seem sweet. One of us. Or maybe I felt like one of them, for a change.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Eighteen, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yup. Eighteen.” She drew it in the air with one finger. “And I always will be, as long as I can stay awake.”

  “Oh.”

  I got it. So tomorrow, about to happen any minute, was her real birthday.

  Crystal gave her the present.

  “We all chipped in.”

  I listened for what Brandy said.

  “That is so sweet.”

  That is so sweet, I imagined saying, seeing my husband naked for the first time.

  “It’s wild!”

  It’s wild! I mouthed, as he took me in his arms.

  “If it’s too big, you can return it.”

  “Too big? Are you crazy? It’s perfect!” she screamed. “I’m never going to take it off! Oh my God, I’m going to die!”

  “Look at Eve.”

  Viktor finally took a bite. His teeth crunched on something. I hadn’t completely defrosted the artichoke hearts because I thought they would keep it cold.

  “Incredible,” he pronounced carefully.

  “I like frozen foods. They’re so manageable. The way they come in individual plastic packets. Or in boxes with those beautiful pictures on the outside? These ideas of meals. Three things on a plate, not touching, not running into each other, so at the border they don’t form a fourth thing, and then a fifth thing, this whole meal of glop that dribbles through your fork. I mean that’s more like what happens in real life, don’t you think?”

  “You look, when you blush, like a rose red.”

  “Jesus, Viktor.”

  He had been drinking. Which was unusual. But this was a special occasion. He took another bite. I listened. Crunch crunch crunch.

  “I was married,” Nora said.

  We all turned. She was nursing a white wine. She’d made Viktor open a bottle. She held her glass by the stem, with two fingers, and tick-tocked it back and forth. The wine swished from one side of the rim to the other, but never spilled.

  “Did you have a shower?”

  “Kind of. My husband tricked me. He knew I wouldn’t want one, so he said we were going someplace. His sister’s house. He opened the door, let me walk in first, and shut it behind me. Then he drove away. I remember hearing his car.” She paused, hearing it. “My car, actually.”

  “A surprise shower.” Brandy held up her bracelet. “How romantic.”

  “Did they do that trick?” I asked. “Writing down what you said after each present?”

  “All they gave me was a Bible. The kind that zips.”

  The Word of God, I imagined saying, as he forced me down on the bed. Forced? No, that wasn’t right.

  We danced. Just the girls. Viktor put the jukebox on a free setting where it played all the selections, in order. We’d moved the tables to sweep up, so there was space. I don’t know who started it. Nobody, really. It was spontaneous. Crystal bumped me, on purpose, in a kind of aggressive, friendly way. And Brandy got this sudden burst of energy.

  “It’s my birthday,” she kept saying, trying to convince herself.

  It wasn’t an orgy or anything, but we were all dancing with each other. I remember Nora’s hair, my face passing through it, we were so close, this thick, strange-smelling forest. Henna. Nile mud. Crystal’s way of moving was to try and bulldoze you off the floor. I leaned forward, against her, and stopped us. She looked up, surprised at how strong I could be. Brandy stood in one spot, bopping her arms and legs, eyes closed, nodding her head, sinking deeper and deeper into herself, into this trance. We all ended up d
ancing around her, like priestesses.

  “What are you going to do the rest of the day?” I asked later, while we waited upstairs for Viktor.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Brandy was back to her old self. She looked around, harassed, trying to avoid photographers. “There’s this yoga class we go to sometimes.”

  “We?”

  “Crystal and me.”

  “Do you change?”

  Brandy looked down at me like I was crazy.

  “Well, don’t they wear the same kind of clothes in a yoga class as we do here?”

  “Of course we change, Eve. What kind of nut do you think I am? It’s completely different, yoga and here.”

  “I know. But the clothes—”

  “For one thing, we wear leg warmers. Don’t we, Cris?”

  Crystal smiled.

  “You’re the one who’s so weird about changing.”

  “I’m not weird. I just like to get back into my own clothes, after. What’s so weird about that?”

  “Listen to you. ‘My own clothes.’ These are your own clothes, silly. I mean, you paid for them, didn’t you? And you wash them, right? Anyway, you didn’t change today.”

  “No,” I said. “Today I forgot.”

  We were waiting between the inner and outer doors. When Viktor’s car finally appeared, we ran. None of us wanted to be outside. We were sea creatures hurrying between one shell and the next. Once we were in the backseat again, we relaxed.

  All these possibilities, I thought, watching Nora’s shoulders bounce going over a pothole, feeling Crystal’s body, smelling Brandy’s perfume. Their presence was so strong. They were these paths to take, ways to be. Even though I knew I couldn’t take any of them myself. I couldn’t be anyone but the freakish mutant I was. But still, just having them around was comforting. I loved them.

  “So maybe I’ll do yoga, too, sometime.”

  “Sure. If you want.”

  Nora adjusted the mirror on her side.

  “Why do you do that?” Viktor complained.

  He was very touchy about his car. She blew a long stream of smoke against the windshield so it clouded right back.

  “There’s this great instructor. What’s his name?”

  “Krishna,” Crystal supplied.

  “The Hero of a Thousand Faces,” Viktor called.

  “He can sit on his nose.”

  Her eyes were staring straight at me. Nora’s. In the side mirror. It’s just a coincidence, I told myself. But she had twisted it that way, so we were seeing each other, even though her back was turned. I couldn’t understand why. It’s not like she was being friendly. Does she see herself in me? I wondered. That was a chilling thought. I wouldn’t want to be her. Although part of me did. If I could be her without paying the price. To be past everything without having suffered. But that was impossible. While they talked, Crystal and Brandy and Viktor, we tried watching each other, keeping this single, unbroken look, both of us bouncing like crazy over the bad streets. He was driving too fast. We kept moving our heads, bracing ourselves, to stay in touch. It was a game. When he slowed down, so did our gaze, until we were perfectly still, locked into each other.

  “See you, Eve,” a voice said.

  “See you,” I answered, still staring.

  Brandy and Crystal were getting out. Fresh air rushed in.

  “Happy birthday,” I remembered.

  “I’m getting out here, too,” Nora announced.

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “No, I’m meeting someone.”

  “Here? Who?”

  She slammed the door. They slammed theirs.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Viktor gunned the engine. I was alone with him. How had that happened? He blasted off like a rocket and I was thrown back.

  You could see sunrise in the exhaust of other cars. That was the difference between here and the Midwest. Out there, light changed on the horizon. It came at you slowly, in order: purple, red, pink, orange. Here, you were suddenly in the middle of everything. Sunrise was all around, right outside your window. Every color at once. You could reach out and grab a handful, if you weren’t going ninety miles an hour.

  “Viktor, stop it!”

  “Move up. So I do not feel like a chauffeur.”

  “How can I move up?”

  He took a turn so hard I crashed against the door.

  “Just climb over the seat.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? Crawl over the top. As you did when you were a child.”

  “We never rode in cars when I was a kid.”

  “Ah yes, I remember now. ‘No automobiles in the Bible.’ You act as though you are performing some task ordered by God. But mostly what I see you doing is running away.”

  I came tumbling down and hit his elbow. The car swerved.

  “See,” he said, “how much better is the view?”

  I hadn’t ever ridden up front in Manhattan. The city came to life the instant you turned onto a block. Whole scenes appeared, then vanished. Steam came out of a manhole cover. Nora had left her window open. The car was filled with that strong summer morning smell. Really it was fall, middle September, but the air held on to a late, lazy August. What was that smell made of? Coffee. Butter. And something else. We weren’t talking. There was a silence, but it wasn’t a good silence, it wasn’t relaxed. The euphoria of the night, if that’s what it had been, the feeling of togetherness, had left along with the others. Now we were back to our own sad sorry selves and I could tell that we both didn’t want to be. For a minute, for a whole hour, there had been this melding of personalities.

  “How come you keep turning? Why don’t you just go up Broadway?”

  We were getting stuck at every light, snaking through narrow side streets.

  “Shortcut.”

  “Really? Because it looks like it’s taking us longer.”

  “Shortcuts often do.”

  “Take longer?”

  “In the short run, yes. But in the long run, no. It all depends on where you are going.”

  “Home.”

  “I thought you did not want to go home.”

  “Well, I do now.”

  More boring sexual tension. I would probably like Viktor if it wasn’t for this. Or hate him. But at least I would know where I stood. It was all so complicated and all about nothing. We were one of those knots you pull tight and it disappears, becomes a piece of string.

  “I am not a citizen.”

  I yawned, grateful to him for changing the subject. Although really, the subject was all in my head, wasn’t it? Nothing had been said. It’s not like we’d ever done anything. I couldn’t be light. Lighthearted. That was my problem. People talked about flirting like it was this totally acceptable form of behavior. Like it could be fun. Or dating, which was apparently this carefree laugh-a-minute time you had, in which case I had never been on a date, because for me it instantly turned into a matter of life or death. Mostly death. Why was I making such a big deal out of this? Viktor acted the same exact way with the other girls. I just took it too seriously. I glanced over and saw, in the morning light, how much older he looked. His mustache was dark, but some of the hairs on his shoulders were already gray.

  “I came here years ago. As a student.”

  “A student?”

  “I still consider myself one, in essence. A student of human nature. But not affiliated.”

  He tapped the steering wheel. He wore a ring. With this hideous, plastic-looking stone. I’d never really looked at it before. Guys shouldn’t wear jewelry, I thought.

  “Not affiliated,” he repeated. “So I never got a green card.”

  He said it like “blue sky.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It is a card so you can work. Legitimately. It is why I started the bar. No one would hire me.”

  “Same here.”

  “Hardly. You exile yourself by choice, not necessity. For me it is question of status.”

  I
yawned again. We were almost home.

  “Thank you for eating my trifle. You’re the only one who did.”

  “It was good of you to make food yourself. Everything else was store-bought.”

  I smiled.

  “Could we be friends, Viktor? I could really use a friend.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  He made a wide sweeping curve and my street appeared. By magic. I looked for me on the sidewalk, then remembered I was here, in the car.

  “It’s halfway down.”

  “So I recall.”

  We pulled up to the curb and stopped. He turned off the engine. We sat.

  “You heard me?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “It is a formality, on one level. By marrying you I would automatically receive citizenship. But of course there are other considerations.”

  “Is that why you’ve been nice to me? Because you wanted to get married?”

  “Well.” He looked confused. “It is a good reason to be nice, yes? Because you wish to marry someone?”

  I sighed and wished I could keep on sighing until all the air went out of me. I wanted to collapse in on myself, get small, invisible.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” I said, while another voice, inside me, the voice that monitored things on a kind of delay, was whispering, Wait. He asked you to marry him.

  For legal reasons. Or illegal reasons, really.

  No. He said that was part of it. On one level.

  Oh, give me a break.

  “We don’t even like each other, Viktor. Why don’t you ask Brandy? She’s crazy about you.”

  “You do not marry someone because you like them.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Your language is incredibly obtuse when it comes to love and like. Half the time you use them interchangeably, and half the time you make them distinct. When it suits you. It is the reason for your high divorce rate, I think.”

  You see? the voice went on. It’s this way he has of pretending he doesn’t care. That it’s all some scam. Because he can’t bring himself to say it. But in a way, that proves he really feels it.

  Really feels what?

  That he’s madly, passionately in love with you.

  I got out of the car. He got out, too, and came around. My heart sank.