Olga Dies Dreaming(60)
The mention of the islands turned his mind to his mother and his mother’s mother. He thought about what his sister had said. How everyone always knows. If that was true, he wondered why none of them had ever told him that it was okay. Okay to be who he was. He wanted to call his sister and ask her. He couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone.
They used to come here a lot, he and Olga, at one time. When she was younger, he’d take her and Mabel over to Ceasar’s Bay Bazaar, where he’d thumb through freestyle mixes while she and Mabel flirted with the guy who ran the Sergio Tacchini kiosk. Afterwards, they’d always get ice cream and sit by the water, boy watching the skateboarders for a bit before he took them home. After Papi died, they came out here together—him and Olga—with two forties of Heineken—and told each other every good thing they remembered about their father so the other would have their own memories and then some. Olga was only sixteen and got so drunk Prieto had to carry her back to the car.
He felt exposed by her. Angry with her for exposing him. But, more than anything, he was angry that she had known all this time and just let him suffer in this secret alone.
He took a sip from the coffee as he looked out onto the placid water.
The mist had lifted.
CHAMPAGNE DREAMS
On Monday morning Olga awoke and found herself not only still at Matteo’s house, but reluctant to leave. He brought her coffee in bed as they watched reports of Hurricane Irma’s wake: flooded streets in Cuba, ports destroyed in the Virgin Islands. In Puerto Rico, damage was minimal, but its frail power system buckled quickly, the island now left in the dark. It might take weeks to restore power, the news said.
“How long do you think they’d let Rhode Island or Virginia sit in the dark?” Matteo asked rhetorically.
Outside, the weather was as gloomy as the news, but Olga felt more buoyant than she had in ages. The first night she’d slept over, she awoke with a panic attack, in disbelief that she’d revealed so much of herself, of her life, to the person lying next to her. She wanted to leave as quickly as possible and, in the gentlest way, Matteo wouldn’t allow it. He made omelets and coffee and got the paper from the stoop, and they read the Times on one of the sofas in the living room. Later that morning, when they had sex, she recognized it as a completely new, terrifying but exhilarating experience: physical intimacy with someone she actually decided to let in. To know. In contrast, she recognized that sleeping with Dick had never been about feelings, or even pleasure, but rather a repetitive attempt to use sex to try and prove that she was, in fact, worthy. She had not realized the weight this had been on her, one she was relieved to be rid of. By Monday morning, she was so content she lost track of time and found herself running late to start her day.
* * *
ALTHOUGH MABEL’S WEDDING was less than a week away, Olga had not only failed to have her bridesmaid’s dress altered, she had yet to even claim it from the Midtown bridal salon Mabel had ordered the dresses from. This morning, they’d explained, was the last possible chance she could come in and be properly fitted. Before that, however, she was due to the office for her quarterly champagne exchange with Igor. By the time she hurried down the Chelsea street her office was located on, he was already impatiently waiting outside of the building with two guys she had not seen before.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“These,” Igor said, “are my OTBs—off-the-boats. Just came from Ukraine a few weeks ago. Know almost no English but will do any kind of work I need. Very helpful for stuff like this.”
Olga eyed them. They were beefier than his last set of hands, but somewhat typical of the Russian-Ukrainian wannabe gangsters she was used to Igor bringing around. Tight black T-shirts, suit slacks, pointy leather oxfords that refused to acknowledge the manual labor that was being asked of them, as though their footwear saw a future when they would not be pushing hand trucks full of stolen champagne, but rather sitting at a café off Brighton 6, calling the shots. Or, at the very least, knowing what the shots were.
Olga had met Igor seven or so years before, when her services had been retained to produce the elaborate nuptials of a Russian oligarch’s daughter. She had a limited understanding of how the family made their money in Russia—the vague term “energy” was tossed around quite a bit—but stateside, it didn’t take Olga long to observe that they had clearly diversified. Family meetings around the wedding were continually interrupted by “business associates” ranging from restaurateurs to home health aide empresarios, often bearing gifts. Though they kept an apartment at the Four Seasons, when in New York they mainly held court in an externally forgettable, but internally lavish Russian restaurant off Coney Island Avenue. Every meeting was an occasion that involved copious amounts of salmon, caviar, pelmeni, and vodka and equally copious amounts of family. Igor, who served as a chief of staff of sorts, was always there. Though shrewd during the contract negotiation, the family was warm and gracious once the planning was actually under way. They spared no expense for what they wanted, treated workers fairly, tipped generously, and had a strong sense of their own style. Above all, they wanted people to have a good time. Olga hadn’t enjoyed her job as much before or after them.
She’d landed that gig during her reality TV years, which meant the period when she was busier trying to be famous than rich. Which meant she was running her business honestly, transparently, and with little profit. The oligarch was charmed with the way she sagaciously negotiated his contracts and bemused by how hard she protected money he was happy to spend. He warmly abused her for what he called “her miserable sense of business.” After the wedding, Igor came by the office to drop off her tip—$9,000 in cash, a new Chanel watch, and ten cases of Veuve Clicquot champagne.