Our Country Friends(92)
“I didn’t do my job,” Vinod said, voice shaking. “I didn’t fix the label maker.”
“Aw, fuck,” Mr. Senderovsky said. “Aw, sheet. But what are you going to do? Slow summer anyway. No one get married. Too hot. Difficult economic climate because Clinton. Things fall apart, but what about center? Center does not hold. Kaput. Whole wedding album industry—” He made a fluttering motion with his hands to indicate its state. “But people like us, we are used to misfortune, nu, Vinod? What did we say when Indian engineers came to Leningrad: Hindi, Russi, bhai, bhai. Brother, brother. And so even in America we are all now bhais. Bhais in misfortune!”
“Mr. Senderovsky, can I make some cold calls? I’ve been working on my accent like you said.”
“No, no, you are strong. You lift boxes.”
“Let me try one call.”
“No, no, your accent is too sick.”
“Too thick?”
“Yes, what I say?”
“I thought you said—” They heard the doorbell and looked at each other.
“I did not make appointment,” Mr. Senderovsky said, tugging at the pager chained to his Dockers. “Maybe idiot Sasha, marijuana user, forgot his key. Wait, did you make appointment?”
“How could I make it? You won’t let me near the phone.”
“So it is surprise customer!” Mr. Senderovsky scurried off toward the distant front door. “Hot sheet! Village Voice ad maybe worked.”
Vinod looked at the old cream-colored public-school-teacher’s desk from which his employer conducted his desperate business, and alongside it the little TV tray with a phone and folding chair where Sasha sat by his side for most of the summer like a minimum-wage lapdog, absorbing his father’s politics and unhappiness. These small, cramped immigrant spaces were Vinod’s favorites, whether his uncle’s curried explosion of a “diner,” where the native born and the just-washed-ashore could have spicy eggs for three dollars at a cramped counter bar; or his father’s ever-failing computer store, where both of his brothers worked on their way up to Wall Street sales desks but where there was no space for Vinod, the Brahmin bhenchod; to this, the most outrageous of gambits, a wedding album business featuring Mr. Senderovsky’s patented “special screw” technology, barely chugging away on the cusp of the Internet.
“Vinod,” the Russian accent returned, “your girlfriend is here.”
Girlfriend? Mr. Senderovsky was fond of jokes about Vinod’s virginity. An entire summer at the office—sophomore year of college, was it?—had been spent arguing about whether oral sex constituted his entrance into manhood. Could he mean—?
Karen walked in wearing the same close-fitting bateau shirt she had worn at their first dacha dinner, only matched now with cutoffs that brought out the muscle of her thighs, the gloss of her knees.
She came up to Vinod. He could feel her closeness and the marimba of feelings that would chime within whenever she did so. He reached over to touch her semi-nude shoulder, like a bird softly tagging a nest mate with her wing. But something else happened now.
She took up both of his cheeks with burning hands and kissed him on the mouth, kissed him with all of her bottled-up youth and her still-innocent soul, and he felt her knee against his groin. Vinod couldn’t stop kissing her, but he realized he was an employee of the mercurial Mr. Senderovsky and he had failed to fix the label maker. He pushed her away (had he really just done that?) and turned to his boss, who was shamelessly examining Karen’s chest. “Uka-uka,” Mr. Senderovsky said to Karen. “We had official North Korean delegation visit institute in Leningrad once. Oh, such women in kimono come.”
“Hanbok,” Karen corrected him.
“Sure, but I never try. Is probably tasty.”
“Mr. Senderovsky, it’s almost four-thirty,” Karen said. “Is it okay if Vin knocks off for the day?”
Mr. Senderovsky sighed to indicate he was in favor of young love. “Go, go,” he said. “I make reduction in pay.”
“Tell Sasha we’ll be at Florent,” Karen said.
“Gay restaurant? Only if they don’t convert you to their Greek ways.” He laughed, gold-capped teeth at the edges of his Soviet mouth.
They were walking out on the cobblestone streets of the Meatpacking District, sloshing through the pools of blood and tallow that made the neighborhood what it once was, a glorious slice of Americana trapped between a doomed highway and a storied townhouse district. But now the blood coated his sandals and her Converse differently, because now they were holding hands. Vinod remembered how Ed’s Japanese reality show revolved almost entirely on the moment two housemates reached over and clasped fingers over knuckles. If only her touch wasn’t warm to the point of burning; if only the humid city air would let him breathe as he surveyed the signs around him:
FULLY COOKED CORNED BOTTOM ROUNDS
RABBITS 1.89 LB.
WHOLE LAMBS 99c LB.
“Listen,” Karen said. “I lied about going to Florent. We’ll meet Sasha there later. Let’s go to your place and fuck.”
Vinod could not say anything. His throat was dry and his feet covered in the splooge of other animals. His other life, his parallel life, had been good, no matter what anybody said. Forty-eight years in, he had seen Berlin and Bologna and Bombay and, at the last minute, his beloved with her pants off. But this life was almost too much. Just the thought of this tough stern woman in the flower of youth grinding into him on one of the twin Murphy beds that constituted over 70 percent of his and Senderovsky’s apartment (there was also room for a hot pot, a torchère, a nine-inch television/VCR combo, and the mini-fridge in which they stored their garbage). They were approaching their ugly building. He was jangling his Mehta Computers Authorized Apple Dealers (they had not, in fact, been authorized) key chain. Vinod leaned over and whispered into her honey ear, “Karen. Listen. I had a thought. A couple of thoughts.”