We Are Not Ourselves(161)

78


It was an unusually warm night. The musk of the flowers she’d planted rose up as she walked from the car. Sergei was standing at the back of the house, smoking under a clear, star-filled sky. She greeted him awkwardly, unsure of whether to invite him in, as he could come in on his own when he was finished. It almost seemed he had been waiting for her.

She went upstairs. A while later, his quick, hacking cough announced his presence inside. It was strange to hear a man in the house when her husband was in the bed next to her. Since Sergei arrived, she’d been able to sleep through the night. She wasn’t even bothered by Ed’s nocturnal ravings anymore; she just stayed in bed with a foothold in sleep and let him walk around the room.

She heard Sergei climb the stairs. She lay in bed awake listening to the quiet voices and laugh track from his television, and his own occasional muffled laughter.

It was a mystery what happened in Sergei’s room after he closed the door. She’d gone in when he wasn’t around and found little more than was present when she’d first turned the room over to him. There was the television, the radio, the armchair, and the side table. There was a small stack of Russian volumes in English translation, a Russian-to-English dictionary, a bottle of aftershave, and the suitcase he lived out of. And there was the bed, of course.

From deep within her, she felt a tremor of unwelcome desire rumble up. She lay there trying to ignore it, but it seized her attention so thoroughly that she felt a buzzing in her fingertips, the room became stiflingly hot, and the sheets lost their softness and scratched at her skin. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, even though it felt like a betrayal, even though Ed was sleeping next to her, she began to touch herself, something she hadn’t done in years, and she didn’t stop until she had brought herself off with a little involuntary cry that sounded vaguely mournful to her ears, after which she lay taking quick, dry breaths and feeling a tingling lack of satisfaction. An attempt at a second round produced no results.





79


Connell hadn’t heard Mr. Marku coming, and when he looked up from the book and saw him standing there, he let out a strangled yelp.

“Come to my office,” Mr. Marku said. Connell rose to follow him. “First, tie up those newspapers.”

When Connell entered, Mr. Marku was staring at the wall-length aquarium.

“You read a lot,” he said.

Connell nodded nervously.

“You’ve heard of Camus’s The Fall.”

He suspected a trap. Mr. Marku always dropped his bombs at the end of a shift, when you had little time to react. Connell was in Mr. Marku’s doghouse for coming in late on a seven-to-three shift on a Saturday. He had thought that Mr. Marku never slept, that he had cameras trained on every entrance and exit, until he figured out that Sadik had ratted on him. The guys built up capital however they could.

“Yes,” he said, “but I haven’t read it.”

Mr. Marku was proud of the year he’d spent at Iona College before family responsibilities forced him to drop out. More than once he’d mentioned that he’d planned to be an English major.

“It’s a parable of hell,” Mr. Marku said. “The devil is this bartender.” He just waved his hand. “It’s too much to get into.” He knocked a smoke out of his pack and lighted it in the windowless office. “You’ll come in Wednesday at six forty-five in the morning.” He handed him a bundle of folded clothes. “You’ll wear this doorman uniform. You’ll shave.”





80


As Bethany backed out of the driveway, Eileen saw Connell coming up the hill. Most nights he came home after midnight, and sometimes, when he didn’t have to work the next morning, when the sun was rising. Eileen rolled down her window.

“There’s chicken in the fridge.” She expected him to wave and keep walking, but he stopped.

“Where are you going?”

She turned to Bethany, who took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Out for a while,” she said. “There are potatoes too. Just put one in the microwave.”

? ? ?

When she came home, Sergei was waiting in the kitchen, sipping from a cup of what looked like coffee, but it could have contained vodka for all she knew.

“Hard work today,” he said.

“Is everything okay?”

“In Russia, even, I don’t work this hard.”

“What’s up? What happened?”

“Is no good to talk about it.”

“Is Ed okay?”

“He is asleep.”

“That’s good,” she said.

“I don’t mind to work hard,” he said. “But he is very hard work.”

He said it with a whistle that indicated a certain professional appreciation. She nodded in solidarity.

“He wipe shit on walls in bathroom,” he said. “I clean it up. Between tiles. Is all gone.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You mind if I . . . ?” He had taken out his pack and already had a cigarette in his mouth. He was flicking the lighter absently.

“Let’s go outside,” she said.

They stood on the patio and he lit the cigarette. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. He pulled on his cigarette and looked at her. Behind it his eyes smoldered. He was stocky and his hair was thick where it wasn’t sparse. He stood in the middle of the patio but seemed to take up much of its space.