by Lara Vapnyar
He imagined her looking like Lenka, but not the Lenka from the snapshot and not even the real Lenka—rather, a different, simpler, kinder version. Then he thought that he didn’t want her to look like Lenka at all. Maybe like Pat, with her flushed thighs, or like the young cashier at the supermarket, who smiled as Sergey paid for his cereal. The trilling voice on the phone gave him a different image, however, that of a short, plump young woman with full lips and small white hands. He thought that this was exactly how he wanted her to look, not like Lenka, not like Pat. Her name was Alla. They made an appointment for six.
AT TEN OF SIX, Sergey got off the train at the Brighton Beach Avenue stop and walked down the station’s metal stairs. Normally Sergey hated this street. “Stop moping and go to Brighton Beach,” Pavel would tell him. “You would feel right at home.” But Sergey never felt at home there. He loathed the gloomy brownstones, the loud store windows, the honking cars, the gray ocean, the cold sand the color of carpet in a New Jersey home, and the smug, well-fed people smoking by the shining doors of restaurants, picking through piles of fruit, loading heavy bags of food into the trunks of their cars. This was the fake Russia, the parody of Russia, that made the real Russia seem even farther away and hopelessly unobtainable.
But now the bustle of Brighton Beach Avenue filled Sergey with a kind of spiteful satisfaction. All those months he’d been saving every penny, thinking of every dollar as one step closer to taking him home, every thousand as one giant step. He didn’t buy any clothes, he didn’t accompany Pavel to bars, he stinted on everything, living on cornflakes, pasta, and an occasional chicken. And now he was about to blow so much money on this obscenely selfish thing? He felt as if he were tearing the money out of Lenka’s hands and he chuckled, imagining the expression of stunned fury the snapshot-Lenka would assume if she knew. He walked onto 6th Street, turning to face the stark wind blowing in from the Atlantic.
The door to Alla’s four-story building was ajar, so Sergey walked up the staircase without buzzing her. The homey smells of cooking intensified and grew more complex with each flight of steep stone stairs. Sergey was able to make out onions frying in fat, boiling cabbage, garlic, a rich meat dish. By the time he reached the top floor, Alla’s floor, his stomach was growling, and Sergey realized he hadn’t eaten anything since this morning’s dry cornflakes.
The doorbell made a short, angry buzz. Too short, or too low, because he could hear only silence behind the door. Sergey’s defiant energy left him, and in its place came dread and embarrassment. He stood with his index finger suspended over the worn white buzzer, unable to press it again. He had a memory of standing just like he stood now, useless and ridiculous, in front of a woman’s door back in Russia, his hands busy with a dripping bouquet and a carton with cake as he pressed the doorbell with his shoulder. He felt naked without the cake and the bouquet and wished he had something to offer other than the four twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. He was about to turn and leave when he heard approaching steps and the door opened.
The hall was dim, and it took Sergey’s eyes a moment to adjust, before he was able to make out the form and face of the woman. She was stocky, with a red, wrinkled neck, blotchy face, and smudges of mascara in deep creases around her eyes. Her short hair, dyed black and highlighted with dandelion yellow, was gathered into a bristly ponytail. “Hello, I’m Alla,” she said, extending her hand for a shake.
As he stepped toward her, Sergey felt woozy, almost panicky, with disappointment. It was hot in the apartment, with a thick smell of cooking, and his head started to ache again. “Nice to meet you,” he mumbled, taking her damp, puffy hand in his.
“I’m not dressed yet,” Alla said, and began untying the flowery apron she wore over a purple T-shirt and blue track-suit pants. “I just need to turn the stove off. You, Sergey, go into the bedroom, relax, take your jacket off.” When Sergey was already heading down the hallway, she asked him to take off his shoes. “This is Masha’s apartment, not mine. She has carpet everywhere.”
Sergey made a stop in the bathroom, where he combed his hair and tried to pee. His head was starting to pound. Maybe he could tell Alla that he had a headache and leave, but then he thought how ridiculous this excuse would sound. He opened the medicine cabinet and found a container of Tylenol behind a disarray of near-empty nail polish bottles. He swallowed two pills, washed them down with water from the faucet, wiped his chin with his hands, wiped his hands against his pants, and trudged to the bedroom.
Alla was already there, crouched in front of the closet, looking for something on the bottom shelf. “Sit down, make yourself at home,” she said to Sergey. He took his jacket off, wondering if his armpits stank, and sat on the edge of the bed. The carpet in the room was unusually dark, a color called, as Sergey knew, Smashed blueberry. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of a better name but couldn’t come up with anything other than Blood turning blue. The room was cluttered with dark polished chests, some adorned with crystal vases, others with large framed photographs of a bosomy blonde without a neck. Masha, Sergey guessed. Masha liked to be photographed in restaurants, hugging a sickly-looking bald man and raising a champagne glass in her hand.
“We can take care of the money now,” Alla said, having emerged from the closet with some bright, crumpled clothes spilling over her arms. Sergey saw a red bra, a pink tag still attached to it on a thread.
“That’d be seventy-five dollars. I always say, Money first.”
Sergey felt a fleeting relief. This was the part of the procedure that he didn’t doubt he could perform. He reached into a pocket of his jeans and took out his four slightly crumpled twenties.
Alla put the clothes onto the bed, took the money, and counted it. Then she sighed and looked at Sergey. “I don’t think I have any small bills to give you your five bucks back.”
“That’s all right,” Sergey said.
She nodded and put the money into a drawer.
“Do you like rock music?” Alla asked next. He said that he didn’t mind it.
“I’ll put something on for you while I’m changing.” She pressed buttons on a battered stereo system, picked up her clothes, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Sergey was prepared to be hit with heavy metal or hard rock, but he heard instead, after a scratchy silence, the intro to “Heartbreak Hotel.” His feet were tapping against the carpet when he heard the toilet flush, and suddenly he became aware that Alla was just a few steps away from him, changing. He imagined her fastening her brand-new bra and then bending over the sink to apply fresh mascara. Lenka put her mascara on while bending over the sink in only panties and a bra. But he didn’t want to think about Lenka now. Lenka was far away, and getting farther every day. Alla was right here. Sergey shifted on the bed, stirred by the certainty of what was about to happen.
But when Alla finally emerged from the bathroom, wearing silver sandals, a black miniskirt, and a dark-red shimmering blouse, it seemed too soon to Sergey. Her lips were thickly smeared with plum lipstick and contoured with a darker shade of plum. She looked heavy, uncomfortable, and aggressive. Sergey’s head began to throb harder, as if it were gathering the strength to fight off two Tylenols.
Alla asked him something, but he couldn’t hear her over the music.
“What do you want?” she repeated, trying to outshout Elvis.
Sergey didn’t know what to say. The truth was that he wanted it any possible way, but not now and not with Alla.
“I personally prefer blow jobs,” Alla said. “Quick, easy, and no mess afterward. Do you want a blow job?” Sergey nodded, thinking that the blow job had two obvious advantages: he wouldn’t have to do anything, and he wouldn’t have to see a lot of Alla while she was at it.
But instead of approaching him, Alla stepped back into the narrow space between the bed and the chest of drawers and snapped her fingers to the intro to “One Night with You.” When Elvis began singing, she started dancing. Her thin, short legs looked wobbly as her high heels sank int
o the carpet. Her hips swayed back and forth and her head bobbed. She occasionally would turn away from Sergey, doing something to her blouse. He noticed that each time she turned back to him she had undone one more button. Her breasts weren’t large, not even filling the cups of her new red bra, but the straps were fastened too tight, so that the material cut deep into the flabby yellow flesh of her stomach and shoulders. The color of dead chicken, Sergey thought, as Alla stepped closer and closer to him. He wondered if it would be rude to shut his eyes, then shut them anyway, just as Alla knelt before him on the carpet.
Sergey wasn’t sure how much time—filled with rough sensations, waves of Alla’s sharply sour smell, images of huge human teeth closing around him, and the pounding music—passed before Alla finally let him go and moved her head away. Could have been five minutes or fifty. “What’s wrong?” she asked Sergey, out of breath. “Are you feeling okay?” Her face was sweaty and red, with lipstick smudges on her chin. She massaged her jaw and moved her stiffened neck left and right.
Sergey’s whole body felt long and empty, drained of energy, incapable of anything except producing a headache, which was now throbbing even harder.
“I better go,” Sergey said, zipping up his pants.
“Maybe you need to rest a little?”
Sergey shook his head.
“Are you feeling sick or something? Because I did everything well, right? It’s not my fault?”
“No, it’s not your fault; I have a headache,” he said, avoiding her stare.
“Headache? Do you want some Tylenol? I’ve got some in the bathroom.”
“No, I’m okay. I just took some.” He needed to leave, but Alla had scrambled to her feet and was blocking his way.
“I don’t have to give you your money back, right? Since it’s not my fault.”
“No. No, you don’t.”
She let Sergey pass but followed him into the hallway, buttoning her blouse as they went and wiping her chin with the back of her hand.
“You know what? I’ll give you your five bucks back, then. I might have change in my purse after all.”
“No, that’s okay.”
Sergey reached for his shoes. He felt a momentary sting about the money, muffled by the desire to leave this place. Right away. Run down the stairs, push open the exit door, and take gulps of cold ocean air.
“Maybe you want a glass of water or something? Some juice? I’ve got some currant juice.”
Sergey shook his head, quickly lacing his shoes.
And then as he stood to leave, Alla caught him by a sleeve.
“I know what I’ll give you. Some borscht! You can’t say no to a bowl of borscht, right?”
In the bedroom, Elvis drew out the last stammering note and the cassette ended with a snap.
ALLA SEATED Sergey at the kitchen table and went to turn on the gas under a large enamel pot.
“Won’t take long, don’t worry. We have to let it simmer for five minutes or so,” she told Sergey.
Alla moved the lid a little bit so that only the slightest puffs of steam could escape, then broke a clove off a head of garlic sitting on the windowsill and grabbed a bunch of parsley that was hanging upside down from a cabinet handle.
Alla peeled the garlic clove, cut it in half, and chopped it up. She had changed and was now wearing a fresh white T-shirt over the same track-suit pants he saw before. Most of the makeup had been washed off her face, which made her look both rougher and younger. Sergey marveled at how light and fast her fingers were.
“Do you want a shot of something, Sergey? Masha’s husband has a whole collection of infused vodkas.”
“Thank you,” Sergey said, “but I don’t drink.”
“At all?”
“It gives me headaches.”
“Well, I can’t drink either. I have to go to work in a couple of hours.”
“I thought you worked here.”
Alla froze, the knife suspended in midair.
“Here? What do you mean here? What do you think I am, some kind of a prostitute? I work as a nanny in Manhattan!”
Sergey mumbled an apology, and Alla calmed down enough to resume chopping.
“They are a very good family. Americans. He’s a lawyer, and she used to be something too. But now she does her projects, that’s her word—‘Alla, I have a lot of projects today’—and I watch the kids. She loves me, because I speak a little English and don’t mind doing the cleaning and the laundry. She says their previous nanny didn’t speak any English at all, and the one before her knew only two words: No laundry.”
She mixed the garlic and parsley together on the cutting board, sprinkled them with salt, and chopped them up.
“I live with them too. But Masha—she’s a really good friend; we go way back—said I could stay with her on my days off so I could take a break from them, you know. To rest, to sleep, to cook some real food. There used to be this other woman, Lubka; she rented a room from Masha, and it was her business. Then she found another job and moved out, and Masha offered me the room to take over. ‘God sees,’ she said. ‘You’re better looking than Lubka.’”
Alla paused, probably expecting a confirmation of her better looks, but since Sergey had never seen Lubka, he didn’t know what to say.
“What do you do, Sergey?”
“I install carpets.”
“Oh, that’s a nice job too. I hear they pay well.”
Alla opened the lid on the pot with the borscht and fished out four large pink potatoes. “I cook them whole in my borscht, then take them out and crush them. My mother and my aunts all used to do it like that.”
She carried the steaming bowl to the table and prodded the potatoes with a large fork. “Well, not as fluffy as in Russia, but still nice and soft. You have to crush them, not mash them. I don’t know why, but they say it’s important.” She stuck her fork in and broke the soft yellow flesh of the potato, leaving four furrows in its surface.
“You know what, Sergey? Why don’t you slice the bread while I’m doing this?”
She took a dark brick of rye bread out of a bread box and handed it to Sergey along with a cutting board and a long steel knife. The bread had such a fresh, heady smell that Sergey couldn’t resist breaking the crust of the first slice and stuffing it into his mouth.
“It’s a nice knife, isn’t it?” Alla asked.
Sergey nodded. “Did you bring it from Russia?”
“Masha. Masha did. She came to stay, so she shipped a whole bunch of stuff here: plates, knives, cutting boards, bowls. Even—listen to this—even a basin for washing clothes! Can you believe this? A basin for washing clothes!” She laughed, and so did Sergey.
“What about you, Alla? Are you here to stay?”
“Me? No way! My family’s there. My husband, my girls.”
Sergey stared at her. “You’re married?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been married for eighteen years, not counting another two when I was married to my first husband.”
She turned to point to the cluster of snapshots clipped to the refrigerator with banana magnets. Most of them pictured two young women and a stocky mustached man.
“What about you, Sergey? Are you staying?”
“No. I came only for a year. To work.”
“And how much of the year is left?”
“Actually, I was supposed to be heading back by now, but then we decided, my wife and I, that I might stay a little longer. You know, since I’m making good money here.”
“Oh, I know, I know. I know this song by heart. ‘Don’t worry, Mom, we manage fine here.’ And they do, they do manage fine without me, as long as the money’s coming. ‘Of course I miss you, Alla, but you better stay as long as your visa is good.’”
She took the bowl with crushed potatoes and carefully slipped them into the pot.
“Think about it, Serezha. He used to bring me coffee in bed when we first got married. Coffee in bed! That’s how crazy he was about me. And then suddenly it was all go
ne. How, when? Once, a few years ago, I was readying myself for a party—dressing up: earrings, perfume, mascara—and my husband walked into the room and squinted at me from the corner. ‘Remember, Alla,’ he said, ‘what a heavenly beauty you used to be?’”
She paused and looked at Sergey. He felt he should say something to her but didn’t know what.
“Yeah, just like that. But what can I say? Life is life, and the only way to live it is to take all the shit that comes with it.”
She stirred the borscht and put the lid back on.
“How long have you been married, may I ask?”
“Eighteen months.”
“Eighteen months! And you spent twelve of them living apart! Saving for an apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. For two apartments. One so my oldest daughter could divorce her husband, and another so the youngest could get married.”
Alla went to the refrigerator and pulled the snapshots of her daughters from their banana clips.
“See here, Serezha,” she said, carefully placing the pictures in front of him. “This is Natasha, my oldest, very nice girl, quiet, serious, smart, not at all like her papik—alcoholic. She is my daughter from my first marriage, and my current husband never really warmed up to her—which could be a good thing, some people say to me. But that’s why Natashka married that jerk at eighteen. Didn’t want to live with us. He drinks, he cheats, and he doesn’t work—exactly the three worst things about a husband—and poor Natashka got all three. My husband at least has a job. She would’ve gotten a divorce, but there is no place to live.”