“Well, that’s about it, Zack.” It seems like the conversation with the detective is almost over. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.” The detective hands me his card. “If you remember something on your way home, I’d appreciate a call.”
“No problem.” I say. I’m still summing up the facts. While I was studying photography I’d spent hours adjusting the camera so that I could capture a bullet going through an apple. That was one of my exams. Now I can visualize the bullet entering my skull and what will happen when it exits. I can also imagine the less deadly scenario in which they throw my ass in jail. If you have a good imagination, you don’t need life experience. “If I remember something, I’ll call, sir.” We shake hands and I am almost out the door when I hear:
“I forgot to ask you, you’ve got a car here, right?” I stop with my hand on the doorknob. My heart is about to burst. Why don’t I just open the door and run? Why don’t I fly out of here like a fireball and burn to ashes anyone who dares touch me? I take a deep breath before I answer. I furrow my brow in what is supposed to look like an astonished wasn’t-it-enough expression and slowly turn to him.
“Which car is yours?” I hear his voice as if there is a thick, glass wall between us. I tell him the model. “Oh? Great,” he says. “License plate?” He is writing something down. Plate, plate, plate . . . I can’t remember the license plate number. It’s my wife’s car, for Christ’s sake. It is Stella’s car. And I realize that I am in deep, thick, slimy shit. I realize something else, too. Not only have I gotten myself into this shit, but I’ve also dragged Stella into it as well. Why did you have to go anywhere, baby? Why did you have to go back to yourself?
I hope my mom won’t think her son is a drug dealer. I hope my sister will still believe in me. I hope that everybody one day will understand that what happened during these last few days was only an accident. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
But then again, every place is the wrong place, and every time is the wrong time, if you are not there, Stella.
“I can’t remember the license plate number . . .” I stammer. The detective lifts his head from the paper he is writing on and puts the pen back in the jar. He gives a rather absent look and smiles. “OK, no problem. If the vehicle was damaged by bullets directly or by ricochets or whatever . . . call this number. Your insurance might need more information. This is the number to call. OK? Do you need a ride back to the motel?”
*
—have you seen those really old photographs where people look kind of stiff?
—yes
—cameras were very slow back then and they needed to pose for an hour or even more for just one shot. they had to stay still. they needed to put braces on people’s necks so they wouldn’t move
—what a nightmare
—now, what I want from you is to stay very still and not move at all . . . just for fifteen seconds
—like this?
—yep. i’m taking this picture at a very low speed
—why?
—because i believe that the longer i keep the shutter open the more life gets captured on the negative
*
I cannot stay in the motel, of course. FOX News and Channel 10 trucks are parked next to my car. Reporters, photographers and camera crews are walking around. A helicopter is hovering above, it’s a total circus. I take my stuff from the room, stop at the reception desk, but, guess what, I don’t need to pay anything.
I find another motel, throw myself across the bed, and fall asleep immediately. I have a dream that I’m in my grandparents’ old house in their village. It’s winter. I press my forehead to the frozen window and look at the snow-covered backyard. Suddenly, in the distance, I see an animal running toward me at great speed—as only happens in dreams or films. The next thing I see on the other side of the glass is the enormous, toothy head of a gruesome wolf. I pull away from the window, but I just can’t stop looking at him. I wake up. I don’t know where I am. Evening is nearing and I’ve slept through yet another sunset. I close my eyes and let my head fall back on the pillow.
*
As time passed, I became more and more depressed by my own inability to master the guitar. I found a teacher and started taking classical guitar lessons and spent countless hours practicing—technique, arpeggios, arpeggios, arpeggios. I wanted to play like Steve Vai, but everything I tried sounded like the Sex Pistols. Sometimes, at night, I dreamed that I could play like a virtuoso. My fingers obeyed me. They moved wonderfully, joyfully fast. In my dreams, I extracted each note with no effort whatsoever, as if I didn’t play the instrument but rather thought with it. There were no secrets for me. I wanted to share all this with Stella and the world. I would be awakened in the middle of the night by difficult, gorgeous symphonies echoing down through the nothingness. I would desperately chase them, trying to grasp at least a few chords with which to put together a song. The results were murky reflections of the real music which flowed through me and which I was incapable of capturing.
We were still poor, but managed to keep our heads above water. We were together all the time—not just hugging, but clenched to one another. We were both excellent students, even though we never studied too hard. We received scholarships and lived in a cheap, small loft from which we could see the red roofs and beautiful sunsets. I started taking pictures and writing short articles for the local paper to make money. I had a Russian camera and a Bulgarian typewriter. The most expensive thing I owned, though, was the Stratocaster. My calling, my gift—I had fooled myself into believing then—was music. Stella never seemed to question her true calling—she just kept on painting. In the uninhabited space adjacent to our loft, she made an improvised studio under the eaves where she started experimenting. Since we didn’t have any money for art supplies, she painted with anything she had at hand on anything she could find—oils on bed sheets, industrial paint on cardboard, house paint on sheet metal.
I wonder where all those paintings are now?
*
It’s cool outside. I find a coffee shop. I order espresso. I sip it as I write some random thoughts in one of the notebooks. Why do I write them down? For whom? Another diary by someone who didn’t need a diary until recently? Aren’t there enough losers in the world already?
I ask the girl behind the register where the cool places are for Friday nights around here. I don’t learn much besides that it’s cool everywhere Friday night. Life begins Friday night. America lives for Friday night! TGIF, America!
It’s still before eight. I leave the coffee shop. I find the closest movie theater. The movies playing this summer are mostly stupid sequels of stupid movies that were playing the summer before. I debate for a while before stopping on a flick starring Jack Nicholson. Stella finds him repulsive as both a man and an actor.
I get out of the movie theater around ten. The film wasn’t bad, not at all. Only Jack Nicholson . . . Isn’t there anybody to tell him that those days are long gone and acting with your eyebrows isn’t funny anymore?
I decide to walk until I reach the ocean and, after that, I haven’t really decided what to do.
The bars start filling up. The night gets cooler with every block. Music sounds from the open restaurants and bars. The ocean is near. I can feel its chill. I can hear it. Here it is.
There are moments when you expect the answer to come precisely from there, from that endless dark mass they say we all crawled out of. I walk through the sand until I reach the water. That’s it. This is where the west ends. And here I am at its very edge. Here I am—at the brink of Western civilization, whose sunset I slept through today.
So what’s beyond this? The East?
I take off my shoes and let the ocean, calm as a cat, lick my bare feet. The foam wraps around them. I close my eyes and inhale—the ocean’s scent now reminds me of blossoming linden and smashed watermelon.
Pacific Ocean, what am I doing here in your calm caress while the Black Sea thumps inside my head?
There is a lifeguard tower further down the beach, and I see a few figures dragging wood and trying to start a fire. From time to time one of them cups her hand around her mouth and yells toward the closest pub: “Bobby-y-y-y-y-y-y-y, you asshole! We’re out here-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!”
*
Things with the band started stalling. We weren’t going anywhere. I dreamed of arenas, but we were playing small bars instead. I wanted best-selling albums, but the boys were happy if the local radio played a song or two of ours. I wrote scripts for our music videos with helicopters and car chases, but I didn’t have the money to buy decent guitar picks. I was so naïve. Stella accepted all this with an unfathomable understanding. She did not judge me. And I looked at life as if somebody somewhere had promised me something. I am asking myself now whether my craziness was contagious, or perhaps the daydreaming of those first years of freedom from the communists had pervaded everyone’s minds, even the most skeptical of us.
Or perhaps youth made things seem so inexplicably possible?
*
I shake the sand off my feet, put on my shoes, and head back to the nightclubs and Friday mood. There’s a long line in front of every place. It makes no difference to me which one I choose. I pause in front of one that is almost right on the sidewalk. Only a tall plexiglass wall divides the table-filled yard and the street.
I can see everything happening inside. Gestures, waitresses, customers, Bacardi, Jack Daniels, bartenders, TV screens, American beer ads . . . I get in line. Behind the glass are the pink tank tops, the bare midriffs, the lower-back tattoos, the ubiquitous California flip-flops, the silicone breasts, the chewing gum, the laughs, the bleached teeth, the artificial tans, the searching eyes.
Soon the line behind me gets longer. Across the street, one idiot gives another a piggyback ride. Both of them fall and start rolling on the ground. The line laughs. A Jeep Wrangler drives by and the three blonde girls in the back laugh and flash the crowd. Large breasts gleam and disappear into the night. The line screams its approval.
And then I notice the woman in front of me. More precisely, I see her semi-profile. The beautiful line of her forehead, her eyebrow. She shifts, slightly lowering her head to say something to the girl next to her, and I see her arms folded over her chest. There is something about the way she readjusts the jacket hung over her shoulder. I see her left fingers slightly caressing the fabric of the dark sweater and pulling it over her breasts. It’s not that she is cold, but more a reflex left over from the years when she had been embarrassed by her own body. Her pants are white and free flowing. The fabric, light and see-through (cotton? linen?), allows me to make out the line of her behind and her shapely thighs. Suddenly, she is aware of my stare and turns around to look at me. Our eyes meet briefly. I can’t tell if she likes me, but she doesn’t shut down.
Beautiful? In that particular way that seems visible only to me. In that particular way that urges me to reach for my camera. In that way that tempts me to pull out her inner beauty, the one others don’t see. She is attractive but she has never quite believed it. No one ever told her when it was most necessary. Her friend is a scrawny brunette, with slightly dark skin, thin lips, perky little breasts, and a high, round butt. She throws a warning look at me and I read the subtitles: “Fuck off, loser!” They go in first, then I follow. I tail them to see which of the bars they are heading towards, and I pick another from which I can see them. The bartender is quick, but the orders are piling up. All of a sudden, next to me, four half-drunk women show up. They are all blonde, wearing tank tops, shorts, and flip flops. Three of them could lose at least twenty pounds and would still be chunky. The fourth is beyond help.
I exchange glances with the woman at the bar across from me at the very moment a broad-shouldered guy with a beer in his hand approaches her. These muscled morons have a distinct way of holding their beer bottles—grasped firmly like dumbbells. From this distance, by the way the young woman speaks with words, gestures, and body language, I can tell she’s not American. And there is something about the way she keeps pulling on the sweater over her shoulders as if it’s a shawl or a light blanket. Obviously, the conversation with the body builder doesn’t go anywhere, as he is not the type to waste time talking, so he waves goodbye and approaches the next girl, as he would the next piece of exercise equipment.
The bartender leans over to take my order. I tell him what I want.
“Dirty martini.”
“With vodka?” He says.
“Absolute-ly!” Where could this young woman be from?
“Olives?”
“Three.” No, definitely not Europe. Actually, why not? Portugal, perhaps.
She could be Spanish. This quiet intensity in her. The bartender shakes the cocktail and pours the murky, greenish content into the chilled martini glass. I take a sip. Wonderful. I compliment the bartender. He thanks me humbly and asks if I want the ice from the shaker before he tosses it. Professional, a true professional. He asks me where I’m from.
“Bulgaria.”
“Never been there.”
“And you?”
“Michigan.”
“Never been there, either, but I went to school close by, at Ohio State.”
“Oh, Ohio State. The Buckeyes almost did it this year, huh?”
“Almost.”
“Are you a bartender?” He asks.
“Used to be. It’s how I put myself through school.”
“You know what you want.”
“I know nothing.”
“I meant . . . the martini.”
“Yeah, I know my martinis.”
“What did you study in Ohio?”
“Photography.”
“Cool. Is that what you do now?”
“No, I work for a pharmaceutical company.”
“You take pictures for them?”
“No. I stopped taking pictures some time ago.”
“So, what do you do now?”
“I monitor data from clinical trials.”
“Well,” he shrugs. “It pays the bills.”
“It pays the bills.” I say and order another one. I leave money for the two cocktails. He thanks me and goes to the other side of the bar to take a large order. I sip the second martini much more slowly. I feel its coolness crawling down my throat and penetrating my body, caressing my agitated nerves. I close my eyes and enjoy it. Nice. Maybe she’s Latin American. Venezuela? No, maybe Argentina. The tranquil grace, the walk. The tango in her eyes. Argentina. Definitely, Argentina.
“What are you drinking?” I hear a raspy voice to my left. I turn. The fattest of the four smiles, leaning toward me. The strap of her top has slipped down her round shoulder. Her bra is green.
“Uhh, martini. What are you drinking?”
“Long Island Iced Tea.” She manages to conceal her Southern drawl until the third syllable.
“Very good.” I say and get down from my bar stool to pick up something from the floor that looks like a dollar bill.
“So what are you drinking?” She asks again and leans toward me, exposing an even better view of her cleavage.
“Martini. And what are you drinking?” It’s not a dollar bill, it turns out to be a dentist’s business card.
“Long Island Iced Tea. And you?” I decide to see how far I can go.
“Martini. And you?”
“Long Island Ice Tea. And you?”
“Martini. And you?”
“Long Island Ice . . . But you asked me already. Wait, what happened to your face?” Goddamit, I had forgotten about my bruise.
“I fell down the stairs.” I take another sip of my martini and glimpse at the bar across from me. She is not there. Her friend is not there, either. I scan the entire place but she is nowhere to be found. I jump off my bar stool and start looking for her, climbing the stairs to the upper level. I can’t find her. I don’t see her around the bathrooms either, and I don’t see her outside where the smokers are hanging out. I don’t see her anywhere
, ever again.
I return to the same bartender and order two more of the same. I drink them bottoms up. Then a blonde beauty enters the bar. She’s wearing a mini-skirt, has huge, round, silicon boobs, and is slightly under thirty. I immediately set off toward her before the asshole in the monkey suit with the stupid beer bottle shows up. I get close to her. I have no idea what I say. Neither does she. My strategy is to hit on a woman who will never pay any attention to me, who will brush me off right away so I can leave and go to my hotel room before somebody beats me up again. Then, I can watch porn until I fall asleep, because I need to get up early. I have important business tomorrow. She, obviously, is drunker than I am. We shout to each other because the music is loud. She says she finds my accent very sexy. She likes my nose. We do shots of tequila and suck limes, sugar, and salt. I tell her about the Jack Nicholson movie; how his wife died and he went crazy. She tells me about her mother, who is also her best friend.
Staggering, we leave the bar. At the last moment, I remember to visit the condom machine in the bathroom. Grapes and raspberry are tonight’s flavors. Grapy or Berry? Stella hates flavored or colored condoms. I hate them, too. Grapy it is. I catch a cab. The hotel is five minutes away. The girl falls asleep in the cab. I hardly manage to drag her out. I pay the driver. We go up to my room.
“I gotta pee,” she stammers. Then she disappears for about ten minutes. I get nervous. My head is spinning. So is the furniture. I shouldn’t have let her go to the bathroom. I should have undressed her passionately and stuck it into her. I’ve had this hard-on for about an hour now. I am debating if I should beat the monkey quickly, before she returns, so I can last longer. I hear the shower.
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