East of the West

by Miroslav Penkov

  DEVSHIRMEH

  I.

  It’s Friday afternoon and John Martin is driving me to my wife’s. We’re picking up my daughter for the weekend and I don’t want us to be late again. I’m tired of my wife rolling her eyes, arms crossed over that heavenly chest, and tapping her foot in some maddening rhythm only she can hear. I’m tired of making her new husband look good in comparison.

  I crane my neck to see how fast we’re going and tell John Martin to step on the gas.

  “You want speed?” John Martin says, “Get your own damn car,” and cranks the heat higher. It’s a hundred and five outside, and John’s truck, the same one he bought after he came back from Vietnam, has trouble staying cool. Sometimes, when he drives me to Wal-Mart, he pulls over to the shoulder, pops the hood up and like shipwreck survivors on a raft with a flat sail we wait for wind to cool down the engine. But there is no time for wind now.

  “How does this help, exactly?” I say, and hold my hand against the stream of hot air.

  “It’s specific science,” John Martin says. “You won’t understand it.” His eyebrow twitches on an otherwise calm face, and I take this as my cue to keep pushing. “Some shortcut this is, John.”

  Out the rolled down window I can see a thin strip of scorched Texas earth and yellow grass. The rest is sky, so large and dull I get angry just watching it. I look at my wrist, an old habit from the days when I still owned a watch, then I look at John Martin’s wrist. That’s where my watch is now: an original Seiko I bought, once upon a time as a student of English philology in Sofia, from an Algerian fellow for a demijohn of Father’s rakia and a pallet of Mother’s canned tomatoes. I sold the watch to John Martin and with the money took Elli to Six Flags; a great experience, if it hadn’t been for all the hitchhiking. When we returned to the house, John Martin had thrown my bed out in the front yard and piled all my clothes on top. He’d left a spiteful note on the pile, in case the message wasn’t clear enough. Pay rent, Commie. So I sent Elli in to melt his heart with some sweet talk about how much all that bonding time in line for the Judge Roy Scream ride at the Goodtimes Square had meant to her. Later she told me John Martin wept while she talked, that’s how touched he was.

  Now I tilt my head to see the time better. As expected, we are already ten minutes late.

  “God damn it, John. This car is absolute rubbish.”

  Like that, John Martin slams on the brakes. We slide along the gravel, and when we finally come to a halt, the dust we’ve roused catches up in a thick cloud. I try to roll up my window, but that’s no good. I’m dust-slapped already, I can feel it on my face and hair and on my shirt.

  “You little Communist shit,” John Martin says. He stares me down and I can’t get my eyes off his epileptic eyebrow. I try hard not to laugh. “This here truck is an American truck,” he says, in case I ever doubted it. The statement alone is meant to refute the shittiness of the vehicle and put a full stop to any further discussions. “Like you ever drove something as fine in Russia.”

  “I drove a tank, John,” I say. “And you know I’m not Russian.”

  “You’re all alike to me.”

  “Cool it, John,” I say. “God is watching.” I nod at the cross that dangles from the rearview mirror—a tiny wooden crucifix on a black string John Martin received as a gift from the fifty-year-old Mexican widow he’s in love with at his church.

  He grabs the cross and kisses it. “Shame on you,” he says, and I apologize right away. I tell him I didn’t mean anything, really, that I was just yapping, nervous because of my daughter. Because we’re late. His truck is fine, a fine American truck. “Here,” I say, “Peace,” and hand him a beer from the cooler at my feet. Miller High Life. America’s finest. The Champagne of Beers. He rolls the can against his neck, cheeks, forehead, and sweat runs in dirty creeks. We both slurp hoglike and wait for the car to cool. I watch a flock of Texas crows land far in the field and I can see their heads twisting to peck dead earth.

  “You should call her tonight,” I say, meaning Anna Maria, the widow from church. “You should take her on a date. Taco Bueno? Taco Bell, even.”

  “I don’t know,” John Martin says, and takes a big gulp from the beer. He watches the heat gauge still in the red. “It might be too early for that.”

  “It’s never too early for Taco Bell.”

  He crushes his can and throws it back in the cooler. “You don’t know shit,” he says. He raps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Last time I checked,” he says, “another dude was boning your wife.”

  “Great talk, John,” I say. I say, “God is watching. Besides,” I say, “I’m working the situation. It’s all a temporary matter. I’m getting her back, one step at a time, even as we speak.”

  “One step?” He shakes his head. “Look at yourself. At least shave that stupid mug of yours. Wear a shirt that’s not brown with dust. You don’t get women back like this, man. Especially one married to a doctor.”

  “Why bring up his occupation?” I say. And I tell him, less time spent listening to Delilah on the radio might do him good. He starts the truck and we’re back in motion. Across the field the crows, too, rise up and head in the opposite direction, flapping chaotically. “I swear, man,” John goes, “I feel sorry for you. That’s the only reason I put up with your shit.”

  “You know it,” I say. “And it’s God that puts this pity in your heart, don’t forget. Love thy neighbor. Love, love.” John Martin first started going to church in hopes of finding a wife. That’s a fact, he told me so. To look good, an eligible bachelor, he assumed the role of a pious Bible abider. Soon he grew into that role and finally convinced even himself. John Martin is not a religious man, he’s not a believer. But he doesn’t know it yet and that’s exactly what I’m banking on.

  We pull outside my wife’s house half an hour late. I step out and the heat feels cool after the sauna of the truck.

  “Five minutes,” John Martin says. I take a swig from the canteen in my back pocket and he shakes his head again disapprovingly. At the door I smooth my hair over, brush my face with a sweaty palm. I pop a mint in my mouth and check my breath.

  No one answers the bell for five minutes. When I look back, John Martin is drinking beer against the truck, its hood open. He taps my watch. I ring the bell again and finally there is a voice on the other side. “Buddy, buddy,” I hear, a thick, ugly, stupid Bulgarian accent. “Sit. Good boy.” One lock turns, then another, then a chain falls.

  My wife’s new husband emerges before me, absurdly obese in the door frame. He’s wearing flip-flops, American ones, a single string between his wet, puffy toes, long shorts that drip water on the parquet, and a cell phone clipped to his waistband. He has no shirt on, and his chest hair, and the hair on his legs, is smoothly glued to his body, layer upon dripping layer. By his side is an equally obese, equally wet dog whose breed I can never remember.

  “Buddy!” he yells at me in English. “What’s going on! You’re late. We’ve been waiting.”

  “Traffic,” I say.

  “Oh, no, buddy. English. We speak English here.”

  “Traffic,” I repeat. “That’s an international word.”

  He swats a mosquito on his shoulder with a thick slap of his meaty palm. Droplets splash my face. “Well, get in,” he says. “Hurry, hurry.”

  I bet he’s eager to get back to the pool before my wife has seen him inside, all wet and with that dog. I know she’d be furious if I ever did such a thing. So I stand where I am and tell him all is well, that I’m only here to pick up Elli, that I don’t want to impose. I keep peeking behind him, hard as that is, waiting for my wife to show, waiting for the parquet to get well soaked and start peeling up. I even reach for the dog and my heart melts with joy when the dog growls and shakes its shaggy coat, sending water all over the shoe rack.

  At last my wife appears from behind Buddy, in a two-piece red swimsuit, her bronze skin oiled up and gleaming. She’s trying to dry her hair with a towel, but it’s not h
er hair I’m looking at. Somehow she manages to squeeze herself between Buddy and the door frame and attempts to put an arm around his waist—an impossible gesture, really. “We’ve been waiting,” she says, also in English.

  I don’t know what to say.

  “Buddy, hey, buddy,” Buddy says. “Up here,” he says and snaps his fingers. “Yeah? You like those? Ten grand each. We got them done in Dallas. Best investment I ever made, if you know what I mean.”

  I want to ask him why, but they’re already walking through the house. I wave at John Martin.

  “Five minutes!” John yells, licks his finger and touches his sweaty shoulder with a gesture that’s meant to convey eroticism, among other things. As I start through the living room my wife orders me to take my shoes off and keep the floor clean. Shoes in hand, I follow them to the pool.

  Their yard is full of people—all in swimsuits, all holding broad, stemmed glasses, margaritas, martinis. There are people in lounge chairs, on towels spread in the grass, on the concrete by the pool. A large grill on one side sizzles with burgers and steaks. Everyone turns to me, and all conversation seems to hang in the heat, but only for a moment.

  My wife brings me a Dr Pepper. “Have a Dr Pepper,” she says.

  I’d rather not, but I take it. “What’s the occasion?” I say.

  She sticks out her chest, in case I didn’t get it. I get it all right, but I refuse to stare. Instead, I search for Elli, who’s nowhere to be found, not even in the pool with all the other splishy-splashy children. I ask where she’s gone.

  “It was Buddy’s idea,” my wife says. Maybe she doesn’t say it exactly like this, maybe she calls him Todor or whatever his real name is, but it sounds like Buddy to me.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I tell her. “They were great to begin with.”

  “What? No,” she says, “no, these were my idea, a self-esteem issue. I mean the scuba set. Buddy thought of that.” And then I see it—through the crystal-clear water, at the bottom of the deep end of the pool—my daughter with a tiny oxygen tank on her back.

  “It’s all safe,” my wife says. “We hired a diving instructor. You see him down there? All Buddy’s idea,” and laughs as if she’s cracked a great joke. So much for working the situation. I have no desire to talk to her now; all the little lies I planned on telling her—that I was declared employee of the month yet again, that I found a great little place I’m thinking of moving to—will now remain unspoken. All I want now is to pick up Elli and get the hell out.

  “Tell her I’m here,” I say, and my wife lets me know there is another twenty minutes on the diving lesson. “Have a seat,” she says, “have another Dr.”

  “John Martin,” I say, but as before, she’s already drifting away. I find a chair with a broken leg far from the pool and pour some vodka into the soda can. Then I watch Buddy, flipping steaks with one hand and with the other holding the cell phone to his mouth like a walkie-talkie. He drops a chunk of hamburger meat to the dog and the dog pushes the chunk with its muzzle, licks it and refuses to eat. I could go for a burger right about now. Most likely John Martin, too, could go for a burger, out in the truck. I drink more and wait for the lesson to be over, for my daughter to reemerge from the deep. She does that at last. My wife helps her out of the pool and the instructor removes the oxygen tank from her back. I would never make my daughter carry anything of such weight. Then my wife tells Elli something and Elli looks about and sees me in the corner. She runs to me and, one hundred words a minute, asks if I saw her scuba diving, with a tank and all, down there in the pool, breathing underwater like a mermaid, like a real mermaid, in the pool.

  “Elli, Elli, Elli,” I say. “Slow down, baby,” I say. “Na bulgarski, taté. Tell me all this, but in Bulgarian.”

  I keep drinking while Elli is changing up in her room, while my wife is packing her a bag for the weekend, because it is just so hard to have the bag packed already. I watch the diving instructor teach a freckled woman how to suck air through a snorkel. Then I watch Buddy by the grill in his flip-flops, dry now, with his fur all bristly, forking meats, taking their temperature with a stick, talking to the dog in his stupid accented English. I feel so utterly out of place here, so stranded I can’t even hate him right. I can’t even envy him properly for all the things he has that I don’t. This is not the way I imagined it. This life. Sometimes, at night, long after John Martin has gone to bed, I sit on his back porch and I drink his beers and chuck empty cans at the dark and I wonder—this everything. Is it worth staying?

  Then Elli emerges, with a bag in her hand.

  “I’m ready,” she says. Buddy comes for a good-bye and she gives him a kiss on the lips. He asks me if I want some steak and I tell him I’d already had plenty of steaks today—for breakfast, for lunch, for an afternoon snack—all steaks, rare, medium, well done. Elli pets the dog and it licks her fingers while my wife whispers something in her ear, all the while watching me with a serious face. “Michael,” she tells me, though she knows this is not how my name should sound. “Take good care of her.” As if such instructions are ever needed.

  By the time we walk out, the sun is slipping behind the scorched earthline. John Martin pushes himself off the truck with a dusty boot and shuts the hood closed. I tell Elli to get in, because she’ll be riding between us, and as I climb in I see that John hasn’t touched any more beers from the cooler, that they are all floating like dead fish in what was once ice.

  “Jesus Christ, John,” I say. “I’m really sorry for the wait.”

  “It’s okay, man,” he says and closes his door gently. “Hi, beautiful,” he tells Elli. He tousles her wet hair. “Hi, Princess.”

  II.

  We came to the U.S. seven years ago. Maya, the baby and I—despite the slim chances—proud winners of green cards. I submitted our lottery applications on the day Elli was born. Ten months later, we passed the interview at the embassy, and two weeks after Elli turned one we flew to New York City. There was very little fear when we left Sofia. We figured if we had to be poor—and we were, very, both of us English teachers at neighborhood schools—we might as well be poor in America. We left in hopes of a better life, I suppose—not for us, but for the baby. And I suppose a better life is what we got. Certainly not me, but the baby. Perhaps. And, as much as I hate to admit it, Maya as well.

  Maya’s first cousin had already lived in New York for fifteen years and he let us stay at his place—a one bedroom in Bronx—until we rented our own one bedroom above his one bedroom.

  The cousin helped me get a job as a cashier at a Russian convenience store during the days and another at night, as a 7-Eleven clerk, three times a week. I worked like this for four months until, one morning, I came home after a long shift with a high fever and abdominal pain so sharp, I cried louder than the baby. Five hours later I lay in a hospital room without an appendix. The operation cost us twenty-five thousand, out of which we could pay zero. We decided to save up for a few months, buy tickets to Bulgaria and vamoose. But while Maya had been waiting in the hospital, she had, entirely by accident, as these things are prone to happen, overheard a Bulgarian name mispronounced over the intercom. She’d seen a doctor rush down the hallway and chased him to the elevator. She’d read his tag. And lo and behold … Buddy Milanov, M.D.

  For months I thought of Buddy as my Christ, my God-sent Savior: he called insurance companies for us, filed claims on our behalf and finally, because we were so officially poor, managed to get ninety percent of our hospital fees remitted. We made him Elli’s godfather. We invited him for musaka on the weekends. We even hiked up our skirts so he could bend us properly over the kitchen counter. With the baby in the room.

  After I walked in on them, Maya moved on the offensive. She blamed me for this, and that, and for other things. A week of fighting later, she had already taken Elli to Buddy’s apartment—overlooking the river, with plenty of rooms and a granite counter in the kitchen.

  I decided to kill Buddy. I quit my night job so I
could wait for him outside the hospital with a knife in my pocket. I waited for a week, watching him call cab after cab, until it became clear I’m not, alas, a real man from the Balkans. So like a slug I began to befriend him again. Buddy, my friend, what’s going on, pal? Let bygones be bygones. I knew that if I could talk to Maya, reason with her over time, she would undoubtedly come home with me.

  Five years went by. Last March my wife informed me that Buddy had found a job in some clinic in Texas and that they were all moving. They would graciously pay for my plane tickets, twice a year, so I could come down and visit Elli at dates of my convenience.

  I decided it was time to kill Buddy again. I sharpened the knife, polished its thick, wooden handle. Then I poured myself some vodka and made a tomato salad with too much vinegar and a lot of onions and ate the salad and drank the vodka, and sharpened the knife. I stared at my Seiko until the phone rang, eight in the evening.

  “Taté,” Elli said on the other side, “we just rode an airplane.” And after, when I hung up, I could not breathe, could not move, knowing she was there and I here. I could not imagine where she was. I could not see the things she saw, did not understand what she meant by a huge sky and no tall trees. After I finished the bottle I called my mother back home, in Bulgaria.

  She did not recognize my voice right away.

  “Mother,” I said, “I’m moving to Texas.”

  “Good for you,” she said. “Are you thinking …” she said, “are you considering …”

  I told her I was not. I had no money, no time for trips to Bulgaria.

  “Of course,” she said. “Money and time. I know how it is.”

  III.

  We’re kicking the ball in John Martin’s backyard, catching the last sun of the day, while he sways in his rocker—one hand holding a beer, the other one swatting mosquitoes. The rocker creaks and every now and then there is the sound of crushed metal, of his boots knocking on the planks, as he reaches over for a new can from the cooler.