Currency

by Zolbrod, Zoe

  Dear Piv ... she wrote in her mind. Dear Piv, I’m so so ...

  The weather helped. The air this early evening held a perfect balance of warmth and cool she didn’t have to wait years for, and it lulled her to peace. No air conditioner needed, but no more than a thin blanket or two at night, either. More like a mountain summer than November in north central Florida. She hugged a zippered sweatshirt around herself and stepped with bare feet into the yard. The tough grass was chilly between her toes, but the dirt retained the afternoon’s warmth, although all that was left of daytime was half a thumbprint of sun and a smudge of orange along the west horizon. In the east, the sky’s blue deepened to velvet. She could begin by describing it to him. She dragged the lawn chair from under the willow and set it in the middle of the yard so she could sit and watch the shadows blur and widen, the orange wash distill into a crimson thread and then disappear.

  Dear Piv... She’d started the letter ten thousand times. A line, a half a line, that was as far as she got, and then she’d be quivering before him, ashamed and hopeful, her eyes wide and her mouth open. He’d be watching her impassively, and no sound would come out.

  Weather and shifts of light were two of the things she had missed most during ninety days in jail. Weather, light, and quiet-and right now, with her mom still at work and her niece, Tiffany, with her own mother, all she could hear were cicadas and the distant traffic from Route 17 and the muffled cries of the baby two doors down. She had to appreciate this-weather, light, and quiet—a perfect gift for an eve of reflection: she was starting a new job tomorrow. Yes, at a lot, but in Jacksonville, worth the hour commute because the money would be better. Not to mention that she’d had no choice. It had taken her over a month to get a single interview. She had thought that having worked in New Jersey would be a boon to getting employment here, that she’d have her pick of dealerships-but no. Never mind. It didn’t matter. She’d been lucky; she’d gotten a job, a legitimate job. She didn’t need everyone to want to hire her. As long as one place did, she’d be fine. She was lucky.

  Seeing a flash of rainbow in the yard near the driveway, Robin pushed herself up from the chair. At the last minute, Tiffany must have abandoned her mascot xylophone before going off. Robin began bending to pick it up, but then she straightened, cocked her head. A slanted ray of sunlight infused the red and orange bars, just those two, and made them glow. The grass rose almost as high as the thick wooden body of the thing, and she liked how it looked, the bright multi-hued notes framed by the textured green, a few yellow willow leaves stuck among the blades like dashed brushstrokes. She liked how it looked, and instead of picking it up, she lay on the ground beside it, her body cupped around the arrangement, protecting. The hard nub of a mole tunnel bumped at her hip. She felt the rivet from her jeans press into her flesh. Gratitude stole through her, a sweetness. Tomorrow she started a job.

  Dear Piv, I’m going to be selling cars again, and if you wouldn’t mind seeing me, maybe I could save up to buy a ticket ...

  She rolled on her stomach and spread her arms. The low end of the xylophone grazed her right shoulder. She closed her eyes and extended her lips to kiss its edge, then nuzzled her face toward the ground and inhaled. The dry autumn had left the grass brittle and odorless, but the earth had a wormy, fecund aroma. It smelled so particular and familiar that she could taste the clayey, sandy grit in her mouth, feel it between her teeth as she had when she was a dirt-eating toddler and again as an elementary school know-it-all—she’d returned to her babyish habit defiantly after learning in class that if worms didn’t eat soil, oxygen and water and sunshine couldn’t get through.

  “You’re not a worm. You’re a little girl,” her mom had said when she caught her, and she’d slapped Robin’s hands and washed her mouth out with soap.

  Robin pictured the worms beneath her, munching and wiggling their way down deep, making growth possible. She turned her head and opened her eyes. As she stared into the grass, minutia became visible even in the thickening gloom: an ant carrying a pink speck of bubble gum though the spiky green jungle, a pale wisp of a spider perched midblade, the gossamer wing of a maimed flyer lying, deserted, next to the mean dot of a flea. In Thailand—in India, China, Singapore, Sumatra—the sun would be perched on the first edge of a day, the same old tired sun she was losing tonight, but yet somehow new. Had he woken yet? Was it warming him?

  Dear Piv, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you in time about what was going to happen, but at least I never told them about you. Please believe me. They tried to make me, but they couldn’t. I know it was too late to help you, but can you forgive me? Do you still dream of traveling, because maybe I could... but where would she send it? She didn’t know his address. She didn’t even know how to spell his last name.

  With her arms spread, she could almost feel the curve of the great, round, blue and green globe she was spinning on. She should get up now. She should get up before her mother came home and worried that her unusual posture meant she was still depressed, or that something more had gone wrong. But she could feel the gravity that kept her holding on, that pressed her flat to the earth as she made her embrace.

  Acknowledgments

  This book wouldn’t exist if not for the help of some kind people and for a string of fortuitous circumstances that stretch back to the beginning of my adult life. For instance, what luck that my first employer out of college, First Publishing, would begin to implode soon after I joined their staff. They eventually bribed the few employees who hadn’t quit or been laid off to stay until the bitter end by offering us five thousand dollars if we did, which, even after taxes, was more money than I’d ever seen in one sum. I knew I wanted to take the windfall and travel with it, but I wouldn’t have thought of going to Southeast Asia if not for a conversation with Barry Cassilly over dim sum. In Thailand, much of the perspective I gained on Bangkok beyond Khao San Road was thanks to my friend Jillana Enteen, who was working there and who graciously hosted me in her one-room apartment whenever I came through town. Currency is not autobiographical, but I did get in scrapes while backpacking, and the worst one occurred after Jillana had returned to the States. I’m not sure what I would have done if Tuk from the Bangkok Center Guest House hadn’t come to my aid in the last weeks of my trip. Wherever he is, I cannot thank him enough. Back in Chicago, I eventually entered the University of Illinois Program for Writers, where I started the experiment in voice that became this novel and stumbled on to an article in the New York Times Magazine—“The Looting and Smuggling and Fencing and Hoarding of Impossibly Precious, Feathered, and Scaly Wild Things” by Donovan Webster—that introduced me to the world of animal smuggling and helped me find my plot. Also, I met Gina Frangello. She, along with Cecelia Downs, Laura Ruby, and Karen Schreck, read this novel many times and improved it with their comments and suggestions. They coached me through rounds of agents, rejection letters, and near-misses. And years later, Gina asked to read the manuscript again, with an eye toward publishing it. I am very grateful to her, Stacy Bierlein, Dan Wickett, and Steve Gillis for the opportunity. I’m also grateful to Amy Davis and The Writer’s Workspace in Chicago for providing me with a quiet place to make the last round of edits. Before that, the Ragdale Foundation and the Norcroft Writing Retreat gave me time and space to write. And I’d like to say thank you to my husband, Mark DeBemardi, who traveled with me when I made a research trip to Thailand, and who has kept the home fires burning when I traveled back in my mind.

  Inspired by the award-winning anthology, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection, the Morgan Street International Novel Series celebrates literary novels set outside the United States by writers from any nation. These works explore issues of race, identity, and political affairs through the lens of human relationships. Characterized by vibrant, compulsively readable storytelling, the Morgan Street International Novel Series will appeal to global citizens and armchair travelers as well as students of international literature and cultural
studies. For more information about the series and other forthcoming titles from Other Voices Books, please visit www.ovbooks.com.

  an imprint of Dzanc Books

  3629 N. Hoyne

  Chicago, IL 60618

  www.ovbooks.com

  OVBooks@gmail.com

  © 2010, Text by Zoe Zolbrod

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Other Voices Books - 3629 N. Hoyne - Chicago, IL 60618

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published 2010 by Other Voices Books, an imprint of Dzanc Books.

  eISBN : 978-0-982-63187-4