Lake Success

by Gary Shteyngart

  Javon didn’t say anything. Barry could almost hear the kid’s mind turning, trying to find a reason to accept him, this white man from nowhere, this Watch Idiot Savant. Barry was running a different set of calculations in his mind. What could he say to make Javon understand him? What could he say to make Javon feel understood? All those childhood years spent in front of the mirror practicing his friend moves, and this was his biggest move yet.

  Barry took a seat next to Javon, the stoop hot and gravelly beneath him. A summer breeze stirred up. A loose fire escape started clanging against a building. Barry imagined a photo of the two of them appearing in a foreign magazine, maybe Der Spiegel. “Zwei Amerikaner,” it would read. Two Americans. And that’s all. Nothing about their race or class. He felt himself overcome with emotion. His father had been a racist, and Barry was the opposite of his father.

  “When I was growin’ up,” Barry said, trying to adopt the local accent, “I didn’t have my momma. She died in a car accident.”

  A window opened up with a bang across the street. An older woman popped out between two plants, her hair in curlers. “Javon!” she shouted. “Who you talking to?”

  “No one.”

  The woman crossed her arms. “Don’t look like no one.”

  “He all right.”

  Barry smiled at the compliment. He lived in a skyscraper where most people didn’t even share floors. Here, your own mother could open a window and shout down to you.

  “Hello, Mrs. Javon!” he yelled.

  The woman rolled her eyes at him. “Get on up off that stoop!” she shouted to Javon. “Germans comin’! I can hear they cameras from up here!”

  “I think you better bump,” Javon said to Barry.

  “What?”

  “Germans comin’,” Javon said. “They pay twenty you let them shoot a photo of you. I gotta work.”

  “If I come back tomorrow morning, can we talk more?” Barry asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “All right. Well. I got a whole bunch of watches I could show to you.”

  “Where you crib?”

  “The Holiday Inn Express. Down by the Greyhound.”

  “I’ll get at you when I’m at you.”

  There was a flash of skin near Barry’s pocket, and a baggie was deposited inside. “Later, Idiot Savant,” Javon said.

  He got up and walked toward the tourists advancing up the block, the long lenses of their cameras pointed at him. “Yo, wassup?” Javon shouted to them, pretending as if he were pumping a shotgun in their direction. “Omar comin’! Ich bin ein Drogendealer! Woop woop!”

  Two blocks away, Barry took out his gift, a sizable Saran-wrapped rock, as polished as Carrara marble, with the sharp yellow tinge of a newborn Parmesan. While his hedge-fund peers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to wake up at four in the morning Uzbekistan time to bake sesame loaves with the best baker in Samarkand or have a one-on-one with a marine iguana on the Galápagos, Barry had been given a genuine piece of America three hundred miles south of Central Park West. And all he had to do was be kind.

  * * *

  —

  HE PACED his small hotel room. Should he stay on in Baltimore one more night? His mind was on fire, the same way it had been at Louis Pasteur Middle School when he felt like someone was about to become his friend. That’s how it started, first Joey Paramico, with the spiked leather bracelet and at least one aerosol can’s worth of product in his hair, then Joey’s cousin Ronnie, then the Irish twins from up the block. And now he could have a young black friend. More than a friend, really. Almost a student. No, a son.

  He wanted to make Javon a force to be reckoned with. He wanted his name to “ring out.” If Barry had had his father’s support, he would have been a billionaire by now. He pictured the two of them working some kind of start-up. What if they launched a foundation? One that would help urban youth buy their first mechanical watch and learn to care for it? A device that recorded time, not to mention showed its scarcity, would add order and rigor to their lives, as it had added order and rigor to his. That was the problem, right? These kids’ lives had no rigor. Sitting on a stoop on an empty street, trying to sell drugs that had gone out of style decades ago, no one to monitor them or set measurable goals. They didn’t mean to be inherently irresponsible people, but that’s what they were.

  So many of his hedge-fund peers were obsessed by the scholastic records of black children, trying to shut down their public schools and turn them into charters. But Barry’s Urban Watch Fund would be a better way to disrupt the system. It would turn children into stakeholders. Whatever that meant. Outfitting hundreds of children with real Rolex Oyster Perpetuals, their cheapest model, would be expensive but, as he had seen some guy say on one Baltimore billboard, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” The kids would have to learn the histories of Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis, Rolex’s suave London-based founders. There would be trips to Baselworld, the industry’s trade fair, and visits to the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva. A crest would be drawn—a watch’s movement surrounded by the words RIGOR and RESPONSIBILITY or however you said that in Latin. RIGORUS. RESPONSIBILITUS. And then when Barry’s Urban Watch Fund scaled, he’d present Javon at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, and he’d say, “I found this young man selling crack on the streets of West Baltimore, and now he’s selling Breitlings at the Tourneau on Madison,” and then Seema would have to take back all that shit about his lack of soul and imagination.

  Barry sat down hard on his bed. He had to breathe. Sometimes excitement disoriented him. Should he go back to see Javon first thing in the morning with his watches in tow? No, first he would find Layla. He would find her in El Paso and present the story of Javon as a calling card, a way to show her that he had changed. Better yet, that Morgan and Goldman and This Side of Capital had not changed him. But this chapter wasn’t over. He would be back for Javon. He realized now that he had forgotten to note the street on which Javon and the pimp-juice lady operated. No worries. He still had resources. He would hunt them down.

  With the crack lodged in his pocket and his watches safely in the rollerboard, next to the passport made out in Bernard Conte’s name, Barry took the elevator down to reception to check out. The man in the Orioles T-shirt was talking to a familiar-looking woman with a Pat Benatar shag and a sleek little blouse that may have been from one of those shops Seema loved downtown. This woman clearly wasn’t from anywhere near here. Maybe she’d be impressed by his Amex black card for a change. As Barry approached, the Oriole was scrolling through a computer screen. “Cohen,” the Oriole said to the woman. “Room three twelve.”

  The mention of his own name surprised Barry, as if he had just become famous. He looked closely at the coils of the woman’s hair. The insistent jab of her finger in the Oriole’s direction. The haughty posture that was somehow the opposite of Baltimore. Recognition came with a pinch of desire that immediately rearranged itself as panic. He turned and ran just as she shouted, “Wait! Barry! No!”

  It was Sandy, his chief of staff.

  But he was already out the door, running as fast as his middle age could carry him, the rollerboard swinging in his arm, a pulse of pain down his spine. But his breath was even and strong. He would survive this, he was the Queens All-County Swim Champ of 1989, and he was going to toast the rich wimps from Douglaston Manor and get into Princeton over and over and over again.

  He ran across the highway separating the Holiday Inn from a gas station and convenience store called Royal Farms. Once inside, Barry peeked back through the automatic door, but Sandy was nowhere in sight.

  Sandy. How the fuck did she know where he was staying? Well, that was easy. All his credit cards were tied into This Side of Capital. Every time he traveled on the Hound or checked in to a hotel, she would know where he was. He had to dump the cards. My God! He had to dump his blac
k Amex. He needed cash. All this could have been avoided if he had just packed some cash. He had three cards, the Amex and some Visa and MC crap tied into airline-loyalty programs he never really used anymore. He stuck the cards into a cash machine one by one, but kept getting a message about a four-hundred-dollar daily cash-advance limit. Fuck. He got out his allotted twelve hundred dollars among the three cards, the bills fanning out like capitalist magic into his waiting hand, stuck them next to the crack rock in his pocket, then threw the cards into the trash can, the black Amex pinging against the metal rim.

  * * *

  —

  HE BOUGHT a twenty-dollar ticket, paying in cash, but he would not surrender his watches to be checked in to the hold of the bus. He hid in a stall in the bathroom where, to pass the time, he sprayed and wiped down the cases and dials of his watches with Veraet watch spray and an extra-soft pocket square he had brought with him. He lavished particular attention on the Universal Tri-Compax, a 1940s specimen that had never quite breathed right from the moment he picked it up at a Boston dealership, via two NetJets flights that cost ten times the value of the watch itself. At some point in his journey he would have to find a good watch hospital for this creaky fellow. He looked into its complicated face, the moon phase showing a perfect full moon over Baltimore tonight. Shiva, the lunar aficionado, surely wouldn’t sleep tonight. “I’m sorry you have to go through this,” he said to the watch.

  The surrounding stalls were now filled with men at the peak of their exertions, making Barry’s eyes tear. He put his watches away and went into the main hall. Richmond was boarding.

  Barry snuck up to the bus, glancing in all directions for Sandy. A Greyhound man in a green vest insisted he put his watches in the luggage hold, and there was no time to argue. A giant tag with his name and destination was wrapped around the handle of the rollerboard. Barry scrambled on board. Scanning the seats, he realized the bus was full. “Sir,” he said to the old driver. “There are no seats left.”

  “Been doing this thirty years,” the driver said, staring into the middle distance. “Never gets easier. No, sir.” Then he sighed and threw some Chinese nationals still holding their starry red passports off the bus.

  Just then, Barry spotted Sandy out the window, running between buses, her New York poise all shot, another Greyhound official shadowing her with a clipboard and an attitude. Shit. Even in these heightened circumstances, he was still miserably attracted to her slim, blunt form, the many times they had drinks together after work and he could all but feel the little hairs on her arms as he got all sloshed and slurred talking about the unfairness of his early life, the Pool Man’s Son, and she would nod and press her cold hand on top of his, and it was all theoretically HR and Seema acceptable because Sandy didn’t like men.

  Barry scampered down the aisle to the toilet and locked himself in. Was this what the rest of his life would be? Hiding in bathrooms from Sandy? The bus’s engine turned over, then started to whir. The bathroom stank of bleach, but it also stank of freedom. There wasn’t even a sink, only a giant canister of Purell. Barry held on to the Purell as the bus rocked out of the station. He breathed with his mouth, but his throat was getting scorched from the bleach. Then he shut his mouth and breathed with his nose. He breathed like a man on a bus running for his life.

  THEY HELD hands. There were so many places in New York to hold hands. Paris was for sticking your tongue in someone’s mouth, but New York was for good old-fashioned Protestant hand-holding. Did she want to do more? Yes and no. Was he being respectful of the four carats on her finger? If so, good. Was he still in love with his wife? If so, bad.

  They held hands at the hot-dog place. They held hands at his favorite bar on Canal. Clandestino was its name (how perfect), and its bartender was some kind of movie-handsome genius in a vest who made Manhattans out of alchemized gold. Luis used to live right above the bar and three hundred feet from the best Malaysian beef jerky in the city, but marriage had “forced” him to the Flatiron District. Another dig at his wife? Please, God, yes. They held hands while watching summer action blockbusters that he pretended to loathe. Here, in the darkness interrupted only by immoderate thermonuclear explosions, his hand formed a warm, heavy weight against the inside of her thigh. She moved her head in his direction, so that he could smell the fragrance of her hair. He breathed heavily, squeezed her hand. Oh, how wonderfully pathetic they were!

  The day after Barry disappeared, she got a call from his general contractor upstate. They were putting in the Olympic-sized pool, but the size seemed to flout all local ordinances, and their neighbors hated the Kyoto-style pergola Barry had built, which robbed them of their views. “Talk to Barry,” Seema said. The contractor said he had tried to reach him, but his phone kept going straight to voice mail. “Fuck the pool, then,” Seema said. “Let it rot.” She hung up. So Barry was going to ignore her calls. Or his phone was gone. Stolen? Taken at gunpoint? He didn’t take his contractor’s calls. That was worrisome. Being the Pool Man’s Son, Barry had long dreamed of installing the largest noninstitutional pool in the Mid-Hudson Valley. What if he had—no, Barry couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything that drastic. Anger was his bag. Self-pity. Not depression.

  A few days into their hand-holding relationship, they were looking at New Jersey across the Hudson, their bodies leaning in over the metal railing along the esplanade. It wasn’t anywhere near high tide, but the water felt close upon them, dangerous. Neurotypical children shrieked adorably beneath a nearby water fountain. There was a hotel across in Jersey City bearing the giant letter W. On a sulky riverside stroller ride with Shiva a year ago, her son had made a concerted sound, the most articulate of his life, and pointed with great emphasis at the W across the river. For a kid with his profile to point to an object was considered a milestone.

  Shiva seemed to like letters. He was a big fan of the Cookie Monster song “C Is for Cookie.” It was part of a Sesame Street alphabet CD his speech therapist played, but whenever she let it segue into the next song, Elmo singing about his love of the letter D, Shiva let out a shriek and rammed his head into the nearest wall. They had to sit by the CD box and press the rewind button back to Cookie Monster’s song again and again. And Shiva would smile with his mouth open as if he had just discovered the universe. But when Seema played the W song he cupped his ears, fell on the ground, and started to shake as if there was a rolling temblor beneath him. Well, she thought, so much for the fucking letter W. Cross that one off the list. He did seem to have a thing for H, and she was glad she hadn’t dropped the h in his name and called him Siva, the Tamil way. Barry had said that having a Seema and a Siva in the house would confuse him. South Indians gave their kids long variations on the name Shiva, like Sivaraman, Sivamurthy, or Sivarajan, but she did not want to push Barry’s limits. “I’m not riding a freaking elephant,” he had said prior to their wedding in Cleveland.

  They were talking about how they met their spouses. Julianna and Luis met at one of his book signings at the PEN World Voices Festival. “The PEN festival!” Seema said. “That’s kind of a big deal.”

  Luis vehemently shook his head no to indicate that yes, it was. “I guess I made a good podium impression on her,” he said, “and then I seduced her with my intellect.” He yawned slowly to show how he wasn’t taking himself seriously.

  “Was she wearing something really beautiful?” Seema asked, to her own surprise. She thought Julianna was very stylish, especially on a doctor’s budget.

  “I can’t remember,” Luis said. “All I know is we kissed that same night. At the Russian Samovar. I thought she was a big drunkie because of how much vodka she had, but she was just nervous.”

  “Okaaaaaay.” The Indian comic actress voice; that goofy, girly, twelve-year-old voice. So he did kiss women.

  “And how did you meet Barry?”

  “Ugh.” The whole thing had been a shitshow to celebrate 120 years of Vogue. Her friend Mina
Kim had invited her and then forgot to show up. Seema didn’t know anybody there, was kind of left to her own devices, and then she had to rebuke this Wall Street creep for looking at her tits. “Let me guess who that was,” Luis said, squeezing her hand all the more, his eyes scanning her body at the mention of “tits.”

  But Seema had talked to Barry, falling into her charming standoffish-flirtatious mode. Maybe there was some of that midwestern politeness in her. Maybe, and she hated to admit it, there was something sultry about being pursued by an older rich guy. When she looked up at the sky on that roof terrace, she could almost see an airplane carrying a banner reading COSMOPOLITAN ELITES over them. Wasn’t that what she was brought up for? She remembered how her mother, still a lustrous-haired beauty, but halfway into her first of several American bellies, would hover over her bed at all hours of the day and night (good luck finding the word “privacy” in Tamil), imparting all those ludicrous and painful life lessons. Freshman year in high school she had drawn Seema a chart of the social acceptability of her friends. Jews and WASPs fared at the very top, one had “money (increasing),” the other “social power (decreasing).” The Asians were separated into several tranches, with the Japanese—who had bought up so much of our country just the previous decade—leading the pack. Tamils hovered several blank spaces above Hispanics, who themselves rested on the shoulders of blacks. Her mother circled “Jews” several times and wrote “accessible,” “liberal,” “emotional,” and “sober” next to it. Seema had called her mother nuts to her face, almost earning a rare slap, but no childhood lesson ever just disappears, especially when it’s from a parent who has crossed an ocean.