“I believed this poor bastard. I’ve been a lawyer for thirty years. I can tell when a client is lying.”
Every lie Lula had ever told passed before her eyes, starting with the one Don knew about, her omitting the half Muslim part on her visa application. No one in her family had been religious for generations. That is, if you didn’t count the third cousin who got born again and went to Afghanistan to wage jihad. Everyone had a third cousin like that. What if they traced him to her? If just one nosy agent found out, she could be back in Tirana tomorrow.
The restaurant’s creamy light made everyone look healthy, rich, and happy to be having lunch with everyone else. How long could her comfortable life here last? She ordered the haddock with grapes and saffron.
Don said, “Thanks. I’m not eating.” He gulped his wine like water. Lula wondered if she was going to have to help him into a cab. His office number was on her phone. She could call his secretary.
Don said, “A client of mine got deported.”
“The one whose foot got run over?” Lula welcomed the chance to prove she had listened. She hoped it was the same client. The more of Don’s clients who got sent home, the less optimistic she felt.
“Good girl,” said Don. “But no, another one. Honestly, I start to wonder, Why am I even trying?”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Lula. “You helped me get my work visa. You fixed things for Estrelia and—”
“This guy had a green card,” said Don. “He’s a contractor. Bangladeshi. His family’s some bizarro evangelical Protestant.”
“What did he do?” asked Lula.
“Illegal weapons possession. Unregistered handgun. To be honest, if I lived where this guy lived, on the far edge of Bushwick with two little kids and a wife, I’d find a way to protect myself, permit or no permit.”
“Okay, sure, wow,” said Lula.
“Is it too warm in here?” asked Don.
How could Don see the droplets beading up on the back of her neck? On TV, the suspects who sweated were either on drugs or guilty or both.
“Allergies,” said Lula. She wondered which was more dangerous, ditching Alvo’s gun and pissing off the Albanians, or holding on to it and worrying that someone would report her to the INS. The latter seemed less likely.
“It’s not allergy season. You should get your eyes checked,” said Don. “I was around your age when I started wearing glasses.”
What age? she might have asked anyone else. But Don knew her age, to the day. It was on her application. Don already knew so much, she wished she could ask him about the gun. After all, he was her lawyer. But she knew what Don would say: Lose the sketchy Albanian pals, don’t answer the door when they knock. She would pretend to take his advice, and she would ignore it.
Lula’s haddock arrived. It could almost make you believe in God, or in some higher intelligence that had created this fish that, perfectly poached, flaked apart in buttery layers. She smiled at Don. “Would you like some?” Too much generosity! A remark like that could encourage Don to hold her hand again.
“No thank you,” said Don. “I seem to be on an all-liquid diet. Go ahead, finish your lunch. I won’t ruin it for you, I promise.”
Don was as good as his word. He waited till Lula had cleaned her plate, then said, “It’s worse than I imagined.”
“Let’s have coffee,” said Lula. She and the waiter conspired wordlessly to get enough coffee into Don so he could ask Lula to calculate the tip—twenty percent—before he signed the credit card slip.
“Drink up,” Lula kept saying, while she plied him with small talk about Zeke and Mister Stanley—the upcoming college trip, Zeke’s B+ on a math test. Don drank all his coffee. From boredom, probably, but so what? The aim was caffeination.
Walking Don to his office, Lula glared at the few pedestrians rude enough to stare. It was an honor to hold a hero’s arm as he lurched down the sidewalk.
Don could manage the elevator. They shook hands, then made an awkward attempt to hug. Lula took the buses back to Jersey.
She decided not to mention the lunch. But that night Mister Stanley asked, first thing, “So how was lunch with Don?”
“He seems a little . . . sad,” Lula said. “He didn’t eat much.”
“Was he drinking?” Mister Stanley asked.
“Only wine,” said Lula.
“I thought so too,” said Mister Stanley. “I mean, about him seeming sad. Well, Jesus, Lula, who isn’t sad with the state our country is in? This evening, driving home, I heard on NPR that forty thousand people are living in homeless shelters. And that’s just in New York City! I worry about Ginger. I don’t want her to suffer. Fortunately, she prefers the company of goofballs in Navajo sweat lodges to the company of drunks with the DTs picking bugs from under their skin.”
“I’m sure she does,” Lula said. “I’m sure she’s fine.” She went to the sink and devoted herself to washing a fork Zeke had left in the drain.
Mister Stanley said, “What did Don want to talk about?”
Lula said, “My story.”
“He told me he liked it a lot.”
“He did. But next time I think I’ll wait before I let anyone read it.”
“We didn’t mean to rush you,” Mister Stanley said. “I hope Don didn’t upset you . . . He’s been under a lot of stress.”
“Don’s a hero,” Lula said.
“That he is,” said Mister Stanley.
Chapter Six
Just when Lula had given up hope of ever seeing the Albanian guys again, Alvo showed up. He had a gauze bandage wrapped around his hand, and he flinched when he shut the front door behind him. There was something sexy about his wince and the whiteness of the bandage. When Lula asked, he told her he’d cut himself when a saw blade snapped. Being in the building trades was an accident waiting to happen. He said, “The workman’s compensation board loves it that nobody’s legal anymore, so nobody files claims.”
“I didn’t know they had workman’s insurance here,” Lula said.
“They used to,” Alvo told her.
“Coffee?” asked Lula. It was noon. She had been delaying the moment of making a sandwich from the last of Granny’s red pepper jam and realizing that this would be the best part of her day, and that it was already over. She should offer Alvo something to eat. Zeke’s leftover pizza? She could make an omelet.
Alvo said, “I was just in the neighborhood. You want to go get lunch?”
“Do I need to change?” Lula hadn’t intended to make him look her up and down. Why had she quit dressing nicely and putting on makeup? Because she had no patience.
“Jeans are fine,” Alvo said.
She’d expected to find Hoodie and Leather Jacket waiting in the Lexus. But the SUV was empty.
“Are you okay?” Alvo asked.
Why did everyone ask her that? Was every emotion so plain on her face for the whole world to see?
She said, “At university I played poker. Lots of times, I won enough to buy my friends drinks at this club where we hung out in Blloku.”
“What club?” asked Alvo.
“The Paradise.”
“I used to go there,” said Alvo. “How come I never saw you?”
“I was there,” Lula said.
Alvo started the SUV and pulled away from the curb.
“I wish I could drive,” said Lula.
“I could teach you,” Alvo said. “It’s easy. Babies drive. Senile grannies drive. It would take one lesson.”
“Two lessons,” said Lula.
“One lesson,” Alvo said.
Leftover drops from a morning shower sparkled on the fallen leaves and the brownish grass. They drove past a golf course on which there was a structure with three roofs, pointed like witch’s hats.
“Look!” she said. “It looks just like that snack bar in the park in Tirana.”
Alvo nodded. That he knew which snack bar she meant made her senselessly happy.
Eventually, Lula and Alvo slipped
into something resembling a companionable silence, the calm married-couple happiness that Lula, despite the odds and the evidence, still hoped someday to experience. With Alvo? She was dreaming.
The silken GPS voice guided Alvo through a series of turns. Then it murmured: “Approaching destination.” Alvo parked in front of a restaurant with a black curtain covering the window. Almost Albanian looking, except for the Asian lettering.
“Old Sam?” read Lula.
“Old Siam,” said Alvo. “Old Sam. Very funny.”
Lula said, “Go ahead, laugh. Nice guy. How do you know I’m not dyslexic?”
“Albanians don’t get dyslexia. It’s a disease Americans invented so they won’t have to admit their kids are retarded.”
“Maybe I caught it since I got here,” said Lula. From this point it should have been easy to steer the conversation toward spelling. If only she could find out if Alvo could spell beauty and healer. That would answer a lot of questions. Or anyway, one big question.
Alvo said, “We should get out of the car.”
“Sorry,” Lula said.
There was a worrisome scarcity of vehicles in Old Siam’s parking lot. Two sips of a sweet umbrella drink—next stop, Bangkok whorehouse. No wonder her social life was in ruins! Who would date a girl who couldn’t tell being trafficked from a lunch date? As they crossed the asphalt, her fingertips and, weirdly, the surface of her scalp seemed to be responding, independently of her brain, to Alvo’s lanky physical thereness. It was impressive, how a few nerve endings firing at once could silence Lula’s sensible doubts about being alone with a man she’d met when he came to hide a gun in her house.
Alvo said, “This Thai guy from work told me about this place. I love that about this country. Some people live here a lifetime, they only eat Albanian. But I like restaurants that serve the real deal from countries Albania never heard of.”
“Me too,” Lula said. She imagined herself and Alvo, brave culinary explorers, eating their way around the world without leaving the tri-state area. He’d said, A guy from work. Maybe he and the guys ran a crew. Maybe they had Thai workers.
“Queens is the best,” said Alvo.
“I’ve never been to Queens,” said Lula. “I’d love to go to Queens.”
There were no other customers to spoil the pristine perfection of the tables set with yellow cloths and folded napkins. Someone switched on a sound system, and a girl with a baby’s voice cooed and hiccupped her way through a song that sounded like a lullaby but was surely about lost love. If Lula ever had a child, she would play it music like that.
The Asian woman who came out from the back of the restaurant was so glad to see them that Lula was frightened to look directly into her joy.
“Water?” The woman smiled, setting menus before them. They nodded. “Beer? Thai beer?” Nod nod. More smiles. Lula watched her walk toward the kitchen door, where another Asian woman and two blond men in white shirts and ties waited tensely as if to debrief her after a top-secret mission.
“Mormons,” said Lula.
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Alvo.
Lula said, “How did they get in? Even under heaviest Communism you saw Mormons in Tirana.”
Alvo said, “Someone paid. Someone always pays.”
The walls were covered with mirrors in which Lula saw herself and Alvo beside a canal in Bangkok. An optical illusion: A poster behind them pictured a temple with orange dragons coiled beneath its pincerlike spires.
Lula said, “Have you eaten here before?”
“Never. I like to change things up from day to day. Never the same thing twice.” Alvo’s tone was unsettling. He hadn’t sounded like a laid-back, self-employed contractor wanting to maximize his fun, but rather like a gangster or politician describing security tactics designed to foil an assassination. Or was it a philosophical statement? Lula didn’t feel she could ask. Maybe it was personal magic, a secret he had with himself, like the female CEOs wearing French underwear to board meetings. Alvo’s gun was in Lula’s underwear drawer, wrapped in those filmy garments that might not, after all, have been such a waste of money.
He said, “Also in private life. You don’t want to be stupid. The place where lovers get blown away? It’s always the lover’s lane. The bench overlooking the Hudson. What sane person would go there? Some psycho sneaks up behind you. Blam. The perp’s halfway to Pennsylvania before the ambulance comes.”
He’s paranoid, thought Lula. Another thing they had in common. Paranoia was English for Balkan common sense. Lula could live without making out on a bench above the Hudson. But what would it be like to have a boyfriend who never did the same thing twice? Sexually, it could be interesting. Where was she getting boyfriend? From one Thai meal? If lunch was a relationship, Lula and Don were married.
But wait. Was that a hair on her plate? No, a thread from her glove. Lula picked it off, but not before her lavender soap, inscribed with a copper hair, hovered like a disgusting mirage above the sparkling china. In seconds it vanished, but not before Lula was able to positively match its color with Alvo’s.
She said, “Have you ever stalked someone?”
Alvo said, “Strange question, but okay. You want me to stalk you?”
“Look in the mirror,” said Lula. “There we are. Eating lunch in Thailand.”
Alvo looked. It didn’t interest him. After that there was silence.
Finally Alvo said, “I wouldn’t go there. I know this Sherpa guy. Buddhist. Hard worker. Never lies. He told me there’s this dog at home that brings down yaks by reaching up their asses and pulling out their guts.”
“Urban legend,” Lula said.
“That’s what I thought,” said Alvo. “Then I saw it on the Internet.”
“If it’s not a hoax,” said Lula, “why aren’t those dogs the hot new pets for rap stars and Asian drug lords and Mexican narcos?”
“Good question,” Alvo said.
The waitress brought their beers.
“G’zoor,” Alvo toasted Lula.
“G’zoor,” Lula said.
A few swallows infused Lula with a fizzy optimism. Life was not so bad. Back in Tirana no one was taking her out to lunch, and this place would be fancy, and it wouldn’t be Thai. At home there was only Albanian. And Chinese, which was the same lamb, only candy-coated and orange. Just before she left Tirana, a Mexican place opened up, Señor Somebody’s, where waiters in cowboy hats served melted sheep cheese and corn chips to missionaries from Missouri. Dunia and the Belarusian model had taken Lula to a Thai restaurant on Rivington Street for her twenty-fifth birthday, so she’d eaten Thai food. Once.
“Why the big sigh?” asked Alvo.
Lula said, “I was thinking about a friend.”
“Friend as in boyfriend?” said Alvo.
“Friend as in homegirl. Last night, I couldn’t sleep, I got up and went downstairs and turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. The best thing about my boss’s house is, the walls are so thick no one hears anything.”
“Excellent,” said Alvo. “Let’s say if you have guests.”
Was Alvo flirting? It could be embarrassing to mistakenly assume he was.
“I never have guests,” Lula said. “So last night on TV this Albanian girl was talking about marrying a rich mafioso and falling in love with his brother, who took her to Italy, where he beat her with a belt and turned her out as a prostitute until her uncle found her and an Albanian lawyer got her back. Two other girls were interviewed, both with similar stories, ghosts with smeary mascara running down their face. The thing was, I’d been lying awake worrying about my friend Dunia. She was here in New York with me, and she went back, but it’s like she left the planet. She smart, she’s tough. I tell myself she’s okay. But maybe I’m just being lazy—”
“I’ve eaten lots of Thai food,” said Alvo. “But I don’t recognize hardly anything on this menu.”
Lula said, “Pad thai is all I know. Why is this place so empty?”
Alvo
said, “Maybe everybody in New Jersey is too retarded to know that Siam means Thai.”
He waved the Thai woman back, then looked into her eyes so warmly he could have been her favorite son stopping by for lunch. The woman nodded and waved her arms, sign language for I’ll-take-care-of-you, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Nicely done,” Lula said.
“Some people you can trust,” Alvo said. “You know right away. Which we learned growing up, am I right? I read this book about bodyguards who work for the mob and the British royal family and Saudi diplomats. The Arab drivers are the brave motherfuckers. The ones who get sent to Guantánamo.”
Lula said, “My lawyer has a client in Guantánamo.”
“Too bad for him.” Alvo crossed himself. “Too bad for his client.”
“You’re Christian?” Lula asked.
“I’m nothing. I’m Albanian. Like you.”
“Like me. I mean, if there is a God, why is he so pissed off at Albanians?”
“Maybe God has a lousy personality,” said Alvo.
“Could be.” Neither had anything more to add on the subject of God. The conversation faltered until, even though it was a boring first-date question, Lula asked, “When did you come to this country?”
“1990, luckily for me. Or I’d still be there. You must have some hotshot lawyer to get a work visa after you’re already here.”
“He’s famous.” Lula tried not to think about Don’s hand dropping on hers.
“If he’s so good, why’s he got a client in Guantánamo? Crazy country.”
“It beats home,” Lula said.
Alvo said, “The U.S. saved Kosovo from being ethnic-cleansed by the Serbs. No matter what else, we should be grateful. . . . But you know what? Sometimes I think this country’s becoming like Albania, and Albania’s becoming like this country. Like we’re on opposite escalators meeting in the middle.”
“In Albania’s dreams,” said Lula.
“We should be in the EU. Forget the trafficking, the drugs. If we had oil or even natural gas, we’d be in the EU yesterday! Then you get these deluded Albanian brothers sending the wrong message by plotting to blow up some army base in South Jersey. How does that make us look?”
My New American Life Page 11