Cruisers

by Craig Nova

  Kohler stood up and left the kitchen, passing her bags on the floor and going into the bedroom, where he started sweeping the rose petals out of the bed into his hand, like crumbs off a table, and then he brought the trashcan from the corner of the room so he could get rid of all of the petals, brushing them off the new sheets with a steady, efficient motion, like using a brush to clean a workshop counter, and in the middle of it, when he was reaching over the bed for the petals near the pillows, he heard her come into the room. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, and looked at the bed. He put the trashcan back in the corner.

  They moved the bags in and put them on the bed, where the odor of roses lingered. Then she started putting her things into the drawers of the dresser he had cleaned out for her and which he had lined with new paper, putting thumbtacks into the corners. Red ones that looked nice on the white paper. Or they had looked nice. Now they looked like something a hick would do. She put her cotton underwear into the drawer along with a couple of pairs of stockings, which were rolled up into neat balls. Three or four blouses, a couple of slips, a scarf, a couple of sweaters, an apron. A couple of dresses, two skirts, a few pairs of shoes. A nightgown. That was it. There was a wonderful fragrance of her that came from her suitcase.

  He sat on the bed, watching Katryna put her clothes away, unsnapping and unzipping the compartments of her old leather case.

  “I wanted it to be nice,” he said.

  “I know,” she said.

  She turned away from him and took off her blouse and skirt and her small, funny-looking brassiere.

  “I can still smell the roses,” she said.

  “You don’t mind?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “It’s all right.” She bit her lip. “I want it to be nice, too.”

  With a practiced gesture, as though she had done this many times, she unzipped his pants, and then he felt the warm, hot touch of her mouth and tongue. He could smell the inside of her suitcase and those roses. Holding him with one hand she stood up and then he did, too, so she could get under the sheets. Everything about him, as far as he was concerned, was stupid and too large, and when he got under the covers, he was amazed by the smooth warmth of her, and how she took hold of him with complete certainty and skill. He thought of the nights he had been alone with the coyotes making that keening sound, that yapping for something that could never really be expressed.

  She looked right at him as though she didn’t know what to say, or as if mystified as to how she had ever ended up here. Then she curled up next to him and he could feel her breathing. He lay there on his back, trying to concentrate on the smoothness of her hip and thigh. Then he realized she was asleep. The small sound of her breathing came as a surprise in a room that had been so quiet.

  RUSSELL BOYD

  “I’VE GOT SOMETHING I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU,” Zofia said. They were in her car, on their way to town. Russell noticed a slight change in the way they spoke to each other when they sat side by side and looked straight ahead, rather than at each other. It was like speaking from behind a screen or whispering to each other in the dark.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Well, I want to tell you about desire. About really wanting something. Have you ever really wanted something?”

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “Say it,” she said.

  “I’ve really wanted something,” he said.

  “Me too,” she said. “Me too. You’re not going to believe this. But I want to tell you about a hair dryer.”

  “A hair dryer?” he said.

  “Wait,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  She told him that when she was about twelve, she had wanted a hair dryer with a sack that you put over your head. The sack had a tube, like one from a vacuum cleaner, that blew hot air into it. She said that it was hard to describe how much she wanted this dryer, and when she thought about it, she probably had never wanted anything else as badly. She had wanted it much more than the way an adult wants something, and she guessed this was because it wasn’t just the stupid hair dryer, but that the dryer was part of an entire vision, of being an adult, of doing her hair so that boys would look at her, of romance.

  Zofia’s mother, whose name was Lillian, spent a lot of time over her appearance, dying her hair, squeezing into a girdle, wearing shoes that were too small and that made her feet hurt. She liked to be noticed and, more important, she wanted to be loved. Lillian took it personally, as though she were being denied something that was hers, when she saw an affectionate gesture or a loving impulse directed toward someone else. At such moments it was obvious that Lillian felt cheated.

  One Christmas, Zofia’s aunt had lost her job, and she was barely able to meet her expenses. Zofia had always liked this woman, whose name was Blanche. Blanche wore her hair all piled up on her head and she always wore clingy skirts and shiny blouses, the kind you would see in an old black and white movie. She wore perfume and powder. Her hips swayed a little when she walked, and her nylons had seams that went right down the backs of her legs.

  Blanche asked Lillian if she could borrow the money to buy Zofia a present, and Lillian agreed. Then Lillian took Zofia aside and told her about it. She did this to make sure that Zofia understood where the present came from, and to guarantee that if there was any good feeling on Christmas, Lillian would be the recipient of it. Zofia was too young to understand these things, and all she knew for sure was that she wanted the hair dryer.

  They had a beautiful tree and Lillian, Zofia’s father, Hank, Blanche, and Zofia were there sitting around it on Christmas morning. Zofia’s sister, Marta, was there, too. They opened books and socks and a sweater, but Zofia kept looking for the hair dryer. She was about to cry when Blanche gave her a present. Zofia unwrapped it and found the hair dryer, and she was so glad to have it that she turned to her mother and said, “Oh, thank you.” And Lillian said, giving her a stern look, “Don’t thank me. Thank your aunt.” Zofia didn’t know anything but the desire to tell the truth, and then she was so excited that she was completely frank and without the least guile. How could she be expected to be so devious, so grown up and suspicious of the truth? She said to Blanche, “Thank you. Even though I know Mom gave you the money for it.”

  They all sat there. Blanche looked at Lillian. Lillian looked back. Zofia’s father sat looking from one to another. Zofia put down the hair dryer as though it had just burned her hand. After a while Zofia’s father said he thought it would be a good idea if they went out to find a place that was open where they could have a drink, and so they all piled into the car, Zofia and Marta in the back, and drove around until they found a bar that was open on Christmas, and the three of them, Lillian, Zofia’s father, and Blanche went in and drank while Zofia and Marta sat in the car.

  Marta was only seven. After an hour she started to cry. She was convinced that Lillian and her father had sold them to the Chinese or the Mexicans or a tribe that didn’t even have a name. Zofia told her that the Chinese or the Mexicans wouldn’t want them, but that didn’t seem to do much good.

  “You see?” said Zofia to Russell. “You see what I am trying to tell you? You want something so badly and then ...”

  Zofia said that she could still feel the heaving of her sister in the backseat of the car, just as she apprehended the approach of sadness that there was no word for: that something was changed forever and that there wasn’t a thing she could do.

  “That damn hair dryer,” said Zofia. “That goddamned thing.”

  Marta wore white socks and black patent leather shoes with one strap that went over the top of each foot and had a silver buckle. “Zofia,” she said “Zofia?”

  “Don’t worry,” Zofia said.

  “I can’t help it,” her sister said.

  “Sure you can,” Zofia said.

  Marta’s nose was running.

  “I don’t have a handkerchief,” Marta said. “What am I going to do?”

  Zofia looked around in the car
, but there was nothing. Not even a piece of newspaper.

  “Use your skirt,” she said.

  “It’s my Christmas dress,” Marta said.

  “I don’t know what else you can do,” Zofia said.

  Marta picked up the hem of her dress and blew her nose on it and then started crying again, all the harder, since she had gotten her good dress dirty and she still didn’t understand anything aside from the fact that something had happened and she couldn’t help it.

  A large, dark-skinned man walked down the street. A Mexican with a mustache that he wore with pride. It was not the mustache of a gringo. He was wearing khaki clothes, the sleeves of the shirt frayed and the pants stained. He had a bottle in a bag, what was called a sneaky pete, and took a sip while he walked, which was like being able to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, and as Marta saw him, she took in a little air. She trembled on the seat next to Zofia.

  “I told you they sold us,” she said.

  “No, no, no,” said Zofia. “That’s just a guy drunk on Christmas. He’s not coming for you.”

  Marta trembled on the seat. She put her head in her hands, but then she looked up, eyes wide open, face tear-stained. The Mexican looked in through the window. Marta ‘s trembling took on a new intensity, like a moth that was shivering as it got ready to fly. Then she put her hands over her face and put her head down, toward her lap, rocking back and forth. The Mexican hammered on the window with his flat, open hand, and when it hit the glass, Zofia saw the white of his palm and the lines in it, like in a leaf. He leaned on the car a little, trying to get his balance, and when he did so, she felt the thing rock back and forth on its springs. The man spoke Spanish, his breath making a white mist on the window.

  “Go away,” Zofia said.

  “She’s here,” said the Mexican in halting English. He put his hand on his chest. “Today. She is here.”

  “Go away,” Zofia said.

  “Tell her,” he said.

  “You promised me,” said Marta. “You said they hadn’t done anything. That they hadn’t sold us.”

  “It’s all right,” Zofia said to her.

  The Mexican took another drink out of his bottle.

  “She’s here,” he said. “She’s mine. She’s pretty.”

  Bonita.

  There was nothing in the car, no tire iron, no bottle, nothing at all.

  “I won’t let anything happen,” Zofia said.

  “You’re too young,” Marta said. “What can you do?”

  “She is my present,” said the Mexican.

  “Go away,” Zofia said.

  Zofia made shooing motions with her hand. The Mexican took another drink and hit the window of the car. Marta started to rock from side to side, as though she could get away by just moving and that made the Mexican angry. He glared and then looked around until he saw a brick, which he walked over to and picked up. The thing was the color of paprika. He rapped the window with it.

  “You think I can’t get you?” he said.

  “Go away. Go away.” Zofia said.

  The Mexican stood back, looking at them. Then he tipped up the bottle, shrugged, and dropped the brick. As he walked away, Marta kept rocking back and forth, crying so hard that Zofia put her arm around her, and after a long while Marta stopped. The girl still turned around from time to time to make sure the man with the mustache wasn’t coming back. As she rocked inside her sister’s arms, she said as a mindless eruption, as an impulse to relive a perfectly understood but yet inarticulate fact, “Zofia, Zofia, Zofia ...”

  “You know what scares me about the hunt?” said Zofia. “The horses. The flowing approach of them. Like they are going to get us. Like they are things I can’t control. So, do you see? I need to know what I’m getting into. You’re not going to leave me, are you? You’re not going to appear one way and then turn out to be another, are you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Look at me,” she said. “Say it.”

  Russell thought of the end of the last hunt, when her sweat had blended with the smell of the leaves, just as he tried to recall the tint of the air, a pink that held them suspended in the heat of the late morning, and at that moment, her lips seemed to disappear into the soft pink glow from the pools of maple leaves and that aureate light of the sun where it hung in the mist.

  “You can trust me,” he said.

  FRANK KOHLER

  KOHLER COOKED BACON FOR BREAKFAST, THE SLICES of it making a snapping noise in the skillet that was like the sound of electric sparks. The odor of it seeped into every corner of the house, and when Katryna smelled it, she went into the bedroom to get away, but even there the smell hung around her like a cloud. In the beginning, she assumed that this was just part of getting used to America: this house had odors that were so unfamiliar as to make her queasy. Even in Kohler’s shop, where he kept his small tools and motherboards, his boxes of software and manuals, she was made queasy by the odor of the solvent he used to clean disc drives. And yet, when she thought of the smells of Russia, black bread and vegetable soup, the dusty and human smell of the subway in Moscow, the aroma of pielmeni, she wasn’t reassured.

  Her skin had broken out, too. It usually had a pale, almost luminescent appearance, which made her eyes seem bluer, but now she looked as though she were fifteen again. And so it wasn’t only that she felt out of sorts because of the American odors, but she had broken out, too. It must have been from the airplane, where the air had been dirty and continually recycled. On the flight she had gone into the bathroom with the folding door and scrubbed her face with medicinal-smelling soap, but it hadn’t done any good.

  She longed, or so she told herself, to feel and smell that wind in the springtime in Russia when the earth was finally wet and green, but when her nipples began to tingle, and when her breasts hurt walking downstairs, she went into the kitchen and sat there, brooding as she stared at the black car parked in the yard. It didn’t look like it was that hard to drive, and while she had never driven a stick shift before, she guessed she could do it. Her brother had been trained to drive a tank in the Soviet army, and he had talked about it all the time. It couldn’t be that different.

  Frank often went out for walks that lasted a couple of hours, patrolling along the brook for poachers and then taking a trail that went into the woods. There had to be a doctor in town, and perhaps there was a clinic she could go to if she could drive there. She sat in the kitchen and looked at that black car, which left her close to sobbing, and she was amazed that a black hunk of fiberglass could make her feel that way.

  She began to think of those intense hours in Moscow when she had taken a chance with a young thug she had known there. But he had been sweet, even when they had done it in the park after getting drunk at a place called Yugoslavia, which was at the end of the Arbat, and he had told her that if she ever needed anything, she should get in touch. For reasons she couldn’t quite understand, she believed him and wanted to call him, but then this grasping at remote possibilities, as though they were real, might have been just one more example of how disoriented she was, and how desperate. He had told her that he was going to travel to the States on “business,” and that when he got there, he would look her up. Was this true, or just more talk? She looked at the car and tried to decide just what was certain, what was wishful thinking, and what she was going to do.

  Katryna kept her tea from Russia in a jar with a red top. She brewed it in the afternoon, hoping that a familiar smell would help her, but sometimes she got up from the kitchen table and went into the bedroom to lie down after having just a sip.

  Each day Kohler noticed how much less tea there was, and he was afraid that when it got down to nothing there would be a crisis, as though the black tea was the one thing that was keeping her attached to her sense of who and what she was, and when the tea was gone she would leave him. The glass jar had a way of commanding the room, as though it kept a running tally on what their chances were. He looked at the amount o
f tea. Then she did.

  “There’s a place in town that sells tea from all over,” he said.

  “Maybe they’ll have some from Russia,” she said, thinking that she should watch carefully when Kohler drove the car. “Who knows?”

  Katryna and Kohler drove along the two-lane road that led from his house. She noticed that the pattern was like an H, sort of, and Kohler started the gearshift at the top left and then went straight back. He put in one pedal when he worked the lever and then let out the pedal again. She thought she could do that. Once, in Moscow, she had driven a Mercedes truck, a diesel that left a long trail of exhaust, like a cat’s tail.

  They went into the store that was filled with the dusty aroma of tea, and through the window she saw the flat, metallic surface of the river. The tea sat in a row of jars on a shelf, and a lot of it was black and shiny, just like the stuff at home, although there were other teas, too, brown and sere, or a green that was the color of an iguana.

  “Can I help you?” asked the woman behind the counter.

  While Katryna picked out tea from Russia, Kohler looked at some books on the other side of the room, histories of tea, and methods of brewing it, along with a cookbook that had a series of recipes in which tea was used to make sauces and marinades. As he turned the pages, Katryna said in a low voice, “Is there a doctor in town?”

  “Sure,” said the woman. “The one I use is up by the hospital.”

  “Where’s that?” said Katryna.

  “About a mile up this road,” said the woman, who was busy scooping out the tea. “There’s a sign. First Care of Vermont.”

  “I mean a doctor for women,” said Katryna.

  “Sure,” said the woman. “Ask at the desk there.”

  Katryna looked out the window at the river. The geese were flying and she heard their call, at once plaintive, insistent, and trustworthy. She paid for the tea out of money that Kohler had given her, and then they got back in the car with Katryna holding the tea in her lap like a girl with a sack lunch. She saw the vees of geese against the sky, but their sound was lost in the growl of the engine. She watched how he changed the gears, first, then second, third, then fourth. A little gas. He started the engine by turning the key forward, toward the dashboard.