Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  “That is helpful! Thank you. But,” Ian said, pointing to his menu, “I was referring to the Lake Ohrid crap. Right here.

  “It’s either that,” he continued in a tone of complete seriousness, “or the house special, which is the Lake Ohrid throat.” He leaned forward and fixed his tree-bark eyes on me.

  “What do you fancy? The throat or the crap?”

  He pushed the menu in front of me. It was immediately obvious to me that whoever had translated trout and carp for the English menu had made some very unfortunate spelling errors. “Oh I would definitely go for the throat,” I answered.

  Ian looked amused. Suddenly I saw myself as I supposed he did. I was wearing a conservative beige turtleneck, and I had not taken my hair down after finishing my lecture earlier in the day. I had donned my reading glasses to examine my menu, and I suddenly felt every inch the dowdy librarian I imagined he saw before him.

  “Really?” he responded. “I wouldn’t have thought so. You seem like a nice young lady.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks. He gave me a coy smile. I could see it in his eyes. He was teasing me.

  “Nice shirt,” I said back, annoyed. He didn’t know me.

  “Thank you,” he said, having a quick look down at what he was wearing. He then physically picked up his chair and angled it away from me and toward Joanna. She, though busy tolerating one of Hillbilly Buck’s stories, registered this realignment with a glance at Ian and a flicker of a smile.

  The toothless octogenarian playing the accordion suddenly fell upon our table like a vampire bat on a herd of cows, and I started digging though my wallet for a tip.

  Ian and Peter eventually left with Hillbilly Buck, who announced he wanted to go somewhere “cooler.” Joanna and I stayed at the tavern, dancing for hours with the scruffy old accordion player and his equally unkempt grandsons who were in the band that came on after.

  That’s how we were. Back then.

  MADDIE

  2001

  After a long weekend with Joanna, I made the bus journey back through the mountains from Macedonia to Bulgaria, closing my eyes as we teetered around precipices and trundled along narrow lanes cutting above massive cliffs. Per usual the driver went far too fast, and the road conditions were poor. Yet for some reason, halfway through the nauseating ride, I was already starting to wonder if and when I might be able to return.

  Back in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, it was with a heavy heart that I arrived to teach my very last class at the university a few weeks later. My time was up. My scholarship was ending as were my afternoons with my students. I would have to go home soon, and I didn’t want to go home at all.

  The urban campus was dominated by a massive baroque revival main hall. The front steps led up to four stately columns, which flanked towering arched windows. The roof was a massive copper dome with a striking jade green patina.

  Inside, it was far less impressive. Several floors of classrooms surrounded a small courtyard. The stairwells were covered in graffiti. The coffee shop offered espresso in tiny plastic cups alongside a rack stocked with cigarettes and a variety of pretzels. From the coffee shop you could follow a trail of discarded espresso cups and empty pretzel packages to anywhere in the building. The bins were full. There was no janitor. There was no toilet paper. There was no money.

  And it was cold. My classroom was on the top floor. Most of the winter I had taught wearing my coat and gloves, looking out over a sea of stocking caps.

  That year in Eastern Europe had been an especially magic time in my life. Just strolling the streets of Sofia, it would have been hard to say what my fascination was with the people and the culture of that maligned country.

  Everywhere you looked, there were ghosts. The black-and-white paper death notices featuring photos of the recently deceased were omnipresent in all the Balkan countries; stapled to telephone poles, plastering bus stops, papering walls and nailed to trees. Underneath the gaze of all those dead photocopied eyes the dogs paced, watching the drunk teenagers with their döner kebabs. A couple of wrinkly men in old, stained fedoras played backgammon at a plastic table under a Zagorka beer umbrella at a derelict café constructed of metal siding. I breathed in the smells of Sofia. Grilled meat and peppers, smoldering trash, crisp, pungent pine from the mountain, badly masked body odor, flower markets and fresh popcorn. It wasn’t for everyone, but I was head over heels for those forlorn and villainous Balkan streets, and my sordid city was about to be wrenched from my desperate embrace. I would have given anything to stay just a little longer.

  It was getting dark when I caught the dilapidated tram back to my apartment in the city center. Moments after tossing my keys on the coffee table, my rotary phone—a contraption that looked like it belonged in a silent film or a museum—made its shrill rattle. “Hello?”

  It was Caroline, an editor from Fodor’s Travel Guides, who had hired me to write a few chapters about Spain when I was fresh out of graduate school. “We’re finally breaking down our Eastern European Edition into countries,” she said.

  It was the best surprise ever.

  She offered me the job of covering Bulgaria for their 2003 travel guide. The pay was not good by American standards but in bargain-basement Bulgaria? I’d just been handed the keys to the Kingdom. I was going to travel, all expenses paid, to every corner of my beloved adopted homeland. It was the middle of May and the start of the gorgeous Balkan summer. Bulgaria had vast stretches of unspoiled beaches as well as breathtaking mountains for hiking. Jo could come visit, and we would take weekend drives down to Sozopol, where she would swim while I read on the beach. There would be picnic tables laden with succulent lamb chops, salty tomato-and-cucumber salads and crispy french fries covered in crumbly feta. We would go barefoot, and our skin would darken and freckle and we would drink homemade white wine in remote, ancient and tourist-free fishing villages.

  I could stay. It was pure happiness. Pure freedom. I called Joanna to tell her the news. “I don’t have to go home when my scholarship ends after all,” I said. “I’ll have lots of time to come see you. I have my laptop. I can write from anywhere. We have the whole summer before I have to leave.”

  “Yay!” she screamed over the phone. “Oh my God. That is abso-fucking-lutely the best news ever. Congratulations, baby!”

  * * *

  The next night I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my apartment with my ancient, liver-spotted neighbor, Mr. Milov. We were chatting at extreme length about the appalling prices of bread and yogurt, and I was slowly inching away toward the entrance to our building when a black Mercedes pulled up alongside us.

  Mr. Milov had impressive eyebrows like silver caterpillars, and they shot up in alarm. The passenger window lowered and a man wearing a cap and sunglasses said with a thick Eastern European accent, “Miss Brandt? I need you to get in the car.”

  “I’m not getting in your car,” I answered, laughing out loud. Then I noticed that Mr. Milov was legitimately terrified and gulping for breath.

  I grabbed his arm, but before I could say anything the back door swung open, and there was Joanna, holding a bottle of champagne. “I’m sorry!” she shouted, jumping out. “Is he okay? Are you okay? It was a surprise for Maddie! We’re celebrating that she doesn’t have to go back home yet! I’m so sorry.”

  She held up the champagne and said with an embarrassed, guilty smile, “Iznenada! Surprise!”

  Mr. Milov collected himself and shuffled away, muttering with his hand over his heart.

  * * *

  An hour later Jo and I were huddled at a corner table drinking bellinis and eating beef carpaccio and smoked salmon at the Sheraton’s Capitale.

  “I owed you a visit,” she said, poking her fork at a piece of salmon. “I’ve been so busy. You’ve been to see me way more times lately than I’ve come to see you. It wasn’t even that long of a drive. Five hours. Tops. Easy peasy. And honest
ly? It feels so good to be away from all the rage and hate, having a blast here with you. This salmon is amazing.”

  She began breathlessly outlining for me the plan she had for us to drive to Montenegro later in the summer and spend a week on the beach at Budva.

  “My friend Ana is going to hook us up with a friend of hers, this guy who rents his flat every summer and goes and lives with his toothless uncle under a bridge or something. But it’s got a beautiful view. Ana emailed me a picture, which I’ll show you when we get back to your apartment, but honestly, Maddie, it’s so awesome and now that you’re staying I don’t have to go alone! My break is from August sixth to—”

  As she was prattling happily along her phone buzzed. She didn’t even pause until she had opened it, and then her face changed completely. She had this little vein that ran down her forehead, and when she was upset it would become gorged with blood. It was throbbing. Her hand was shaking. “Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  She closed her phone and lowered her head.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She looked up and let out a huge sigh. “I have to go back to ball-sack Skopje.”

  “What!”

  “Hold on.” She made a quick call to her driver and then motioned to the waiter for the check. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay after all.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “We have a shipment of baby formula and diapers for the refugees at Stankovac being detained at the Greek border.”

  “But it’s the weekend. Can’t it wait until Monday?”

  “If I lose this shipment, it’s thousands of dollars,” she said, rifling through her purse for her wallet. “And apparently the Macedonian police are trying to confiscate it. That would mean we’ll never see it again.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because some police officer at the border knows that there’s a crazy American lady who will pay to get her shipment released.”

  “You mean you?”

  “Duh.”

  “You’re going to pay off a policeman?”

  “Yep,” she said nonchalantly, and then knocked back the last sip from her champagne flute.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Oh my God,” she said, mimicking me, and then laughed. “It’s okay, Maddie. It’s just the way things get done.”

  We grabbed a cab back to my apartment. While she threw her things back into her bag, I packed as well. She noticed and said, “I can’t take you back with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not a good idea this time.”

  “I’m done teaching and my assignment package from Fodor’s isn’t going to arrive for two weeks. I can’t even start working until then. Let me come with you.”

  “It’s getting worse in Macedonia. Massacres. Bombings. All of us Americans are under a travel warning not to enter the country.”

  “You live there!”

  “I have to! Don’t be crazy.”

  “I’m coming.”

  After a second she reached out and took my hand. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  For the first stretch of the drive, Joanna was busy texting her coworkers about the situation. When the border crossing was behind us, my thoughts wandered. My parents would be furious with me for taking the Fodor’s job and staying in Eastern Europe. However, I imagined my grandmother Audrey would be quite pleased. She, too, had been frustrated by the inertia of her Midwestern upbringing in a small university town filled with academics and immigrants. But she had learned French in school and German from her grandparents.

  When I was thirteen she took me on an architectural tour of France focusing on the structures of Le Corbusier. On Saturdays she would take me to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and make me repeat after her: “Though Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins museum is primarily distinguished for its extensive collection of Asian art, I have always particularly adored the lovely east wing, which is filled with European paintings by Caravaggio, El Greco, Degas and Monet.”

  This was one of many rehearsed opinions meant to be shared with the sophisticated and cultured people she introduced me to on our travels. I remember sitting across from her over a light lunch after one such outing to the Nelson-Atkins. We were at her first-choice corner table at the private Carriage Club. I was sipping tea, ignoring the enticing bread basket and picking at my salad as she had taught me to do.

  “The problem with Sara,” she said, referring to my sexy sister, “is that she has never had her heart broken. And Julia. Well. Julia is brilliant. But book brilliant, if you know what I mean. You, my dear,” she said, her small gray eyes boring into mine with fiery ambition, “you are more like me. The type to take on the world. People like us? We don’t play by the rules. My grandparents would say you are ‘übermensch.’ Remarkable.”

  I took my grandmother’s veiny hand in both of mine and leaned toward her to share in her conspiratorial smile. Maybe I was remarkable. She said so and I was game to find out. And unremarkable Kansas played no part in my future whatsoever. My parents had no idea, but I was never going to move back home.

  It was partly because of that conversation with Grandmother Audrey that I began to view the rules as guidelines, scoff at danger and flirt with disaster. Like Icarus, I suppose I was giddy and flew too close to the sun.

  His wings were fake, constructed of wax and feathers. He should have known better. They melted and burned. He plummeted from high in the sky into a vast sea where he drowned.

  Up front in the driver’s seat, Stoyan cracked his window and began to smoke. Only one hand on the wheel. We’d reached a neglected stretch of highway, the road uneven and dark. Trucks coming from the opposite direction barreled by, causing gusts of wind.

  Stoyan began to overtake a slow-moving car while headlights from oncoming traffic twinkled ominously in the distance. The radio was loud.

  I glanced over at Joanna. She gave me a sleepy smile and then closed her eyes. I did the same.

  When we woke, the mountains were behind us.

  MADDIE

  Nine weeks before

  Ian is in Nigeria looking after a small group of firefighters from Boots & Coots who are preparing to extinguish an enormous oil well fire outside Port Harcourt, where there was a suicide bombing last month. These oil fires can take weeks to put out and then there’s a massive cleanup. He told me ninety days, but the truth is I don’t know when he’s coming home.

  I’m headed to see Cami J and wondering if part of today’s session will be another list of things that scare me. If so, this time I will include Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadists and their fanatic leader. He was on television briefly last night and I rewound it six times. He chomped his gum and gleefully declared, “Guess what? I abducted your girls!”

  As I watched the documentary clip again and again I thought about the two hundred girls they took like it was nothing. That’s the world now. No consequences. That’s where Ian’s been for the past three weeks and where he’ll be stuck for some time to come.

  With Ian out of town and my parents visiting my sister in St. Louis, I need to leave Charlie at the YMCA Kid’s Club for the two hours necessary to drive into Overland Park, have my session and drive back. I can’t find Charlie’s shoes and he can’t find his special superhero paracord bracelet Ian made for him. We’re running late.

  I’m backing out of the driveway like a lunatic, and I nearly run over my neighbor Wayne Randall. Wayne has retired from his job at Heritage Tractor and Trailer and now spends the better part of each day planting trees, trimming his hedges and staging elaborate holiday arrangements around his house and yard about two months too early. He is literally standing behind my car, so that I have to come to a complete stop. Wayne spent three weeks on the English coast forty years ago and is also a fan of Monty Python movies. Without fail, whether Ian is with me or
not, Wayne greets me heartily with a horrible British accent.

  “Maddie,” he says outside my window, moving his hand in frantic circles like he’s turning a handle. Charlie leans forward with interest. Wayne may as well be a clown.

  I oblige and roll down the window. He pokes his ruddy face in and shouts, “Top o’ the mornin’, lass. It’s been donkey’s years!”

  I say, “I’m so sorry, Wayne, no time. I’m late for an appointment.”

  “Okay,” he says, not budging. “And how’s the wee little lad?” He shows Charlie his big brown teeth.

  Charlie frowns and says, “We don’t say ‘wee’ anymore.”

  “Because you’re so big?”

  “No. Because I go to the bathroom now. Not wee.”

  Wayne hits his thigh twice; this is so damn funny. “Isn’t that precious?”

  “It’s true,” Charlie says, nodding grimly. He holds up his bare wrist for Wayne to see. “And look. I lost my bracelet.”

  “Boys don’t wear bracelets!” Wayne says teasingly with a wink at me.

  Charlie sits straight up and his cheeks flush red. “They do. It’s made from parachutes and soldiers wear them and so does my dad.”

  “Okay, okay,” says Wayne apologetically. “I was only—”

  “My dad made it for me. You just don’t know about it because you’re not a soldier.”

  “All right, Charlie,” I say. “That’s enough.”

  A dark cloud passes over Wayne’s face and his eye twitches. “Is that what your dad said? Wayne Randall never went to war? Did he say that?”

  Wayne starts muttering something about having tried to enlist, and I simply can’t wait any longer. “I’m so sorry, Wayne. I should have said straightaway that we’re late for a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Well, pardon me. On your way then,” he says, retreating. I pull away, and in my rearview mirror I can see him glowering, arms hanging at his sides. I feel a bit bad, but I just can’t give our retired neighbor the amount of attention he wants. Charlie and I would spend all of our time in Wayne’s garage watching him build birdhouses.