Now Vladimir squirmed and pushed back onto the headrest and tried to be calm as the dentist began poking with the pick. Although he was an old hand at First World dentistry by now, and everything seemed under control here, nothing—not the cleanliness, the fresh, unexpired anesthetic, or even the friendly practitioner—could undo the feeling of complete, abject terror in the blue chair.
Would Javier stay with him permanently?
The poking and prodding in awkward parts of his mouth made Vladimir think about the lack of fluoride and calcium, the fact that only children under seven were allowed milk on the ration card. Not that Cuban adults needed much milk—milk in coffee was an American phenomenon, clearly because there was milk in America. Coffee was another sore subject. The Cordón de la Habana, the line of trees that used to ring the Malecón, had been cut down in the early seventies to implement the Leader's brilliant idea of planting coffee trees. But coffee doesn't grow by the sea; every last tree died. Not a single tree now grew by the Malecón.
Vladimir held a hand up. The dentist paused with the pick. “I just want you to know …,” Vladimir said, removing the saliva-sucking hose. The dentist listened. “I really hate Castro.”
The dentist nodded and went back to work.
Castro had also decided it would be efficient to interbreed dairy cattle and meat cattle; the experiment produced a new hybrid with bad milk and stringy meat. Vladimir held up his hand again.
“No: I really, really HATE him,” he said, and spat blood into the running water.
When he walked out, he saw his son's face, stricken with worry. He was grateful that Javier was there to take him home: the light outside was so intense he couldn't even open his eyes to hail a cab.
He got into bed exhausted.
He must have fallen asleep. He woke up drooling.
Javier offered him a glass of soda with a straw, and began chatting about how much he enjoyed visiting the studio, what fun people Vladimir worked with.
“Is Paul an architect, too?”
“No, Paul is there in his capacity as a friend of Chris.”
“Are Chris and Paul friends from school?”
“Chris and Paul are best friends,” Vladimir said. “They live together and love each other.”
Javier's eyes widened. “You mean … ?”
He nodded. “I try not to judge. I work very well with Chris. We get along fine. Paul is a pain in the ass, but he's always around. Nothing I can do about it.”
Javier took this in. Vladimir arranged his pillows to sit up in bed.
“What about Magnus?”
“I think he's still available, if you're interested.”
Javier cast a not-amused look at him.
The sun was going down and the sounds of a baseball game drifted in from the field. Javier went to look out the window.
Vladimir had missed the entire childhood of his son.
But how could he have done anything any differently? Who, in his position, with that impossible wife, in that impossible country, would have stuck around to see how much worse it could get? He'd made mistakes. He'd paid for them. He stood by his life.
Vladimir arrived at the theater the following evening to begin his son's architectural education. Javier was waiting in Diane's office, and Diane followed them out with her bag. It appeared she was coming along. He would have to say something, and soon. He took them to the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Flat-iron Building, a series of cast-iron warehouses in the West Twenties. Javier and Diane were chewing gum—were they listening to what he was saying?
“Enough for today. Dinner?” he asked, hoping Diane would say goodbye.
“Sure,” she said, and recommended a place around the corner.
Since he had nothing else in mind, they went around the corner.
“So you eat at restaurants all the time,” Javier said as they sat down at a place that was decorated like an old-time bar, with black-and-white photos and mounted fish on the walls and assorted picturesque junk on every surface.
“I don't cook,” Vladimir said. Javier had been lobbying to get groceries.
“I love to cook,” Diane said, swinging her new short hair. Vladimir still hadn't gotten used to it. “But I don't have a kitchen. I don't have a home.”
“Still?”
She threw her hands up in a posture of rage and helplessness.
What was wrong with this woman? He'd been willing to believe she'd hit a run of bad luck, but this was ridiculous. She was clearly waiting for their situation to resume so that she didn't have to make any financial commitments. He wanted to be at home playing chess; he was playing three games simultaneously now at RedHotPawn.com.
“I was supposed to be a homeowner as of the other day. But the seller called half an hour before the closing to say that she'd been in a car accident, and she wanted a delay because her physical therapy is a block from the apartment.”
“So you'll wait?”
“Two weeks, sure. Anything more than that, no.”
He felt some pressure release in his side.
“It has a terrific little kitchen. Listen: It's painted HOT PINK!”
He recoiled. What had he ever seen in her?
Javier had eaten all the bread. Take it easy, Vladimir wanted to say, but the kid was so thin. Javier and Diane were making plans to go to a museum the following day. “Four o'clock okay with you, Dad?”
“Actually, some of us have to work,” he said.
They both stared at him. In Spanish, Javier said, “Why are you so mean to her?”
“Mind your own business.”
“She's terrific, Dad. I can't believe you treat her like this.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“She didn't tell me anything. I have eyes.”
Diane was alert; she could probably figure out what they were saying.
“Enough. I've opened up my life to you, and I'm glad to see you, Javier. But I'm warning you: Don't stir up trouble in my personal life.”
Javier sat back.
“It's rude to speak in Spanish and not include Diane,” Vladimir said in English.
“Soy cubano” Javier said, in a fatuous radio-announcer's voice. “jSoy popular!”
“Let's schedule that visit for a time when you can join us,” Diane said.
“That's very nice of you,” he said, thinking of how he might get out of it.
Javier drifted off to look at some photos in the bar. It was now or never.
“Look, I hadn't planned anything, because I was sure that his application would be denied, if not by the Americans, then by the Cubans. But I can find a class for him and he won't be a burden.”
“Javier isn't a burden. He's a delight.”
He forced himself to look at her. She smiled without cynicism and said, “When the apartment comes through, I really am going to cook for you two.”
“What: a family dinner?”
Her face froze. “Why not? Family is what you make it.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Clearly. You know, Vladimir, I think the situation you moaned about all those years was really just fine by you. I think you don't want a family. Not just the one you were stuck with, but any family.”
He shook his head. “I'm sorry, Diane.”
“Were you even going to tell me about the divorce? I heard about it thirdhand.”
“Javier brought the papers. It's official.”
“So I was fun while you were unavailable, but now that you're a free man, you have better things to do with your time?”
Javier sat down eager to talk. “Those people have motorcycles!”
Diane was a study in disgust.
“Shall I go away again?”
“That's a good idea,” Vladimir said.
In Javier's wake, they stared at each other across the table.
“Look, I'm tired and I'm angry and I've spent almost half my life fighting something and now it's over. I don't know wha
t to do or what to think. Okay?”
“Are you saying you might be interested when you figure it out?”
“I can't tell you to wait until then. That wouldn't be fair to you.”
“Oh, but stringing me along for almost three months making me wait for a single word of anything from you IS fair to me? Did you think I hadn't noticed?”
He sighed. Javier came back to the booth as his dessert was delivered.
“I can get a motorcycle license at the DMB,” he said in a chatty way. “What's the DMB?”
“The DMV is the Department of Motor Vehicles, with a V. And you can't ride a motorcycle as long as you are under my roof.”
“Hasta mañana, socio.” Diane rose, kissed Javier on both cheeks and walked out.
“She's not like Mom at all.” Javier lifted his spoon and watched enchanted as the ice cream fell in a ribbon.
“Enough about both of them. And don't play with your food.”
JULY
DIANE LOITERED across the street from the apartment with the hot-pink kitchen early on a dark, humid, claustrophobic morning. She didn't buy the seller's car-accident story, and needed to know whether to cut her losses. If the story was true, Tanya Morris, a middle-aged legal secretary, would emerge from the building on crutches and turn left for her daily physical therapy session.
Diane hadn't been up this early in a long time. Sometimes Javier would ask her questions, like, Does CVS belong to the State? Does the U.S. government pay your wage? There would be a free-ranging discussion, two hours would go by, and she wouldn't even notice. Javier was the highlight of her day.
Through a Paul Zazlow connection, she had found a beautiful, sleek, furnished one-bedroom month-to-month sublet in the West Village, and had moved out of the Commodore Club. She hadn't noticed until she moved into the sublet that the space was permeated by a faint smell of bleach. The second night, she turned on a light and found the phrase “R.I.P. Consuelo” scrawled in red marker on the back wall of a closet.
She called Paul. “R.I.P Consuelo?”
“I didn't want to tell you,” he said. There had been a murder in the apartment. Fairly recently. But it was a great location, an elegantly furnished place, and as good a temporary solution as she would find for the money—didn't she agree? As she undressed and got into bed, she thought of The Tenant (1976), perhaps Roman Polanski's most execrable movie, although the scene where Polanski—renting an apartment previously inhabited by a woman who threw herself out a window—pokes his finger into a hole in the wall next to the bed and pulls out a tooth had to be among the most magnificently creepy moments on film.
Diane checked her watch. Where was the wounded seller? She called the only physical therapy clinic in the neighborhood that she'd found listed in the phone book. “This is Tanya Morris,” she said. “Could you look up what time I have my therapy appointment today?”
“Tanya Morris?” There was a moment of shuffling. “I don't have you in our system. Are you a new patient?”
Diane hung up. Everyone, but everyone, was wasting her time.
She stalked down the block, calling Paul. “This accident is bullshit! Could you line up a day of apartments for me tomorrow, please?”
There was a pause. “Actually, tomorrow I have the whole day booked.”
“Are you getting rid of me, Paul?”
“Diane! How can you say that?”
“Why? I'm too much trouble? Not in a high enough bracket? What?”
“Diane, relax. What about Thursday?”
She stalked to Third Avenue. Nobody wanted anything from her. She bought a paper and sat at the coffee bar that should have been her local hangout by now. She combed the real estate section looking for owners selling without agents. She found an open house in the West Village the following night.
When she got to the theater, Javier was pacing the lobby with excitement.
He had discovered the Food Network.
He wanted to make dinner for her.
She sat down at her desk, which looked the way she felt: scattered, shabby, confused. “What will you make?”
“Applewood-smoked tilapia on a bed of frisée lettuce with pancetta and mango-corn salsa,” he labored to read from a sheet of paper.
“Wow. Either that or an egg salad sandwich. Count me in!”
The new series was “Savoir Faire,” classic comedies from France. The French made comedies that weren't funny. They made sex comedies about innocence, buddy comedies about men not bonding and family comedies that were inappropriate for children. And yet. As Truffaut said, “We always appreciate better what comes to us from afar, not only because of the attraction of the exotic but because the absence of everyday references reinforces the prestige of the work.”
Dorothy Vail appeared, for no good reason, in a white-and-navy linen sailor suit with a crisply pleated skirt. Diane introduced her to Javier and asked him to bring sodas, just then noticing a pile of newspapers, magazines and DVDs scattered over the floor. Where had that come from?
“He's delicious!” Dorothy said when Javier walked out.
“Hey!”
“What? Such curls! You just want to run your hands through them.”
“Dorothy”—she faced her directly—“what can I do to help?”
“I have an extra ticket to the ballet tomorrow night. Are you free?”
“Thanks so much, but I have an open house tomorrow night.”
“What about the hot-pink kitchen?”
“Fell through. Beyond despair. Living in a crime scene now. If you hear of anything, in any price range, for rent, for sale or for sublet. Anywhere. Let me know.”
Javier returned with three sodas and sat down on the sofa. He'd gotten into the habit of hanging out in Diane's office, and she hadn't dissuaded him. Minute by minute, she could see him absorbing information and acquiring new habits. He got something out of every encounter, every leaflet that was handed to him on the street, every ad on a passing bus. Right now he was eager to listen to Dorothy.
Smiling at the attention of this keen young man, Dorothy said to Diane, “There's somebody coming to the ballet that I'd love you to meet.”
Diane laced her fingers on top of her desk. “No.”
“Don't you want to know who he is?”
“I don't care who he is.”
“But Diane. He's the son of Leona and Myron Gelbman. They've had the exclusive plumbing contract for all the Broadway theaters for many years.”
“He's in plumbing? No wonder you want me to go out with him.”
“A good-looking guy, a family business, and he happens to be Jewish.”
“Since when are you such a yenta, Miss Vail?”
“I happen to know that you are Jewish, even if I am not. The Gelbmans aren't religious, but the son went to Israel after the divorce, and he is quite observant now.”
“He's a born-again Jewish plumbing magnate?”
“And a serious tennis player, in the fifty-and-over league.”
“I don't like this man for Diane,” Javier announced.
Dorothy smiled. “You like your dad better?”
“Okay, everybody stop talking about me. I am here.”
“Maybe not my dad. But this guy is not seem fun for Diane.”
“Speak to my manager, Dorothy,” she said, indicating Javier. “In the meantime, we have an urgent Rohmer screening. Would you like to join us?”
“Oh, no. I can't stand him. Talk talk talk.”
“Yes!” Javier said, and engaged Dorothy in an impassioned chat about Pauline at the Beach (Eric Rohmer, 1982). Dorothy immediately invited him to lunch. He looked at Diane for permission.
“Of course,” she said, making a do-what-you-like gesture. She felt annoyed. She liked the routine that had developed with Javier, where they had lunch, worked on cinema business and then watched the double feature at the end of the day. In fact, she'd watched more movies with Javier in the month since he'd arrived than she had in the previous six months. The previous
evening, as they watched Pauline at the Beach, she'd been so comfortable she almost put her head on his shoulder.
After he and Dorothy had gone, she slipped another new release from France into the DVD player. Diane had learned many things from French films over the years: austerity is a virtue (Bresson); adultery is normal (Chabrol, Godard, Malle, Tacchella, Truffaut); incest is natural (Blier, Chabrol, Malle); talk is often better than action (Assayas, Desplechin, Leconte, Rohmer); audiences need not be entertained (Demy, Godard, Resnais, Rivette, Tavernier); there is nothing more stifling or dreary than a provincial French town (Bresson, Chabrol, Fontaine, Pialat); Paris really does set the standard for style (Assayas, Besson, Jeunet). Also: coming of age can be gut-wrenching (Breillat, Jaquot, Kurys, Malle, Truffaut, Varda), and youth are sexual beings (Andrieux, Blier, Chabrol, Malle, Truffaut, Varda).
She wondered where Dorothy would take Javier, and what they would talk about.
“Enough chess and architecture lectures. I want to go out.”
Javier had doused himself with a pungent aftershave that came in a bottle Vladimir remembered from his own adolescence. “So go out.”
“I want to go out with you.” “I don't want to go out. So you can stay in with me, or go out yourself.”
“You are so boring. Why did Mom wait for you all those years?” An expression passed over Javier's face, making him look exactly like Pucho, and Vladimir almost choked. Resentment was to be expected; he'd been surprised that it hadn't surfaced. Without a doubt, there were hormones at work here; he hadn't provided a structure, a place where Javier could meet kids—girls—his own age. That didn't give Javier the right to speak to him that way.
“You wanted to come here. You're here. This is it. This is America. This is what I'm doing tonight. Do what you want to do, but don't insult me in my own home. It's ungrateful, and unnecessary.”
Javier kicked his sneaker across the room.
Vladimir walked into the bedroom and closed the door. He'd moved his desk there to be able to work without disturbing Javier. He was now a prisoner in his own bedroom. The living room was overflowing with crap that Javier attracted—newspapers, magazines, gum wrappers, articles from the Internet, calendars from the cinema, museum floor plans, ticket stubs from concerts. Javier saved price tags. Javier was all over everything. When Vladimir opened the refrigerator, he found a dish of dense orange material. He took it out to examine it. It looked like a brick.
Don't Make a Scene Page 23