A SHORT STORY

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent”. ~Victor Hugo

WILD LIFE

His name is Billy Porter, and he was once married to Angela. Brighton, England where Billy Porter comes from exists only in his head now, remotely oneiric. He rents a couple of decent rooms on the top floor of a half-baked, two-story stucco cottage on Oceanview Avenue in Brighton Beach. It is a Brooklyn neighborhood, jerry-rigged with color and roughly sketched in broad Slavic strokes; tagged by ethnically diverse newcomers and described most accurately by Billy’s Russian born landlord, Viktor Semenov: “This iss nut the United States, moy frehn.”

It was also very far from his job at a zoo in Queens, which sat snugly in a pocket of Flushing Meadows Park. It was a ridiculously long commute, in fact, involving two changes onto three subway lines and still only just far enough. It is the mechanical motion on the nearly two-hour journey—at least twice a day, five days a week—that saves him. At busier hours of the day or night he was distracted by the choppy tide of passengers that washed his mind free of pointless backtracking. Sometimes, in the winter, he entered an empty subway car after a parting glance at the Unisphere’s black silhouette, which reminded him of a Kara Walker tableau. In the deserted space he had to imagine an episode of Dr. Who or be drawn into unwelcome episodic memory.

After a few false starts spring took hold and unleashed stiff-legged sufferers of cabin fever—all sorts, young and old, orthodox and profane—and directed them to the zoo in Flushing Meadows in droves. Billy Porter—or Porter as he preferred to be called— saw an onslaught of third-graders was headed straight for his post, led by an already harried-looking teacher, and darted into the ticket booth. His exaggerated appearance—arms and legs akimbo, quivering like a frightened cartoon rabbit—left the young female attendant flustered and giggling, while the teacher and her overheated charges eyed them warily.

“Just need a sec, love.” Ducking, he checked his messages. Willie, texting again: “Sorry 4 not kissing ass. I am who I am that it.”

His co-worker—and friend, he had to admit—was a fifteen-year-old wannabe gangsta in the body of a forty-seven-year-old man and it was always a drama with Willie. He and Porter were security guards on a handful of acreage in Queens. What was once a garbage dump, became landfill, and then the site of one World’s Fair and then a quarter of a century later another one; weighting the dubious cap of achievement heavier on the “master builder”, Robert Moses. Finally, it was a zoo, or Wildlife Conservancy as it was eventually re-christened. Angela was a native New Yorker. She called a despot a despot. She’d have something to say about Porter too; remade, yes, but working the day job he’d once scorned.

They were the odd couple for sure, Porter and Willie, similar only in age. A tall, keen-witted, ginger-haired Brit, Porter embodied the desiccated joke no one gets until the storyteller with the irresistible British accent has left the room. The older women were charmed by his courtly manner. The younger ones drawn to his deeper well, never prying but always alert for signs of his past. Willie’s muscle mass, like the winter-hard ground, had softened on his squat mud-spring body, like a boxer no longer in training. Under his baseball cap, his shaved skull bore an elaborately lettered tattoo that warned he was “born to raise hell.” He was a gregarious Puerto Rican always looking to party until some injustice, some misstep on the part of another, usually a supervisor, clouded his otherwise low-pressure demeanor. Then Willie was a bad muthafucka. Porter guessed his text message meant Willie had refused to do overtime. It didn’t matter that he had already planned on the late shift. It was on his terms or nadda.

Porter texted:“2nite is off?” He had counted on Willie to do that shift, but a man like Porter had all the time in the world. He had to go with the flow. He added his signature response, “No worries,” thinking his reply might sound harsh. Later, they left together, legging it past the rockets he had seen rusting from neglect that were now tarted up reminders that once man was predicted to walk on the moon. Willie was all apology that wasn’t really an apology. With bone-deep budget cuts, the bosses were riding employees who weren’t on sick leave, jury duty, vacation, or disability. Willie didn’t mind being asked to do overtime. The extra money was essential to his well-being. He minded very much being told.

“Whatcha doin’ tonight then, Pawteh? Gonna play some bally lika with Ivan?” The way his name escaped from the tongue of a streetwise native amused Porter no end. He loved the accent, the noo yawkiness. When, at first, he used to make fun of it Angela, rightly, fought back. “Massif, innit?” she’d challenged. “It’s all just music babe, you know?” Porter stared ahead. “Might do. And his name is Viktor.” Willie started, “Sorry man, I….” “No worries,” Porter reassured him, he’d have a quiet night, a walk on the beach. Maybe go to the café. Willie knew better than to invite Porter along with his homies, as he called them. It meant endless tequila shots and chorus lines of white powder kicking it back in East Harlem. It meant suddenly realizing it was 4 A.M. and time to get back to work. Porter knew better than to ask but he did anyway: “What are you up to tonight mate?” Willie patted his chest over a NY Yankees jersey. “Livin’ large, I hope, bro.” They parted at Grand Central. “Be happy we work outdoors. Lotta eye candy at the zoo today.” Willie high-fived. “I’m good. You good?” Porter told Willie he was good.

At the Queens end of his commute there was the distant passing skyline of Manhattan to ponder. He was rarely induced to leave Brooklyn or Queens for the city but he was somehow reassured by the architecture of memory across the river. He sometimes rose from a seat to gaze out of the window when the train reemerged above ground and crossed the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn. Porter wondered at the speed of graffiti artists in covering the work of another, their tags slapped across every available surface. He wanted to disappear, remove his name from everything.

He felt up for it so he remained seated until he got off at Coney Island. Porter loved early spring. The first trace of the ocean swept his nostrils at Sheepshead Bay. The scent intensified until he was on foot and well clear of Nathan’s Famous on Neptune Avenue and inhaling only what the ocean had to offer at the far end of the pier at Coney.

A freighter skimmed the horizon like a slow-moving target in a carnival shooting range. Tangerine and purple streaks ripped the sky, predicting a fine sunset. Porter slumped over the weathered railing above the Atlantic. Before he knew the neighborhood all too well, he and Angela had made many trips out there. She loved the ocean, especially in winter. Thunderous waves along a deserted beach invigorated her. He needed a placid sea, not the sound of the tearing of his soul; gulls crying or laughing he could never tell. Like hot flashbacks beating against cool present, it all ends up in tears if he goes there. So he doesn’t go there. It was the ocean that brought them together. It was his visceral ocean that drove them apart.

Angela had been on a lark when they met. She’d made a bet with friends that she would get to London before her 29th birthday. But after a week of pints in boisterous pubs, soporific cream teas in over-upholstered ambiance and tiring hikes through cavernous museums she’d bolted and set off for the seaside. Porter awaited her in Brighton in high, seductive heat. She’d stumbled into the Zap Club, to the crowd cheering his band. Angela fell heavily for his beguiling voice, his disarming lyrics sung over folky, rogue music. She loved his dry, idiosyncratic humor. She was a hard-line New Yorker, a native and tough as nails. Yet she was a successful illustrator of children’s books, her style unconventional, and a voice as warm as a freshly laundered towel.

They married and he made a life with her in Manhattan in her art-filled apartment on West End Avenue. He dug the vibe of the neighborhood on the upper west side. Fortress like, their building was a musician’s haven. Judy Collins lived next door.

They would head for the pier at Coney armed with bright yellow paper bags of salty fries bloodied with catsup, already a comfortable married couple in the first years of marriage. She’d count the number of steps—432—it took her to reach the end. She did it for fun until she needed a reason to ignore his moods.

Staving off melancholy, he decided his usual table in the café under the elevated tracks back in Brighton Beach was no substitute for his landlady’s kitchen. An evening with Viktor and Valentina Semenov meant a home-cooked meal. The fussy ministrations of Valentina sometimes exasperated him, but the food was reliably satisfying followed by strong coffee before Viktor unpacked the balalaika.

Inspired, Porter hurried along the beach away from Coney Island, away from the turbaned man strolling in pensive meditation who stopped to stroke a long ashen beard and stare at the horizon. Soon the place would be teeming with day-trippers. The irascible bartenders at Cha-Cha’s and Ruby’s would be placating the punters with weak American beer. Hideous canned laughter would once again exhort the crowds to ‘shoot the freak.’ It would be a change from the likes of a dog-eared eighty year old; the nearly naked man with a strange orange glow dressed only in skimpy running shorts jogging in frigid weather. A gnarled bit of driftwood spearing the sand caught his eye. Angela would conjure fantastic scenarios for the spine of some mystical creature she came across. He managed to shutter that: “Nope," he'd counter, “it’s a piece of wood.”

He picked up his pace and returned to the boardwalk. Echoing above the wall of the aquarium the hollow bark of sea lions accompanied the clatter of an incoming train in the near distance. Porter’s childhood fantasies were about the sea, the dark mysteries of the ocean. He loved the Ladybird books, simple picture books about science and nature that captivated him. When his marriage failed and he found himself living in Brighton Beach he returned to the aquarium so many times he became a kind of fixture. He discovered the odd steel eyeball, called the bathysphere, that obsessed him as a boy. Still taken aback by how small it was and always delighted by its monocle.

One of the attendants he’d chatted with introduced him to the woman in public relations. Likewise charmed by him, she got Porter an interview for a security job at the Aquarium. Soon after there was also an opening at the recently re-opened zoo in Flushing Meadows. He accepted the position in Queens, much to the bewilderment of his mentor. “The commute is a horror,” she exclaimed. “You must be crazy!” He’d tapped his head as if to say, “Just a tad.”

In Brighton Beach Porter looked into the café. He recognized the solitary men gazing distractedly up at a television screen from a plate of smoked fish; elbows on the table, fingers splayed for the invisible cigarette while watching a Madonna look alike gyrate to Slavic-infused Hip-Hop. Porter could eat the same thing every night. Angela never understood that. He never got her interest in food though he loved it when she cooked. She prepared a meal like she was visiting with friends, happiest in a market of fresh produce. Tonight he would not be one of those men.

Rounding his corner onto Oceanview Avenue, he was greeted by the sight of a rebellious patch of lawn. Behind the undisputed chain link fence was planted a rigid line of sunny yellow plastic tulips. At the top of the steep crumbling steps to a bright red front door, salmon-pink flamingoes eyed him like sentinels. His rooms above were spare and clean, disturbed only with his few belongings and what instruments and recording gear he still had. He recognized the aroma of dill and onion. Valentina called from the kitchen: “Just in time Beeley.” Her husband dropped his balalaika in the comforting hodgepodge of their front room. “For later, moy frehn. Now, we eat.”

Porter woke refreshed in the still dark room. He gathered his clothes, baggy navy cargo shorts, and a white cotton polo shirt. An incoming text pinged his cell phone. Willie: “Buggin man. BP wit me. Doin 2 shifts later. We on 2nite. Peace.” Porter shook his head. It was how Willie kept his job, getting a supervisor, like Big Paul, to party with him.

Arriving on the station, chilly in the pre-dawn darkness, he heard the plaintive notes of a saxophone. It was unusually early and he imagined it must be a musician on his way home from one of the many nightclubs in Brighton Beach. He was surprised to see a young black man aged by circumstance, blowing tentatively on a battered instrument. Porter recognized the song, once the signature tune of his dad’s band. He saw Porter and dropped the sax from his mouth apologetically. “Didn’t do so good this month, didn’t match my money out,” he mumbled. “Get a check on the first. My name’s Albert by the way.” Porter slipped him some bills. “Keep playing Albert. You’re doing fine.” Until the oncoming train drowned the music, Porter sang along in his head, “For nobody else gave me a thrill. With all your faults, I love you still. It had to be you, it had to be….”

Lulled by the rocking motion of the subway car he thought about Angela. “There must be a person who loves you,” she’d said in response to his self-deprecation when they first met. “No.” “Somebody must love you,” she insisted. “Nobody loves me,” he said and kissed her. She’d pulled back for a moment and murmured, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m halfway to loving you already.” He caught the first band of light low on the horizon, just before the train entered the tunnel into Manhattan.

Porter drew deep breaths, fending off the past, but there it was, the image of his father’s band playing up in London, the club probably a curry house by now. His uncle played sax. His dad was on piano. They played the old standards like they were new again, never played before. Their audience was oftentimes peppered with celebrities, drawn to a newly reassuring familiar their music evoked.

His dad and his brother were close, though disparate personalities. The families lived within a few miles of each other. Porter, an only child, found his uncle—a bear of a man—too effusive, hard drinking and difficult for a little kid to warm to. Growing up he watched silently as his cousins—all girls—shrank from their father’s embrace and he blushed furiously at his risqué humor.

It wasn’t until he ran into his oldest cousin in a Brighton pub that her secret was revealed. She was a pretty young woman, reticent until she’d got a few drinks down her neck. She’d remained at home, choosing a local university. Two of her sisters—the twins—were willowy soft-spoken blondes just starting grammar school. The fourth, the youngest, was a scrabbling tomboy in junior school. Against his aunt’s wishes and sadly and quietly supported by his own parents, Porter saw his cousin’s sordid confession through to his uncle’s conviction and incarceration. The band broke up. His father gave private music lessons and they never spoke of it. His aunt died, in denial to the end. To his three oldest cousins Porter was a hero. From New York he’d kept them at a long arm’s length and in fact, they did not know where he lived. Probably they learned from Angela that they were no longer together. His cousins were married, with their own little ones growing up in villages in Sussex and Wales. The youngest, living with another aunt in Leicestershire, swore she would never speak to him.

He had asked himself this question over and over: How did he miss the signs? His aunt was a nervy, rail thin woman, never without a cigarette in her ungenerous mouth. On the occasional night out to London to see the band there were clues to the ebullient young woman she had once been. Porter’s mother revealed that she had suspected something for some time.

Married, his dark moods, the drinking that demanded more attention than the music, and Angela’s painful confusion had shamed him into a confession. Sometimes it was too much to get out of bed. Ennui sat on his chest like a cat yawning indecisiveness into his face. Once he confessed his dreadful secret she came to understand, at first, even the dark moods. Angela ushered in an era of understanding. She’d urged him gently: “Go with the flow, Billy. Leave the past behind. It’s strangling you.” He thought her hippy jibe a throw away line until he realized it had been his lifeline. Go with the flow. Wave, don’t drown. But it was too late.

Lost in thought, he had not realized he was at his stop. He leapt between closing doors at Grand Central and made his way to the No. 7 line where Willy was usually on the platform, hopping from one foot to the other, attempting to keep awake. But Willy was pulling a double later that day. Porter would go home when his shift was done, catch a few hours sleep, grab his guitar, and head back to the zoo after midnight.

Because Queens got the ass end of a city budget there was usually only one guy on security from midnight to eight. No one need ever know that Porter hung out with Willie on those nights. He always stashed his guitar in his locker and slipped out unnoticed, with plenty of time for a huevos burrito on 111^th Street before returning for his 7 A.M. start.

When Porter arrived it was nearly one in the morning and Willie was practically speed talking, no doubt enabled by a few lines snorted in the office. He was clearly fixated on Porter’s response to some injustice the day before, that this was just a job. “That is so whack bro. It ain’t just a job man, looka what your doin’ heah!” Porter unzipped his guitar case. “What I’m doin’ heah bro…” Porter replied, “…is between you and me.” He took his guitar up determinedly. “Right, mate?”

At 5 o’clock Willie shivered like someone had walked over his grave. He’d need another line to keep going. Porter could probably do with coffee. He listened for his guitar. The morning bird chorus had already begun and had found its way into the music. How does he do it, Willie thought. How can he make that guitar sound like a lamb laughing or a bear sleeping or a hundred captive birds beating their wings? He poured a black coffee and strode back to where Porter sat against the enclosure for the newborn lambs. “You’re like that guy Edgar,” he said, extending a steaming mug. “Elgar,” Porter corrected. “They only used his music in the experiment. It wasn’t written for the elephants.” Willie, hands on hips stared him down. “You’re gonna hafta let people know someday, am I right? Or like, what’s the point? What kinda life is that, man?”

Without looking at his friend Porter replied, “Mine.”

WILD LIFE is an original short story by Linda Danz.

STORIES ON THE AMERICAN FRIEND Writers Guild of America, East #R28299

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The use of names of actual persons, places, and events is incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. © April 2010

IN HER YOUNGER DAYS: from my journals, 26 July 1977

PHOTOGRAPH: DAN BRINZAC N.D.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF…

—an intolerable situation. It’s come round to where i must do without cigarettes, without a beer—“without grass” is already a wicked fact. I’ll be able to keep painting for as long as there is a bit of money saved but this scrimping is an absurdity. To work and to work at a job & just maintain oneself is a pain in the ass bore! In this past week i’ve come round from a lot of things—put off the notebook as a luxury in strength i didn’t have. All of the stories and phrases & pictures kept running around in my brain trough—Let’s look at the calendar—an unrecorded week—Thursday evening unexpectedly dined with SW. Dinner turned into drinks and mad conversation. Seven o’clock became a drunken 11:30. The evening helped ease the tightness in me concerning the job—We argued politics, art—disagreed on almost everything except drinking—SM drunk—pays for it the next day—heat gets to him—fainted in the studio—turned to marble before my eyes and kind of swooned to the studio floor—My edginess turned rapidly to fear. U. was at the studio, and so after all were ‘recovered’ somewhat, U. thanked me for an “interesting as usual” visit. Friday i had barely enough energy to pick up stretchers & come back here to build and stretch. This evening i can begin a drawing of the flower—though the canvas is a bit tacky. Mario begins [sitting] Friday (if he remembers) i’ve found a beautiful, huge branch—stripped it to its skeleton and so minus its dried leaves it will become part of Mario’s portrait.

—Somehow, as usual, every thing i expected i should record now goes by me sort of blandly and none of it wants describing. I do know i’ve passed out of that muddled overwhelming depression i was in—i’ll never resign myself to this job thing—a handwriting analyst at The Express last night does me—“Tenacity—a great deal of it—appearances of outgoing but keeps things deep & hidden—blinders on—can work that to my advantage but sometimes involves personalities—relationships with people—an artist—could be equally successful at commercial or fine art (how depressing to even breath those two together) Will always see a thing through—must have an amazing fantasy world—needs room to breath fresh air—absent minded. Already i feel i’ve wasted enough time on these pages and so to the canvas—sans cigarettes & beer.

IN HER YOUNGER DAYS: from my journals, 14 February 1975

“Things are never so bad they can’t be made worse.” Humphrey Bogart

HOT DOG

“At the Whitney today to see what the world is getting vomited on their heads in the name of art and also to see two films—one on Henry Miller (ah, idol of my younger days) and Charles Bukowski (idol of these days)—i remember going to the DeYoung Museum—a show of Peter LeBlanc and the Beat Generation poets and i can still be upset because the poetry readings were a week later—Anyway i was in absolute agony because the hot dog man outside the Whitney somehow came to mind and then i started thinking, man i had to have one of those Sabrettes and that’s suicidal because for some inexplicable reason i get real bad headaches not to mention sick to my stomach after one of those but when i actually submit to the thought of eating one there is no turning back so i was agonizing over the MAJOR decision and trying to laugh and react in the right places in the film on Bukowski, so of course, i should look like i have heard of the guy and i’m also getting some ideas and can’t write in the dark but the hot dog question is gnawing away at me and finally i decide yes, yes, yes,—you know those loud defiant yeses in my brain & figure well i haven’t missed too much of what Bukowski is saying anyway he would have understood and i fly past the shit that litters the museum—(i appear to have my mind on something else ((i do, the hot dog)) but i can also scowl knowingly at this crap—CRAP—as only an artist can scowl) tear ass into the street and the hot dog man who is ALWAYS—not sometime, but goddamn always there on his corner—even in the goddamn rain he’s there—and shit, he’s not there today and all the way back to the studio i kept thinking how awful and tragic it all was and how nobody (maybe X but I wouldn’t want to underestimate X) NOBODY could understand the defeat—this absolute crusher—it could have been worse, tho, i could have been stoned.”

UPDATE: I no longer eat meat.

PHOTOGRAPH: RONALD THOMAS N.D.

“…yet you cannot help being a woman…”

Charles Bukowski, Sleeping Woman, “The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills.”

WHAT I CANNOT HELP

From my journals dated January 25, 1978 (two years after my communication with the poet had ended).

The bad weather keeps me safe from people knocking at the [studio] door for a while. Time to read Bukowski’s new poetry. My favorite fantasy has him knocking at the studio door—I’ve been reading his work—he’s fresh scrubbed, clean, polite—with flowers, a bottle of good wine under his arm. “I owe this to you,” he says—“We should have one sane, serious, friendly afternoon together.” He’ll ask what I think of the new poems & I’ll tell him there are a couple of brilliant works in there begging to be freed from the bulk of the shit. He’ll look at this current canvas & say he knew exactly that this would be my work—We’ll drink the wine—I’ll clean glasses for the occasion. Some things will make us chuckle, sometimes we will sympathize with each other—there will be no anger, though & some things will make us howl with laughter—he’ll say, after three or four hours, that he’s got to get back to some woman in his life—& he’ll thank me for the woodcuts & he’ll leave a poem for me. It’s a wonderful fantasy I think.

A SHORT STORY

“One’s destination is never a place,

but a new way of seeing things.”—Henry Miller

FROM RUSSIA WITH…

PEERING OVER HER SUNGLASSES, Brenda Shorenstein took in a breathtaking view of Paris under a walloping great sky. Hot August wind blew across her where she stood at Sacre Coeur, high above the city, on Butte Montmartre. “God knows what will come of all this,” she sighed, scanning a web of narrow streets. Emptied of Parisians, the steep cobblestone paths of Montmartre were negotiated now by herds of myopic tourists. Clouds like thick gray woolen socks, which lowered her expectations on arrival, had dispersed. A strong sun bleached the rooftops. Moscow, where she had just come from, had been hellishly hot. Forest fires on the outskirts of that city had rained burnt-smelling cinders over everything, fairly obliterating the sun.

Brenda recognized the conversation of indolent American tourists jostling her: “That shop clerk was rude but whadya expect?” “They act like they don’t unnerstand a word of English.” “Why can’t I find anything to fit?” She edged closer to the white stone balustrade, which was practically fluorescent in the blazing sun, and thwarting a parade of tourists she recaptured the view. “It’s August,” she reasoned. “I was warned.”

Nearly 25, Brenda’s first trip abroad began in Moscow and ended in Paris. Back home Richard Nixon was counting on a ‘silent majority’ to win him a second term as their Communist-routing president, but even he had been to the Soviet Union only a few months before on his way to China. Brenda had been more emboldened in Moscow than she’d dreamed. Now, in Paris, she was less sure than she’d hoped.

Brenda had tried to make the marriage work, though she had no idea what that meant. It already was work. She countenanced marriage with the intention of putting some order into her life. But it was the wrong move and now she felt trapped. Never was there a more perfect example of a confused, assured, fearful, fearless person. No question about it—she wants to cry all the time, even when she laughs or sees others laugh she wants to cry.

“Ha-a-low!” Brenda flinched. Jacob—Jake to his devoted parents—had a gratingly effeminate voice like his mother’s, which detracted from his footballer physique. She edged an imperceptible distance, ignoring him.

After Moscow, Paris had completely undone her. Tapping into some deep reservoir of resentment or regret—she could not honestly say which—left her in tears. They argued in the Louvre under Mona Lisa’s dispassionate scrutiny and sparred in leafy parks ignoring the jerky movements of chalk-faced mimes. Punishing carafes of red wine undermined the thrill of a singer’s warbled homage in a boite à chansons. Taken for natives who were comfortable with their volatile public displays they were asked directions in careless French from clueless Americans. Once, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, she’d slumped against a lamppost defeated and weeping. An old man, a proper Frenchman accompanied by his scrappy little dog, vehemently chastised Jacob. Her husband dodged the man’s walking stick, protesting that she, his wife, could have anything she wanted.

“I’m starving. Ha-a-low, anyone there?” Brenda rebuffed her husband and slid from his grasp. Dressed in a faded denim mini skirt and a knitted patchwork top she fingered granny-style sunglasses, surreptitiously wiping a tear behind rose-colored lenses. “I will come back to Paris, to this spot,” she swore silently, “and I will be different.”

…

Preparing for the trip, Brenda had struggled with so many what-ifs. Her husband was disengaged, as usual, and entirely absorbed in his work. A friend introduced Brenda to someone at the library where they both worked who had made many trips to Russia and who generously offered advice that only added to her confusion. What if she inadvertently brought in contraband? Even unwrapped pantyhose, apparently the bargaining tool, could be confiscated at customs and she reproved for packing too much for personal use. “Bring gum,” she was told, “for the children.” But Brenda’s hyperactive imagination found her in a Tennessee Williams scenario, ripped to pieces by cannibalistic boys who would misconstrue her innocent offerings.

After a nerve-shattering cab ride from the airport, driven by a surly, chain-smoking, lead-footed Russian emboldened by his panic-stricken passengers, Brenda and Jacob fell trembling from the back seat of the taxi at the entrance to the Rossiya hotel, reeking of cigarettes, cheap vinyl, and fear. Herman and Faye Weissbrodt appeared that dreadfully hot morning as if they’d lain in wait for their arrival.

Brenda steadied herself for Faye’s clammy embrace. She and her husband and the rest of his team—minus Jacob—had been in Moscow for two days and evinced the shell-shocked appeal of unwitting hostages. Jacob, oblivious to what was required of normal people, had neglected the paperwork necessary for visas. It was only through the machinations of Milton, his wealthy and professionally connected father, his vainglorious mother Roz, and a hurried trip to Washington D.C., that their adored only child would deliver a paper at Moscow University.

Brenda liked Faye well enough, but there was little in common beside their husbands’ research at Rockefeller Institute in Manhattan. Faye was a housewife—accepting of her role—with no discernible talents apart from a killer pecan pie and an ability to ignore Herman’s indiscretions. Her dewy accent and demure dress contrasted sharply with the scattershot delivery of a native New Yorker who lived in miniskirts and platform heels. Faye thought Brenda was a little ‘crazy’ and any talk of Brenda’s job at Columbia University in Butler library, her growing involvement with the labor union on campus or her fervent desire to write was met with Faye’s measured drawl: “I cain’t think why any woman would want to work as hard as you want to.”

While Jacob pantomimed at the front desk, Brenda disclosed what had transpired. In London they left comfortable modernity behind when uniformed Russian men appeared and escorted them to a connecting Aeroflot flight. A flinty female guard searched Brenda who was exhausted and uneasy. Upon disembarking at Moscow Airport they were marched across the tarmac and entered a terminal worlds away from the futuristic structure at JFK. Brenda was certain their plane had breached a time barrier and had landed them in some remote, antediluvian outpost. “You guys…you remember that Twilight Zone episode?” Herman and Faye nodded sympathetically.

Brenda told them she’d noticed that Jacob was not at her side. Frantic, she looked around for him. “He’s surrounded by police…or soldiers…I don’t know what, but they were scare-e-e.” Jacob, outfitted by his mother in a baggy brown Brooks Brothers suit, waved his arms helplessly after he’d patted his pockets and then tore through his briefcase. His rumpled club tie and button-down shirt struggled to abandon him. The gate Brenda had just passed through was now shut. “I’m in freakin’ Russia and he’s not!”

Herman rolled his eyes, recognizing the signs. Jacob was the absent-minded professor, a label endured good-naturedly from fellow scientists. The lone female doctorate in the department, the secretaries, and the lab technicians were less enamored.

Urged on by Faye, Brenda described begging tearfully to please be allowed through the gates just as one of the uniforms pulled Jacob’s passport from his pocket. “Smirking and all, whoa, where did this come from?” Brenda quipped. Jacob had dropped it on the tarmac where they’d skirted men kneeling in prayer, flipping like jackknives. A thickset, unsmiling woman searched through Brenda’s luggage. Her drab uniform contrasted sharply with brassy hair pulled tightly into a doughnut-shaped clump at the back of her head, forcing her cap into a comic tilt. Brenda’s things were judiciously culled but neither the panty hose nor the gum sparked any interest. Relieved, Brenda retrieved the stockings but the guard spied a paperback book. “Nothing inflammatory,” Brenda had been warned. Certainly nothing like Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, which she finished reading just days before. “My God. Have you guys read that?” Herman and Faye had not. The guard uncovered John Updike’s Rabbit Run. Brenda had chosen the book, not because she liked the author—she didn’t—but because it was popular and she thought it would be a safe bet. “So, this woman, she’s turning every page, brings it up real close to her face, looking for God knows what…” Brenda paused for effect, “…holding it upside down!”

Jacob returned, punched Herman genially on the arm and said: So, what’s it like here?” “It’s like being a nigger in the Deep South,” Herman drawled. “Herm!” A sharp jab from his wife caused him to squint cautiously around the lobby, avoiding Brenda’s expected indignant response. Brenda was too relieved to react. If Herman and Faye were a reassuring presence then Brenda was in deeper than she’d imagined.

Struggling with their luggage in the wake of a dour, slow-moving woman they arrived at their room. Jacob wrestled with the door key until it broke in the lock. Uncannily the same woman who’d guided them to their room at a paralyzing gait, who had returned to her seated post further down the corridor, was behind them in a flash, her bulk notwithstanding. She plucked the decapitated key from Jacob’s hand. “Joiner come,” she said gravely. They tried and failed to get any other information from her: When would that happen? Where should they keep their luggage until then? What should they do now? Every question prompted the same response: “Joiner come.” Jacob prodded Brenda, “Use your German.” She frantically mined one semester of the language and sputtered: “Was sollen wir tun?” The woman—called a floor mother—softened perceptibly: “Joiner come.”

Resigned, they left their luggage and returned to the lobby. Jacob declared he was off to meet Herman and the rest of the team, catch up on the symposium ahead. “I’ll see you back here, yeah?” Stunned, Brenda watched him hurry away. Faye had gone off to her room to nap and Brenda’s first thought was to find Faye and wake her the hell up. It was stiflingly hot at ten o’clock and she was desperate for a cool shower. But the prospect of navigating the massive hotel in search of Faye’s room forced her to rethink. She was, after all, carrying the rubles. Jacob was hopeless with money. The hotel was centrally located. Brenda had practiced one very important word in Russian: spasiba. She’d be perfectly fine on her own. She hoped.

The luggage was gone when she returned. Under the steely glare of a different matron installed on the same chair, Brenda turned the doorknob. Each suitcase, still locked, had been placed on a single bed. The room key lay on a nondescript bedside table. It was a small, somewhat shabby room without much personality, which surprised Brenda. The hotel was Moscow’s showpiece, the reason they had booked here. In the cramped bathroom she turned on the taps and both faucets dripped lukewarm water. The best feature in the room was the floor-to-ceiling window—streaked with soot—which when opened revealed an impressive view of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, but offered no respite from the odd heat. She realized that the scene was not unlike the oxidized copper onion tops she’d grown used to seeing from their apartment on the Upper East Side.

Brenda decided not to read anything into this. She’d had a good day and even if she’d felt intimidated, she thought she had accomplished something significant. When Jacob burst into the darkened room, Brenda roused from a deep sleep. She wanted to tell him of her solo adventure but he kept his back to her, rummaging through his suitcase for a clean shirt. She suspected his sweaty exuberance was somehow down to a few drinks but he rejected her assertion and told her he had been in Walter’s room all day, practicing his talk.

Still not facing her, Jacob urged her to get ready. Brenda’s news would have to wait: the angry, armed Soviet policeman sternly motioning to put pen and notebook away. How she cautiously explored the odd and outdated merchandise in arcade shops under the glass roof of an elegantly designed department store taking up one whole side of massive Red Square and negotiated the currency, freely peppering her finger-pointing with effusive spacibas to score a stick of shriveled cubes of chicken and a turbid sour-cherry drink that slid down her throat like liquid sandpaper. Everyone hurrying past her carried what appeared to be the same kind of melon in identical net bags; the young girls swaying arm-in-arm like lovers and the defeated look of drunkards careering in the street. All of that would have to wait.

Dinner at a restaurant not far from the hotel was a riotous affair fueled by a seemingly unending supply of vodka of a proof unheard of back home. There were identically labeled bottles of Georgian wine that varied wildly in taste. Dr. Walter Larew, head of Jacob’s department, held court at one end of the long table, which had been decorated with paper American flags and laden with bowls glistening with black caviar. Above them hung gluey strips dotted with flies. Herman was there with Faye who’d captured a seat next to Brenda and who clung to her all evening. Among the group, Brenda observed, she and Faye were the only women at the table. She had no idea who the ruddy-faced men were laughing boisterously with her husband and the other scientists.

Hard-mouthed women in evening dress skulked around the perimeter casting covert glances at their table. Deprived of the mostly southern-born scientists’ bourbon drink of choice, the men indulged freely in vodka, toasting astronauts and cosmonauts, Yanks and Soviets, hot dogs and caviar. It would be the last time in the trip that a frosty glass of chilled vodka passed their lips. Brenda, resigned to the absence of air-conditioning anywhere, tipped her head back a few times and let the sleety clear liquid tear down her throat. Dr. Larew’s unsteady hauteur encouraged them to spend the next day sightseeing. He bellowed like a Confederate general on the eve of battle: “Ma friends, make sure you all do not miss the Cold Cut.” A collective flicker of unease shot across each one of them, momentarily sobered by the reference to Vladimir Lenin, whose body lay in state in nearby Red Square.

Insistent pounding at their door collided with her smacking headache and a tummy overloaded with smoked fish, potatoes and cabbage, beets and something called aubergine, which turned out to be eggplant. Brenda clawed for her watch; she saw it was, incredibly, only five in the morning. Throughout the night the telephone had rung and each time Jacob picked it up he shouted into the phone, “I don’t understand!” Finally Brenda answered and the line went dead.

They had returned from the restaurant to find the windows she’d left open had been shut. Brenda again threw them open, lightheaded from the vodka and the wine, and intoxicated with the foreignness of her surroundings. She imagined the scent of smoldering charcoal still lingered in the dense night air. She was in a good mood—a sexy mood—but Jacob’s mind was elsewhere. The austere twin beds were not exactly an enticement. Jokingly, Brenda combed the room looking for “bugs” and Jacob, irritated, shouted at her to cool it. At the window she asked him if he didn’t smell something burning. “Go to bed,” he grumbled. Before he shut the light he promised, “We’ll have fun tomorrow.”

The pounding resumed. Brenda leapt to the door. In the dimly lit corridor she recognized the same matron they had first encountered. The woman charged into the room, heading straight for the window, which she firmly shut. Jacob stared wide-eyed from his bed. “Winds come,” she said and left.

Jet lagged for the first time in her life, Brenda paced nervously, buzzing the many thoughts that clamored for her attention. “Paris will be good,” she reckoned. Though she hated the fact that Jacob’s parents had insisted on the diversion. Brenda had rallied for the Moscow leg of the trip, not wanting to miss out on such an experience. She’d felt strong-armed into Paris, more so because it was the city of her dreams, the home of her literary heroes. But her depression distracted their son, and so her in-laws stepped in. “Have a second honeymoon,” they urged. “Go somewhere romantic after Moscow, celebrate Jake’s success.” Get pregnant is what they meant, have a child and leave our son alone.

They spent the day together, accompanied by the Weissbrodts; the only day she was not on her own. They queued in Red Square to view the body of Lenin but were quickly tapped and then goaded to the front of a deathless line of Soviet citizens who, if they were angered by the special treatment of American tourists, showed no sign. The armed escort mitigated Brenda’s embarrassment.

Bored in the Kremlin, they sagged under ostentatious displays of wealth. Brenda could not reconcile the bright yellow buildings and overwrought riches with the apparent poverty outside the Kremlin walls. They drifted like zombies until Faye discovered the Fabergés and declared they were just about the darlingest eggs she’d ever seen.

Their hunger was done a cruel turn when waiters shouted, “Nyet, nyet,” and they were turned away from barely populated restaurants. Brenda led them to sidewalk food carts and they gorged themselves on pirozhki and kebabs. Cabbage, cheese, meat, onion, they devoured it all.

By mid-day the sky had darkened. The heat that pressed upon them was staggering. It smelled like the sky was burning. They joined another queue to slake their parched throats. Brenda knew about the little kiosks: Wait your turn. Ignore the line jumpers. Drop your kopecks in the slot and hold the communal glass steady under a stream of something called kvass. Drink the fermented, lukewarm liquid and return the glass upside down to rinse over a waterspout. A chain, she noticed, attached the glass. Herman and Jacob went for it thinking it must be alcoholic and maybe even cold. Faye, gagging, politely declined.

Jacob and Herman had no interest in shopping and all it took was one rude encounter when they were ostentatiously cold-shouldered in a nearly empty shop to put them off any further investigation. From the vendors in the outdoor market on Arbat Street Faye bought Russian dolls. Brenda purchased shiny red pins with Lenin’s image, ignoring her husband’s curious stare. The men brightened at a display of bear skin rugs, bravely investigating the now harmless head and ineffective claws still attached.

Later Faye and Brenda joined their husbands in Walter’s room where they had spent the evening preparing for the next day’s symposium. A tiny sink blossomed with bottles of Stoli swimming in tap water in a vain attempt to keep them cool. Brenda was used to the hard drinking scientists who waxed as eloquently about their preferred bourbon as they did about some new discovery. But they had always maintained a kind of southern gentlemanly demeanor. In the claustrophobic heat of the airless room that reeked of alcohol and sweat they fairly reeled about, roaring with laughter and comparing conspiracies. Why had no one had any idea where the charred smell came from? Why did the city look like it had been covered in some kind of hellish snowfall? Questioning a hotel employee got a vague shrug, as if this was a normal occurrence. “Accordin’ to Pra-a-a-vda,” Herman slurred, “Ain’t nuthin happenin’ here, so just mo-o-ove along folks.” This provoked another round of hysterical laughter.

A knock at the door revealed two of the women Brenda recognized from the restaurant, still in the same sorry evening dress. “Wrong room!” shouted Walter and turned them away. The men fell into comparing their lab assistants, trading innuendos, something about how easily they “assisted.” A numbing shift passed through her, but Brenda failed to catch Faye’s eye.

The morning of Jacob’s talk, Brenda arrived on the university grounds with only moments to spare. Across a square mile of parched landscape loomed the colossal structure where she was meant to be. She clipped on her official pass, resigned to having to run in the heat. A cluster of American women preparing to board a bus caught her attention. “Excuse me,” Brenda inquired. “Where…I mean what is this…?” One of the women smiled and tapped her nametag, very much like the badge Brenda wore. “Hi, I’m Dr. Leppert. Ellen. Johns Hopkins. Are you looking for the hospital tour?” Brenda nodded without thinking. “Well, c’mon. I imagine this will be some experience.”

Brenda kept to herself, affecting the concentrated demeanor of a professional. It became obvious that the tour was staged for their benefit. Though the floor of the hospital ward gleamed, the place was prehistoric. Everything was disturbingly outdated, even decrepit, from the rusted iron beds to the few patients in evidence who inhabited those beds, gumming toothless smiles. While their guide touted the superior healthcare of the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn’s words tolled grimly in her head: “We mustn’t talk about death! We musn’t even remind anyone of it.” Only a few of the women—obstetricians—were allowed to witness an abortion. Expressionless, they rejoined the group and remained silent on the return. When Jacob asked later what she thought of his paper—did he speak too fast, did he look nervous—she replied, “You were fine. It sounded great.”

Travelers brought the news from abroad that a forest fire on the outskirts of Moscow was the source of all that ash and Brenda left the last of her inhibitions behind. There was a fire in her life, too. And everyone had ignored that. Each day brought a new adventure. On her own, she discovered the sensation of time, how it didn’t matter in her displaced scheme of things. At home she woke to the alarm and hurried off to her job at the library. Jacob seemed to come and go at will—between their apartment, his lab and his parents’ richly appointed home on Fifth Avenue.

Early morning solitary walks in the city calmed her. Brenda had taken to braiding her hair, pinning it atop her head. Deciding to be innocuous, she dressed in the longest skirt she owned and wore a light, long-sleeved blouse she’d brought just in case there were chilly nights. Before she left the hotel she proffered a balled pair of panty hose to the floor matron on duty. Each uttered a stern “Nyet” and all pocketed her offering. In the streets Brenda watched the old humped women in babushkas sweeping the streets with crude brooms made of twigs and she recalled the bent-back men swinging scythes in the vast fields along the road from the airport on that first terrifying morning. She strolled under the impassive gaze of caryatids. She noted what was carried in those net bags—different every day and all the same. She discovered she could indulge to her heart’s content the sweet ice cream as long as she got some before noon and as long as she was happy with vanilla.

On her first attempt in the Metro a man stepped out of the rapid flow of passengers and drew a line with his finger, showing her how to use the interactive subway map. He hurried away, swallowed up in the current, ignoring or frightened by her effusive spacibas. Brenda bravely plumbed the luxurious depths, open-mouthed at the extravagance of the peoples’ palaces. Chandeliers, if they lasted at all, would be missing a few crystals on the IRT line back home. TAKI would have a graffitti artist’s field day with all those slick marble surfaces.

She visited the Tretykov Gallery and listened impatiently to the young guide with the blackened teeth as one golden icon began to resemble the next. Poking her head into a gallery she was startled to see a Kandinsky hanging in all the painter’s colorful and abstract glory. The guide dismissed those paintings and discouraged any detours. With the hospital tour fresh in her mind, she asked him, why, if they had such a great system of health care, were his teeth in such need of repair? “Only the pain is addressed,” he responded, she thought, wistfully. “We don’t care about the cosmetics.”

Led through the rooms of Tolstoy’s house Brenda was overcome when she entered the great writer’s study. Here among the gloomy trappings had once sat writers named Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov. As a girl she’d been ashamed of being sent to the free city camps for underprivileged kids. Holed up at the shady side of an inner-city pool she devoured library books. Brenda had never learned to swim but she had a massive reading habit she never shook. Mentally she made a note to add those Russians to her reading list when she got back to New York. She bent to stroke one of the many cats strolling the grounds, descendants of the writer’s own feline companions. Maybe she’d get a cat and call it Leo. Who needed children anyway?

Freed of their obligations, the scientists seemed to unhinge before Brenda’s eyes. They gathered at the hotel for dinner and drunkenly accepted a plate of underweight chicken, not fully plucked, their menu choices ignored. The undependable Georgian wine and the ever-present bucket of caviar were summarily demolished. Afterwards they attended the circus, where the dizzying stench from the bears and humans was inescapable. Or they found their seats at the Bolshoi Ballet, when Faye, in a faint-hearted whisper, begged Brenda to accompany her to the toilets before the end of the performance only to be turned away at the exit doors guarded by unyielding female ushers. Walter, shadowed by one of those hard-mouthed Russian women, caused Brenda to wonder what his wealthy thoroughbred wife would think, alone among the fussy period décor in their Park Avenue apartment. Brenda speculated what Jacob would be up to if she wasn’t there. She wondered about all those late nights at the lab.

On their last night in Moscow Jacob and Herman planned to meet their wives in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant. The Weissbrodts were desperate for home and made plans to stop in Louisville before returning to New York. Jacob and Brenda would carry on to Paris. The women met in the lobby and were followed onto the elevator by an aged, toothless stick of a woman clad in black and a small, round-faced boy. Brenda hit the 21^st floor, which was their destination. She turned to the wizened face and mimed hitting another floor for the woman and child. They pressed closer to the elevator wall. “Prolly goin’ to the same place,” Faye suggested.

Their ascent halted abruptly. “These things happen, I was told,” Brenda offered. Faye was not reassured and bored an imaginary hole through the doors, willing them open. Five minutes passed. The boy crouched closer to the woman. They stared, unblinking, at Brenda and Faye. “Push that red button,” urged Faye. A watery alarm resounded above them. They waited. Brenda pushed it again. They were startled by a ringing telephone, hidden behind the old woman. Garbled Russian volleyed through the line and Brenda understood nothing but the urgent reprimand in the voice of the caller. She held the receiver out to the old woman who shrank further from her. Brenda shouted into the receiver, “We are stuck in the elevator! I can’t tell which floor!” The caller hung up. “They’re coming,” Brenda said. “I think.”

Faye had just about had it and tugged at the doors, which sprang open. They decided one of them could give a leg up to the old woman and the boy while the other held the door. The odd couple sprang to life, as if they’d understood the Americans. The old woman lifted her skirts. The boy scrambled out on his own. Faye watched, aghast, as the two skittered out of sight. They managed to extricate finally and found themselves in an empty hallway. “I’m walking. No way you’re getting me on another elevator,” Faye huffed.” “Oh Christ,” Brenda moaned. “We’re on the sixth floor!”

Beet-red and sweating profusely they barged past a waiter attempting to shoo them off and headed for their husbands who were also red-faced and by the looks of it, drunk. The enormous dining room was nearly empty. Jacob grinned: “What took you girls so long?”

…

Brenda Miller buttoned her black silk jacket, aware of an early morning chill atop Butte Montmartre. Dawn speared the lapis sky and reminded her of a metro station in Moscow, that same rich blue in a ceiling clinquant with golden hammer & sickles. Or maybe it was so long ago that she’d imagined it. She still loved Russian food. They both did and she and her husband frequented the cheap and cheerful restaurants on the lower east side of Manhattan. Brenda had been back to Paris many times. She’d met Neil in Paris eight years ago. This trip was their first real honeymoon and though they both hated that term they made the most of it. They had been up all night, dancing at a party friends had thrown for them. After a midnight walk along the Seine they decided spontaneously to walk across Paris from their borrowed flat on the Rue de la Huchette. They strolled through wet streets filling with noisy club goers on their way home. Still with a lovers’ confidence, they’d plucked a baguette from the doorway of a boulangerie and assured each other it was not stealing.

She’d been standing for a long time, watching the sunrise over Paris and suddenly turned to look for her husband. Neil Howe was a painter from London. She’d not taken his name when they married. After shedding her first husband she decided to keep her family name. They struggled but their lives were rich. “Sorry. How long have I been staring? Was I gone long?” He put his arms around her and nuzzled her neck. “I didn’t want to disturb you. You weren’t really gone.”

FROM RUSSIA WITH… is an original short story by Linda Danz.

STORIES ON THE AMERICAN FRIEND Writers Guild of America, East #R28299

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The use of names of actual persons, places, and events is incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.

© March 2010

Danz—San Fran reading 1975. I makes ‘em watch me drink beer and I gets paid for it. Buk

BUKOWSKI & ME

are you all right?

yeah, I say.

Excerpted from the poem bad night by Charles Bukowsi

In the early summer of 1976 I went to see Charles Bukowski read at St. Mark’s Church-in-the Bowery. I was a 29-year-old painter. This event would be the culmination of a year and a half of voluminous letter writing and mad middle-of-the-night telephone calls between New York City and Los Angeles; between me, and the poet. The heightened expectation that came with his stated plan to seduce me, as I had never before been seduced, was too much and I demurred in a letter before his arrival. He showed up with a rangy Texas bombshell who went by the name of Cupcakes O’Brien; a stunning redhead half the age of the old man. He wanted pussy and I wanted a mentor. Our great misunderstanding. After the reading, at which my dear friend Judith discovered “…he has the eyes of a madman…” I drank and danced the poet and the night away.

POETRY READING

All of her heroes moved nervously

into her.

She thought of laughing sparrows and

dying swans.

Strangely calm

her hairbrush stroked

the fear of the Poet’s years

into and through her

as if it knew her

from some other time.

She floated on the souls of others

to a place where other souls lay.

They drank around and in her

for her, with her

planted wisdom kisses on

her drunken brow.

Until the gates that kept her

from the Poet and

the tombstones

spread their iron fingers.

The cross on the altar bore no ill will.

They drank their catcalls from green bottles

breaking them against the

strength of her protectors.

The Poet read from pages

soaked with familiar words

she’d never heard

BURNING began before it ended.

voice, burning

head, burning

belly, burning

Her Chief Protector saw his eyes;

(saw that madness had already

made a home in them)

and saved her twice

to later drink frenzied elixir

take a youthful companion with her and

dance the Poet’s madness

from her breast

pick his words

from her hair, her dress and

finally be led by patient hands

to rest

to rest.

1 July 1976 NYC