9. November 1995, Part I“Rely only on yourself.”“What’s the long con?”“You can call me Simochka.”
NOVEMBER 1995, PART I
“RELY ONLY ON YOURSELF.”
W illiam parked his motorcycle illegally in the alley behind Dunphy’s, against the back wall of the building. After stowing his valuables in the break room locker, he exchanged his motorcycle jacket and helmet for a white chef’s coat and skull cap. He had finished prepping the grill and was readying his mise en place when Paul approached him.
“William,” he barked. “My office.”
William delayed only long enough to scrape the parsley he had been chiffonading into a prep bowl, then dropped the bench scraper on the counter and followed Paul.
He knew better by now than to ask questions. Besides, William could tell just from the tightness around Paul’s lips.
She had told him.
When? And how did it unfold?
Of course – her birthday. Her mother had called to wish her a happy birthday. She had told her mother, and then her mother told Paul. Or, she came into town for her birthday – after all, it was Sunday this year – and she had told them both together, at the same time, sitting over her birthday cake at their dining room table.
“Why isn’t William here?” they would have asked. And it all would have come out.
Maybe she had even come to the restaurant. Maybe she had even worked there. He looked around himself. It was as if her hypothetical presence – maybe even in the very spot he stood now, in her father’s office – changed the air in the room. Perfumed it.
Paul closed the door behind them and gestured to the empty chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
William complied, of course, and waited for the ax to fall.
But Paul took his own seat, and folded his hands on top of the desk. The same green-gray eyes as hers. The same long, thin, freckled face.
“I know you and Julia broke up.” He had never been a man to beat about the bush. “I really hope we can keep working together, without any awkwardness. I know I’ve never told you this, but you’re the best line cook I’ve got. One of the best I’ve ever had, in fact. I think you have a real future in cooking, and I hope it’s in my restaurant; I really do. But if not, I want you to know that you’ll always have a great reference from me, wherever you go.”
To William’s horror, a sudden, involuntary chokehold gripped his throat. He bit his tongue - a little trick he had picked up over the years. “Thank you.”
“In fact, you’ve more than proven yourself on grill lately. And I want you to take over that position, now that Hector moved on.”
“Wow,” said William, gobsmacked. “Thank you.”
Of course, if Paul promoted him to grill at age twenty, he shouldn’t read too much into it for himself. Hector had taken over from Mark, who had opened some up-and-coming Asian-fusion joint in Hayes Valley. And now Hector had moved up to sous-chef at a swanky Vegas hotel.
All the best staff were jumping ship. Stuck on Fisherman’s Wharf with a rapidly-graying patronage, these days Dunphy’s was only a springboard for promising cooks like Hector. And now, apparently, for William.
Yet that wasn’t even the greatest appeal of his new promotion. The greatest appeal was knowing that maybe Julia would hear about it. Maybe she would even visit Dunphy’s one day, and then she would see him there, at the grill, or maybe even working rounds cook. And then she’d have to know that he was going places, despite her previous dismal assessment of his drive and ambition. And then one day, when she heard he was opening his own restaurant, she would be sorry she had dumped him all those years ago.
But if he moved on from Dunphy’s – when and where would he ever see her again?
He went straight to the griddle and attacked it with everything he had. He would do his damnedest for her dad. Either way, stay or leave, she would hear nothing but good things about him.
It didn’t sink in until he went home – she had never responded to his overtures at reconciliation. She had just ignored them, like they weren’t his very lifeblood, painstakingly extracted over their past two years together.
She was never coming to Dunphy’s, at least not while he was there. She was never going to just show up on his doorstep, like she did in his dreams.
He would never hear from her again.
Her thrift store style; her bright smile that he had once dismissed as showing too many teeth. Her capricious conversion to Islam, until praying five times a day proved too burdensome.
The way she squatted behind him on Ocean Beach in her pink bikini and teased him about the caged albatross on his back.
The way the wind whipped her hair on his uncle’s boat when he kissed her.
The way the Halloween soundtrack, the other revelers, the entire world faded into the background as she snap-zoomed forward in the mermaid costume. The rapture when he asked her to come home with him, and she did .
“I'm never taking it off,” she teased him when he gave her the ring. “You're never getting rid of me now.”
All of that. All for absolutely nothing . How was he ever supposed to get that out of him?
There wasn’t enough weed in the world.
He burst out of his bedroom and ran up the stairs. His mother had already been in to pluck the Jameson from his snoring father’s grip and cover him with a blanket. William knew from experience that by now, she was already sound asleep in bed, and he was in the clear.
He found the key to the liquor cabinet and swiped another one of his father’s bottles. Brought it back downstairs to his room. Opened the cap, and poured a generous helping.
“Next time, save the vodka for after you light up.”
Or, as Mike would say, “Grass then beer, you’re in the clear.”
He set the whiskey on the bedside table, untouched.
He had enough weed to sustain him for the next two weeks. He had no real excuse to call or visit Haze again. And it was eleven o’clock at night; he couldn’t go over there now.
Half an hour later, he knocked on her front door. Only then did it occur to him – she might not be home. Or even alone.
Just as he was about to give up and leave, the chain on the door slid, and the locks turned. She had been sleeping; he could tell by her eyes. She wore the same short white satin kimono as yesterday, with nothing underneath; he could tell by her nipples poking through the fabric.
She stepped back inside the foyer. Opened the door to him. After she closed and locked it again, she came to stand in front of him. Looked up at him, waiting.
He stepped closer. Slid his hands inside the opening at the front of her kimono. She untied its sash, and allowed him to peel it off of her shoulders. Allowed it to pool at her feet.
Upstairs in her bed, he shifted himself down. Just below her navel was a spider, with a line of Cyrillic script at its feet:
надейся только на себ я
Tracing the script with his fingertip, he found a ridge, streaking horizontally above the triangle of dark hair between her legs. He lingered, exploring its rough, puckered texture.
He propped himself up a bit on his elbow to get a clearer look at her sphinx-like face. “Appendix?”
“C-section,” she replied matter-of-factly. She put her hand in his hair, massaging his scalp.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. He held her gaze for a moment, waiting, but she didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.
He ran his fingertips over the scar. Planted a string of kisses along its length. Shifted further down, and she opened herself to him with some mild Russian epithet of contentment.
An hour later, they lay in her bed, shotgunning hits from a joint. The same strain she usually sold him; more indica than yesterday’s sativa.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here or not,” he said.
“I’m pretty much a homebody these days. After a day at the studio, I just want to read a book and go to bed.”
He traced the onion domes atop her Russian Orthodox cathedral. “What are you reading?”
“Pushkin,” she replied. “And Tyutchev.”
She offered him the joint and reached for a book on her bedside table. Its cover bore writing in both Cyrillic and English and had long since faded to the color of dust.
“I came to the U.S. when I was nine, so I can still read Russian. But sometimes I need a little help.” The pages crackled with age as she turned them to the spot she had marked. She looked up at him with a little smile, and added, “You should like this.”
He rested his head in the crook of his arm and puffed on the joint while she read to him:
Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light ,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard...
take in their song and speak no word.
“What is that?” he asked after allowing it a moment to sink in.
“ Silentium, by Fyodor Tyutchev. The translation is by Nabokov, but it doesn’t matter – a translation can never do the original justice.”
William nodded, thinking of L’Albatros by Baudelaire. It didn’t seem right to share that with Haze, though. Julia was the only person in the world who had ever guessed what his tattoo was about.
So he passed the joint back to her and reached out to touch her gray-streaked hair. “Where in Russia did you grow up?”
“Novosibirsk.” When he drew a blank, she added, “It’s in Siberia.”
“Siberia,” he echoed.
“People take one look at me and assume I grew up in a gulag,” she said, gesturing to all of her tattoos.
In fact, she explained, she grew up in Akademgorodok, a college town within Novosibirsk. For a while, it was one of the best gigs in the Soviet Union, so far in the middle of nowhere that people could get away with the unheard-of. Exhibitions of banned Soviet artists. Risqué poetry readings. Nude seminars on a manmade riverside beach. And the freedom to practice frowned-upon disciplines like genetics – her father’s field.
“We actually lived in a house , wonder of wonders.”
“Then why did your parents decide to leave?”
“Because by the time I was old enough to remember anything, all of that was gone. Brezhnev stagnation, in the seventies. My parents heard there was a big Russian community here, and my dad got snapped up by UCSF.” She reached for the roach clip on her bedside table and used it to grasp the joint’s dwindling nub. “And also, my dad thought my mom could get better help here.”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “Your mom?”
He watched her take a final puff from the roach, and accepted the clip when she handed it to him. She said, “My mom had some sort of mental illness. She committed suicide two years after we moved here.”
“Oh.” The roach clip remained frozen in suspended animation .
He remembered her telling him, three years ago, that she was the one who found her mother dead. He knew from personal experience the trauma of something like that; but he couldn’t begin to imagine the abject horror of finding someone he loved dead from suicide – much less a parent. Having to live with that image, and the questions of why and what if , for the rest of his life.
His own trauma suddenly paled by comparison.
Unsure what else to say, he added, “I’m so sorry.” Then he cringed inwardly at the almost comical inadequacy of it.
She put her hand on his. “Save the roach. We can put it with some others and smoke it another time.”
After she deposited the joint’s remains on her bedside table, he reached for her and pulled her head down onto his chest. Her fingertips traced circles there.
They fell asleep tangled together like that, and when he next awoke, the sun was already up. So was he. He glanced at the bedside clock and felt a stab of panic – 7:36. His exam started in less than an hour.
She lay curled on her side, facing away from him. The sheet covered her only from her hips down. His eyes traced the curve of her spine, the Madonna and Child on her back. A six-winged seraph below that, matching the gold pendant she wore around her neck. Four lines of indecipherable Cyrillic script below that:
Духовной жаждою томим,
В пустыне мрачной я влачился, —
И шестикрылый серафим
На перепутье мне явился.
Painfully hard, he scooted over and wrapped his arms around her, spooning her. Planted kisses on her ear. Massaged her breasts until she stirred and murmured in greeting.
She turned her head back, smiling. Their mouths met, exploring, tasting. Deepening. Then, finding selflessness impossible, he slid inside of her .
She drew a sharp breath and held his stare with her own keen one. He seized her chin, unable to pace himself, unable to change positions, unable to do anything except submit to his own lust.
She drew her knees up, pushed his thighs with her feet and threw him back off of her. Spun around and, in one swift movement, pinned him onto his back with the weight of her body.
“You will not finish before me,” she declared.
Her breasts dangled just above his lips, swinging like fruit on a branch as she rocked her hips, and each time that he craned his neck to sample, he felt himself tumbling over a precipice. But she wouldn’t allow it. She reached between their bodies to stanch what had seemed inevitable moments before, as if twisting the shutoff valve on a hose. She reduced him nearly to a whimper, again and again. Losing patience, he made swift, tight circles with his fingers around her most sensitive spot, and she threw her head back with a groan of appreciation. At the end of an interval both too long and too short, she shouted unspeakable things in two languages and finally, blissfully permitted him to tumble headlong over that precipice with her. She crumpled into a spent heap on top of him, and he nuzzled her hair with his fingertips – he didn’t know how long – until they caught their breath.
“Jesus,” he panted finally. “ Wow. ”
She lifted her head, and said, “Good morning.”
He gave a ragged sort of laugh, and she smiled in return. She reached behind his head, pulled him to her in a kiss, but he didn’t close his eyes. The clock behind her read 8:02.
“You need to go?” she guessed.
Deeply conflicted and feeling guilty because of it, he kissed her again. “No. Do you need to go?”
“Not until eleven. I know where we can get breakfast.”
Aware that he lay in a pool of sweat, he said, “I could use a shower.”
He helped her strip the sheets off of her bed, then she took his hand and led him to the shower. Which turned out to be nearly futile, because at the end of it he wound up on her bed again, between her legs, pleasuring her on top of the towels they had spread over her mattress.
While she recovered from that, he lay alongside her in silence, stroking the skin between her navel and pubic bone with his fingertips. Tracing the line of Cyrillic writing that concealed her scar.
“Rely only on yourself,” she translated for him.
He said nothing, just looked up at her and continued to caress her skin. She peered back at him for a while in that stoic way of hers. She said, “Remember when I was so unfriendly that day? When you came to my house to buy more weed? This is why. I tattooed it on myself, in case the scar wasn’t enough of a reminder.”
He still said nothing, waiting to see if she cared to elaborate. But she didn’t.
“That makes me sad,” he offered. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”
“Me too,” she replied, but she watched him rather warily, he thought. After a moment, she startled him by swinging abruptly out of bed, saying, “How about that breakfast?”
They got dressed and walked down Van Ness to a restaurant called Los Jarritos, where they were the only white people in the building. William ordered nopales con juevos and chilaquiles for them in Spanish.
“I guess I should learn to speak Spanish, since I live here now,” Haze remarked while they waited for their food. “How did you learn to speak it so well? The processing plant?”
He shook his head. “You know that restaurant right across from the processing plant? Dunphy’s? I’m a line cook there now.”
“Really? When did that happen?”
The waitress delivered their coffee, and he took a huge chug. “A couple of years ago.” He gulped down the rest of the coffee and lifted his mug, signaling the waitress, who ignored him. So he reluctantly turned back to Haze. He watched her watching him, making the connection.
She said, “I have an appointment at twelve, but then I’m going to start getting ready for the Festival of Altars. ”
“The what?”
“It’s Día de los Muertos, you know.”
“Oh. That’s like Mexican Halloween, right? Where they dress up as skeletons?”
“ Calacas ,” she clarified. “They’re inviting their departed loved ones to celebrate with them. Building altars, with food and other things their loved ones enjoyed. And there’s a procession through the Mission District, with music and Aztec dancers.”
The waitress delivered their food, and while they dug into it, William weighed his options. He could call in sick to work, but he had promised himself he would never give Paul a single reason to complain. Julia would only hear good things about him.
Besides. What if – remote though the odds may be – Paul mentioned something about her? Or her mother did? Just to hear her name , for Christ’s sake...
Haze derailed his train of thought by offering him a bite of her nopales con juevos. “Where do you have to be, after this?”
He chewed, glanced at his watch. 9:47. The exam had started at 8:30. “I have rehearsal at two. And I’m supposed to work at five.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Rehearsal?”
“Yeah; I’m filling in on lead guitar for Mike’s new band. Just until they find someone permanent.”
“Really? Why aren’t you the permanent guitarist?”
“The band is Mike’s dream, not mine.”
“Fair enough, but it still sounds fun. What kind of music is it?”
“Irish pub rock. We haven’t even had our first show yet. It’s next Friday.”
“Where?”
He could see where this line of inquiry was heading. He offered her a bite of his chilaquiles. “It’s just at MacGowan’s Pub, in the Sunset.”
After chewing and swallowing, she said, “I’d love to see that.”
“Of course,” he said a little too quickly, a bit annoyed that she had just gone ahead and invited herself. For one thing, he worried he would fall flat on his face during his first show, and he didn’t want her to witness it. But also, he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain her presence to Mike. He didn’t look forward to Mike’s relentless ribbing. And he wasn’t sure he was ready to come out as her boyfriend yet.
On their way back to her house, she tugged his sleeve and said, “I need to stop in here a minute.”
He peered through the open door of the gift shop to the interior. A jumble of items, including accoutrements for Dia de los Muertos. He followed her as she gathered marigolds, votives, and colorful, lacy-looking paper.
“ Papel picado, ” she explained. “For decoration.”
At the counter she tried to explain to the clerk, in English and broken Spanish, that she was here to pick up something called a calavera , but the clerk didn’t seem to understand. William stepped up and intervened, and in the end, the clerk emerged with a small decorated skull, a name written across the top of it: “Oksana.”
Haze held it carefully, displaying it to him. “It’s a sugar skull. It’s a tradition to decorate these with the name of the loved one you’re honoring.”
“Your mother,” he guessed, and she nodded. The votives and papel picado she placed in her bag, and the flowers she handed to William. But the calavera she carried in her hands the rest of the way to her house.
He followed her into the kitchen, where she deposited the flowers into water. By then it was eleven o’clock.
“Well, listen,” she said. “In case you develop a little cough and need to call in sick to work, I’ll be in Garfield Park at six, by the Primal Sea mural. You should like that one. I’ll be in full calavera make-up, but you’ll find me by my tattoos.”
As he drove home, he wrestled with a sudden moment of clarity. Was he really going to let Julia stop him from living his life? She had made it abundantly clear to him with her silence – he had blown it, for good.
Madness to have assumed that his first love, a high school flame, would last the rest of his life. He was twenty years old, for Christ’s sake, and Haze had already proven to him how much he might have missed out on.
He wasn’t oblivious to the interest he attracted from women. Besides Cindy and Haze, there was the chick who sat in front of him in Macroeconomics and kept turning her head back to steal a glance. There was the girl at the gas station, checking him out as she filled up her GTI.
Who got married at age twenty? Who had sex with only one woman, his entire life?
Ridiculous.
“WHAT’S THE LONG CON?”
At home he showered again, rinsing the rest of Haze’s scent from his beard, and grabbed a quick nap. Made a sandwich, slung his guitar case over his shoulder, and took the bus to the house in West Portal with the soundproofed garage beneath it.
The homeowner kept the garage door permanently shut, so he knocked on the front door of the house. Mike frowned and grumbled about something as he admitted him; something about someone “significantly lowering the average pussy magnetism in the room.”
“Mike, what are you bitching about now?” William demanded. But soon enough, Mike opened the door from the interior of the house to the garage. William discovered for himself the assemblage of peculiar instruments on the floor, and the thirty-something man fiddling with them. A mandolin. A bodhrán. A concertina, and a tin whistle. Even a banjo.
Niall, wearing a flat cap and his signature sweater vest, sprang forward from the corner of the room where he assembled his drum set to clap a hand on William’s shoulder. “There you are! Let me introduce you to Christopher.”
The thirty-something’s head popped up from the mandolin he was tuning, and Niall said, “Christopher, our lead guitarist, William. William, our Irish multi-instrumentalist, Christopher. ”
“I’m Northern Irish, actually,” clarified Christopher, coming forward to shake William’s hand.
“And I’m the temporary lead guitarist, actually,” William further clarified, still feeling peevish from his last argument with Niall on the subject. He eyeballed Christopher and understood why Mike had been complaining. Not that William really cared about such things, but Christopher, with his desultory expression, his slight paunch, and his receding hairline, wouldn’t add any sex appeal to their lineup. Not even his earrings, heavy black claws that stretched his earlobes and seemed tacked on as an afterthought, would help on that front.
“See, I told you I’d come through,” Niall declared, beaming. “A single man who could do it all.”
While William unpacked his guitar and plugged it into the amp, Mike wandered over and grumbled, “I don’t see why we needed all that extra shit.”
“You said it was Irish pub rock, right? Part punk, part folk? Well, where did you think the folk was going to come from?”
“Yeah, but folk , not a fucking polka band!”
“Just give the dude a shot. It can’t hurt anything, for one rehearsal.”
Mike took himself off, now grumbling some bullshit about Christopher being a "fuckin’ Orangey;” and William finished tuning his guitar. He strummed a few chords lazily. He watched Christopher strike the bodhrán with its double-tipped beater, then nimbly pump out a few verses on the concertina. Watched Mike depart the garage in search of the bathroom.
A song emerged from the chords William strummed – a song he knew by heart. Mike had long ago taught him to read music well enough to learn his favorite Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin songs; but he had never bothered writing down the music to the melodies he created. He stored all of that in his head.
Niall’s voice at his shoulder startled him from his reverie. “Does that melody have lyrics to go with it?”
William had mailed the lyrics to her in the shoe box. He shook his head no.
“It’s a shame. Do you think you can come up with some? ”
William said nothing. Changed to a tune they had previously worked on together.
“Listen,” Niall persisted, “Mike can bitch all he wants about Christopher and his ‘significantly lowering the average pussy magnetism in the room.’ But Mike significantly lowers the average IQ in the room. No offense, friend; I know he’s your brother, but it’s the truth.”
“No offense taken.”
“But you know what would significantly raise the average IQ in the room?”
“You need to learn to take no for an answer, dude.”
Niall clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You have no faith in me! I was going to say some thoughtful tunes with some well-crafted lyrics. As sort of a counter-balance to all of Mike’s manic energy. To give the audience a bit of a rest, you see.”
“I don’t think rest is the vision Mike has for the band, or the audience.”
Niall grinned and squeezed William’s shoulder, as if humoring him. “That’s because Mike is not a strategic thinker. He doesn’t understand the long con.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the long con?”
Niall squatted down beside William. Stretched his arm out with a faraway look, as if surveying a vast expanse in the distance. “We’re playing in a pub. And guys don’t come to a pub to hear the music. They come to the pub to meet girls. But how many girls are coming to hear Mike’s version of the band?”
“I don’t think Mike cares about that. Mike’s end game is to resurrect old-school punk.”
“Yeah, but all that stuff he worships? The Tool and Die, The Farm, The Deaf Club? All that was dead and gone before he hit puberty. Nobody wants punk anymore. At least, not unless it’s cleaned up and dressed all pretty for MTV, like that Green Day shite.”
“I kind of like Green Day. They’re not horrible.”
“Exactly! That’s exactly my point, my friend. So why did Mike sign on for pub rock if he really wanted punk? ”
“I don’t know, Niall. Shouldn’t you be having this conversation with Mike?”
Niall gave him a deer in the headlights look, then unfurled one of his contagious laughs. “You’re right. But I think you’re the man in the best position to get through to him.”
William never thought he’d see the day when Mike, of all people, had the most artistic integrity in the group. At least Mike didn’t want to compromise his vision for mercenary commercial reasons. But then again, there was a balance to be had somewhere between pure artistic integrity, and flopping.
“You’re framing it to him all wrong,” William offered.
“How’s that?”
“The girls. We don’t sell ourselves to girls so we can attract the guys. We sell ourselves to girls, for ourselves.”
Niall’s jaw dropped, and he slapped William’s shoulder again. “I can’t believe what a plonker I am.”
Mike returned to the garage then. Niall leaped up and declared, “Right! Let’s get started, shall we?”
What happened over the next few minutes was a revelation. Christopher’s additions elevated the set list from a collection of punk songs whose lyrics coincidentally celebrated the working class, women, drinking, and Irish nationalism – to Irish pub rock. William’s eyes traveled from one bandmate to the next. Christopher, suddenly wide-awake and freed from the constraints of his surplus flesh. Mike, slack-jawed at the overthrow of all of his dismal expectations. Niall, beaming triumphantly.
William felt his spirits soaring. He had no idea if their set would be the “pussy magnet” Mike hoped for. But for the first time, it was fun as hell.
After the first song, Niall started to give some feedback, but Mike cut him short by dropping his bass guitar and going to wrap Christopher in a hug, slapping him on the back. Christopher’s initial shock and Niall’s amusement at the spectacle triggered William’s own laughter, burbling up quite involuntarily from somewhere deep in his gut .
When the rehearsal ended, William approached Niall as he dismantled his drum set.
“You asked me earlier if my melody had any lyrics to go with it.”
“Yeah?”
“I lied. It does.”
The lyrics were so ambiguous and metaphorical that he knew no one would ever figure out who they were about, anyway. He played it for him, and Mike and Christopher eavesdropped while they finished putting away their instruments.
“Can you play acoustic guitar?” Niall inquired when he finished.
“Of course.”
“I think that’s the way to go on a serenade like that.”
William nodded and helped him load his drums into the van. When he returned to the garage, he found Mike wrapping up cords. It was mid-afternoon, and foggy, and William’s energy was tanking precipitously. He watched Mike light a cigarette and take a drag. He said, “Hey, can I bum one of those?”
Mike turned to look at him, startled. “You’re smoking now?”
William shook his head. “I’m just really tired. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“Right on,” Mike ribbed, which didn’t bode well for what William was about to tell him. Mike held out the pack of Camels, and William selected one. While Mike flicked the Zippo, he said, "Come get a drink with us. We're going to MacGowan's."
William took a couple of puffs from the cigarette and shook his head. "I can't. I told Haze I was coming over."
Mike shrugged. "So come over after you score some."
William couldn’t help giving a short laugh at Mike’s choice of words. He turned to look at him, but said nothing.
Mike's eyes widened, and he appeared to nearly lose all muscle tone. "You're fucking kidding me."
William turned away again. Took another drag from the cigarette.
"Oh – no way. Just – no way." Mike gave one of his jackhammer laughs. Clapped his hand on William's shoulder, and shook him. "How did you manage it? "
William blew smoke. "Manage what?"
"Oh, shut up!”
William couldn't help giving a bit of a snicker.
"Wow. I stand in awe of you, little brother. I never would have seen it coming, but you have managed the nearly impossible - you have surpassed both me and Jimmy. Of course, you did have the very best teachers."
“Give it a rest, Mike. I only told you because she’s coming to our show next Friday. So keep your mouth shut when you see her, okay?”
Mike lifted his hands. “For my brother’s girlfriend? Perfect gentleman.”
“Thank you; but she’s not exactly my girlfriend.”
“Best friends with benefits?” suggested Mike, quoting a line William recognized from a song on the radio. Some pissed-off chick named Atlantis, or something.
“I think she’s a bit wounded,” William explained, thinking of the C-section scar.
“You’re right, you know. She closed down shop and left San Francisco in…” He turned his face up to the ceiling, squinting through one eye. “I think it was in ‘92. Yeah, it had to be ‘92, because it was right after she gave you that tat. I heard it was for a man, but I didn’t believe it at the time because I thought she was a dyke.”
“Why, because she wouldn’t sleep with you ?”
Mike dealt him a good-natured punch to the shoulder. It hurt, but of course William didn’t let on. “She was gone for… I don’t know. I guess she only came back a few months ago. And the next time I saw her, she had all those new tats.”
William considered a moment, then made up his mind. “Hey, will you take me home?”
“Sure, man.”
“Wait for me a second. I just have to make a phone call.”
He left the garage and found his way to the telephone mounted on the wall in the kitchen. Lifted the receiver, and dialed the number he had memorized for Dunphy’s. Asked for Paul, and called in sick .
“YOU CAN CALL ME SIMOCHKA.”
At six o’clock, he found the Primal Sea mural in Garfield Park and looked for her tattoos. He found her, in the same torso skeleton tank top she had worn on Halloween, her gray-streaked hair crowned with a tiara of marigolds, her face painted with expert intricacy in calavera makeup. She hadn’t spotted him yet, so he hung back, watching her. She had placed a box on the ground, and atop that she draped a red blanket. Part of the blanket also draped the ground in front of the box. On top of the makeshift altar, she placed an ornate picture frame with a black and white photo of a young woman. Blond hair, light-colored eyes, broad face. Almost Mongolian features. Haze surrounded the photo with marigolds, exotic sweets, and containers of mysterious libations labeled in Cyrillic script. Votives, which she attempted to light.
Women and girls nearby tried to talk to her in animated voices, but she couldn’t understand them.
“They want to know who did your makeup for you,” he said, by way of announcing himself.
She didn’t even look up. She recognized him by his voice alone, and smiled. “Tell them I did it myself.”
“Lo hizo ella misma,” he told them.
They looked startled to find him speaking Spanish to them. A volley of exclamations followed, one tumbling over the other so he couldn’t understand them. He decided to take advantage of the mass confusion.
“They want to know if that’s your mother,” he lied.
“Si,” Haze replied to the women and girls. “Mi madre. Oksana.”
Of course they looked confused by her response, and William put a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter. But one of the ladies graciously replied, “Era bellisima, su madre.”
“Tan hermosa,” agreed another.
“Si. Hermosa como la hija,” agreed William, turning to smile at Haze.
Another volley of exclamations followed, from which he discerned that they approved of his flattery of his novia. The next thing he understood was one of the women asking, “?Era china?”
“Claro que no,” replied another, “Mira su pelo rubio.”
“Rusa,” William clarified.
“Ah, si, claro, rusa.”
Haze was having a hard time lighting the votives in the wind. He crouched down beside her and cupped his hand around the rim of one while she lit it. She still smiled.
“I see you caught a cold during your rehearsal,” she said.
He watched her face the whole time. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t dare mess up her perfectly executed face paint. Her eyes were black smudges, ringed with fuschia blossoms and purple jewels. A teal-colored bindi-like jewel on her forehead, surrounded by a lotus blossom. The vines spreading with tiny blossoms and jewels over her cheeks. The white and teal of her face, and the pink of her lips all blending, contouring together seamlessly. The sharp black nasal cavities and the gash from ear to ear and across her mouth. The vertical black stitches atop her pink lips.
He never would have seen it coming, such breathtaking artistry; but then he wondered why not?
“Help me set up my ofrenda to my mother,” she invited him.
He helped her string up the papel picado like bunting over the altar. Helped arrange the sugar skulls, including the one with her mother’s name on it.
They drank with her mother – kvas , she explained, a sweet non-alcoholic beer; and mors , a fermented berry drink. They ate the pastila – various small, square confections made of sour apples, honey, and egg whites.
They toured the other ofrendas , including a popular one to a dead singer named Selena, and stopped at a “tree of life,” where they could write notes to departed loved ones on slips of white paper. Haze grabbed one and scrawled something in Russian, presumably to her mother, since one of the first words he picked out was “мама.” He couldn’t help noticing the closing greeting, as well :
Люблю,
сима
He pointed to the last word. “Is that your name in Russian?”
“Yes – the short form. Sima. In Russia, friends and family never call each other by their full names.” She clipped her note to a wire branch of the tree and said, “Do you have anyone to write to? It doesn’t have to be to someone who’s dead. It can be to someone who’s not with you tonight.”
For half a second he considered writing something to Julia, but for obvious reasons he quickly dismissed that thought. His next idea still felt way too raw and vulnerable to reveal to Haze. But something about Haze in her face paint and this place encouraged him to throw all caution to the wind. Before he could change his mind, he seized a piece of paper and a pen, and wrote:
Dear Nonna,
I’m sorry. I’ll do better.
Love,
Will
He did not look at Haze, and thankfully she didn’t say anything. He felt the choking sensation. He bit his tongue – hard – until he tasted blood. He clipped the note to the tree branch and watched his slip of paper fluttering alongside hers.
She took his hand, wove her fingers through his and led him silently to the procession. They watched the drummers and took in the homemade floats, constructed atop pickup trucks and bicycles. Mictecacihuatl, queen of the Aztec underworld, pulled on a wagon altar. The thirteen standards processed by – snake, rat, wolf, and more. They watched the Aztec dancers, their ankles festooned with bands of beads that clacked like castanets, their colorful, sometimes sparse costumes glittering, their headdresses soaring with spikes of tall, colored feathers. And everywhere, the calacas and calaveras , like Haze in her face paint and skeleton tank top, which she now covered partially with a black leather jacket.
The atmosphere was festive, yet respectful; the air perfumed with incense and the occasional whiff of cannabis.
At the end of the procession, they returned to Garfield Park, where William helped disassemble Haze’s ofrenda and load the components into the wagon she had brought with her.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Starving,” he admitted.
They were on Mission Street now, walking north toward her house. She pointed across the street to a storefront with a mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe. A lighthouse on a yellow awning below that proclaimed it as “Taqueria El Farolito.”
“Let’s get a burrito and take it back to my place,” she suggested.
In her kitchen, she invited him to dig in to his burrito while she washed off her face paint, an offer he happily took her up on. He also helped himself to an airplane mini-bottle or four of tequila to wash it down.
She joined him at the table, fresh-faced without a speck of makeup. She usually wore a little something – some black eyeliner, perhaps, or a smear of brick-red lipstick. After sex or sleeping, her makeup smudged, and then she freshened up as soon as she got out of bed.
Now, as she took her seat across the table from him and unwrapped her burrito, she smiled at him a bit self-consciously.
Impulsively, he seized her hand. “What days do you work?”
“Every day except Sunday.”
“I don’t work Sunday, either. Do you want to do something?”
She gave a wry smile, withdrew her hand, and snagged one of his mini-bottles of tequila. Unscrewed it, and took a swig.
“My dad doesn’t speak to me anymore, but when he did, he kept asking me why I don’t just date a nice Jewish boy. I tried to explain to him – the nice Jewish boys he has in mind would never date a girl like me, anyway.”
“Why not? ”
“Well, I mean...” She held up her arms, wrapped in animal tattoos, and flicked the ring in her nose. She hesitated a moment, then pointed to the cupolas above her neckline and the eyes that flanked them. “These are supposed to be prison tattoos, you know.”
He felt his stomach lurch. “You were in prison?”
She laughed. “Not exactly. I was in Brighton Beach.” When he still drew a blank, she explained, “Little Odessa? The American headquarters of the Russian Mafia? It’s in Brooklyn.”
“Really? And you got those there?”
She nodded. “After our mother died, my brother and I went to live there with my father’s relatives.”
“You have a brother.” He had always assumed she was an only child – an orphan, for all intents and purposes.
“I have two, actually,” she clarified, sipping her tequila. “Kirill – he’s an Orthodox priest. And Vasya – the one who went with me to Brooklyn. He still lives there. He and I got into a lot of trouble, playing around like real vor. ”
“ Vor ?”
“You know, like – made men.”
“Did you actually know anyone in the Russian mafia?”
“You couldn’t run the streets unsupervised like we did without bumping into one or two. They made a big impression. We took all that vor crap very seriously. We gave each other our first tattoos.” She patted her knees, where he had earlier spied what resembled compass roses. “Stars. They mean, ‘I kneel to no one.’ He was sixteen, but I was only twelve.” She took another bite from the burrito. Chewed thoughtfully. “I told you about my other brother, Kirill – the priest. He lives in Anchorage.”
Anchorage. “Alaska?”
She nodded. “There’s a large Russian Orthodox community up there, left over from its days as a Russian colony. Kirill knew of a good rehab facility up there – you know, after all that crap with Jimmy – and he convinced me that the change of scenery would help sobriety stick.”
William plucked a black bean from his burrito and popped it in his mouth. He reached for her hand again. Examined the ring tattoos on her fingers – a circle with a dot inside of it. A skull inside of a square, and a circled A. An Orthodox cross inside of a diamond.
She abruptly withdrew her hand and got up to retrieve more salsa from the kitchen counter. When she returned, she said, “Vasya was nosediving and taking me along with him. My relatives sent me back to San Francisco, but by then I was fourteen and I had already started dealing. And using.”
Once again, he reached across the table and took up her hand. Touched the animal tattoos, running his fingertips up the length of her arm.
She looked down at them, and smiled. “The Siberian ice maiden.”
“What?”
“A mummy they found in Altai Republic, where my mother was born. They found the ice maiden in 1993. She was buried alone, surrounded by all her things for the afterlife, including a container of cannabis.”
William couldn’t help laughing out loud at this last detail. “How perfect.”
“But the most amazing thing was her tattoos. Like this one, here on my shoulder.” She pointed to the bucking deer-griffin hybrid, with the flowering antlers. “There were other mummies, too, and I totally ripped off all their designs. This may sound crazy, but when I saw the pictures in National Geographic, it was like my mother was there, looking at them with me. Like I was seeing them through her eyes, or something. I knew that’s what my arms had been waiting for all these years.”
“I don’t think that’s crazy,” William murmured.
“My son – Asher – he was born in February of this year. His father, Matt... my ex-husband…”
She paused here and peered up at William, as if to gauge his reaction. Whatever she saw in his eyes must have satisfied her, because she continued.
“Matt is an Alaska Native. A lot of Alaska Natives are Russian Orthodox. I met him at my brother’s church, at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. And that’s where we got married – at Kirill’s church. But Matt is an addict, like me, and he relapsed, and then he cheated on me. And I had no way to support Asher by myself. So after he was born, I left him with Matt’s mother, and came back here to try and get a business up and running.”
“I’m so sorry,” was all that William could think to say.
“I had just come back to San Francisco in April when I saw that National Geographic article.” She looked down at her tattoos, at William’s hand caressing them. The grooves between her eyebrows deepened. “You know, some cultures use tattoos as medicine.”
“I know.” He again considered telling her about his albatross tattoo. He just couldn’t. Sacrilege.
“Medicine, and armor,” she clarified.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Pretty much the only guys who fetishize this are white American guys, like you.”
“Is that why you think I’m with you? Because I fetishize you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Well… yeah.”
She burst out laughing. He had never seen her laugh so freely before, and he couldn’t help smiling at the way it revealed lines in her face and around her eyes that he had never noticed. He added, “But not because of your tattoos. Not for any reason, actually – I was just teasing.”
“I’m not quite sure how to take that,” she said, still snickering.
“I just think you’re a beautiful woman, all around. It’s a shame if anyone doesn’t see that. Their loss.”
She gaped in disbelief, then leaned across the table and kissed him. “Yes. I’d love to do something with you Sunday.”
Upstairs, in her bed, she said, “This is all I could think about, all day.”
“Me too,” he lied.
As she kissed her way down his torso, he gave a little shudder of anticipation and said, “Sima.” It was out of the blue. He had no idea where it came from .
She looked up at him, and said, “Simochka.”
“Hm?”
“You can call me Simochka.”
After she dropped off to sleep, he lay awake a few minutes longer, despite his physical exhaustion. His mind racing, still buzzed from all the alcohol and weed and confusion.
He understood now. Sex with Haze was good because of her experience and skill. But Julia’s entire being , physical and otherwise, lit him on fire. Every single nerve ending in his body scintillated, even when he merely thought of her. It was that total quenching, that ultimate spiritual and physical consummation, that he craved.
But it didn’t matter. He would never have that again, certainly not with Julia. Meanwhile, here was Haze. Sexy, smart, talented in so many ways. Kind, generous – but no pushover. And into him .
He could work with that. That could grow. He could have that ultimate consummation again.