My New American Life (19 page)

“Don't change the subject,” Dunia said. “Stop here! Forget the macho parking two steps from the entrance.” She flung open the door and trotted across the lot. Lula rushed to catch up. Was Dunia running away? Possibly from the idea of Lula's romance with Alvo. True love and hot sex, even the chance of true love and hot sex, was the only thing that could compete with the standard of living that came with Dunia's boring marriage to Steve. Love, or even the hope of love, gave you status, in a way.

But if so, this slight edge was lost on the women who watched Lula and Dunia from the mirrored fortresses of the cosmetics counters. Under their scrutiny, Lula's coat turned into a jester's rags, in which she skipped after Dunia, distracting her friend from the saleswomen's grown-up claims on her attention. They sized up Lula and looked away, as if from someone disfigured. Then they trained their come-to-me gazes on the one in the ostrich boots.

“I need a new outfit,” Lula said. “Something sexy but elegant.”

“Perfume,” Dunia told her. “Trust me. Forget the outfit, the short skirt, the fishnet stockings, the unbuttoned blouse, the fuck-me shoes. More wastes of time and money. Dab something expensive in a few secret places, and their testosterone pumps. Steve brought me home a study from a medical journal. Certain scents increase guys' blood flow and give them massive hard-ons. Better than Viagra. Call a doctor if your erection lasts longer than four hours. The problem is, a different smell works on each individual guy. So Steve does his own research and comes home with this million-dollar vial of oil, probably illegal, he says it's extracted from poppies that grow in the kitchen gardens of Afghan warlords. God knows where it really comes from. If I put it where he wants me to, it gives me a hideous rash. So now I have to smell like a hooker and pretend to talk dirty in Albanian. How much fun is that?”

Did the women smiling at the two girls from their glittery counters suspect that the rich one was complaining about her sex life?

“Pheromones,” said Lula. “Like with the insect family. That funny odor when you crush a beetle. To another beetle it's the irresistible sex smell.”

“The death smell,” Dunia said. “The day I met Steve in the airport I was wearing a bucket of Chanel No. 5.”

Lula said, “How nice for the person sitting next to you on the plane.”

“There was no person next to me on the plane,” said Dunia. “No plane. I figured I might as well wear it. If I tried to bring it home to Albania, some customs guard at the airport would have stolen it for his girlfriend.”

Dunia trawled the counters, eyeing bottles, raising and dashing the hopes of women who had spent the day seducing an empty department-store aisle. Grasping Lula's forearm, Dunia said, “Concentrate. Focus on this guy. Be him. Figure out what he'd like. Let your instincts guide you.”

Now all the women were looking at them. How confident it made Dunia and Lula to stand there deep in conversation, suspended in time and space, feeling no compulsion to get on with the business of shopping. Lula couldn't be this brave alone. No one could. How she needed and loved her friend! Dunia flitted from counter to counter, spraying perfumes on tissue squares and writing, with a stubby pencil, the names of scents until she'd narrowed the selection down to three or four squares. In what exclusive rich-girl school had Dunia learned to do this?

“Smell them. But think about the guy.”

“They're all starting to smell the same,” Lula said.

“My God, you're hopeless.” Dunia kissed Lula's cheek. The perfume ladies goggled. Did they think that Lula and Dunia were Russian hookers spending a stolen lesbian afternoon? She could see why Steve's parents worried about Dunia. How wrong they were, how little they knew. But the lie they believed about her friend was another lie come true. Somehow they'd transformed her into the ambitious Natasha climbing the social ladder on which their son was the bottom rung.

“I think musky,” Dunia was saying. “A guy who stashes his gun with you and pretends to be in construction—”

“Pretends? He's in construction.”

“Pretends,” Dunia said. “Probably the fastest way to his heart is to pick up your skirt and show him. Look, no underwear.”

“That's not going to happen,” said Lula.

“I understand,” said Dunia. “That's why we're doing perfume. Concentrate. Start again.”

Lula sprayed and sniffed and tried to think about Alvo. But try as she might, she couldn't conjure up the scenario in which one whiff of something spicy or sweet gave him no choice but to jump her.

“Check out this one.” Dunia sprayed a cold mist on Lula's wrist. “Give it a minute. Okay, sniff.”

Lula closed her eyes and inhaled.

In the littered courtyard behind her housing block in Tirana had been a glorious flowering tree that thrived on garbage, weeds, cigarette smoke, and the fried food aerosol that fell on it from the windows. Luckily it bloomed around May Day, so the tree was left alone by the neighborhood committee, which usually ruled that anything pretty or pleasing was Western bourgeois mind poison. The May Day tree bloomed for a week, and people would come downstairs in the evenings and gather in groups or stand alone to breathe in the scent of the blossoms. No one stole the branches to have inside their homes. It was the only time when Communism worked like it was supposed to. After the blossoms fell, it was understood that the kids could stay out late and have battles, flinging the slimy petals and hard stamens at each other. The perfume Dunia had sprayed on her wrist smelled like those warm spring nights.

“This one,” Lula said thickly. The bottle—sapphire blue, like the pharmaceutical vials in which Granny used to keep her gardenia water—reminded her of Granny's story about the woman who went around collecting tears and marketing them as a skin care product. Just thinking about that story seemed like asking for bad luck. Lula decided to keep the perfume in the drawer with Alvo's gun. Let her new smell and his pistol spend some time together.

A voice said, “Shall I wrap it up?”

“My treat,” Dunia said.

“I can't let you do this,” Lula said.

Dunia brandished her credit card. “Steve's treat,” she told the woman.

Chapter Ten

M
ister Stanley took the day before Christmas off and spent the morning rooting through the closets for some important item that turned out to be a package of tinsel that he draped, strand by strand, over the picture frames. When Zeke woke at noon, Mister Stanley, apparently having forgotten his plans to ignore the holiday, asked if Zeke wanted to go help pick out a Christmas tree.

Zeke said, “What kind of sick trees do you think will be left on Christmas Eve?”

Mister Stanley said, “Probably plenty. There will be plenty of choice.”

Zeke said, “Then you don't need me.”

Mister Stanley said, “What the heck, does one even need a tree?”

Zeke said, “What the heck, does one even need a tree?” and turned on the TV. Was he trying to exhaust the patience of his patient American dad? No, he was trying to remind his guilty American dad that his mother had abandoned them on Christmas Eve.

At six, when Lula decided to start dressing to go out with Alvo, Zeke was lying on the couch watching the Yule log burn on TV, while Mister Stanley sat in a chair, watching his son watching.

“Oh, look, it's just like Communist TV,” Lula said in the grating warble she heard in her voice whenever she tried to brighten the dark air between them. “The newscaster would read us statistics of people starving to death in the West, and a clock would tick on the wall.”

Mister Stanley said, “Zeke, do you think we could possibly watch something more compelling?”

“No,” said Zeke. “I like this. It's totally compelling.”

Mister Stanley struggled visibly not to ask, then asked, “Are you high on something, Zeke?”

“On holiday cheer,” Zeke said.

Beckoning Lula into the kitchen, Mister Stanley said, “I think he misses his mom.”

“I'm sorry,” Lula said, meaning sorry sympathetic but sounding like sorry apologetic. In Albanian they were different words, and the difference could mean life or death.

Mister Stanley tented his fingertips like a priest. “Quite honestly, it was a challenge not to notice the symbolism and anger in the timing of my wife's departure. I told you it was Christmas Eve.”

“You did,” Lula said. What a heartless monster Ginger was. Yet somewhere in Lula's own heart she understood Ginger's panic. She was sure, or almost sure, that the remorse she felt for leaving tonight would vanish the minute she left.

“I'd better get ready,” she said.

Even as Lula told herself that her date with Alvo would be nothing special—really, you couldn't say enough for low expectations!—she not only used all her creams and soaps but every one of the free bath-product samples she had hoarded from her first days in New York. There was a reckless glee in opening the tiny vials and anointing herself with substances so potent that the store had bet those precious drops on making her want more.

She walked naked across the bedroom, opened her underwear drawer, and gently unwrapped Alvo's gun from its cocoon. She held the silk in one hand, the pistol in the other, hesitating as if she were weighing them, deciding. She lay the gun on a hastily gathered nest of polyester and stepped into the silk panties, fastened the bra, and went to the mirror, braced for a vision of decrepitude and horror. But in fact she looked fit. Like a girl! Her ass hadn't sagged all that much, amazing when you considered how much time she'd spent sitting on it at Mister Stanley's. For a moment she drifted out of herself and floated into another perspective, the warmer, more admiring view of someone like . . . someone like Alvo. She imagined, as she hoped he would, slipping off the lace and silk. The physical symptoms of desire were unmistakable, even after a long remission. Like riding a bicycle, Lula thought, not that she'd ever learned to ride a bike.

Lula needed to calm down. It would be unwise to start out on her first real date with Alvo in a state of high arousal.

Given that Dunia had talked her out of spending money on a new outfit, “dress nice” had better mean her black dress and the heels that made her calves look thin but which she could dance in, if she had to. She put on her makeup, American subtle but heavy enough to convince an Albanian guy she'd made an effort. Even after she'd wiped off three different shades of blush and sprayed on the precise dose of perfume that, she'd learned through trial and costly error, communicated erotic interest without being too aggressive, she was ready twenty minutes early.

Which was lucky, because so was Alvo. Her phone chirped, and a text appeared.
Parked outside
. Short, to the point, and now his number was on Lula's contact list.

She had rehearsed her exit, and it went smoothly, as planned. She grabbed her coat and let the door close tenderly on her “Merry Christmas!” This time she added, “See you soon,” to reassure them that she wasn't leaving forever. As she walked down the path, her knight in his shining black charger beeped his horn—honk, honk, hello. The guy had a few rough edges. Maybe he was nervous.

Lula slid across the seat and kissed Alvo on the cheek.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

All Dunia's painstaking olfactory research results were instantly corrupted by the unforeseen variable of Alvo's strong cologne. Despite the fortune Dunia had spent, Lula was glad to let the scent of those long-lost summer evenings surrender without a fight to the peacock pheromones of Alvo's preparations for the evening, which happily did not include the tight, shiny synthetics that so many Albanian boys favored. His black shirt set off the red of his hair, and in his black jacket and jeans, he could have passed for one of the guys who'd blown their trust funds on rum drinks at La Changita. Lula hadn't wanted to go out with those guys, so why did she want Alvo to look like one? Because she didn't want to be the bossy know-it-all, tutoring her fresh-off-the-boat boyfriend in the fashions and customs of their adopted country.

They rode in silence, struck dumb by the awareness that they'd altered their smells for each other. That had to signify something, if only the likelihood that Alvo had calculated the probability of his getting laid this evening. Lula's stomach fluttered. Dunia and her bright ideas. How much harder the perfume made it to pretend this was just a platonic friendly night out, Older Brother and Little Sister reeking like a pair of sex fiends.

“Where are we going?” Lula asked.

“The Bronx,” said Alvo. “Where else?”

They crossed the George Washington Bridge, its bright loops improbably strung above the silver cord of the river. Down below, glittering hives of mist swirled around the streetlamps on the snowy banks of the Hudson.

Alvo said, “So how are the boss and his kid spending their Merry Christmas?”

“Watching the Yule log on TV,” Lula said.

Alvo said, “Bleak. Very bleak.”

“Please. I feel guilty enough,” said Lula.

Alvo took the exit for the Whitestone Parkway. Then he said, “Are you sure you're not fucking the boss?”

“Jesus Christ!” said Lula. “How many times do I have to—?”

“Sorry,” Alvo said.

Lula said, “What's the point of Christmas, anyway? We never had Christmas at home.”

“Now we do,” said Alvo. “Now it's a big travel season for Albanians. Everyone's got to come here. To do what, I don't know. Go to Radio City. Sit on Santa's lap. Right now I've got three cousins from Vlorë sleeping on my bedroom floor.”

So much for the option of ending the evening at Alvo's apartment. But since when had Lula needed to do it in a proper bed? She'd grown so middle-aged and conservative since she and her boyfriends used to sneak out and rip off their clothes and roll around in the dictator's bunkers.

Alvo said, “I wonder if they ever took a survey: How many Albanian guys and girls had their first sex in a bunker?”

Lula said, “Did you just read my mind, or what?”

“Really?” said Alvo. “That's beautiful.” Without taking his hands off the wheel, he bumped his elbow against hers. “You know what? One of my cousins brought me this little vial of water from a spring somewhere in Bosnia. Male water, they call it. Supposed to be Balkan Viagra.”

“Do you need it?” Lula asked.

“Not the last time I checked,” Alvo said.

Lula saw searchlights raking the sky above an industrial wasteland, beacons to guide their smooth landing in front of a one-story building on which red and green and silver lights spelled out “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.” Another string of bulbs outlined a double-headed eagle over the door.

“I've heard of this place,” said Lula.

“Who hasn't?” Alvo said.

Two guys in bow ties lunged for the doors of the Lexus, but Alvo waved them off until he and Lula got out and he surrendered the keys.

“Valet parking sucks,” Alvo said. “Paying some stranger to screw with your seat adjustment and mirrors. But in this neighborhood you need somebody to kneecap the junkie before he smashes your window for the pocket change stuck in the seat.”

A squad of gigantic bouncers guarded the entrance, checking IDs and exuding random intimidation. One of them recognized Alvo and cleared a tunnel through which Alvo led Lula, a gauntlet of arm-punches and shoulder thumps that Alvo good-humoredly endured while Lula succumbed to the dizzying high of specialness and privilege. Which other girls had Alvo come here with? It almost spoiled her good mood to think about Alvo's life before her.

Lula saw a security guard holding a girl at arm's length, laughing as her flailing arms and fists bounced off his puffed-out chest.

“Spit on me?” he was saying. “What kind of way is that for a nice Albanian girl to behave?”

The coat check girl looked hard at Lula to see how she'd wound up with Alvo. Lula wanted to tell her: chemistry. For some reason she thought of Savitra asking if she'd had sex with Don Settebello. What did Lula know about Alvo's past? She knew nothing about his present.

A blast of noise blew these reflections straight out of Lula's head. As Alvo guided her into the crowd, Lula remembered why this feeling—too many people, too much sound, not enough oxygen, not enough room, a barrage of intense sensation bombarding your heart and belly—was something you might want. Sparks leaped from body to body, each body in a bubble yet paradoxically hyperaware of every other body nearby. It was a highly diluted but still arousing version of the wordless language two bodies speak when they are about to have sex.

As they moved away from the door, the space was less tightly packed, and indeed the dance floor had the forlorn air of a wedding before the party gets rocking. An invisible DJ shouted, “Let's slow it down!” as if it weren't slow enough already, and a soul singer crooned a ballad. A few couples, newlyweds or newly engaged, danced closely, half entranced and half convincing the world and themselves of their passionate future together.

“Let's get a drink,” said Alvo, again reading Lula's mind. He found an empty corner and told Lula to wait. He'd forgotten to ask what she wanted. Or maybe it was a guy thing, profoundly cave man and Bronx. You not only ordered for your date but you told her what she liked.

Alvo vanished into the strobe-swept darkness. What if he never came back? How long did Lula have to wait before she called a taxi? There were plenty of single guys here. She could dance, have fun, maybe even find another guy to take her home. But there was no one she wanted to meet. She wanted to be with Alvo. He wouldn't do that to her on Christmas Eve. No one would stoop that low. No one, that is, but Ginger.

At last she spotted Alvo bobbing toward her with a shot glass in each hand. “Sorry it took me so long. I ran into this crazy dude who wanted to start a big fight. He claims we installed his air conditioner backward, and it blew dirt and soot and garbage all over his little baby. Now he wants us to reinstall it—”

“I thought you did commercial construction,” Lula said.

“We do,” he said. “Like I told you. The dude's hallucinating. This one's yours.
G'zoor
.”

“
G'zoor
.” Lula took a sip. Raki, the drink of good-bye and hello, of congratulation and consolation. Lula didn't think of herself as a nationalistic person. Mostly, in her experience, country was like religion, an excuse to hate other people and feel righteous about it. But then there was raki. Raki
was
Albania, it had that special taste. Even Albanians with no sentimental attachment to their home country brightened and got teary-eyed when the talk turned to raki. They got high just hearing the word.

“Mother's milk,” said Alvo.

“Delirium in a glass,” Lula said.

“Hell, yeah. Whoever said money can't buy happiness never got into the top-of-the-line mulberry raki.”

“I like the walnut,” Lula said.

“That works too,” said Alvo. “Expensive.”

Lula was trying to figure out what else to say about raki when a blare of static rattled the loudspeakers, and the music turned Albanian. A man sang about a woman he couldn't forget, while behind him the clarinets tried to cheer him up. The volume climbed, while the sinuous thumping of the electronic drum cast a spell on the crowd and dragged the enchanted ones toward the dance floor.

“Another drink?” Alvo asked.

“I've still got some.” But oddly, Lula's glass appeared to have emptied itself. “Sure, why not?” She smiled.

“That's my girl.” Alvo plunged off toward the bar against the incoming tide of merrymakers.

His girl? Had Lula heard right? It meant nothing besides approval of the pace at which she was drinking. He could have said, My man. Yet she no longer worried that he wouldn't return. She leaned against a wall that seemed to be keeping time with the drum and watched people approach the dance floor as if it were a pool into which they were either about to dive or venture one big toe.

It had been so long since she'd seen Albanian dancing. She'd forgotten how it made you want to join the line even if you were cool and modern and over Albanian dancing. So much individual soul was poured into the simple steps, men and women, young and old, married, single, fat, thin. No one wore the stiff mask of vacancy or anxiety that Lula had so often seen on the faces of Americans inventing their own dances, trying to seem unself-conscious even as they labored to telegraph a message about confidence, sexuality, and whether they were available or taken. How stressful it was when Americans paired off in Noah's ark couples, performing rhythmic preludes or aftermaths to sex, or danced in groups of girls, never groups of guys, writhing, distanced from the bodies they were showing off. Albanians just grabbed the last hand in line and let the music take charge.