The Cosmopolitans (39 page)

She brushed some hair back from her eyes, streaking it with
white. Even when she got old, she’d still look good. “Yana’s back
in Chittagong. Milla’s in Provincetown this week, with Izz and
Theandra.”

“Thea —?”

“Her girlfriend. Theandra.” Katya narrowed her eyes, but
he wasn’t about to say anything “inappropriate.” Why was he
constantly under suspicion? All he’d been about to say was that he
wasn’t surprised.

He said, “My mom wanted me to ask about Roman, too. She
couldn’t have him back in the house, after…” he gestured towards
the upstairs bathroom, “so we don’t know if he’s okay, or…”

“Roma,” she called. He was there? And being addressed in the
diminutive?

Roman limped into the room. “Returning to the scene of the
crime?” Leonid said.

Roman laughed in that immigrant way that showed he didn’t
understand, and said, “How’s it hanging?”

Leonid replied in the usual manner. Katya hadn’t divorced
Roman? Roman was squatting in the house he’d wrecked?
Seriously?

“Check it.” Roman pulled a CD, jewel case and all, from the
droopy back pocket of his jeans. “Romin Tha White Russian” was
brandishing a hammer at a Winnebago in what looked like a used-car
lot. “Money goes to New Orleans, for houses not trailers,” Roman
said.

“All the vast amounts of money you’re making on this?” CDs
were obsolete, hadn’t anyone told them that?

“He’s sold over forty already,” Katya said, with a challenge in
the movement of her chin.

“More like my friend Chino has sold, in Iraq.” Roman put a
hand on Leonid’s shoulder. “But how I am thinking is, we don’t
need to live like Mafia to party like porn stars.”

“Huh.” They were far from partying like porn stars, from what
Leonid could see. If Katya really wanted to party like a porn star, he
could show her: amazing steaks, front-row Counting Crows seats.
But that didn’t seem in the cards. The plaster dust was making his
cold worse. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Roman said, “Like now, I have dance party, Westhill High. Bro,
want to bounce together?”

Leonid shook his head, smiling. “Work tomorrow. I’ve got to
be a good boy.” How competitive could you get with a greenhorn
cousin who misunderstood your insults and called you bro? And
who was Leonid, if not a firm believer in family values?

Katya jumped off the ladder. “It looks good, right?”

Leonid sneezed, nodded.

Katya linked an arm through Roman’s. “
Here is the path upon
which hundreds of millions of people have already followed, and
upon which all of humanity is fated to tread
,” she said in a strangely
mannish voice.

Roman was laughing before she’d even finished. “Most dope.”

Leonid held up an arm and staggered into the living room under
the weight of an impending sneeze. It bellowed out of him, and his
eyes ached, and his fingers — oh, God — were now webbed with
mucus. He’d left his tissue pack in the car. “Are you okay?” Katya
called. He had to get out of this house.

Leonid had a strange sense of being watched, from above, by
some benign but not at all disinterested party, not God, definitely
not his Grandfather Mendel, who’d called him a “soft boy” and died
before Leonid got into Harvard, which would have shown him.

— A white handkerchief floated before his eyes, and fluttered,
with a strange sideways motion, into his open hand. “
Batyushka,
moy spacitel
,” my lord, my savior, emanated from parts unknown.