A Replacement Life (19 page)

“Ten,” Vova sighed.

Slava was about to pass thirteen dollars to the front seat when Vera’s eyes sent out an ultramarine blast of distress. Her hand reached into his wallet and removed another five. Speechless, Slava passed eighteen dollars to the front seat.

“He takes care of me,” she said vaguely as they walked into the fluorescent embrace of her friend’s building.

The guests were in their midtwenties, everyone paired up, and they spoke Russian, normally distressing to Slava, but his had been receiving an unfamiliar workout in recent weeks. Slava stood to the side while Vera exchanged elaborate, lippy greetings with her friend Lara and Lara’s boyfriend, Stas.

“Everyone?” Vera said, taking Slava by the arm and walking him into the living room. His discomfort retreated slightly, her hand warm and familiar. “This is Slava. Slava is a writer.” The assembled brayed in admiration. “He works at the best American magazine.”

“
Playboy
?” said a potbellied young man in a blazer. The other boys laughed. The girl whose arm was entwined with his laid a free fist into his gut.

“That’s Leonard and his Galochka,” Vera said. “Leonard is our resident literario. You guys will have something to talk about. That’s Lyova, that’s Oslik. Everyone, introduce yourselves and make Slava feel at home, please. Girls, let’s go set the table.”

His girlfriend rising, Leonard shook his poetic curls and patted the freshly vacated seat next to him. There were half a dozen boys altogether, drinks in their hands.

“What are you drinking?” Leonard inquired.

“Vodka?” Slava proposed.

“Incorrect!” Leonard announced, and the boys squealed with laughter. He was their ringleader, by the look of things. Each of their glasses held a caramel-colored liquid. “Galina Mikhailovna, my dove!” Leonard called out toward the kitchen, using his girlfriend’s patronymic, the way wives and husbands did in the old times.

Galochka, who was setting a plate of herring in oil on a lacy tablecloth, looked up. The girls were working with daunting facility. One was setting the table with gold-rimmed plates, another following with filigreed thimbles, and a third unloading bowls of salad Olivier and boiled potatoes. Slava wished he could be in their circle instead. Vera caught his eyes and mouthed, Everything okay? Embarrassed, Slava nodded.

“Dove, get our guest a glass of cognac, would you?” Leonard bleated.

“I’ll take care of it,” Vera whispered to Galochka, and moved to open one of the bottles.

“So what kind of writer are you?” Leonard turned back to Slava. “I read a lot. Unlike the rest of these knuckleheads. John Grisham, James Patterson. Suze Orman is very good. Last year, I read
The Count of Monte Cristo
.”

The rest of the boys nodded reverently.

“Why do they call you Oslik?” Slava said tentatively to a skinny boy in jeans and a sweatshirt. “Oslik” meant “donkey.”

“Oslik?” Leonard answered for him, grinning. “Oslik!” he said, and brayed. “Why do we call you Oslik?”

“I don’t have an elevator in my building,” Oslik said, sniggering. “We came back from shopping one day and had to carry it all the way to the fifth floor.”

“Like a donkey!” Leonard said.

Oslik laughed with everyone else.

“If Oslik thinks I am going to marry him in these conditions,” said a short, bulbous girl who was helping to set the table, “he’s severely mistaken.” Everyone laughed again.

“Boys!” Vera shouted. “Positions, please! The table’s almost ready. Leonard, please pour? Girls, who’s drinking what? Vodka for me.”

While everyone was trooping toward the table, Slava’s cell phone rang. He had opened it by the time he realized he shouldn’t have: It would be Grandfather requesting an update. He’d stand over you counting thrusts if you let him.

“Hey,” Arianna said. “You’re somewhere.”

Slava froze. After too long without speaking, he dashed to a corner of the living room. “Funeral,” he blurted out.

“What?” she said.

“The shiva?” He worked with what he had given himself. “We’re trying it out. Like you said.”

“Oh—okay. It’s only the seven days after—Oh, it doesn’t matter. Good for you. Okay, no problem. I’m sorry to interrupt. Tell everyone my condolences. From your work friend.” She laughed quietly.

“But what was it?” Slava said. Looking up, he saw Vera observing him skeptically. He realized he was wedging himself into a corner, his hand covering the phone. He straightened, as if talking to no one other than Grandfather.

“A club, a band,” she said. “No big deal.”

“That works well for us,” Slava said, trying to sound casual.

“Sla-va! Everything’s ready,” Vera shouted in English. Several people behind her whooped, laughter following. Slava looked at her hatefully.

A long, stinging pause on the other end. Then Arianna said: “I should run.”

“Hold on—”

“I’ll see you on Monday, okay?” she said, and hung up.

Slava cursed himself. Then Vera. Then himself. Vera called for him again.

When everyone had sat down and the thimbles had been filled by Leonard’s pink hand, Vera raised her glass.

“The hosts, Verochka, are supposed to raise the first glass,” Leonard said.

“Leonard,” Lara hissed. “You know I don’t mind. Vera is like a sister.”

“Thank you, Larochka,” Vera said. “This one’s been reading
The Count of Monte Cristo
too much, with his table etiquette.” Everyone laughed as Leonard frowned, and Slava understood that Vera was the only person at the table permitted to contradict him. “I would like to welcome Slava to our table,” Vera went on in Russian. “And I would like to say a word in honor of Slava’s grandmother, who passed away a week ago. A proud woman and a strong woman. I remember her from when I was a little girl. She was so kind, but you never messed with her!”

Again, the table laughed. Oslik slapped the table. “For grandmothers!” he announced.

“Babushka, oh, babushka,” Leonard recited with cautious dreaminess. His tone meant that the words were coming from a poem. He was hoping to regain the upper hand of the conversation. Everyone turned to him, but he couldn’t recall the remainder of the lines. “Something, something!” he rescued himself, and everyone laughed.

“Slava, what’s it like to be at a Russian table?” Vera said as everyone drank. “Different from your American friends?”

“It’s very intimate,” Slava said, hoping that he was providing the response she wanted.

Everyone burst into hysterical laughter, Leonard’s eyes gleaming with his now indisputable restoration to the crown of the male pyramid. Vera laid a hand on Slava’s arm. Slava felt her breath on the edge of his earlobe. “
Intimno
is for the bedroom only,” she said in Russian. “At a table like this, you say it’s very warm, or close.”

Slava bulged his eyes for the benefit of the group. The laughter redoubled. Then Slava laid a hand on Leonard’s forearm and made flirty eyes. Oslik was so gratified that he had to pull his chair back from the table so he could double over.

“To Slava!” Oslik said. “To Slava!” all of them echoed, even Leonard, slapping Slava’s back so hard that Slava nearly spat out a piece of herring.

“So we were promised stories about Italy,” Lara said after everyone had settled down.

“Let’s eat,” Slava tried to encourage everyone.

“Come on!”

“The bourgeois look to the past and the proletariat looks to the future,” Slava said, thinking a Soviet slogan might divert them, but he bungled part of it.

“I remember,” Vera said in Russian, looking at Slava, “Slava’s family had finally been called to the consul. For the interview if you were going to be let into America. And nobody speaks one drop of English. But you can’t have a seven-year-old boy answering. So they all stumble how they can, and then the consul asks, ‘Why do you want to go to America?’” She said this last part in English. “And nobody understands him. Moments like this—I mean, you know—enough to kill the application. Because they are rejecting
people already by this time. Go to Israel, they say.

“And Slava understands, but how can he answer? So he says, ‘I want to meet my aunt Frida.’ And the consul laughs. And everyone laughs. And meanwhile, his mother or father—who was it, Slava?—understands. Because they practiced this answer, you know. ‘Why do you want to emigrate to America?’
Svoboda
. And how do you say
svoboda
?”

“Freedom!” the table shouted.

“How do you remember the word?”

“Aunt Frida!” the table shouted as one.

“And so after Slava said ‘Aunt Frida,’ one of them remembered and said, ‘Freedom.’ And they passed. You can say that without him, his family wouldn’t be here.” She beamed proudly.

The table whooped and rocked with applause. “To Slava!” Oslik whooped. “To Slava!” everyone shouted. Slava gave in and smiled sheepishly. Thimbles knocked his, splashing cognac onto his wrist, palms kneaded his shoulders, and Leonard launched into the “Marseillaise.” Next to him, Vera shone with a thousand lights.

Three hours later, a final piece of herring gleaming undesirably in a small lake of oil and a pack’s worth of cigarettes crushed into a porcelain ashtray, the group had switched positions. The boys were at the table, finishing the cognac, and the girls were smoking on the couch. Leonard’s blazer clung limply to the back of his chair. He had unbuttoned the upper two buttons of his shirt and hung his arm across Slava’s shoulder, as if the two of them had served under Kharkov together. Now and then Slava heard his name in the circle of girls and peered over Leonard’s Pushkinian curls to make out what was being said. It was difficult because Leonard was breathing heavily into his temple. Slava looked at Vera, who looked at him, as if she came equipped with a device that alerted her every time he wanted her attention. She nodded and smiled.

Leonard’s girlfriend, Galochka, wandered over to Leonard and Slava. “Popochka,” she said to Leonard. Little butt. “You’re done eating?” She wedged herself into his lap, eliciting a grunt. “I’m going to feed you until your belly is so big no other woman will want you. And then you’ll be all mine.”

Leonard turned to Slava. “Who said women don’t speak directly?” He turned to Galochka: “Dove, please, we’re speaking.” Galochka pecked Leonard’s forehead and removed herself to the couch.

“How long have you been together?” Slava asked, to ask something.

“I don’t know,” Leonard said, squinting with overfed eyes at the clock. “Our parents have medical offices next to each other.”

“I see,” Slava said. Leonard downed two fingers of cognac and gazed contemplatively at the wall. “What specialty?” Slava said dutifully.

“Gastro?” Leonard said absentmindedly. “Mine are gastro, hers are feet. You and Vera?”

“We just met again,” Slava said.

“She’s special,” Leonard said.

“That’s what everyone says,” Slava said. “We haven’t really spoken. She clears my plate and runs off.”

Leonard tried to focus on Slava through the drink in his eyes. “She doesn’t want to interrupt.”

“What, this?” Slava said.

“You know what?” Leonard said. “You’re okay, Slava. You know why?” He stuck out his fingers—Slava was startled by the gold band on his left hand; he and Galina couldn’t be over twenty-five, but they were married—and counted. “One, you don’t run your mouth. You observe. It’s a gift. People talk too much. They like to hear themselves talk. And two, when Vera said famous Slava was coming, I’ll be honest—I’m drunk, so I’m honest—I thought, This guy is going to be a fucking prick. And you are a prick, a little bit. You think you are better than us. But you’re all right. I like you.”

Despite himself, Slava smiled. Leonard—sloping belly, puffy fingers, the face starting to line—was already a little version of the man he would be in thirty years, to him an achievement. Some questions—America, but a distinctly Russian America; Galina; the medical office he would inherit from his parents—he had answered and would never have to be asked again.

“You’re a charming prick, too,” Slava said.

“Good.” Leonard’s face broadened in pleasure. “Let’s drink to our women.” He reached for the bottle again.

“Galina is driving?” Slava said.

Leonard brought a finger to his lips and winked. Then his teeth closed around the bottle stopper. He extracted it with his mouth and spat it across the table.

“You savage!” Galina shouted from across the room. “I’m not taking you to the dentist when you ruin your teeth.”

“Get up, get up,” Leonard counseled Slava, a bottle in one hand and a Slava in the other. Everyone looked up from their positions. Leonard made eyes at Oslik, who immediately sprang from his seat and dashed for the stereo. A Russian pop song emerged from the speakers. “Opa!” Leonard shouted, swigged from the bottle, and gave it to Slava, who held it at his side. “Drink, drink,” Leonard insisted quietly, pulling Slava, whose right arm now rested around Leonard’s haunch, to an unoccupied part of the living room.

“The lilac fog,” the crooner sang, “sails above our heads.” Slava watched one of Leonard’s trousered, loafered feet kick the air, the keys in his pocket producing a businesslike jingle and his center of gravity immigrating position until Slava was nearly embracing him from behind. “I love this song!” Oslik’s bulb-girlfriend shrieked. Leonard’s leg returned to the floor and he turned to look at Slava:
“Nu
?” Obediently, Slava kicked up his left leg. “Attaboy!” Leonard roared, rubbing Slava’s head to indicate admiration for his balance despite his having consumed nearly as much cognac as Leonard.

By now the chorus was up—“Conductor, please don’t rush / Can’t you understand / I’m saying goodbye / To her forever”—the entire room shouting in unison and swaying in place. Leonard’s turn: He kicked up his right leg. Slava kicked up his right leg. Leonard swigged, Slava swigged. They went around the living room, the others singing and yelling. Slava must have revealed an unforeseen aptitude for the primary maneuver, because soon he was alone in the middle of the living room, Leonard seeking respite in Galina’s arms and pushing Vera out onto the dance floor. “Ve-ra! Ve-ra!” the crowd chanted, dividing her name into the syllables that Slava had mouthed so many times as a boy. The room swimming, he summoned her with an open hand. Rolling her eyes, she rose to join him, swirling and twirling, demurely coquettish, as he kicked and sprang. They hadn’t planned, but somehow they fit together. Grandfather’s tutelage, so useless at Bar Kabul, directed his arms and legs, and she—she danced on heels as if on bare feet, though after a while she kicked them off to applause. Finally, the song ended and they collapsed on the carpet. The room thundered, feet stamping the floor.