How to Get Into the Twin Palms (4 page)

I had been a placement counselor and placed people in their temporary positions. I found people the right fit. I got a certain sense of pride when a temp hire became a full-time hire. It gave me a sense of accomplishment.

I had worn the same thing to work every day. Black slacks made from cheap synthetic fabric. Black or gray or white button down, with a bit of stretch. Black, sensible shoes. I tried to keep them unscuffed. I tried to keep my appearance neat. I understand the importance of looking good at work. When we first came to this country my mother went to work bra-less and without stockings. She was scolded by the owner’s wife and made to wear a bra and nude stockings in the sweltering heat. She would come home and peel the stockings off her sweaty legs. She would tell me they said she looked too foreign, indecent. In America you couldn’t show skin. You could not show your legs. You had to hide your skin with the appearance of skin, a bit browner than your own. I wanted to make sure my appearance was acceptable at work so I covered as much skin as possible. I wore collared shirts to cover my neck, as to not appear sexual or
feminine. I was fired anyway. “Laid off” is what they called it. Our key client called and said I had sent them an inappropriate candidate. They were going over to Manpower Inc. That’s what did it. Manpower Inc. Now I was getting a check on Fridays and had to call in to the state to tell them that I was looking for new work, new opportunities. Something in HR. I knew just what to say. I hadn’t had a vacation in 16 months at FastTrak. But now I was going to take one and for as long as I could.

The first thing I was going to do was take up smoking. It was going to hurt the running, but help my attempts of getting into the Twin Palms. Getting in with Lev. The cabbies were already trading in their heavy leather jackets for simple Members Only jackets in dreary grays and blacks. They smoked Marlboro Reds.
Amerykanskie papierosy.

In Poland, men smoked Marlboro, L&M, Golden American, Slims, Vogue, West, Pall Mall, and Rothmans. They all sounded Western and romantic to me. Golden Americans. I wish we had Golden Americans in America, mostly unfiltered and always smoked in quick succession.

I was going to be a casual smoker, I decided. I hadn’t seen the women in front of the Twin Palms repeatedly snuffing out cigarettes like the men. They smoked slim cigarettes, like small straws. Virginia Slims. A few puffs finished them off.

I was going to have to invest in Virginia Slims.

 

I went to the convenience store and stood at the counter, scanned the cigarettes and asked to see several packs. I wanted to see how slim they were. There were Virginia Slim Luxury Light 120s, Ultra-Light 100s, Ultra-Light Super Slim 100s, and Ultra-Light 120s. I wanted to know which one was the slimmest. Which cigarette would look like a thin coffee straw between my fingers. Which version would make me look dainty and nimble-fingered. The clerk couldn’t help me so I bought them all and I opened them on the street. I opened each pack and pulled
out each slender stick. I crushed several between my fingers by accident. Creases formed along the stem of the Ultra-Light Super Slim 100s as I tried to perch it in between my index and middle finger. It wasn’t working. My fingers weren’t thin enough. The elongated straws made my fingers look like sausages. Over-plump sausages. I didn’t look sexy at all. I would have to take them home and practice.

 

I sat on my balcony on my dining chair and dropped extinguished Virginia Slims into the overflowing ashtray at my bare feet. The Slim Luxury Light 120s seemed to be the best fit for my fingers. Their length and luxury looked best crooked in my hand. I inhaled deeply and saw Lev approaching. I smiled as I exhaled slowly. Allowing the smoke to luxuriate between my lips like it was supposed to. He came up and stared at my feet. At the white, crushed pile.

“Have you been here all night?”

I stared up at the sky becoming brighter. Morning, finally. Then down at my feet at the wrappers from my Virginia Slims purchase escaping the black convenience bag. “No, just a little while.”

He stared at me. I kept inhaling and exhaling.

“You smoke those old Russian women cigarettes.”

I snubbed out the 120 into the pile of others and stared at them. I couldn’t look at him.

“Hello?”

I finally looked up, sick from the Slims. “It’s something new.”

“I see you running. You shouldn’t smoke.” He played with the dry leaves on my ficus plant. Tugging at them. “I see Polish girls smoking and they don’t look good when they’re older.”

He scolded me like a father would. I didn’t want to think of him as a father. As my father, or as anyone’s father.

“Or do what you want,” he said.

I pushed the rest of the packs in the black plastic bag with
my foot, under my chair. He pulled the leaves off the tree and dropped them on the concrete sidewalk, in front of me and in front of my balcony. Cluttering the walkway.

“I’ll probably quit soon.” I tried to make it sound convincing. Like it was a decision I’d been laboring over, losing sleep over.

“I’ll see you around, Anka.”

He started walking away, pulling out a cigarette from his pack and lighting it. He called me
Anka
. The diminutive, the child tense. He didn’t take me seriously.

He turned around and inhaled deeply, squeezing his eyes like he was in pain or trying to smile. He kept staring at me while walking away.

“HEY.” LEV WAS STARING AT ME THROUGH THE
screen. He was watching me walk around my apartment with my towel slipping off. “Aaaanka.”

He sang it to me. “Aaaanka. Aaaanka. Aaanka.”

The rest was in Russian and I couldn’t understand. He was smoking outside my window. Calling to me like a tomcat. I pulled my towel up and tight.

He was speaking in Russian. Singing in Russian. I could only understand “Anka.” He smiled at me. “Anka, come here.”

I went toward the screen. Unsure. “What are you doing?”

“Come out here,” he slurred, accent thick. He looked at me, lids hanging low over his eyes.

He wanted to come inside, come home with me, instead of one of the Russian women at the Twin Palms. Or he wanted to push me up against his car. Like the other men did. Like how I saw them do it.

“Anka…”

The rest was a slur of Russian.

He was singing it to me.

“You’ll wake up the neighborhood.”

“
Lyubimaya moya
…
Laskovaya moya
…
Devochka moya
, Anka…”

The last one stopped me. Little girl.
Devochka
. Little girl. My little girl. Anka.

He was smiling at me. Beckoning to me and humming to himself. “Come here,
devochka
.”

I finally slid out of the screen door. Onto the balcony. Only a concrete divider between us.

“
Devochka moya
.” He pulled me close and I could smell his breath. The hot, boozy breath on my cheek. I pulled away. Away from his tattooed fingers and backed into my apartment.

“
Devochka
, where are you going?” His breath reached me through the screen. He pleaded with me to come back.

“Not tonight.” I closed the door. And let him moan away. Singing my name and lacing it with Russian. I pulled my towel tighter and turned off the light. I stood in the darkness and watched him watch me. He couldn’t see me anymore but he could sense me there. He sang my name and sang
devochka
over and over and over again. He stared at me with his shark eyes. Lights turned on and flooded over Lev and he looked upstairs, blinking. He stared up and the lights turned off. Nothing was yelled down from the Ukrainian, for the first time.

I watched him withdraw like an animal and I wasn’t scared.

 

He was drunk like the men from the villages in Poland. Carousing. Knocking on doors and waking us up in the middle of the night. Looking for their women. Or other women. Anyone warm. I wanted to feel hot, boozy breath on my cheek. I wanted it to wake me up. Back then, I wanted to feel their drunken fingers fumbling at me. I wanted to hear them whisper me awake and tell me to open my legs. I wondered what it would be like in the village, when the men came home from the bar. I wondered if I would make a good village wife, or if I would talk back too much, if I would let them fumble. I would. I would pretend to be asleep when they got home. I’d hear the stumbling and I’d keep my eyes closed, hear the water go on, hear them washing up for me, the footsteps coming closer. I would wait,
pretending to sleep. I would make a good Polish wife. I would lie still.

I wondered if Lev would mind if I was still or if he’d want me to act like I liked it. I wanted to know if it was different with a Russian man. If they felt like I did. I wanted to know how close they were to us and if it was just a question of proximity.

I thought about all of this as I lay in my bed, listening to the birds sing outside my window trying to mate with one another under the nighttime heavy orange lights.

THERE WERE CIGARETTE BUTTS ON THE SIDEWALK
outside my doorway in the morning. I picked one up.

Marlboros.

I figured they were Lev’s but they could have been from the hostel on the corner. The students had begun to trickle in. Europeans on holiday. The girls passed my door. Teenagers with backpacks. I started to get jealous thinking of Lev looking at the young girls in shorts and snug tank tops and I would glare at them as they passed, as they tried to find their way up and down and through the grid. I hoped they would get lost. Lose their way back to the hostel. End up in Inglewood or worse yet, Palms. My neighbor in the
chustka
had already started sweeping the sidewalk for the morning. Her
chustka
had mirrored circles dangling from the fringe and she was edging toward me. I saw her staring at the pile littered around my feet and each tug of the brush across the pavement brought her closer. She wanted to clean up. Make sure no one saw them. She wouldn’t look at me and I could only think that she wanted me to forget about them too. She stared down, tugged and pulled, back and forth across the pavement and said something to me in her language. She didn’t smile and she wouldn’t make eye contact. She just muttered and droned. I let her sweep away the evidence as Lev walked up. She picked up her broom and disappeared back into her apartment.

“
Pree-vet, kra-sa-vee-tsa.
” That’s how he said it.

“What?” I stared at him blankly.

“You don’t know Russian at all?” He kicked at a butt on the sidewalk.

“What’d you say?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“
Pree-vet.
”

“Just means hello. Don’t worry about it.”

I leaned down and started picking at snubbed out cigarettes that my neighbor had missed.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up your mess.”

He stepped back. He wore thick black sunglasses and I could see the crow’s feet around his eyes. It was early for him. I hadn’t expected him yet. “What mess? I don’t see mess.”

I pointed to the doorway where my aging neighbor had disappeared.

“If you’d let me in there’d be no mess out here.”

“You were drunk.”

“You never seen man drunk before?
Fignjá.
”

He was calling bullshit.

I stood up and stared at him. Gathered the half-smoked, crushed cigarettes in my hand and started walking away from him.

“You were walking in front of the window. Nearly naked. What could I do?”

I don’t know why but looking at him – his face swollen and ruddy – I wanted him to work harder.

He should have begged.

I didn’t answer him and just kept walking. Toward the alley and toward the dumpster. He followed me, close. I could hear his steps, his attempt to get in line with mine. He was following me to the dumpster. I crossed pavement and dumped the cigarette butts in the bin, turned on my heel and stared at him.

“All that for a few cigarettes?” he said.

I had embarrassed myself by being overly dramatic.

“You American girls are all the same.” He started walking away.

“Like what?”

“
Zanudi.
”

I searched for a Polish translation. Something similar.

It all meant the same.

Boring.

“Speak English,” I said.

I wanted to pretend I didn’t know what he said. I wanted to hear him say it to me again. He turned around and took off his sunglasses and looked at me cold with his pocket eyes. He wanted to make sure I saw him, his face and his eyes. And then he turned away, walked out of the alley and back to the Twin Palms.

I watched him walk and he didn’t turn around this time. He didn’t check to see if I was watching him. He just knew. I contemplated chasing him. But he had called me an American. Common.

“
Spierdalaj!
”

It was all I knew. He turned around, laughing. “The mouth you have.”

I smiled at him.

“Didn’t your mother teach you better?”

I shook my head no, coyly.

“Come here, Anya.”

I walked real slow. Counted each step. I made him wait.

When I came up to him he took off his sunglasses and he smiled at me and he didn’t look so bad anymore.

“What do you do, Lev?”

“What you mean?”

“What are these?” I held up his fingers gently and we looked at the rings tattooed on.

He squeezed my hand and pulled it away. “If you were Russian I could tell you.”

He winked at me.

“Lev!”

He turned around and the thin man from before was standing there. He started speaking in hurried Russian and Lev started moving, leaving me in the alley. Then he stopped and turned around and came back.

“Anya, I’ll come for you tomorrow.”