Moonlight in Odessa (17 page)

Maybe I should tell you a little about myself. I’m a schoolteacher. I teach science to 11–14 year olds. I’m also a scout leader and spend time teaching boys how to do everything from pitching a tent to helping them with their hunter safety classes. As you can see, I enjoy teaching and I like kids.

Well, that was a huge point in his favor.

I have never done anything like this before . . .

Harmon stalked into his office to grab a stack of files. ‘You really are the most infuriating woman I have ever met.’

‘You can’t break a wall with your forehead,’ I muttered to myself. And to him. In other words, don’t deal with stubborn people. And don’t be stubborn yourself.

I needed to get out of this office, out of Odessa. And San Francisco suddenly sounded appealing. I wrote back immediately.

An hour later, Harmon came out of the boardroom as though we hadn’t fought and said, ‘You know, I was thinking this place needs a little something. I never thought this branch would last more than a month, so I didn’t bother decorating. But we’ve been here for well over a year now. What do you think about getting some paintings?’

‘Fine,’ I said. Another chore on my list. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘No, no, you’re so busy. I can do it.’

I should have known that Harmon had something up his Gucci sleeve. He never volunteered to do any extra work. He never volunteered to do any work, period. The following day, when I walked down the hall towards my desk, there were paintings on nearly every inch of the wall. Splatters of yellow over blots of black entitled
Bruise
. A canvas painted monotone blue called
Sky
. I didn’t need to see the signature to know that they were Olga’s post-modern spree. The prices were marked on cards tucked between the canvas and the frame: $100, $75, $150. Exorbitant in a country where an average monthly wage is thirty dollars.

We don’t say ‘That’s the last straw’ in Russian. Who has a camel? We say ‘the last drop.’ As in the drop of water that makes the vase overflow. Everyone has a vase. The last drop came when I looked up from my desk and saw the three by three foot painting of a large red stiletto with someone crushed underneath it. I looked closer. It was me beneath the heel, extinguished like a cigarette.
Sudden Death
for only twenty dollars. That bitch. And Harmon. How could he let her get away with this? I went to the kitchen to escape the art gone bad. The paintings there were equally ugly, but at least I wasn’t being snuffed out in them. I waited for Harmon. This vase had overflowed.

When he came in at ten, he was grinning. ‘Well, what do you think? Don’t all these paintings liven up the place?’

‘Did you see my portrait?’ I grabbed his tie, pulled him down the hall to my office space and pointed to the offending shoe.

He squinted. ‘That’s not you.’

‘The hell it isn’t,’ I said, using a phrase I’d learned from the captain of one of our ships. ‘Take it down.’

‘Olga thought you’d like this painting best and insisted we hang it in front of your desk.’

‘One needn’t think too hard why.’

‘It’s not a big deal,’ he said.

‘Easy for you to say, you’re not the one being squished under her shoe. Of course, if she painted your portrait, you’d be under her thumb.’

‘Enough!’ he roared. ‘The painting stays.’ He strode into the boardroom and slammed the door. Looking around, I realized that I was surrounded by photos of the Barbie and the Bulldog and tacky paintings. I moaned. Why couldn’t I have just one ordinary, boring day?

When Harmon’s daughter Melinda phoned a few minutes later, I looked at the discount
Sudden Death
canvas and felt no compunction about saying, ‘Ah, yes, your father is in. Let me be the first to congratulate you . . .’ I was so mad that I didn’t think about the ramifications. I just wanted to hurt him.

‘Congratulate me on what?’ she asked.

‘Oh, dear,’ I said, ‘didn’t your father tell you he’s engaged?’

When she started to scream, I bellowed, ‘Harmon, it’s for you.’ Although in my mind I’d referred to him as simply Harmon since the incident, this was the first time I dared to address him without the respectful title of ‘mister.’ It was the first time I walked out of the office before the end of the day. It was also the first time I put my fist through a work of art.

I wasn’t worried about going to work the next day. I knew that Harmon wouldn’t mention his daughter or the painting – he hated confrontation more than my Boba hated dust. But I also knew that my days were numbered and that I had probably started the countdown myself with that stupid stunt.

For the first time since the day after the incident, he arrived before me. He’d even made coffee. I appreciated this gesture, especially since I knew that of the two, I was the one who should have made the peace offering. He put the carafe on the tray along with cups, spoons, Scottish shortbread, and the bowl of sugar and carried it to the boardroom. He sat at the head of the table, I on his right side.

I poured the coffee and waited for him to speak. ‘I don’t blame you for telling Melinda that Olga and I are engaged. I’m sorry for not telling you. Maybe you knew before I did myself.’

‘I saw the ring.’

This is what I’d wanted all along: Harmon attached to some other woman. Then why was I miserable? Because of what Olga had said? Because she’d never been my friend? Because I was jealous? Jealous that she was getting married and I wasn’t?

‘Thank you for introducing me to Olga. I care for her and her three children.’ He looked into his white porcelain cup, imported all the way from France. ‘I haven’t always made things easy for you. Especially at first. I’m sorry. For everything.’

I didn’t know what to say. I never expected an apology from him. Never expected him to have real feelings for Olga.

He continued, ‘I want you to know, about what I said . . .’
Sleeping with me is the best part of the job
. The words hung in the air. ‘That’s not me. I’ve never said anything like that before . . . It’s just my first night in Odessa, I met this guy Skelton and he said . . .’

I groaned. Not Skelton. Anyone but him.

It all became clear. Odessa is like a village. Everyone knows everyone. And every village has an idiot. Ours is Skelton, a loud redhead, red-faced lout, the owner of a Tex-Mex restaurant. Anyone with a little money went there – missionaries, mafia, sailors, teenage children of New Russians. I swear he opened the restaurant just so he could hit on the waitresses and female customers. Friday was Miss Tex-Mex night. He actually held a pageant – contestants were whoever happened to be eating there. Skelton was a Texan with a skewed vision of the former Soviet Union. True, women slept with him because they hoped he would marry them. But that happens everywhere.

‘How could you have listened to Skelton?’ I yelled.

‘I know. I don’t know. I met him my first night at the casino. He seemed nice. Like he knew what was going on.’

Casino! That was just an Odessan euphemism for whorehouse.

I could just imagine the scene. The two men, drunk, watching strippers gyrate to throbbing Russian rock. Harmon, the fragile newcomer, stunned by the foreignness of Odessa, unable to read the street signs, speak the language, decipher a menu, order a drink. Charismatic Skelton, the old pro, only too happy to relay his vast experience, to give warped advice, to order Harmon plenty to drink, to give him the wrong impression about Odessa and her people. I could just see him telling Harmon that all the women were easy, that they
wanted
to mix business and pleasure. That this was a place you could get exactly what you wanted without even trying.

‘Anyway, he told me –’

‘I can’t believe you listened to Skelton,’ I said. ‘He’s an idiot.
You’re
an idiot!’

‘I know that.’

‘Being under the influence of Skelton isn’t an excuse. A man in your position . . . what you did . . .’ No one can understand what it feels like, what it does to you when you’re scared to go to work when you’re scared to quit. Why try to explain? I shook my head.

‘I realize that. I’m not trying to make excuses. I’m trying to say that I was wrong. Period. After what happened, when I hurt you, I thought the best way to prove I was sorry was to back off entirely. That’s why I stayed out of the office or came in with your friend Olga. To show you were safe. So that you would feel comfortable at work.’

‘You mean you started dating Olga for me?’

‘Well, yeah.’ He stared out the window, as if the answers were out there on dusty Soviet Union Street. ‘I thought it was what you wanted, since you brought her here. But now . . .’

I didn’t want to hear how much he loved her. ‘Congratulations. My best wishes to you both,’ I said. The words scorched my mouth. He looked up from his coffee. I continued, ‘I’m sorry, too. For my behavior towards your daughter.’

‘I’ll have to go to Haifa to sort things out,’ he acknowledged.

‘I already booked the ticket.’

‘I can always count on you.’ When he gently grasped my hand, it felt as though someone squeezed my heart.

Chapter 8

It was a day of unexpected arrivals. Bright and early, Harmon’s daughter walked through the door and stood directly in front of my desk. To my mind, she looked like a pudgy punk, all glower and sneer in black baggy clothes with green hair that stood on end. I didn’t appreciate the fact that she referred to Odessa as the ‘slum’ where her father worked. Odessa is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Everyone knows that. She came to visit her father for a week every few months and was nasty to everyone in her path.

‘Aren’t you surprised to see me?’ she asked.

‘Not particularly.’ I went back to my logistics report.

‘Go get me an espresso,’ she said.

Another one who wanted me to get her coffee.

‘The kitchen’s down the hall,’ I said. ‘Help yourself.’

‘I said, go get me an espresso.’

The director stood in the doorway and watched Melinda. After the strange phone conversation in which he had asked about Harmon, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him. Still, I was. In Hebrew, which sounds guttural and rough during a scolding, Mr. Kessler said, ‘I don’t like how you’re speaking to Daria. If you say one more word, I’ll have security remove you.’

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking like a fat Black Sea carp.

‘Wait for your father in his office,’ he dismissed her.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Coffee?’ God knows I needed one.

He nodded.

When I returned with the tray, he was looking at the canvases in the boardroom. ‘This is truly the ugliest excuse for art I’ve ever seen. Whose idea was it to put up all this crap?’

Crap. The perfect word. I nodded, happy that we were in perfect agreement.

‘Mr. Harmon is just doing his part to support local artists,’ I murmured.

He sat down and I pulled our paperwork out of the cabinet.

‘The downside of having three sets of books in different languages is that it’s time-consuming; the upside is that your common thug or government employee can’t read Hebrew,’ I told him with a smile.

‘People have told me the mafia is worse here than in New York. You haven’t had any problems?’

Personally or professionally? Here or at Soviet Unions?

‘No. The payments aren’t so high and their protection keeps the skinheads away. Since they made it known that we’re under their roof, the office hasn’t received as many threats and we haven’t found any more bombs on the premises. I hate to say it, but it’s money well spent.’

He glanced at his watch and cleared his throat. ‘I know this is a delicate subject, but we need to talk about David.’

I hoped that he would arrive; already he was an hour late. And again I had to cover for him. I started to grind my dentures, which only served to remind me how much I owed him. And I didn’t like to owe anyone. Thus, I chose my words carefully. ‘It’s true . . . that . . . he’s been somewhat . . . distracted. But as a newly engaged man, can we blame him?’

I could see the informal announcement, and my defense of Harmon, surprised the director. Perhaps the nuptial news worked in Harmon’s favor. Who doesn’t want to believe in happy-ever-after? Perhaps the director remembered me in an altogether different position concerning Harmon, and thought that if I, of all people, stood up for him, then he was defensible.

Harmon and Olga came in together as usual. When she saw that I wasn’t at my desk, she said, ‘Daria bad worker. I good worker. She bad. She go, I stay.’

I rolled my eyes. Despite daily English lessons, Olga’s language skills remained as crude as Soviet architecture. But as long as she had a limited vocabulary, she couldn’t come straight out and ask for my job.

Completely oblivious to Mr. Kessler and me, the happy couple went into Harmon’s office, where Melinda was cooling her cloven hooves.

‘Papa, how could you marry this whore?’

I was glad that Olga couldn’t understand what was being said about her. Harmon’s daughter had called me a whore plenty of times and it was never a pleasure. She must have thrown herself at him because there was a dull thump and a gasp from Harmon. I couldn’t blame Melinda for wanting her father all to herself.