The Romanian (38 page)

Later that afternoon, when the sea had changed to a vivid blue and was puckered by a breeze like skin irritated with goose bumps, I saw something that overturned some of the established attitudes I'd been depending on. Romulus was at a café, sitting with a girl, who was young, very young, and blonde. She was so tiny a thing that she had to be about a third my weight. Seeing me go by, he introduced me, sparing me the appellation “uncle” and referring to me instead as his “friend.” Shyly—almost in terror—the girl extended a trembling hand, her eyes cast to the ground. Her voice was as quiet as a mouse's—about to be devoured by a fox, I thought grimly. Her purity unsettled me. She was just a well-mannered teenager, probably from a humble but stable family. I'd been so used to battling Romulus's competitive shrews and sluts, the jaded whores who filled my fantasies, encouraged by Elena, that it had never occurred to me I'd be faced with so mild a rival. Then for all these months I'd been preparing to do battle with a child? A wan ray of pity for her rose in me, a surprising note of empathy.

That evening, Romulus and I went to the most expensive of the four or five restaurants along the shore. It was something I'd imperially insisted on. No matter that stuffy establishments made Romulus uncomfortable. I was through limiting my life to please him. He made an attempt to dress for it, putting on one of two pricey items in his wardrobe that he seldom wore. It was a deep violet Ralph Lauren shirt I'd bought him in New York, which brought out the gleam of his shiny black hair. His shadowy, photogenic face and the way his strong shoulders met the seams made it look like the perfect shirt. All of these charms, I reminded myself, were just snares bound to lure me into disappointment. Without so much as a compliment, I sat stiffly at the table across from him. Over his naturally suspicious eyes, his lips curled a bit in irony at my glum expression.

“If you're meeting that girl tonight,” I said, “no problem. Eat with her. Or eat here fast and take off.”

“I do not know about her,” he said guardedly. “She want to go to Mangalia tonight.” This was a larger town to the south.

“It's no fun hanging out with somebody who just wants something from you,” I said cuttingly.

Romulus responded to the childish gibe with a defensive, mocking look. “I tell her to meet over there at seven-thirty,” he said, and pointed across the terrace.

I dove for his wrist and looked at the watch. “Seven-oh-five already. That doesn't give us much time at all, does it. How about a drink?”

“You will have what?”

“Jack Daniel's.”

“Me, too.” It was spoken like a challenge. Romulus usually never touched anything but beer and wine.

“Make mine a double,” I told the waiter.

“And mine.”

Intermittently gulping our drinks, we gobbled the overpriced but mediocre food we'd ordered. “What time is it?” were my next words, with a full mouth and fake concern.

“Seven-twenty. I mean, twenty-one.”

“I do hope she's there,” I said in my best white-gloved Joan Crawford tone.

Romulus made that French-Romanian blasé gesture again, expelling air through pursed lips. “It doesn't matter.”

“But it does, Romulus, it does. She was cute. How old is she, by the way?”

“Seventeen, she say.”

“Tsk, tsk, robbing the cradle.”

He chortled at the quip, but too much, with the vain hope of reestablishing familiarity. I cut it off by asking, “Isn't it time to go?”

He checked his watch again, “Seven twenty-three.” Then he stared at me in annoyance. “Why you so concerned?”

“You know I want you to have a good time,” I said with Crawford's purring insincerity. “Come on, Romulus, go over there. It must be time.”

He stood abruptly and tossed his napkin on the table. “Good luck!” I called out ostentatiously as he walked away, which stiffened his walk.

While he was gone, I ordered another double. Nothing, but nothing, would stop me from finally having a good time. Under a passing cloud, the sea had turned leaden.

Romulus came back a few moments later. He gave a macho shrug.

“Not there?”

“I not wanna go to Mangalia anyway,” he mumbled with forced unconcern. “Save that for tomorrow.”

“Ah, yes, tomorrow. For your birthday. A real bash.”

This time he missed the sarcasm. “Always my birthday is best day of year! We get—”

“I know, you get drunk, you fuck. You told me already.”

“On your birthday will be different, Bruce. We have fine dinner or maybe even theater. . . .”

“And who's going to pay for all that?”

As planned, the comment stung him. Seeing an inroad, I went on. “I think I'll go out with Răzvan and his buddies for my birthday, Romulus. Hope you don't mind. Drink some beers, maybe get laid. You think Răzvan would put his legs over his head for fifty?”

Romulus scratched his chin, seeming to consider the proposition seriously. “Maybe . . . he do. I'm sure he do many things to survive.”

The answer infuriated me further. I'd wanted him to say, But Bruce, I want to be with you on your birthday, so I called for the check, and when the waiter brought it, said, “Hey, let's have one more. Sort of a pre-birthday celebration for you.”

“Bruce, my head spinning already. I am not used to the strong drink.”

“Come on, Romulus, don't be a wimp.”

“What is this word? Don't tell me—ah, I know. It is sudden desire?”

“That's ‘whim,' Romulus,” I said with pretended exasperation. Curiously, this wounded him more than anything else. He took pride in having learned several languages without a book or teacher. “And you're not,” I said slurringly, now feeling the liquor, “a sudden desire. Or do I mean you're not a desire suddenly?”

Romulus missed my point but glared at the intention anyway, then rapidly slipped into a conciliatory tone. “So, what we do tonight? You want to go to disco, the one on the beach?”

“Sorry, I have plans of my own,” I said as I stood up.

“And what is they?”

“I thought I'd go to Mangalia,” I said, thinking quickly. “But I know this isn't your night to go.”

Romulus stuck to his guns and nodded.

“Okay, then,” I agreed, while a crushed voice pleaded inside me to stop the game.

Romulus nodded curtly and we separated. He went toward the disco, and I headed toward our room; then, after turning around to see if he was looking, I walked to the restaurant bar and ordered another drink.

 

 

THE ANESTHESIA OF THE ALCOHOL was supporting my self-deception. I told myself that tonight I was really free and had damn well better be glad about it. This was the moment of power, I lied, when I was going to seize my own pleasure. I wanted to be just like him.

I was trudging along the highway in the direction of Mangalia, which is about a mile and a half south. The road led me past Neptun with its carefully guarded mansions. My eyes met those of a guard standing in front of one of them, in the harsh rays of a spotlight. Drunkenly, I cackled toward him, as if to say, You and me know the world's a fucked-up place. His body stiffened, and he moved his hand toward his gun.

There were plenty of tourists around me heading in the same direction, some in cars and some on foot. There was, I dimly remembered reading or hearing, a music festival going on down there. A garish sense of false optimism curled my lips into an inane smile fed by the alcohol; somehow I'd gotten it into my head that I was going to get laid.

The main street had been made to look festive, decorated with strings of red lights. In my blurry sight they looked like new bloodstains in the humid summer air. Mangalia was packed, just as I'd suspected. The majority of the people were young, and they lacked that sense of melancholy I'd often noticed in the faces of older Romanians. Along the street, a meaty teenager in a tank top was cooking corn on the cob on a charcoal brazier. The alcohol pushed me toward him, and boldly I struck up an inconsequential conversation. It was probably only my American English that succeeded in charming him; otherwise he would have been annoyed by a middle-aged drunk trying to get his attention while he was working.

“Hey, where's the fun around here?”

He grinned at my casual tone and gestured with his chin toward the beach. “The concert just finished. But there are still the people over there.”

“Who was playing?”

“You know Andrei?” he asked, expecting me to shake my head. I knew the group of two sexy girls called Andrei very well. They were the Jennifer Lopezes of Romania, with beaded hair, who sung with loose pelvises and swinging, pert breasts. I'd watched Romulus watching their rock videos countless times.

“Sure!” I answered a little too enthusiastically, and hummed the chorus of their hit song. He broke into an embarrassed, astonished smile and nodded along with me. “Take it easy,” I called as I moved off, and seizing delightedly on the American expression, he called back, “You take it easy!”

The encounter had aggravated my horniness and filled me with a false sense of confidence, but when I got to the beach, which had carnival booths, rides and a stage, my spirits began to lag. I wandered among the laughing couples like a bachelor ghost, adrift and out of any context they could possibly imagine. I started back toward Olimp on the main road. Fatigue suddenly drained me, and my footsteps became leaden. Seeing a taxi pushing its way through the hordes, I signaled it and jumped into the front seat.

The driver was relatively young, about thirty, and he caught me examining his strong-looking hands on the steering wheel. They were stained with black grease from some kind of manual labor, which had also probably given him his lean, strong physique. Right away I noticed that he had a curiously elegant posture, a graceful crouch that would have looked good in expensive clothes. What caught my attention most was the position of his legs. They were spread a little too wide for driving, and the thighs were nonchalantly upturned.

My eyes locked to the sprawl; I was too drunk to move them away. He followed my line of sight, then looked back at the road.

“I'm going to Olimp,” I said. “The Panoramic.”

He nodded knowingly and then said, “You from America.”

“Hmm, hmm, but I'm living in Bucharest. Came down here for a little vacation.” His face darkened with misunderstanding.

“Oh, I don't speak Romanian,” I said. “I'm really sorry.” Then just for the fun of it, I added,
“Vous parlez français?”

“Oui. J'étais à Paris. Deux ans.”
Then, still in French, he added that his name was Tristan and that he worked days as a mechanic at the train station in Constanţa.

He had mild blue eyes and something lax and cruel about his mouth, but I ignored the lower part of his face and concentrated on his eyes. Still, there was a facet of his body's tension that suggested ambiguity. The lean, casual elegance was a cover for something perverse. I was intrigued, and he seemed to like that, so I chattered on in French. As we went down the long driveway to the Panoramic, I suggested, “Why don't you come have something to eat with me?” He nodded and his slouch grew more pronounced. His legs lolled even more, as if he should have been wearing silk pajamas.

He knew his way around and led me to the closest restaurant, glancing at my gait, then taking in my face. I wasn't sure why I suddenly felt so cheerful, glad to be walking with someone fairly young, not bad-looking, masculine, impressing him with inconsequential information about New York.

The gleaming dark red lips of the leggy waitress greeted him with familiarity. A few casual comments passed between them with snickers and knowing looks. The waitress took off to get us some wine. He leaned closer toward me until I could see each individual eyelash. They were sandy-colored, a mixture of blond and dark brown. His full lips were slightly cracked, and there was a day's unshaven growth on his face.

“They're whores, you know,” he confided in French, with a sly glance toward the waitress. As he said it, I let one knee graze his as if by accident.

He opened a pewter cigarette case and extended it toward me. For the sake of the gesture, I took a smoke between thumb and forefinger. As he lit my cigarette his mild blue eyes engaged mine insouciantly, but the mouth looked slack and absent. It seemed the very opposite of those people who engage you with a smile while their eyes remain vacant. He leaned back on two legs of the chair and let his legs loll open again. As he did, I thought I felt a bitter sadness waft from him, something metallic.

“You're here with somebody,” he assumed, always in French.

“Just a friend,” I assured him, “a Romanian.”

Now his eyes looked bemused, the lips betrayed a hint of detached irony. “You need chauffeur?”

“As a matter of fact,” I decided to claim, “I might need one for half a day. Especially tomorrow. I want to see more of ConstanÅ£a and some of the towns along the coast.”

“Hmm, hmm,” he nodded suggestively, as if I'd made a veiled reference.

“How much would you charge, say, for five hours.”

He laughed as if I'd made a joke. “It depends.”

After the wine, the waitress brought the food. I'd ordered a salad for myself, to conceal the fact that I'd already eaten. I picked at it halfheartedly and ordered another drink. As I ate and drank, he studied my manners as if they contained an answer to a question he'd posed himself. In the tension of the situation, I'd regressed to that old excitement. The black water beyond the terrace now looked soft, velvety and welcoming, with a note of risk that was enthralling. There was a small breeze. By the time we finished eating, I'd mutated completely. In my mind I felt I was projecting energy and warmth. It gave me the confidence to make my final gamble.