A Comedy of Nobodies, page 8
“It was three minutes, my Moon Pie.”
“I’m not your Moon Pie. It was five.”
“Three.”
“Five.”
“I jumped out a window for you. It was three.”
She laughs at this, and we limp slowly on, into our first accidental date.
the vent
(november)
My romantic low from the beginning of the semester descends into a nosedive by November. Soph, a woman I had a brief thing with—maybe five or six things with—earlier in October, during that surprise snowstorm, stopped calling. Our fling showed all the signs of a long-lasting relationship: she is older by six years, studying to become a literal brain surgeon at Harvard Med School. Comparably, my summer internship application at Dr. Phil was rejected. My last-ditch attempt to save this doomed fling is through a song I’ve memorized. I don’t sing, but here I am, so I guess she’s worth it. It is her favorite jazz tune from Chet Baker, “I Fall in Love Too Easily.”
“I still think it’s in C minor.” Ted sits behind the Fazoli grand piano, holding the C minor chord like the Close button in an elevator. We wait in the Adam House common room for Mike to come down. The fireplace emits dancing shadows. “You ask me, I think she’s over you,” he says casually.
“We don’t know that,” I say. “It could be a maybe.”
“Maybe means no.”
“Maybe means maybe.”
“No means no. Maybe means no. Yes means maybe.”
“Just play the song, will you?”
I put the phone on speaker, and it purrs the ringtone. No answer. Ted scratches his nose and winces after the fifth ring.
“Hello?”
I look at Ted. This is it. “Soph?”
“Hi, Charlie.” She sounds tired.
“You sound lovely, how are you?”
“I smell like raw brains and I’m tired.”
I glance at Ted for analysis. He shrugs. “Well hey, Soph, I have a surprise for you.”
“Charlie . . .”
“I’m not sure how the piano will sound across the phone, but here it goes.”
“Charlie . . .”
I signal to Ted, who tinkles out the introduction. I sing: “I fall in love too easily—”
“Charlie, I’m engaged.”
Ted stops on a low D note, looking like he’s just seen a naked man. The fireplace pops.
“Right . . .” I try to sound casual. “Well, have you picked a date?”
“I was always engaged. Sorry I didn’t call you sooner.”
My heart beats twice the rate of the grandfather clock, waiting to hear something different, ideally something like Never mind, actually I want you, a twenty-year-old noodle-boy. Brains go through bizarre scenarios to avoid the hurt.
After a long beat of silence, Soph says, “Goodbye, Charlie,” and the three-note boop-boop-boop sound on FaceTime echoes traumatically.
“Whoa.” Ted seems genuinely fascinated.
I fall into the sofa. “I learned that whole stupid song for nothing.”
“Yeah. You did.”
“Why is life so full of rejection?”
Ted blinks. “I don’t know. Evolution?”
He does have a point, and regardless, that’s a perfect breakup line: “Look, nothing personal baby, it’s just evolution.”
I wish—perhaps that was my first mistake—that the brain cramp called consciousness could be shiatsu massaged until it was no longer sore to think. We walk into one heartbreak after another throughout our lifetimes. Maybe that is the whole point.
Ted and I wait outside Adams House for Mike to come down. He is upstairs preparing for his date, no doubt dabbing cologne in forbidden places. What an optimist.
I leave my phone. The sight of it is temporarily depressing.
Ted tries consoling me—I guess that’s in the “friend” job description. He theorizes that she probably thought I was an incompetent boy with no money.
At 6:33 p.m., the door opens, and Mike steps out in a 1960s-style burgundy suit and black tie. He looks like a Jersey Boy.
“Gents, get ready.” He flashes us a Norman Rockwell grin.
“That girl just broke up with Charlie,” Ted blabs.
“What girl?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“Oh, that brain surgeon? The one ten years older than you?”
“Six years, and yes, the brain surgery student,” I clarify, “that you introduced me to, thank you very much. But don’t worry about that. I’m over it. I’ll go see a movie or something.”
“Did you sing her that Chet Baker song?”
“No.”
“That’s rough, sorry. You were practicing for weeks.”
“Yes, yes I was.”
“All for nothing,” Ted adds.
“Thank you, Ted.”
“I feel good.” Mike eyes himself in a round mirror. “You know that feeling when you’re at the beginning of something, and you have all this energy because you know everything will be okay?”
“No.”
We walk down Brattle Street, where he is supposed to meet his date. I’ve never seen him so optimistic.
“Hey, when you see her, don’t mention I wanted you guys to meet her, yeah?” Mike says.
“Why not?” Teds asks.
“Trust me, just say I bumped into you guys.”
“You bumped into us?” I repeat. “Sure.”
“Did Charlie and I bump into each other first, and together we bumped into you, or did we simultaneously bump into you?” Ted clarifies.
“Sure, whatever, say we all bumped into each other.”
“But why would we bump into each other, then go the same direction for five minutes, only to turn around and go a different direction?”
“Ted, I don’t know, make something up.”
“I like the simultaneous bumping idea,” I say.
“Guys, just pick a story—”
Before Mike can finish his command, a girl in a beige parka and black tights waves just ahead of us, from in front of Burdick Chocolates. Accidentally, we all wave back in unison.
“Hey,” Mike croons as we approach her. “How are you?”
She emits a faint smile with distractingly white teeth and goes in for the casual hug. “Good! Just busy.”
“These are my pals, Ted and Charlie.” Mike turns to us. “I bumped into them.”
“We bumped into each other,” Ted robotically clarifies. “Separately. You see, we all casually bumped into each other, and upon bumping we decided to take a brief, platonic stroll.”
“Oh . . .” The girl tilts her head back at this fascinating backstory.
“Anyway . . .” Mike turns to us with a stern expression. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I shake her mitten-wearing hand, and Ted gives her a high-five.
Ted and I accidentally walk in the same direction as Mike and his date. We slow down, hoping they pass us, but they linger, hoping to create distance. When Ted and I realize this, we start speedwalking, just as Mike and his date pick up the pace, hoping to pass us. We turn the corner on Story Street and lose them.
As Ted and I pass the post office on Mt. Auburn, I see a woman just ahead. She kneels over a large vent in front of the bus garages, and whenever a bus comes rolling out, she runs to the sidewalk and then returns like a sandpiper.
She cross-bends her legs, flight-attendant style, apparently searching for some lost thing worth getting run over for. Her hair is damp, like she’s been running. When she retreats a fourth time to the sidewalk where we stand, she notices us and brushes strands of her blond hair off her forehead. She looks somewhere in her midthirties, with a worried, piercing face and opal eyes, the kind of beauty that demands two beats before moving on. She wears a black, plunging dress, with pearls and high heels and a coat with fur lining. I don’t know fashion, but I know her income level is clearly out of place near the buses.
“Can we help?” I offer.
She points to the vents and says something that sounds like Russian.
“What’s down there?” I ask.
She says more in Russian, pointing at the vent.
“Sorry, I don’t understand,” I say, gesturing.
Her hands summon us. “Come,” she says with a hard k sound. “Come.”
From Ted’s stoic expression, I assume he is caught in the headlights by her irrefutably sensuous aura.
We stand over the vents, and warm steam sprouts up, filling our clothes and relieving us from the cold. The strange Russian kneels down and wriggles this rusted metal ring wrapped around the bars of the vent. As the headlights of a bus find us, like escaped prisoners we run back to the sidewalk, cold from the sudden contrast. I shiver.
The woman speaks more Russian and gesticulates what looks like a heart.
“You dropped your . . . heart in there?” I turn to Ted. “Maybe she dropped her wedding ring.”
“Yes,” he says with a starstruck expression. “I also noticed she isn’t wearing one.”
The bus passes, and she leads us back to the warmth. I kneel down to take a better look. It seems she is pointing at a rusted padlock.
Ted attempts to use his phone as a flashlight, but his battery is dead.
“Do you have the key? The key.” I gesture.
She shakes her head, “Nyet, nyet . . .”
The padlock isn’t made of steel, but it’s also not tin. It could have been used for a flimsy high school locker. An inscription is etched on the surface: Tatiana & Mikhail, 2003. I recognize it as a love padlock, the kind you see on chain-link fences to symbolize cheap infinity. Maybe that’s why she wants it. Because it doesn’t mean nothing to her.
My clothes are damp from the steam and my body shivers. I leave Ted and the stepmother of his dreams in communication chaos. I’m sure he’s happy just to hear her voice. I jog to CVS, three blocks away, and buy a five-dollar Phillips-head screwdriver. The cashier’s name is “Ok,” and I tell him how much I appreciate his name.
“Okay,” he says.
When I jog back, Ted still believes he can break through the language barrier.
“Man, love. Am I right?” he tells her. “Love really ought to have a catch to it, like a love tax or something.”
She smiles and frowns at the same time.
“’Cause, you know, all good things have a catch to them.” He laughs, and she laughs because he laughs.
“There is a catch to it, Ted.” Kneeled down, I insert the screwdriver into the ring portion of the padlock. “It ends.” I hold the lock with one hand and twist the screwdriver with the other, using leverage to bend the metallic ring. My muscles shake until I feel a sudden pop.
“You broke it?” Ted yells.
“I hope she kept the warranty back in 2003.”
The damp padlock swivels from the hinges, and I give it to her as another bus approaches and we run to the sidewalk.
She is overjoyed, and for a moment, amidst the self-babbling, I could swear she is on the verge of tears. She plants a soft kiss on both our cheeks. Ted’s lips tighten.
“Well, goodnight.” I put up my hand.
“Nyet,” she exclaims, already walking. “Pojdemte—come, come.”
I recognize something poetically seductive about this, the danger of a strange older woman from a different land come-hithering two Americans to go somewhere far, far away, where all things are good and beef jerky prices are half off.
Ted looks like he’s been told he’s going to Disneyland.
“Oh, absolutely I will,” he whispers.
“Pojdemte,” she keeps saying.
We obey our marching orders, and she smirks at her powers of persuasion. I’m assuming this goes down one of two ways: either we’re idiots for following her, or we’re idiots for not following her. I don’t know the rules, but when a beautiful woman says “Come,” you come.
Her heels tap the sidewalk of Hillard Street, the way they do in noir movies where the mysterious blond seems all right until she pulls a tiny gun from her garter belt in Act Three. But Humphrey Bogart always smacks her in the jaw before she pulls the trigger, so all clichés being equal, maybe Ted and I are in good hands. Then again, we’re no Humphrey Bogarts, and at 6’6” in heels, she can easily take us both.
On Garden Street, a little past the graveyard and beyond the Unitarian church that offers terrific lemon bars on Sundays, guests walk in and out of the Commander Hotel. Our Russian enters without looking to see if we’re behind her. The doorman’s eyes stoically twitch down to our shoes and up to our heads, not reserving judgment. She leads us through the lobby that smells of coffee. Green shrubbery surrounds us like a forest. We’ve entered her territory now. A little beyond the lobby, she walks us through an empty ballroom.
“Charlie,” Ted whispers. “Let’s set some ground rules. No looking down.”
“Jesus Christ, Ted.”
“I’m serious.” Yes, he really is. “When we get to—where I think we’re going, neither of us looks at the others’ . . .”
Before I can answer, we enter another door, this time to a hallway. Two men in black leather jackets stand at the end. Ted glances at me. By now, sounds of the lobby muffle to a distant hum. Our mystery woman casually mutters something in Russian to the men in black leather jackets and they let us through a set of double doors that open to a ballroom, like the one before, but this one has at least four hundred people in suits and ball gowns. The men are ugly, and the women are beautiful. No music, only chattering, all in Russian. A microphone and grand piano sit unused in the middle of the room. Outside is a cold and lonely Cambridge, and here, not even a mile away from Harvard Yard, through a few anonymous grand hallways, is mini St. Petersburg. Ted and I are certainly outside our habitat now. We help one stranger, and suddenly we’ve entered the Russian Great Gatsby.
Our leading lady takes us to a table where a balding man in his late sixties sits. Just by his stillness, his seeming immunity to any kind of stimulant, I know he’s rich. His glasses rest on the bridge of his crooked nose as he scrolls through something on his phone without much movement beyond his thumbs. Four bored men in black suits surround him at nearby tables. One of the suits routinely stands, giving me the up-and-down. The mystery woman comes around and kisses this Vladimir Gatsby on the cheek. His eyes follow her, but his face remains still. I think it is safe to say that Ted and I will not be entering an Eyes Wide Shut party tonight.
She murmurs something to the boss man and shows him the broken padlock. His eyes flicker between the padlock and us. After a minute’s worth of her innocent-seeming explanation and his sinister stationary listening, our mystery woman blows us a flirtatious kiss and saunters off to another table, leaving us to our fate. He allows us to approach with a subdued nod. We walk to his table and sit, not sure if we’re allowed to.
Silence. He stares at his phone. Something isn’t right; I had a bad feeling when I saw him, now I have a terrible feeling.
“Men without women,” he begins with a thick Russian accent. “Like boots without socks, no?”
Ted and I stay silent.
“But men with women . . .” His eyes never rise from his phone. “Like two feet in one boot.”
“Women, am I right?” Ted thinks this comment is productive.
More silence.
“So, what happened to the music?” I try to stir something up.
“They let me down. Do you know why you are both here?” he asks.
My toes curl. Intuitively I say, “We’ll have to get back with you on that. She didn’t really tell us where we were going.”
The man’s fingers stop moving on his phone. He finally looks up. His shark-gaze at Ted seems meaningless until I notice what he’s staring at—the red kiss mark on Ted’s left cheek.
“She says you were both very helpful.”
“It was nothing,” I remark.
“You say it was nothing, but it makes her happy to recover her toy.” He pokes at the padlock. “She tells me to reward you both.”
“Oh, really, no need.”
“She leaves the premises by herself without security.” He pulls a checkbook from his coat. “This little trinket must mean so much to her, no?”
“It’s a love lock,” I say, as if he couldn’t tell. “Tatiana and Mikhail. She must be Tatiana, then?”
His face remains stoic.
“And you must be Mikhail.”
He shakes his head.
“Oh, I see.” My back gets sweaty.
He nods, slowly.
“Mikhail Popov, political science, Harvard University class of 2004. Why do I know that?” he asks.
“You looked it up?” Ted offers.
The man’s mouth grins, but his eyes don’t follow. “Women talk of their past like men talk of sport trophies.” He tears off the check with his middle and index finger and holds it like tissue. “When I was eight, I wanted a rifle. My parents asked me why, and I said to shoot an owl that kept me awake at night. They said I was not to bother the owl. It was bad luck. But that month, in a wrestling match, I won a slingshot. Every day at three forty-five p.m., I would practice my aim with the slingshot until I could hit pine cones in tall trees. On the ninth day, my father beat me. Why, you ask? I didn’t kill the owl. I didn’t even try. But an act without intent is a crime against others. Intent without the act is still a crime against you. My father beat me, for me. It takes many years for a man to realize that his punishment is a present.”
He flicks the check across the table, and it flutters down in front of me. I glance at the number: $800. He mutters something in Russian to the four men in suits and they stand, yawning.
“You don’t know why you are here, and yet you follow a strange woman to a hotel.” His eyes go back to his phone. “And so, gentlemen, this is my present to you. It will be over quick if you don’t resist. If you put up a fuss, they will break your fingers. Goodnight.”
