Misinterpretation, page 21
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Have a good night.”
She returned to her apartment. Her tanned, muscular legs looked as if they belonged to a twenty-year-old.
THE FIRST TIME I saw a grown man’s private parts, I must have been around seven. Alma and I had just left school and were walking home, taking a shortcut by a new construction site. A few meters away, a man (he appeared old back then, but was perhaps only in his thirties) was peeing in a corner, under a scaffold. Upon noticing us, he turned in our direction. He did not move his hips suggestively or even say anything; he simply exposed himself, staring us in the face. We didn’t know what he was doing at first. He held his penis in his hands nonchalantly. But we were scared, and we ran.
When I was about twelve, parents in the neighborhood were alerting their children about a teenage boy with mental problems. He roamed the streets all day long, occasionally attacking people without provocation. The boy’s name now escaped me, but whatever it was, everyone would add mad to it. My parents had pointed out the boy to me before, so when I spotted his large head and V-shaped bangs a couple of blocks away, I took a right turn to avoid him. A few minutes later, a burning sensation on my back, which rapidly turned to pain, stunned me. I had fallen face forward on the ground. A voice behind me said, “Don’t you dare walk away from me again.”
A passerby who helped me up told me the boy had run into me with all his might, as if I were air or invisible. It seemed strange that, from such a distance, he had realized what I had been doing. Had everyone else been avoiding him like that?
When I was about fifteen, men in their twenties, even thirties, disheveled, unkempt, wearing sports jackets and smoking cheap cigarettes, would hang outside our high school for hours. They referred to this pastime, in direct translation from Albanian, as hunting. It was a common word in their vocabulary and we’d often hear them say, I’m hunting so and so, or Who’s hunting that beauty, you know? Afterward I’d even hear my boy cousins use it much the same way. Those boys were grown up, after all. They had to be hunting.
My hunter turned out to be a man twice my age who would follow me home, in the streets and the bus, much like Rakan had Leyla. It was strange that this story hadn’t come to mind earlier, when she first told me about Rakan. In fact, it didn’t come to mind until the morning following the bodega incident, while I was deciding whether to go out or not. It had been decades since leaving the house represented a tangible danger. But the internal anguish came to me at once, as did images from bygone years. My hunter must have been unemployed because he trailed me in the mornings and afternoons, before and after school. Even during lunchtime, he was there, amid that group of men who looked like they could all use a shower. What did they talk about while waiting for us to finish school? Future plans? They’d joke and jeer at every girl passing by. The girls’ fear made them laugh, put them in a good mood. At last, my hunter talked to me, saying that if I didn’t stop for a conversation, he would pull my hair or slap me in the middle of the street. You don’t want to be embarrassed, do you? he asked, feigning concern. Everyone will be looking. With that heavy-looking head and thick legs, my hunter didn’t look like a runner. Once he finished talking, I busted out of there. The next day my hunter got a bike. As I ran, he biked alongside me, muttering whatever threats came to his mind. With much trepidation, I eventually told my parents. My father had to walk me to school every morning and pick me up from then on.
From my kitchen in Brooklyn, those memories appeared fragmented, like a damaged film reel. Had they really happened? Was my current situation helping to embellish them? Maybe the hunter had been someone else’s. The faces of the other girls now appeared in front of me, especially that of Nora, a pale child-woman with glossy eyes whose hunter owned or had borrowed a white van. Nora hadn’t come to school for days at some point. Nobody knew why. When she returned, she was sleepy, ignored our questions. Still, I had never truly feared the hunters, not properly, deeply, not how it counted. I had always known I would survive them.
Would I go out? Stay home? Still early for a decision. The sun was shining over the brownstones across the street. My mother’s advice was to stay inside, but there was nothing I wanted more than to go for a walk in that crisp air, through the tree-lined sidewalks, to lose myself inside a store or conversation. Even back then, in all those weeks that the hunter had waited for me, hoping that his insane threats would bloom into romance, I had always gone out.
While driving to my coworking space, I wondered if it was due to some genetic trickery that fear had never paralyzed my curiosity for the world. Wrestling the unknown had always held excitement for me. Or maybe, at some point, I had promised myself that staying inside would never be my choice.
It turned out to be an uneventful day. The translating assignments went smoothly. They were mindless and kept me from thinking. I had a few brief conversations with coworkers while making the tea that Alfred had left with me. Billy still didn’t call, but he texted. He asked me to turn my phone’s tracking on. And I did. I wanted to call him, but I couldn’t manage to.
When evening rolled around, I hoped he’d be at home. But as I circled the neighborhood on a lookout for a parking spot, the living room light in our fifth-floor apartment was off. The only available parking space was a few blocks away. I scanned the street up and down before leaving the car. The pepper spray was in my right pocket. The idea for purchasing that particular pepper spray had come from one of my translating assignments. The Russian company that produced it had included pamphlets that needed to be translated to English. The history of pepper spray had held little interest at the time, but now forgotten facts popped up in my mind. The Chinese, apparently, used to wrap ground cayenne in rice paper so they could fling it at their enemies. In Japan, pepper spray was used by ninjas and samurais, who’d blow cayenne and dirt into their opponents’ eyes. I held the spray in my hand during my walk home. Would it be easy to spray it into Rakan’s eyes? The nozzle had to be put into the on position and aimed the right way, so I wouldn’t spray it toward myself. Imagining him bending over in pain was gratifying.
A wan moon was struggling to come out. The sky was gray and heavy. The night before, while everyone slept, it had snowed. A thin layer had covered the streets and dirty piles had accumulated to the sides and in between cars after the plows had passed. A portly man was taking his two poodles out for their evening walk. With their long, slim limbs and pink booties, they minced about in the snow, reminding me of ballerinas. A group of teenagers, oblivious to the cold and wearing short-sleeve T-shirts, sat on a stoop, teasing one another, laughing, smoking pot. They paused their conversation as I walked by and said good evening.
It might have been a pleasant walk, but the next block was badly lit. It was also quieter. Aware of the deep silence, my steps faltered. I thought I saw a fantastic creature, the kind Alfred saw all the time, crouching behind a car. It was a beast with Rakan’s upper body, but with the long tail and ears of a horse. A few steps down loomed a creature with horns, a pointed snout, and the hind legs of a goat. They were just piles of snow, I reminded myself, yet they still looked like creatures.
The steady footsteps behind me stopped me in my tracks.
“Good evening,” said a voice. I turned around. It belonged to a man holding a baby in a carrier. He smiled at me in a reassuring manner. At the next brownstone, he went up the stairs. All that could be heard now were my own footsteps. Or were they the footsteps of someone else? Leaving the house had been foolish. My mother was right. I suddenly wished to be home, lost in a soap opera. I tried the pepper spray’s flip-top just in case; it was easy to open. I sped up.
Behind me, the long, empty street stretched for several blocks. Why did I look back? It was a voice, someone calling my name. On the dark sidewalks, the streetlights formed large circles of lights. The next street over, a man was standing under one of those circles. He kept one hand on his beanie hat, the other held what from a distance seemed like a massive silver fish with jagged horizontal stripes across its flanks. Its mouth wide open, the fish appeared freshly caught. Upon noticing me, Rakan started waving and pointing at the fish. I ran fast. A car was crossing the intersection. I took a right instead of going straight.
“Prit, moj. Prit.”
What was he saying? What did he want? It dawned on me the voice was speaking in Albanian. It was asking me to wait. While still running, I looked back.
Zani appeared behind me, holding a bottle of wine.
“Did I scare you?” he said, running out of breath. “What’s wrong?”
Had that image of Rakan been a hallucination? Was I becoming mad? Or it had been him, and he had run away the moment he’d seen Zani?
Zani touched me on the shoulder.
“What’s going on?”
“What are you doing here?”
“That lawyer accepted my case,” he said. “So I brought you a bottle of wine. Wanted to thank you. I remembered that your husband likes red wine.”
“He does?”
“Why were you running like that? Was someone following you?”
The words felt distant, hard to grasp. A sudden flood of tears gushed out. I was wiping them silently, as Zani looked on.
“Someone is after me, yes.”
“Who? It’s not your husband, is it?”
“No, it’s not my husband. Someone else. Were you under the light before?”
“Under the light?” He looked behind us. “What do you mean? I came from that direction.”
He pointed toward the direction where Rakan had appeared earlier. I told him the story. About Leyla. About Rakan. About the night before at the bodega. About the baby mice, peeping out of the tomato slush. It all poured out. Zani listened carefully, sometimes looking at my face, sometimes turning around and staring out into the night. I was fifteen again, telling my father about the hunter, asking him to walk me to school.
Zani was squinting so much that his eyes looked closed.
“Are you talking about that bodega on the corner? Is that where he bumped into you?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go over there.”
I hesitated.
“Don’t worry. Let’s go get a drink. I know the owners.”
The bodega was only a few minutes away. The after-work rush was gone. The owner, an affable man in his early sixties, was behind the counter.
“What do you want? Coffee?” Zani asked.
“No. A tea.”
“Peppermint? Black?”
“Nothing with caffeine.”
“Okay, peppermint.”
He went toward the counter as I waited outside. He talked to the owner for a while. It didn’t seem like an important discussion. They were in a good mood, laughing and high-fiving each other. When Zani was about to pay, the guy didn’t let him. He placed one hand on his heart, then made a motion for him to put his money away.
Zani came outside with two cups.
“Nice people, the owners,” he said, handing me a cup. “Egyptians. They’re building two houses for their families and need my help.”
I remembered then that Zani worked in construction.
“How long have you known them?”
“A couple of years. Since when I was fixing bathrooms at a fancy building around here. We started talking about history. Egyptian and Albanian history are connected, you know?”
He was looking at me, expecting me to agree and elaborate. My mind went blank. Nothing would rise to the surface. Zani was disappointed at my silence.
“You must know about Mehmet Ali, the Egyptians’ Albanian King? They called him the founder of modern Egypt.”
“I know,” I said, suddenly remembering. “He built a dam across the Nile or something.”
“There you go.”
The bodega’s light suffused the sidewalk with a luminous haze. Our silhouettes were outlined in blue sapphire. Zani went on about the two houses the bodega owner and his brother wanted to build in Jersey. Their expectations surpassed their budget, but he didn’t mind doing favors.
“We’re like brothers,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”
It did seem odd that Zani wasn’t mentioning Rakan at all, as if he had forgotten the reason we had come to the bodega. On the other hand, something about his voice, talking about unrelated things that meant nothing to me, was comforting. I had no sense of how long he talked before taking a break. He finally took a sip of his drink.
“You see,” he said, lowering his voice. “I can’t get involved in anything. I’m in the middle of my immigration papers. It wouldn’t look good.”
It took me a second to realize that he was no longer talking about the owners.
“Of course,” I said, matching the volume of his voice. “I’m not asking you to.”
“I can’t have any more brushes with the law. Plus, my wife would kill me. But maybe those owners can tell him something. Not to come around here anymore, not to bother you. What does he look like, this man? What does he wear?”
“A beanie. A bomber jacket. Green eyes. Square jaw.”
“And what’s his name?”
“Rakan.”
“Okay, very well. I’ll tell them later. Is your husband home?”
“He’s not. He’s on a business trip.”
“You shouldn’t stay alone. Don’t you have a friend you can stay with?”
At the mention of the word friend, it dawned on me that Anna’s apartment was nearby. I had her key on my key chain. Was she still at her parents’ house? I wrote her a text, asking if I could spend the night there. Anything would be better than being alone in that apartment with Leyla’s ghost.
She responded at once. Come.
“Actually,” I told Zani. “There’s one place I can go to. Not too far.”
“I’ll walk you there.”
“How old is Rakan?” Zani asked during our walk.
“In his twenties.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he then said, tapping me on the arm. “Everything will be fine.”
ANNA WAS WELCOMING. She offered me a hug and Greek food from a neighborhood restaurant that was still on her table. My text had piqued her curiosity, so she inquired at once what was the matter. Being on the verge of anxiety for days had made me loquacious. Or, maybe, our last meeting had unlocked the door to our intimacy. I was incapable of lying to Anna, omitting details as I had done earlier with Alfred and Zani. I told her the entire story of how I had followed Rakan to that shoe store, of our fake date and that drive to Jersey. I confessed about Rakan’s sexual appeal, of leaving him there stranded, then of his sudden visit. I also told her about Billy’s detached reaction, how he had left the apartment without saying a word. After telling her the entire story, I felt lighter. It took a second for my distrust toward her to rear its head again.
“I’ll call Billy tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t care if I have to drag him to your house myself.”
Realizing how absurd she sounded, she chuckled. One of her crutches was leaning on her knee and the other on the seat next to her. That Anna, who could barely walk, would drag anyone anywhere was ridiculous.
“But let me get this right,” she said after pouring me a glass of wine. I had handed her the bottle Zani had given me, but the unfamiliar Albanian wine apparently didn’t make the cut. She had opted for an Argentinian Malbec. “This guy Rakan put two mice into your shopping bag, and you still didn’t call Billy?”
“Maybe he wants some time to himself,” I said. “After what Rakan told him.”
“Time to himself doesn’t apply in this situation,” she said. “Not when someone might actually kill you.”
But respecting his boundaries was only part of the reason why I had delayed calling Billy.
“At least he’ll kill only one of us,” I said. “Not two.”
Anna’s eyes went wide with shock. She clutched one of the pink sofa pillows to her chest. For all her worldwide travels, she was unfamiliar with the more sordid aspects of life.
We were sitting in her spacious living room, where the furniture was either pompous Baroque or perfectly suitable for an Almodóvar movie set. She had a knack for combining outlandish colors in such a way that they seemed made for one another. Her chandelier was of a bronze finish and featured intricate cherub carvings. Its style was elaborate, but the light sparse, illuminating little besides the dining table right below it and a set of wineglasses hanging on a rack above the kitchen counter. The corner where we were sitting—Anna on a velvet chaise lounge of bright pink, and I on a red sofa next to it—remained steeped in shadows.
“Do you have any idea,” she suddenly said, “what happened to Leyla?”
“Her phone is no longer in service,” I said. “Maybe she has changed her number.”
“Do you think he did something to her?”
“I don’t know. But that night he came to our apartment, I got the feeling he didn’t know where she was either.”
“He must be looking for her now.”
“He does seem able to find people. Leyla was always wondering how he did that. If he was tracing her phone or something.”
Anna’s shoulders shivered. She grabbed a blanket and adjusted it on her lap. Despite the poor lighting, she looked as if she belonged on a magazine cover. She was wearing an indigo robe, in whose soft folds a Persian cat was napping and purring. By her feet, on a fluffy carpet, slept her second Persian cat. She had named the cats March and April, after the months she had bought them. She took a break from petting March and adjusted her hair, tucking some strands behind her small ear.
“I’m sorry for dumping all this on you,” I said. “You’re still recovering from your accident.”
“Oh, please. I’ve been bored out of my mind. All I do every day is shop online for clothes. I can’t manage to do anything else.”
“By the way,” I said. “I bought you a purse in Albania. It’s handmade. I hope you’ll like it.”
“I’m sure I’ll like it.”
I then told her about the man from Missouri who lived and worked in Berat, and how he had flattered Billy. I described how bewildered Billy had been afterward, realizing the man’s charm had hypnotized him into buying a purse. We laughed at that together. When the laughter died down, I thought about how odd it was that we were acting as if nothing was the matter in light of her recent confession that she was in love with my husband. She had been mentioning his name casually, as if that awkward conversation at her mother’s house hadn’t happened. She would call him on my behalf, she had said.
