Troika (4 page)

T
here was the death: it occurred at home, in the cold room that Julian and his mother shared in a dilapidated boardinghouse. During the six transcendent months after their escape from the orphanage, after the destruction of Krepuchkin, Maria worked at a fish market on the wharf. She walked right up to one of her old customers—a humble, sad man who ran the shop—and requested a job. The man looked to the back of the shop. He watched his obese wife toss fish heads into a bucket, a tuft of wiry hair sprouting from her chin. Understanding Maria’s implicit threat, he shrugged his shoulders, handed Maria a soiled smock and quietly returned to his work.

Maria used to joke that she took to this job the way a fish took to water. She discovered great satisfaction in preparing the fish for sale: whitefish, salmon, perch, grayling, lenok, muksun, dogfish. She dressed them with the skilled hand of a surgeon, laying the fish out
on beds of ice, decorating them with local flowers—yellow poppies, spring beauties, purple larkspurs—bringing a dash of color and sweet smells to the dismal market.

To evade any authorities who might be searching for him, Julian enrolled at school under the assumed name Ivan Bezdomny, an inside joke from his mother’s favorite novel by Bulgakov. Bezdomny, the principal laughed when Julian showed up the first day.
Homeless
.

During those six months, Julian and Maria would eat breakfast together every morning—usually dried fruit and cereal and a cup of black tea. Maria would walk her son to school in the morning, drop him off at the front gates, and place her hands on the boy’s cheeks—a ritual that memorialized their connection to each other but also evoked in them the terror of their separation. At the end of the day, Maria would walk from the slimy wharf back to the school in the center of town and pick up Julian. Each day, she brought a small treat for him: a piece of candy, a marble, a colorful string. Julian, with a hunter’s eye, would wait outside the school, scanning the street, the distant wharf, the sea—nervously awaiting his mother’s arrival.

Her body ravaged by disease from years of shared needles and degrading sex, Maria’s decline was fast and precipitous. First, there was a rapid wasting away of the flesh, as if the subcutaneous fat had been heated, liquefied, absorbed into her core. And then came the purple blotch across her chest—deep and royal like the ribbon on a general’s uniform. Finally, there was the coughing, so wet and so rough, with each spasm expelling a fine mist of blood.

Julian sat by his mother’s bed. He held her hand. He cried until he realized that his pain, the
expression
of his pain, was torturing his mother, destroying what little remained of her fractured soul. He composed himself. He told his mother stories about Petrov and Volokh, how they had once stolen Krepuchkin’s watch and sold it in
the market. Maria smiled. Julian told his mother that he was proud of her, that he had no regrets. He told her that she should have no regrets, that a life isn’t defined by mistakes, but by whether you recognize them, own them, fix them.

“You fixed everything, Mom,” he said. “Everything.”

Maria squeezed Julian’s hand. “I love you.”

“No, Mom, no,” he pleaded, struggling to breathe.

Maria held her index finger to her lips. “Two things you must do, son. Promise me.” Julian nodded. “First, you must go to Frankmann, the old Jew, the one who trades pelts. You know of him, with the office on the wharf. Right across from the butcher. He will make sure you get to the States. I spoke to him and everything is taken care of. He owes me.”

Julian swallowed. “The
United
States?”

“Yes, that is where I want you to be, to start fresh, away from the stigma. Away from
my
stigma.”

“Okay.”

“And second, you must promise me this. . . .” Julian’s mother paused.

“Anything, Mom.”

“You must promise me, Julian, that you will submit to no man. You are your father’s son. Sometimes predator, sometimes protector. Only you will know when to be one and when the other.” Julian recalled the fatal blow he delivered to Krepuchkin’s skull. He shuddered.

Maria motioned her son to come close. She extended her lips, cracked and dry. Julian kissed his mother, smelled her bitter, infected breath. He pressed his ear to her chest and listened. There was a rattle from deep within, mechanical and slow. Then the rattle stopped, replaced by something that sounded like the soft purr of a sleeping cat, and finally, a rush of air through his mother’s lungs,
out her mouth, her nose—a hissing through her eyes, her ears, the pores of her skin.

The room was quiet. Julian looked around. He felt tiny, impotent, untethered. The immensity of his solitude threatened to overwhelm him. He again struggled to breathe. I submit to no man, he said. He reached for his mother’s hand. I submit to no man, I submit to no man. He repeated the mantra one hundred times, his resolve growing with each recitation. I submit to no man—a primal, rageful howl that caused the pedestrians on the street below to stop in their tracks and gaze in terror at the building above.

J
ulian’s down for work again and comes by the club. I’m real perceptive, always picking up on the smallest things, and I can tell as soon as he sits down that there’s something wrong with him, something that’s different than before. He’s still put together all nice, but the man looks tired, frail, his shoulders slumped a bit. So I sit down on his lap, rub his thigh, wrap my arm around his neck, give him a peck on the cheek. What’s wrong, baby, you looking exhausted. And I’m not just saying it to make conversation, ’cause I really am concerned about the man. Julian looks at me, not straight on but out of the side of his eye, and then lowers his head and looks at the floor.

Now, I’ve been doing this long enough to know when a man’s under pressure, when he’s all out of answers, and that’s when a man usually shuts down, goes deep inside and keeps the world at a safe distance. So I reach for his hand, his left hand, and squeeze real tight. And when I squeeze, he winces just a little bit, not ’cause I
hurt him, but ’cause I’m doing just the opposite. A man feeling this bad about himself can’t stand any kindness, especially from a woman.

But when I squeeze tight, I feel something cold in my palm, something thin and hard, and my heart pounds real fast. I open my hand and put my thumb and index finger around his wrist and lift it up to the strobe light. And there it is, blinking in the light, on-off, on-off, on-off, a platinum wedding band, clear and bright like a priest’s collar.

I lean back and look at his face, focus from a different distance, like I’m trying to figure out if I made a mistake. Maybe I sat down on the wrong guy’s lap, but sure enough it’s Julian. He shrugs his shoulders, and I’m not sure if the shrug means
you caught me
or if it means
damned if I know how this got here
. I open my mouth, not sure what I’m gonna say or how I’m gonna say it, either real mad or real hurt or real professional. His hand is around my ribs, he’s holding real tight, and as I open my mouth to speak, he releases—and something about the way he lets go tells me that a break just occurred, that we’re not connected anymore. And I can feel myself floating away, up toward the ceiling like a balloon. And I swear I can see his eyes moving up too, following my flight.

The first word is about to come out of my mouth. I’m deciding between
I
and
you
, and I think I’m gonna go with
I
’cause in some way this is more about me than it is about him. But just before the first word comes out, Schultz gets on the speaker and says in his deep voice that always makes me laugh ’cause he sounds like a game-show host, he says Perla to the main stage, let’s welcome the fabulous Perla to the main stage. That’s my cue to stop what I’m doing and get up and dance.

Got to go, I say to Julian. I’m done in fifteen minutes and then we can talk about this. And I grab his wrist and hold his hand up to the
light again and the ring is glowing and flickering in the strobe. Julian nods but still doesn’t say a damn thing, and the fact that he can’t seem to speak gets me angry. Fifteen minutes, I say, then the set’s over and we can go to the Champagne Room and talk. I push down on his shoulder and jump up off his lap.

I climb the three steps to the main stage, which is nothing more than an elevated platform twenty feet long and maybe four feet wide with two poles and some little white Christmas lights around the base. I pull a few antibacterial wipes from a box on the corner of the stage and clean off the poles, ’cause God knows what kind of nasty stuff is on them. The times when I go on after Lopez, I wipe down the poles twice just to be sure ’cause that is one skanky bitch. I take a deep breath, which is what I do for anxiety and I say to myself here we go again. I take off my top and toss it to the floor, put my hand up high on the pole, wrap my lower leg around it and look over to Julian. But he’s not there. He’s gone.

I wait for the music to start. I stand on the stage in silence, just the chatter of the locals at the bar and the girls flirting with different accents. South American Spanish, Russian, Gulf Coast. I’m cold up on the stage. A cloud of cigarette smoke drifts my way, a storm cloud that’s dark and thick, carried by a blast from the AC. As it reaches my face, I close my mouth and hold my breath, ’cause to inhale the smoke would mean to inhale this place, this life, to bring it deep inside me, mix it with my blood and my organs. To breathe in this smoke would be suicide. Please, please start the music, I say to myself, to Schultz, as the cloud consumes my head, hovers for a few seconds, surrounds me, and then, caught again by a draft, moves past me, past my face, and toward the bathrooms.

I stand on the stage, exposed and naked and staring at the empty seat. I curse myself for being such a fool, and all along I thought
he
was the fool. Schultz comes on the speaker and he says one minute,
Perla, there’s trouble with the music, one minute. So here I stand, waiting for the music, waiting for my life to start again, frozen, caught in this purgatory, which is something I learned about in Catholic school. And sometimes I feel like it’s happening to me right here on earth, right here in this club. I’m stuck on this stage, right in the middle between heaven and hell.

And just then, when my mind’s about to take me to a dangerous place, the music starts. Boom, boom. Then a pause. Boom, boom. Another pause. And I’m back.

A
fter I finish my shift, there’s two ways I can go. I can pack up my stuff, go home and have dinner with my mom, which is either gonna be chicken with rice and beans or shrimp with rice and beans. My mom’s name is Carla, and she’s forty-two, had me when she was real young and she’s just about the hottest mom a girl could ever have. She’s a great cook and sometimes for dinner she’ll make up some sweet plantains, which I love, hot and steamy and all gooey with a crust of caramelized brown sugar on top. The other thing I can do is go to the hotel and see Julian, get the story behind that ring. But I’m so damn mad, so hurt even though I’ve got no right to be, that I decide I’m gonna make a good decision for once in my life and go home, have a quiet night and see my mom.

I stand in the parking lot and there’s a tiny space maybe six inches wide where I can stand up on the curb, up on my tiptoes, and from there I can see a clip of 95 through the buildings. It’s pouring
rain and I get up on the curb, my purse flat against the top of my head, and I can see the freeway and the red lights glowing in the mist, the cars all backed up. There’s the flicker of emergency lights bouncing off the green sign, and the traffic looks like hell getting back to Miami.

So I’m thinking I should stick to the surface streets, make my way south and west, avoid the bad neighborhoods, which in this part of the state can pop up out of nowhere. One second you can be in a real safe area, lots of middle-class homes, cute shops, a bicycle just lying on a lawn and no one’s even thinking about stealing it, nothing to worry about. And then the next minute, maybe you make a wrong turn or you’re daydreaming about being loved or famous and you don’t see the red flags, some graffiti on a wall, a woman on the corner smoking a cigarette, she’s wearing a short skirt and a pink halter top, holding her fingernails up to the light, a pack of kids on bicycles looking over their shoulders, puffy jackets even though it’s hot as hell outside. So you make that wrong turn, and you’re only a quarter of a mile from the nice place, but you make the wrong turn and there you are and damned if you can’t remember how to get out. Was it left, right, left? Or left, left, right?

You panic and start to sweat, and you can feel it under your arms, the dampness, the fear. It happens to me like that sometimes, and not just in a car driving around. Sometimes I’m daydreaming and I’m not paying attention to what’s really happening, I’m somewhere else, and even though it feels good for a few minutes, the fantasy, it turns out to be just the opposite. It turns out that I’m not escaping at all, that I just got myself into deep trouble, and I can feel the sweat coming on, my body’s way of telling me that I made a mistake and I’m going, again, in the wrong direction.

I look at my watch and it’s nine-thirty and I figure it’s gonna take me a good hour, hour and a half to get home in this weather. I think
about Julian and the ring on his finger and that sick feeling in my stomach when I saw it. I think about the anger I felt when I got up on that stage, looked down and found myself staring at an empty seat. I jump inside my car and close the door, toss my purse on the passenger seat and gather myself, the rain coming down hard on the metal roof—plunk, plunk, plunk—and it feels nice and cozy.

The sound of the rain on the roof makes me think about my father, the camping trip when I was a little girl. Me and him in a canvas tent on a beach near Nibujón, the east end of the island, and the rain crashing down just like now, with me and him all safe inside, eating pastries and listening to salsa on the radio. Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Willie Colón.

I ache for him and try not to think of his death, try not think about how things might have been different for all of us. Him, my mom, me. How so many lives can change ’cause of just a few seconds, maybe a fraction of a second, an inch or two, even a small change in speed or direction. Everything has to come together perfect to end a life before it’s time.

There’s my father, Rafael was his name, standing on the beach. He’s a few feet from our tent, casting a line into the water, a white straw hat on his head and his thin body twisting in the hot wind, proud and determined to catch our dinner. And there’s me, his little girl. And I’m watching him in awe, wondering what will end up on his line, maybe a wahoo or a snapper, which is delicious. And there he is now, the pole bending, something big and strong on the hook, and my father digs his bare feet into the sand, pulls hard and arches his back.

I see him struggling to keep his balance, so I run over, put my hands around his waist and hold tight. I try to pull him away from the water, to stop the fish from pulling him into the surf, away from me. And the two of us are sliding in the soft sand, sliding
toward the edge of the water, then catching ourselves and back a few feet toward the dunes. Every time we take a step toward the water I feel a panic in my chest, like I’m about to lose everything. Every step back, away from the surf and whatever creature is pulling us into the dark blue, every step away brings me comfort and slows the thump in my heart.

Hold on, baby, my father yells, and his hands grip the pole so tight I can see the veins popping out through his smooth, tan skin, and I hold on tight as I can, so tight around his waist that he gasps for air and says not so tight, baby, not so tight. But I don’t listen to him and don’t let up a bit. He’s pulling in the line a few inches at a time, but the pole is bent so much, like a half circle, that I can’t imagine what in God’s name he’s got on the other end of the line, maybe some sea monster or a whale. And we’re making our way, half step by half step, up toward the dune while my father works the reel. And then my heel hits something hard, a burned log in the sand. I trip and fall backward and, with my hands around my father, I pull him down to the beach with me—and before we hit the ground the pole breaks in half, shatters right in the center from the force of our fall, and the top half flies out into the sea and disappears into the water, attached to the sea monster. The bottom half stays in my father’s hands, a piece of broken wood attached to nothing.

I’m afraid my father will be angry with me, that he will blame me for the fall and the broken rod and the lost dinner, and the dampness under my arms gets worse. But instead, my father puts his arms around me and gives me a kiss on the forehead. You all right, Perlita, you all right? And I smile and tell him I’m fine and sorry for falling. Don’t worry, baby, don’t worry. And then he lifts me up off the ground, brushes the sand off my bony shoulders, holds my hand and we walk down the old beach road, where there’s a few goats and men selling trinkets and necklaces. We find a little stand and we get
grilled meat and arepas and sweet corn and take it back to the beach and talk about the past and the future, and we watch the sun set, amber and purple and thin lines of yellow.

I’m in the car, driving in the Florida rain, but I’m really on the beach with my father and tears are running down my cheeks. I’m not aware of the road around me and I almost run through a red light, and an old woman with powder-blue hair in a big old Cadillac, there’s lots of them down here, the Cadillacs
and
the old women with blue hair, well, she gives me the finger and points to her temple like she’s telling me to use my brain, and she mouths the word
stupid
.

It’s that woman calling me stupid that snaps me out of my state, bittersweet thoughts of my dad, and it’s only then I realize that I’m not driving toward Miami. Turns out I’m driving
east
, toward Julian’s hotel. I’m going past the dead strip malls, leftovers from a crazy time when it seemed that anyone who wanted to put up a building could do it. There were some girls from the club, two from Latvia and one from Baton Rouge, who got together, started a company called Brass Pole Development—yup, that’s the real name—pooled their money and built a little apartment building in Pompano Beach with four units and a wading pool in the back. They rented it out quick and figured they were real smart. But then the market crashed, the tenants didn’t pay and the girls couldn’t make the mortgage payments. And that was that. So much for being legit, one of them said after the bank took the property, we’re sticking to the pole from now on.

I see Julian’s hotel in the distance, all lit up, and figure I ended up here for a reason, that probably something guided me here. So I keep driving and pull into the hotel parking lot. The rain lets up and I grip the steering wheel. I’m breathing hard and it’s hot and muggy in the car and the windows fog up so no one can see in and I can’t see out. I open the window and look out to the hotel. There’s a few
people out front, gazing up at the dark sky, holding their palms out and trying to see if it’s still raining. I’m still angry about that ring, still confused. So I get out of the car and take a deep breath, a
courage breath
is what my father used to call it, and walk toward the hotel entrance, all determined like I’m one of those baseball managers stomping across the field to yell at the ump.

Julian stays in the same room every time. He told me once that he likes 1404 ’cause it’s high up and faces east, toward the ocean, and it’s not near the elevator or the noisy ice machine. And also the television is at a perfect angle to the bed and the shower has good water pressure, all of which is true. I strut through the lobby all confident, get in the elevator and press 14. But just as the doors are about to close, a man waves his arm between them and they stop real fast, shudder like they’ve just got punched, then open right up. In walks two men, and the second I see them I know all I need to know—’cause that’s how I am, super-observant and good at sizing up a man in a matter of seconds.

The doors close and I smell the booze, bitter and sick and seeping out of their skin, the same way you can smell when someone’s got the flu, and I figure that’s God’s way of protecting us, our senses telling us when danger and disease are close. The first guy in, the one with the goatee and the yellow tennis sweater draped over his shoulders, he says what floor you going to, like he’s being a gentleman and trying to help. I point to the panel, to 14, which is all lit up and I say already got it, thanks. And then the second guy, he’s got a sunburned face, a little purple on the tip of his nose, he’s wearing chinos and a golf shirt and his phone is clipped to his belt. And this is just not a good look. This guy says to me, get this, he says wanna come over to our room—we got a suite—and watch some porn? He starts laughing as soon as he says it and looks over to his friend all cocky like he’s got some game.

Now, I’m a little girl, thin and no more than five four in flats, but I
am
a stripper, and a Latin stripper, and I don’t take shit from anyone, especially a couple of middle-aged white guys with golf shirts and khaki pants. So I’m watching the floor panel blink in red numbers—four, five, six—and I step forward between the two guys and I put my finger in the chest of the one who suggested the porn and say . . . I pause to make it more dramatic . . . I say let’s do it, boys. How about I take the both of you back to the room and fuck you ’til you can’t breathe. Sound like a plan, Romeo?

Well, this is where you separate the men from the boys, and trust me, there aren’t many men when a girl like me does something like this. And sure enough, this boy gasps, turns redder than he was before, which I didn’t think was possible, and staggers against the elevator wall. He clutches his belt-phone with one hand and his chest with the other and says uh, uh, uh. Ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen. There’s no thirteen ’cause of bad luck. The doors open and the two guys part, open up a path for me and I step out of the cab. I walk down the hall toward Julian’s room and I can feel their eyes pointed like lasers on my ass.

I stand in front of the room and press my ear against the door, which is cold, and I can hear noises inside. It’s Julian’s voice on the phone. Yes, a hamburger, please, medium well, with sweet potato fries and a club soda. There’s also the sound of a TV, sports I think. Here goes, and I raise my hand and knock all forceful, one time, two times, until I hear the TV go quiet and the squeak of the bed as Julian gets up and the slide of that stupid dangling chain out of the slot. And I wonder how it is that little chain is ever gonna stop someone from kicking the door in. I take a step back, fix my hair and straighten up my shoulders, try to get every inch out of my small frame.

The door opens and Julian stands there in his bathrobe, and he’s
got a look on his face that says
how the hell did the food get here so fast
,
’
cause I just hung up the phone
. But when he sees it’s me and not room service, he grabs his left hand with his right, covers it up. He looks at me, shrugs his shoulders and says you hungry? I just ordered dinner. He steps to the side and opens the door wide. I walk inside and toss my purse on the dresser right next to his wallet and his gold watch and I say I’m gonna take a shower. And I’ll take a burger and those sweet potato fries I love and some ginger ale. Orange slice? he asks, and I nod yes.

The shower has two heads and they’re adjustable, so I aim one at my face and one at my chest and it feels so good, not too hard, not too misty, but just right. I’m scrubbing up with the nice body gel they have, seaweed and cucumber it says on the bottle, which seems like a strange combination but turns out that it smells great, and I’m wondering what I’m gonna say to Julian when I get out.

My first thought, option number one, is that I tell him to go to hell, tell him that even though I’m a stripper I have certain rights—rights to be treated with honesty and kindness. And that this isn’t working for me. Maybe I say don’t you ever come by the club again, ’cause I’d rather dance for some married guy in a bad golf shirt with a ring on his finger, someone who doesn’t say anything sweet to me, ’cause at least
that
’
s
an honest man.

My second thought is to not even bring it up, just pretend I didn’t see a thing. Turn this back into what it should’ve been all along, and that’s a commercial transaction. Go back to where I dance and he gives me money. Dance, money. Dance, money. No more sleepovers and room service and hot showers, no more free dances or screwing him in the hotel. Dance, money. And leave it at that.