18% Gray. Zachary Karabashliev
The Vietnamese guy insists. “Cass, cass!”
“Cass, my ass.” I say.
“Huh?” He frowns, he doesn’t get it. Well, I don’t get why Stella’s gone either.
“I don’t have any cash.” I say. “No credit card either.” The Vietnamese guy sees he’s got no other choice and decides to accept the check, but now he wants more money. I write a new check for ninety dollars. Whom should I make it out to?
“Howah.” He says.
“Howah?”
“Howah.”
“Oh, Howard? OK, Howard.” Look at them Asians and the noble names they appropriate! I’ve yet to see one named Bill or Bob. I write Howard Stern and hand him the check.
“No! No!” He screams. “No Howard Stern!” and rips up the check. “Howah!”
“Howard what!?” I snap.
He grabs the checkbook and writes the name himself: Hau Ua.
“Oh!” I pat him on the shoulder. “I know lots of Vietnamese guys, Hau. Good people.” Hau stares at me with no expression. “Good people!” I say, “the Vietnamese.”
“I from Laos.” Hau gives me a nasty look and turns his back on me. Now they’ll skin me at the garage. Let them.
I take a cab home. Quiet and shady. I water the plants in the backyard. Nothing is their fault. The neighbors’ orange cat shows up. He wants to play with somebody. “Do you miss Stella?” I ask. He meows, which means of course he does. Stella used to buy him canned food. She insisted that ocean whitefish was his favorite. I find some cans under the sink and open one. I take it out and set it under the easel where her last abandoned painting sits. A sheet spattered with blue paint covers it. I watch the cat eat for a couple minutes. I gave Stella this easel five years ago as a Christmas present. I lift one corner of the sheet and look at the canvas. I don’t get it. This is the only painting of hers in the house—the rest are either in her studio or in storage—and it’s unfinished. Why don’t I throw it in the trash?
I’m hungry. I turn around and accidentally knock over one of the jars with watery paint and brushes sticking out. It rolls over, spilling an ugly trail of muddy, grayish paint. I angrily kick the jar and it shatters.
The only things in the fridge are some rotten vegetables from before she left, and some beer, which I stashed there afterwards. Lately, my life has been divided into before and after she left. The latter is made up of nine days of loneliness. Loneliness that I feel most acutely at dusk. The world sighs with relief after a workday, while I choke up with her absence. Alone like a Sasquatch, I wander through my thoughts, and there’s no shelter, absolutely none.
“You need to be alone. To decide what to do with your life.” I can hear her words in the room now. I didn’t say anything then. I just watched CNN and didn’t say a single thing. What was on the news then?
I find half a baguette in the breadbox. I take out a can with a colorful sombrero and an “El Cowboy” label and pour its contents into a small pan to heat it up, stirring it from time to time. The smell of spicy Mexican beans fills the room. She doesn’t like beans. She doesn’t like Mexican spices, either. I go pick something to listen to. While I sift through CDs and LPs, I hear a “pf-f-f-f”—the beans are boiling over and spilling onto the burner. I get up and start sponging away the mess before it’s dried up. Suddenly, my wrist—where the skin is most tender—sticks to the hot pan. That sizzling sound, the smell of burned flesh, the pain . . . I don’t even scream in pain. Why should I? Shit, my hand, shit, fuck my stupid hand! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Fuck? All of a sudden, the idea of porn doesn’t seem as pathetic as it has for the last week and a half. I will reward myself with a serene hand job after my spicy bean dinner.
I put a tablecloth on the table. I lay out the silverware on a linen napkin. I take out a jar of hot chili peppers and arrange it on the table. I light a candle. I serve up the bowl of beans in the middle and set two beers next to it. I pick a record—La Sonnambula by Bellini, performed by Maria Callas at La Scalla 1955—and play the aria “Ah! non credea mirarti.” I pump up the volume, like I never did when she was here. I drop pieces of dry baguette into the bowl, stir, and slurp up the hot chunks, rolling them around in my mouth. Beans are an experience. You have to devour them hot and spicy, otherwise there’s no point.
The aria lasts five minutes and forty-three seconds. Two minutes in, I see the bottom of the bowl and spend the next three listening with my eyes closed. The telephone rings right at the last note. I don’t pick up. I haven’t picked up the phone since Stella left.
Leave a message!
“Zack, are you there?” It’s the annoying voice of Tony, who’s been calling me three times a day.
“I’ve been calling you three times a day. Where are you, Zack? We need to talk, man. Pick up the phone. Zack?!”
Thirty-three messages blink on the machine. Not one from her. I look around. Every single thing in this house is in its place because she put it there. Every square inch is covered with her fingerprints. I try to get used to the fact that she’s gone.
The porn is lame, pink bodies lurch on the screen for a while, then everything ends in a napkin. I toss it into the trash along with a few old papers, bills, and junk mail. I get ready for bed. I brush my teeth meticulously and wash my face. I turn the lights off everywhere. I lie down on the right side of the bed. The left side—her side—feels like a wound. I’m suffocating on sadness. I stare at the dark ceiling for a long time, then roll over to where she slept until nine nights ago. I curl into a six-foot-long embryo and press my heart with the full weight of my body. The heart is like the neighbors’ cat—it doesn’t get it. It doesn’t understand that she’s gone. The heart is an animal.
*
1988, Varna, Bulgaria
Stella.
I saw her for the first time just before I was discharged from the army. I was on day leave and was wandering around the central part of the old Black Sea town where I was stationed. It was a warm afternoon in late May and the scent of blooming linden trees hung in the air. I had read in the newspaper that ancient ruins had been discovered during the construction of a mega-department store. The subsequent excavations unearthed the remains of a Roman arena, and a third of downtown had been turned into an archeological site. It was worth checking out, I thought.
It wasn’t. It was a big hole in the middle of the city filled with bored students brushing stones. I crisscrossed the central promenade several times and started seriously thinking about having a bite to eat. Then I headed half-aimlessly toward the beaches, my ravenous stare making the local girls move to the opposite side of the street. Or was it my hideous buzz-cut?
I remember walking into a café and there she was. First her lips? No. First her eyes, then her lips. Then her breasts—her round breasts stretching her uniform. Then the curl of light brown hair hanging down to the dimple in her cheek. The feeling of destiny. And then the dread that whatever I would do was pointless. She was the most beautiful girl in town. There was no way she didn’t belong to somebody. There was no way some lucky bastard wasn’t counting off the minutes until the end of her work day. Miracles don’t happen, I decided, and walked out.
*
Something suddenly thrashes in my stomach and my insides knot up into a small, hard ball. I sit up in bed and stare into the silvery threads of darkness. I listen. Is there someone in the house? I hold my breath and try to figure out if there’s someone in the living room. I swear I heard something. THERE IS someone. I can hear the blinds moving. I get up cautiously. I reach for the bedside lamp, unplug the cord, roll it up and grab it by its metal stand. Then I realize I’m naked. I can’t just burst out of the bedroom nude and start chasing off criminals like in a Swedish film. In the dark, I manage to make out the three white lines of my running pants. I put them on carefully, without dropping the lamp stand, and move toward the door. I press my ear to it, struggling to catch a sound.