Absurdistan

but where the hell am I going to drive it? Into the Caspian?”

I remembered a piece of unsettled business that was bothering me, an insult against my person. “Larry, why won’t the hookers in your hotel sleep with Russians?”

“They’ve got an unofficial service provider’s contract with KBR, Misha. There’s so much business on that end, my girls all got big heads now. ‘No more dirty Russians,’ they tell me. ‘No Chinese, no Indians. Golly Burton or we go home to our villages.’”

“Doesn’t Hyatt HQ mind the prostitution? The whores are chilling right by the penthouse suites.”

“My hands are tied,” Larry Zartarian said. “Look at what I’m up against. An ancient trading culture. Halliburton. It’s cultural relativism, Misha. It’s Chinatown.”

“I’m just a little offended, is all,” I said. “I like to think of the Hyatt as a multicultural space. And then some whore calls me a dirty Russian. Where’s the respect?”

“Listen, Misha, we’re becoming friends. Do you mind if I ask you something personal? Why did you sleep with Lyuba Vainberg? Everyone knows you’re a sophisticate and a melancholic. But popping Boris Vainberg’s wife? Why’d you do it?”

“How do you know about that?” I shouted, grabbing an Ativan bottle out of my fanny pack. “Christ almighty!”

“Everyone knows everything about you, Misha,” Zartarian said. “Your father was legendary here. He sold the eight-hundred-kilogram screw to KBR, remember?”

I uncapped the Ativan and let two pills roll down my throat, chasing them with the Efes beer. “This really isn’t my year,” I muttered. “I hope the whole world goes to hell, to be honest.”

Larry reached over and stroked my hand below the elbow. “Your luck’s about to change,” he said. “I spoke to Captain Belugin. We’ll get you your Belgian citizenship today. Maybe Rouenna will move with you to Brussels if you treat her right. Take her writing seriously, for God’s sake. You know how we Americans are about self- expression.”

“Good point,” I said.

“Go down to the Beluga Bar,” Zartarian said. “Your friend Alyosha-Bob will be dining with Josh Weiner from the American embassy.”

“That name sounds familiar,” I said.

“In a few minutes, this little native guy is going to show up. We call him Sakha the Democrat. He works for some local human rights agency. Buy him a turkey burger with fries, and he’ll take you to meet Jean-Michel Lefevre of the Belgian consulate. Just follow him out of the hotel after lunch, and I guarantee you you’ll be a Belgian by sundown.”

I shook Larry Zartarian’s hand. “You’re a nice man,” I said. “I won’t forget your kindness.”

“Please drop me an e-mail when you’re in Brussels,” Zartarian said. He swept his hands around the perimeter of his office with its bleeping computer monitors and stacks of yellowing official documents, each likely an Absurdi request for a handout.

“You have no idea how fucking miserable I am,” he said.

16 Gimme Freedom!

The poolside Beluga Bar was sweltering. Hyatt boys had been conscripted to throw ice cubes into the pool, and gigantic portable fans had been brought in to tickle our sweaty bodies with rotating gusts of salvation. On one side of the pool, the hotel’s male and balding guests were gorging themselves on plates of sturgeon and freshly grilled hamburgers. On the other side of the pool, the Hyatt’s hookers had arranged themselves on green chaise longues and were fanning each other with abandoned copies of the Financial Times, occasionally ululating the name of their favorite American company, Golly Burton, to the oilmen dining across the pool. The oil workers, many of whom sported thick Scottish accents, shouted back incomprehensible British terms of endearment. Even with my perfect knowledge of English, I could not understand why a woman might be flattered to be called a “bird.”

Alyosha-Bob was sitting next to a young man in khakis and a striped polo shirt who was minding a large Hyatt menu with skeptical eyes, his finger running down the price column. He had a familiar-looking cold sore that reminded me for some reason of an ice age crevice that snagged across the arboretum of Accidental College. As I approached the table, I tried to remember his name but kept coming up short. There is a class of Americans, a cheap pansy upper class, whose members are utterly indistinguishable to me. “Josh?” I said. “Josh Weiner?”

Weiner looked up to my encroaching shadow. “Snack Daddy?” he said. “Holy shit! Bob just told me you were down here. What’s the word, Big Bird?”

“Class of ’94, right?” I said. “You had the six-foot bong on College Street. What was your house called again?”

“Ghetto Fabulous House,” Weiner said. We gave each other an urban smack of the palm, knocked our fists together, and shot an imaginary finger gun at each other.

“Remember how the freshmen used to rub your belly for good luck before midterms?” Weiner said. “Mind if I give it a rub now, Snack?”

Actually I remembered this belly-rubbing ceremony all too well. The humiliations of so many little white hands casually stroking my love pouch in the dining hall. How I begged all those Noahs and Joshes and Johnnys to stop. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” I said. “My analyst says it reinforces certain behavioral patterns. Child-rearing issues and such. It makes me feel violated.”

“Uh-huh,” Weiner said. “Hey, Snack, I was just asking Bob if you guys still keep in touch with Jerry Shteynfarb. I’m totally into that Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job. It’s so funny. And full of pathos, too. Just how I like it. Homeboy made good!”

Mention of my competitor, together with the belly rubbing, dispelled my generous mood. “I hear you’re with the State Department,” I spat at Weiner. The young diplomat’s chair practically slipped out from beneath his slender East Coast frame. The foreign service was not an acceptable career choice at Accidental College, where a surprising number of graduates went on to raise organic asparagus along the Oregonian coast. Even during his college years, Weiner had exhibited unhealthy tendencies, such as writing the sports column for the Accidental Herald, the school newspaper, the kind of job only a clueless and entirely ambitious immigrant would take.

“Hey, easy, dog.” Weiner laughed, scratching at his thinning cowlick. “If you think I sold out, like, check out my paycheck. Shit.”

I continued looking at him with my meanest, bluest eyes.

“So, let’s talk politics, dog,” Alyosha-Bob said, changing the subject. “Word on the Absurdi street is that the Sevo are gonna go apeshit if Georgi Kanuk’s idiot son takes over. What’s the official U.S. position on this one?”

“We’re not really sure,” Josh Weiner admitted as he pillaged a bowl of complimentary smoked almonds. “We’ve got a little problem. See, none of our staff actually speak any of the local languages. I mean, there’s one guy who sort of speaks Russian, but he’s still trying to learn the future tense. You dogs are both from this part of the world. Do you know what’s gonna happen after Georgi Kanuk dies? More democracy? Less?”

“Whenever there’s any kind of upheaval in this country, the pistols come out,” Alyosha-Bob said. “Think of the Ottoman rebellion of 1756 or the Persian succession of 1550.”

“Oh, I can’t think that far back,” Josh Weiner said. “That was then, and this is now. We’re in a global economy. It’s in no one’s interests to rock the boat. Look at the stats, homeboys. The Absurdi GNP went up by nine percent last year. The Figa-6 Chevron/BP oil fields are coming online in mid-September. That’s, like, a hundred and eighty thousand barrels a day! And it’s not just oil. The service sector’s booming, too. Did you see the new Tuscan Steak and Bean Company on the Boulevard of National Unity? Did you try the ribollita soup and the crostini misti? This place has serious primary and reinvestment capital, dogs.”