I tried to stick my big, squishy hand inside, but to no avail. After tearing the envelope to bloody pieces, I withdrew a purple Belgian passport.
I opened it. Beneath a faint hologram of what I imagined was the Belgian Royal Palace, I saw a grainy duplicate of my Accidental College yearbook photograph, the travails of a grossly overweight twenty-two-year-old already hanging from my chin.
“For more information on Belgium, visit www.belgium.be,” Lefevre said. “They have some information in English, too. You should at least know the name of the current prime minister. They sometimes ask that at Immigration.”
“This looks so real,” I said.
“It is real,” the diplomat told me. “According to official records, you became a citizen of Belgium in Charleroi last summer. You were granted political asylum from Russia. You’re a Chechen sympathizer or something. A Jewish Chechen sympathizer, that’s you.”
I pressed the passport to my nose, hoping to smell Europe—wine, cheese, chocolates, mussels, Belgian as opposed to McDonald’s fries. All I smelled were my own odors reflected back—a hot day, a tired man, hope tempered with sturgeon. “This is very good,” I said.
“No, it’s not very good,” said Lefevre.
“Well, it’s very good for me,” I said. I was trying to stay positive, as they do in the States all the time.
The diplomat smiled. He gestured for the other Misha to tilt his head and administer the vodka inside the McDonald’s paper cup. In between swallows, he started singing the anthem of my new homeland:
With each French word, he stared farther into the blue void of my pretty eyes, grimacing, guffawing, and willing upon me every failure of which I knew myself capable. I stood there and listened. Then I said, “You know something, Mr. Lefevre…”
“Hmm?” he said. “What do I know?”
“Everybody hurts,” I said.
The diplomat curled his fine lips, seeming surprised for the first time. “Who hurts?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Everybody hurts,” I said once more. Despite the logistical problems posed by my weight, I lowered myself to the ground and extended my hand to take the vodka cup from his hand. Lefevre reached over, and our hands met briefly, his as wet and vulgar as my own. I took the cup and spilled some vodka on my new passport.
“What are you doing?” shouted the diplomat. “That’s an EU passport!”
“In Russia, when one graduates from a university, he spills vodka on his diploma for good luck.”
“Yes, but that’s an EU passport!” the diplomat repeated, scrambling backward on his mattress. “You paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it. You don’t want it smelling like vodka.”
“I can do as I please!” I began to shout, my anger suddenly matched by the sound of crashing china and cutlery behind me. We looked to McDonald’s, aware that the restaurant offered only plastic and paper service.
“What are these idiots doing now?” Lefevre said.
Several middle-aged women with very full lungs were screaming inside the McDonald’s. Almost immediately, the women’s roar was joined by a distant counterpart, issuing presumably from the Sevo Terrace below. A strange sonic displacement seemed to be taking place all around us, as if the summer heat with its layers of shimmering, highly sulfuric air were taking on an acoustic quality. “Shit,” Lefevre said as the recycling bins started to shake violently, which I surmised could not have been the result of the female screaming alone. “Oh, fuck me,” he said.
Sakha ran out of McDonald’s, his hands trembling with the yellow remains of a cheeseburger, his Zegna tie stained with a trail of ketchup. He tried to speak but could only sputter and whinny in an impotent intellectual way. It took the McDonald’s junior manager, Misha, to make the situation clear for us.
“Georgi Kanuk’s plane has just been shot down by Sevo rebels,” he said.
18
“I predict,” said Lefevre, “that we’re all going to die here in Absurdistan.”
A lone MiG-29 punched a hole through the stratosphere above us and swooped alarmingly over the gray bowl of the Caspian. The Svani Terrace rumbled in its wake.
“We’re Belgians,” I shouted at the diplomat, brandishing my new passport at him. “Who would want to hurt us?”
“I predict that before this ends, we will all be dead,” repeated Lefevre.
“What the hell, Jean-Michel?” Misha the junior manager said. “You told me there wasn’t going to be a civil war until August. You said everything would be quiet through July. We would get the Vainberg money and leave. We were going to be on a plane to Brussels next week.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” the diplomat said. “They’ve shut down the airport by now. That’s for certain.”
“How could this have happened?” the junior manager shouted, one hand raised in anger, the other draped passionately over his hip. “And what about that luxury American Express train that runs across the border? The one that costs five thousand dollars a ride. How could they cancel that?”
“I’m sure it’s all finished,” Lefevre said. “They lied to me.”
“Who lied to you?” the junior manager said.
“Everyone,” Lefevre said. “Sevo, Svani, Golly Burton…”
I turned to Sakha, who looked as discarded as a burger wrapper. “Sakha, what’s happening?” I said. “They don’t shoot Belgians, do they?”
“Vainberg,” Lefevre said, “you have to do something important.”
“I’m always ready to do something important!” I cried, scrambling over a recycling bin to get to my feet.
“You have to get the democrat to the Hyatt immediately. Put him under Larry Zartarian’s protection. It’s not safe for him out here.”
My heart beat like that of a young girl in love. I was blissful and manic at the same time.
“Just get the fuck out of here,” Lefevre said. “Everybody hurts, Misha. But some hurt more than others.”
“What?”
“Godspeed, Gargantua! Go!”
The starchy McDonald’s was filled with the sounds of women and children whimpering, the men contributing an undignified stream of curses revolving around the all-purpose Russian swear word
