MEMORIES
Back then. Most of our other neighbors were either drunks or hags or sulkers or government tattlers or thieves or con artists or too tired to be nice. She was alone. She was patient. She was soft. The old lady. Rest her soul.
I HATE HOW MEMORY FEELS ON ME
There’s Time and there’s Death and there’s a succession of lies trying to braid my hair.
CORRECTION
There’s also love. I mean, the yearning for. It is enough to civilize a child. A caress without weight. A rule to follow.
NOW I’M GROWN AND HE’S GROWN
And it’s the body that’s difficult.
THE DIFFERENCE
Unlike Nicky, who’s been who-knows-where all this time, I am an American citizen. I have a good American accent (though I still can’t pronounce the word “thief,” zief, fiev—forget it).
Unlike Nicky, who probably hasn’t had any kind of loving since they took him away to prison, I have a girlfriend. We love each other very deeply and also daily and also toward the horizon.
Unlike Nicky, who sounds like he’s pretty much damned, I have fallen in love with an angel and now I know that I am a pure and loveable soul.
JUST ONE THING
Long after the old lady was stabbed, we all felt sorry for Nicky’s mama. What a curse, to have a son who’d stab an old lady—and for what? He didn’t even take anything from her in the end. For what? Because of his soul. Because his soul was a stabbing kind and it was so strong within him, that it couldn’t even wait for adulthood to stab, it flung out from the teenage boy.
OH NO
“I’m a bad man,” Nicky says.
OF COURSE
The line went dead right after that.
FORGET IT
I plug my phone back into the charger and put it on the nightstand at my side of the bed. I slide as quietly as I can back under the covers near Angelina’s warm, peaceful body. I tell myself, just like that damned word you can never pronounce, forget it. Forget Nicky, Nicky, Nikolai from floor five.
DREAMS
They are blocks of nothing. Dreams, heavy and blank. They pile upon me like weighted blankets. I can hear myself in my dream saying, Wake up. But the dreams hold me inside.
MORNING
When I wake up, Angelina is already at work. Then it’s almost noontime. I have no work. I have cereal and coffee. I look online for job opportunities. I go to the couch. I hook my chin over the back cushion and look through the window at the sidewalk far below.
Angelina, who’s at the clinic now. Angelina, soft and assuring. Probably filling out a form, or swabbing a bit of skin. All with her creamy, dark eyes.
IDLENESS
I pick up what I can of me. I go to the bedroom. I get in our bed. I masturbate to the color of her eyes.
BAD THINGS
I’ve never killed anyone. Not even in dreams. Not even in daydreams. Not even in the afternoons when I’m sitting between jobs, looking from the window at the pavement with a fierce void.
I’ve never stabbed anyone. Not even poked. Not even with the handle. Or the dull edge.
I’ve never hit anyone. Not even with the palm. Not even with a fist. Or a leg. Or a convenient kitchen object, like a pan. Or a convenient living room object, like a book. Or a convenient bathroom object, like the plunger.
Not even with an unexpected item, like a loose brick from a to-be-repaired chimney (like Miss Anya from floor one did to her husband one night when he was asleep in bed. We heard his snoring, then a flap of voice—part man, part fish. We all listened with our lights off. The ambulance came. Some folks from floor three took bets. He didn’t die.).
Not even with a quick-on-your-feet home goods concoction like a pillowcase full of silverware (though I prepared one for an occasion, but then got sucker punched and can’t remember why I didn’t strike first, I had planned to, I faltered, but that’s another story).
BUT NICKOLAI
He has done one of those things and he’d done it once, twice, thrice.
DON’T ASK
How do we know that the soul is good when the mind is filled with foul things?
A NUMBER WITH NO NAME
My phone is ringing in the living room where I left it next to my computer with my CV file open and my internet tabs of classifieds and the cold pool of sweet milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl.
“Privet,” he says.
HIS VOICE IS DAMP
I’m not sure if it’s meant to be threatening. It’s not.
“Listen, just listen,” he’s insisting.
“You shouldn’t have called back,” I say firmly. “You shouldn’t have called at all.”
“Don’t hang up, Olga.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Stop—”
“What’s this got to do with me?” I insist.
“Believe me, it’s got to do with you,” he says with a sudden emptiness.
“Okay, listen, Nicky, I don’t know how you got out, or got to America, or got my number, but if you’re looking for my money, I don’t got any of that, so it’s bespolezno, no use, got it?”
“I’m not looking for money.”
“Well what are you looking for?”
There’s a crack on the line.
BE CAREFUL
When Angelina comes home from work, I’m on the gray metal slab of a balcony we got off our apartment, smoking. The sliding door is open.
Her purse is on the couch and she wants to kiss me, Hello.
I turn around and arch my back over the balcony railing. My cigarette is between my fingertips. I’m blowing smoke up into the dark sky.
“Be careful,” she says, reaching out to me.
NOTHING TO TELL
I don’t mention the phone calls to Angelina. They are part of the old world. My life, split in two. Nicky knows. But what good is it, to know?
THE OLD WORLD
It’s not just a place and time.
SLAPSTICK
A Soviet childhood in the West.
ALL IMMIGRANTS ARE CHARLIE CHAPLIN
He had
