I NEVER TOLD ANGELINA ABOUT NICKY
Because I never told her about the murder in our building, because I never told her about the feeling of anachronistic dread.
IT’S DIFFERENT THAN HIDING
I told her we had odd neighbors. I told her that my little brother, Misha, was handsome and sickly long before he took off. I told her that my parents were different than her own, because they were ghosts of an era—anxious, angry, unable.
IT’S DIFFERENT THAN A SECRET
It is airborne and obvious. It is in my posture. It is in my gloomy charisma. It is in the way I pick up cues.
IT’S A LAPSE IN LANGUAGE
An air bubble between two continents.
BESIDES LIFE DID NOT STOP
After the old lady was murdered. There were daily worries to tend to. There was my father’s shaky position at the agricultural engineering plant. And my mother’s intellectual affair with her colleague. And then my baby brother Misha was born with weak lungs. And Miss Anya from floor one accused my mother of trying to seduce her husband (before she almost killed him herself with the stray brick). My mother had to explain that she wanted nothing to do with that first-floor grunt of a man in a polite and convincing manner. Still there were those who sided with Miss Anya. My mother was Jewish and beautiful and couldn’t be trusted. My father was Georgian and stubborn. I had my mother’s looks and my father’s character. My little brother Misha had ghostly eyes and took long, winded breaths. I tried to look after him.
MISHA AT EIGHTEEN
I won’t get into the details, but at eighteen, Misha had only one functioning eye. Otherwise he was perfectly healthy. A miracle—I mean, his lungs.
But he was far away. He stopped talking to me. Then he skedaddled from our home altogether. Didn’t tell us where. Said don’t call. Don’t try. Said leave me alone. I didn’t know what to do. I was busy being a deadbeat myself. I was twenty and living at home. This was before Angelina. Before that kind of faith. I guess I could have figured it out. His whereabouts. I heard he was somewhere on the East Side. On what money, I don’t know. I guess I could have tried to find him. To tell him, Come back. Come home. But who was I to talk? Who was I, to open my palms and show him my handful of community college credits going nowhere. I don’t know if it was an excuse. I believed it at the time. I thought, He’s better off out there, in the American glimmer of happenstance, than with us.
DINNER
Angelina is setting up the dinner table. Rice with chicken and peas. I love peas. My angel knows that. I come in from my cigarette. We sit down and start eating.
I’m awfully quiet, I know.
SPEAKING OF GOD
So Misha got Jewish. Heard he prays now. Heard he believes in God. Heard he goes by Moshe.
FOR THE RECORD
I never said God was bullshit.
Maybe I said it once.
I said it because I heard our Babushka saying it back in the day. God is bullshit. It sounded right. I personally have nothing against God. Babushka had a lot of pain. It was God’s fault. I don’t have any pain. Just a sense for suffering. I think it’s in my nature. I don’t blame God. I think the Almighty gave me a decent life. Not the Lord’s fault I am ungrateful.
DESSERT
I often tell myself, Olga, you’ve got an angel who loves you back and you’re acting spooky. The ungrateful shall not be blessed.
BACK IN OUR BEDROOM
I feel more like myself. I’m not in my words. I’m in my T-shirt and underwear. I take off the T-shirt. I take off the underwear. I’m naked. You don’t need words when you’re naked.
Angelina’s wearing her pajama shorts and camisole, satiny like her voice.
Satiny, satiny, her thigh and her shoulder.
She glances down at me, curled around her knees. She knows what I want. She smiles with the knowledge. What I want. I want. She leans over me and lowers down, down. I’m arching my face up, up. Then we are kissing. Just the lips. Just touching lips. Light kisses.
DOVES
First we kiss like doves above the flood.
EARTH, LAND, HOME
We slide our tongues into each other’s mouths.
WHAT I WANT
I want. To swallow her tongue.
I WANT
What I want. To fill up her mouth.
DOWN, DOWN
To pour my own long, heavy breath down her throat.
UP, UP
The tips of her hair, the tips of her fingernails, the tips of her nipples.
OUR HEAT CONVERGING
It’s a miracle that we are both so wet and alive.
SLEEP
It’s the third-degree of night. My eyes open. My phone is buzzing on my nightstand. I grab it and paw my way out of the bedroom so I don’t wake up Angelina.
“Enough is enough,” I whisper into the phone.
“It’s urgent,” he huffs.
I find my pack of cigarettes and my lighter. “What is it?”
I throw my long blue coat over myself and quietly pull open the glass door to step out onto the balcony. It’s dark and watery outside. My skin prickles and my shoulders shiver involuntarily. It feels good to be naked in my slouchy blue tent of a coat, my bare heels on the cold slab of concrete.
“You’ve got to come meet me,” Nicky says.
“I don’t have to do anything you say,” I tell him.
“Listen, Olga, listen to me…”
I’m leaning on my elbows upon the railing like a dog on guard, smoking in slow drags.
“I’m listening…”
“They’ve got your brother.”
“My brother?”
“Moshe. Moshe… Isn’t that your brother?”
LOVE
My lit cigarette is falling six stories into the night.
“Olga… Olga…?”
My two empty fingers, my two dumb-struck fingers.
“Please… please… don’t hang up.”
I don’t know how to love people who aren’t there.
THERE IS AN HOUR
When the traffic lights switch to blinking yellow. There is an hour when sleep becomes a waking thing.
I’ve got
