Meg Howrey - The Wanderers

“There would still be divorce,” Dmitri had pointed out. It was as close as he dared to come in contradicting his father, or introducing a note of reproach in their conversation. His father had laughed and said, “That is true,” and appeared almost proud of Dmitri for making the remark, and for a moment it seemed like he would talk to Dmitri like a man, but he did not. His father said that it was possible to divorce with love. No one was angry, he said, as if no anger meant happiness.

Dmitri looks across his younger brother to his mother and Alexander, who are holding hands. Dmitri is used to the sight of his mother and Alexander holding hands, and hugging, and kissing. It disgusts him, but he knows that his objections are childish, and he has decided to be stoic about it. His stoicism moves him.

Tonight is Ilya’s treat. The ballet here is not in season, so they have come to a Broadway musical. Tomorrow is meant to be Dmitri’s treat, only at the time he was asked he was in the mood to reject the notion of treats, so he just said Ilya could use his turn.

Tomorrow he could tell his family that he is sick. He is fifteen. His mother might let him stay behind in the hotel on his own.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes. He will tell them that he is sick. Tonight, he will start coughing.

“Do you want me to explain to you what the synopsis says?” he asks Ilya, opening up the program. Ilya gives him an assessing look, and then agrees. Dmitri feels ashamed about the assessing look. He teases his brother too much. He loves his brother, and admires him. It means something to him that his brother should trust him. If his brother decides that he can’t trust him, then that will be that, he will never trust him again. Ilya is not a subtle person; he only believes one thing at a time.

Dmitri thinks that in this, Ilya is very like their father. Maybe.

Dmitri translates the synopsis into Russian, quietly, because they are meant to speak only English in public, for practice. They examine the pictures of the performers that are printed in the program.

“This guy,” Ilya says, pointing. “You can tell he is a good dancer.”

“It’s just his head,” Dmitri objects. “How you can tell about his dancing from just his head?”

“You can tell,” Ilya says.

Dmitri chews his lip and then points to a picture of a girl with blond hair and the appearance of five hundred thousand teeth.

“Her name is Rose,” he says, reading the program. “She says thank you to her family and friends and teachers for believing in her, and her husband, Trey, for giving her love, and the Lord, for giving her a reason to wake up singing. So, Ilya, can you tell from her picture whether she is a good dancer or not?”

Ilya barely glances at it. “She is an idiot.”

Dmitri laughs and shuts the program. His stomach hurts.

IN THE LOBBY, Dmitri noticed a man.

He noticed the man, and looked at him until the man looked back. The man had a little gray in his hair, though his face was not old. Dmitri did not think the man was American, because he was slim and very well dressed and not talking and anyway, there didn’t seem to be so many Americans in New York City. The man was standing by himself in a way that Dmitri admired. He wished that he too was standing by himself, and was well dressed and not a kid.

Dmitri had a sudden feeling, a thought. That man will know what to do. But he hadn’t been able to think much beyond that because he himself did not know what to do, or precisely what he meant by that, even.

He sort of knew.

“I have to go to the toilet,” Dmitri had told his family, after he saw the man. “Restroom,” he corrected himself. Dmitri’s mother looked at Alexander.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Dmitri said. “If you give me my ticket, you can all sit down now.” Alexander, who liked to make a point of respecting Dmitri, handed over the ticket. Dmitri was, as always, a little ashamed of his ability to make people do what he wanted them to do.

He had to walk by the man to go to the restroom, but the lobby was crowded, and people had come between them. He had felt very stupid in the restroom, and did not trust touching himself, even to take a piss, so he just washed his hands and then came out.

The man was standing next to a poster on the lobby wall. Dmitri pretended that he was interested in inspecting all the posters, which seemed like a reasonable occupation. He was very afraid that the man would walk away before he got to him, but that did not happen.

“Hello,” said the man, when Dmitri was next to him.

“Hello,” Dmitri said. The poster next to the man was blue and pink colored and pictured a ridiculous blond girl, a unicorn, and an imbecile wearing legwarmers making a dance pose in roller skates on top of a rainbow. It was an absurd poster. No one could possibly be interested in it except for a six-year-old girl or a fag.

The man had on cologne. Alexander wore cologne. Dmitri’s mother liked it, she was always smelling him. Dmitri’s father did not wear cologne, because he often had to be in very close spaces with other people and so needed to have as little smell as possible.

“Are you interested in the theater?” the man asked in a friendly way. Perhaps Dmitri had been mistaken. Perhaps this man would not know what to do.

“No,” said Dmitri. “I like art.” Although it wasn’t art he liked, he liked geometry, of which art had many good examples.

“Oh?” The man turned and looked at the poster and seemed to give it polite consideration as a potential work of art. The poster read Xanadu on it in bubble letters. Dmitri did not know what that word meant, or how you would say that word, or even if it was a word. Perhaps he didn’t know English at all. He was a moron.

“Are you visiting New York?” the man asked. Dmitri was not able to place the accent.

“Yes. No. We are—I am moving—my family is moving—at this moment—we are in hotel.” Dmitri stopped. His face was burning, so he kept it aimed at the poster. This was not him, this know-nothing child. “I am in a hotel,” he said.

“Ah,” said the man. “I am visiting. I am also staying in a hotel. The Gramercy Park Hotel. Do you know it?”

Dmitri shook his head and then looked at the man. Beauty was symmetry but also something else. This man wore cologne that made Dmitri’s tongue feel big in his mouth.

“How old are you?” the man asked.

“Eighteen,” said Dmitri. So, now he had told a lie and now it was all a game. This idea made Dmitri feel powerful and he stopped being embarrassed. He looked fiercely at the man.

The expression on the man’s face changed. It became at once more gentle, and somehow much less so.

“My name is Kamil,” said the man.

“Mikhail,” Dmitri said.

“Mikhail, do you remember the name of my hotel?” asked the man.

“The Gramercy Park Hotel,” said Dmitri.

“Tomorrow afternoon I will be there, all afternoon,” said the man. “My room is 1204. What is the number of my room?”

“1204,” said Dmitri.

“1204 was the year of the siege of Constantinople,” said the man. “If you forget the number, then you must look up when was the year of the siege of Constantinople.” The man smiled, and then laughed, which made Dmitri laugh too.

“You should join your family, Mikhail. Enjoy the performance.” The man stepped back and so Dmitri had no choice but to do what the man said.

When Dmitri got to his seat, Ilya was making a fuss about how he would need to ice his ankle later because they were doing a lot of walking, which was why Dmitri had needed to call him a fag.

His mother and Alexander are talking to Ilya now. Dmitri is not certain how to spell the word Gramercy —with a y at the end? Or an e ? He traces different versions in English on the leg of his pants with his fingernail. Gra-merci .