Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

“ No, no ,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” she said, with a half-smile. I wasn’t sure if she was making fun of me. She sipped her water. “You don’t ever feel like going up and dancing alone? Making a commotion?” Whereas her Russian had a refined cadence, almost regal, her English was casual. It was the softest part of her.

“I’m too busy,” I said.

“Or not busy enough,” she said. She touched my arm.

I had never met a Negro who spoke Russian. She had learned it from her first dance teacher, in Virginia. She also spoke French, Spanish, Italian and the Haitian language of Creole. She was a good painter and knew how to fish. Her favourite novel was Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers . She loved my intelligence, my confidence, the pencil I carried in my shirt pocket. She loved the quiet she saw in me. One week after we met, I took her to watch the boat races in Central Park. Lavinia had a strong chin on a wide face, eyes that narrowed when she saw something that impressed her. The men in their boats swept and swept their oars. Everything was lashed in sunlight. She pointed at one of the smaller boats, tapered, with a blue flag at its prow. “That one looks like a winner,” she said. It won, of course it won.

That night we went to a games bar in the Bowery, a cellar where visitors could play checkers against small, severe men. You paid only if you lost. Lavinia and I sat side by side, each of us in a game, each of us playing for free.

LAVINIA AND I WERE married on St. Valentine’s Day, 1938. In a hotel room in Montauk, she danced her love song. I sat on the bed, dry-throated, watching the fan of her limbs. She was gorgeous and unreal. Her arabesque, weightless, rose up in the candlelight. Her straight leg pointed back across Long Island Sound. To you. I rose, in the shadows. I simply stood there, waiting for my wife to look me in the eyes.

THEY GAPED AT ME across a plate of toast.

“Who is she?”

Coolly, I drank the poured vodka. “A dancer,” I said.

“Russian?”

I snorted. “She is an American.”

The Karls did not smile. I measured their expressions. “She supports the class struggle,” I said.

I had expected them to be pleased. And yet despite their pleadings for matrimony, their warnings about visas, the men now sat staring at where they had written Lavinia’s name in their notebooks.

“You did not consult us,” said the Karl with the moustache. “I spoke to Pash,” I said.

Instead of looking chastened, sullen, the Karls seemed merely weary, exchanging glances. “We believe you should leave the country,” one of them said.

“I am married now,” I said.

“Even so.”

My nerves felt as if they were fraying. “There is the new contract with Ossining prison,” I said.

“Even so.”

I flexed my jaw.

“I do not wish to leave.”

Again those weary glances.

I stood up. “I am doing vital work here. Work that is vital to the future of our country. To the Soviet project. Remember the investigations I have done into American aeroplanes, into prisons and railroads. You brought me here to do these things. That’s the point of this whole life. How can I replicate such accomplishments from far away?”

“It is not a question of utility,” said Karl. “There are other reasons to leave a place. There are questions about your visa. We believe you are under investigation.”

“Investigation? For what?”

The handlers exchanged a look. “We’re not sure.”

“I have friends here,” I said. “I have a wife. A family.”

“A family?” Bearded Karl raised his eyebrow.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “Who knows?” Would I now need a son? “My future is tied up in this place. I cannot just disappear.”

The men folded their arms.

Darkly, one said, “Tell us more, Lev, about what you can and cannot do.”

JUST A WEEK EARLIER, Pash had given us the keys to a Cadillac. He smiled. “Belated wedding present.” We went out and stood on the curb. The car was long and low, black, a bullet. I clasped and unclasped my hands. I shook my head. Pash wrapped Lavinia and me in his arms, a business partner with his friends. “A married couple deserves certain privileges.”

Now I drove the car home from Mud Tony’s. Its engine growled in a way that felt just barely controlled. People watched from the side of the road. I arrived at the house. Lavinia was reading by the front window. She came to me as soon as I walked in the door. She was always so full of desire, tinder on the threshold of flame. “Are you all right?” Her fingertips grazed my cheek. “What’s wrong?”

I murmured something wordless. I gazed at the perfect ridge of her shoulder. “Everything’s fine,” I said.

She laid her nose against my nose. “Pash called.”

“Yes?”

“He asked you to meet him at the machine shop.”

For a short moment we held hands.

I took the car to Frederick’s Garage, where he and I were paying men to assemble metal detectors for Ossining jail, Sing Sing. The wardens wanted arches like the ones at Alcatraz. The contracts were big, but Pash refused to hire a proper manufactory. So I drove across the bridge to Queens, to the deserted end of a dead-end street, where a little Russian garage slouched amid chamomile. As I pulled up, Pash was standing beside a pneumatic lift. One after another, he lifted glass sheets from a crate at his feet, threw them to shatter on the concrete. I approached him gingerly, through the broken glass.

“What are you doing?”

“Breaking glass,” he said.

“Why?”

He didn’t respond. I watched another strong piece of glass slice through the air and separate into ten thousand shiny pieces.

Finally I said, “You wanted to meet?”

He nodded. He looked at me. “Problems in Frisco.”

I tried to give him a smile. Frisco . As though we were two cowpokes at a saloon.

He could see there was something else in my face. “What is it?” he said.

I made a vague gesture.

“What’s wrong?”

I told him what the Karls had said. About an investigation. About leaving.

“Always with the cut and run.”

“It seems different now,” I said. “There’s something about the visa.”

Pash clicked his tongue. “A visa’s not why you leave. It’s how you stay.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Americans are on to us?”

He snorted. “What reason would they have? You’re clean.

They’re just a gang of skittish lambs. A department of paranoiacs.”

“Mm,” I said.

Pash turned to me. “You work for me, Lev. I am your champion and protector. I will carry you on my shoulders through the wolves.” He lifted up a piece of glass. I waited for him to throw it onto the driveway. He did not.

“All right,” I said finally.

“All right?”

“All right.”

He heaved the glass sheet. It seemed like it was coming apart before it hit the ground. “The metal detectors aren’t working,” he said in a level voice.

“What? Where?”

“At Alcatraz. They’ve stopped working.”

“Why?”

He shot me a wry glance. “That’s your area of expertise. The ones here are fine. Seem fine. For now.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Work out what’s wrong,” Pash said. “Fix it.”

“I’ll book a flight.”

Pash hesitated. All of a sudden I realized that he was afraid. He had been hiding it very well. There, a brittle fear, at the edges of his eyes. “No, stay here,” he said.