Boris Fishman - A Replacement Life

Leonard’s girlfriend, Galochka, wandered over to Leonard and Slava. “Popochka,” she said to Leonard. Little butt. “You’re done eating?” She wedged herself into his lap, eliciting a grunt. “I’m going to feed you until your belly is so big no other woman will want you. And then you’ll be all mine.”

Leonard turned to Slava. “Who said women don’t speak directly?” He turned to Galochka: “Dove, please, we’re speaking.” Galochka pecked Leonard’s forehead and removed herself to the couch.

“How long have you been together?” Slava asked, to ask something.

“I don’t know,” Leonard said, squinting with overfed eyes at the clock. “Our parents have medical offices next to each other.”

“I see,” Slava said. Leonard downed two fingers of cognac and gazed contemplatively at the wall. “What specialty?” Slava said dutifully.

“Gastro?” Leonard said absentmindedly. “Mine are gastro, hers are feet. You and Vera?”

“We just met again,” Slava said.

“She’s special,” Leonard said.

“That’s what everyone says,” Slava said. “We haven’t really spoken. She clears my plate and runs off.”

Leonard tried to focus on Slava through the drink in his eyes. “She doesn’t want to interrupt.”

“What, this?” Slava said.

“You know what?” Leonard said. “You’re okay, Slava. You know why?” He stuck out his fingers — Slava was startled by the gold band on his left hand; he and Galina couldn’t be over twenty-five, but they were married — and counted. “One, you don’t run your mouth. You observe. It’s a gift. People talk too much. They like to hear themselves talk. And two, when Vera said famous Slava was coming, I’ll be honest — I’m drunk, so I’m honest — I thought, This guy is going to be a fucking prick. And you are a prick, a little bit. You think you are better than us. But you’re all right. I like you.”

Despite himself, Slava smiled. Leonard — sloping belly, puffy fingers, the face starting to line — was already a little version of the man he would be in thirty years, to him an achievement. Some questions — America, but a distinctly Russian America; Galina; the medical office he would inherit from his parents — he had answered and would never have to be asked again.

“You’re a charming prick, too,” Slava said.

“Good.” Leonard’s face broadened in pleasure. “Let’s drink to our women.” He reached for the bottle again.

“Galina is driving?” Slava said.

Leonard brought a finger to his lips and winked. Then his teeth closed around the bottle stopper. He extracted it with his mouth and spat it across the table.

“You savage!” Galina shouted from across the room. “I’m not taking you to the dentist when you ruin your teeth.”

“Get up, get up,” Leonard counseled Slava, a bottle in one hand and a Slava in the other. Everyone looked up from their positions. Leonard made eyes at Oslik, who immediately sprang from his seat and dashed for the stereo. A Russian pop song emerged from the speakers. “Opa!” Leonard shouted, swigged from the bottle, and gave it to Slava, who held it at his side. “Drink, drink,” Leonard insisted quietly, pulling Slava, whose right arm now rested around Leonard’s haunch, to an unoccupied part of the living room.

“The lilac fog,” the crooner sang, “sails above our heads.” Slava watched one of Leonard’s trousered, loafered feet kick the air, the keys in his pocket producing a businesslike jingle and his center of gravity immigrating position until Slava was nearly embracing him from behind. “I love this song!” Oslik’s bulb-girlfriend shrieked. Leonard’s leg returned to the floor and he turned to look at Slava: “Nu ?” Obediently, Slava kicked up his left leg. “Attaboy!” Leonard roared, rubbing Slava’s head to indicate admiration for his balance despite his having consumed nearly as much cognac as Leonard.

By now the chorus was up—“Conductor, please don’t rush / Can’t you understand / I’m saying goodbye / To her forever”—the entire room shouting in unison and swaying in place. Leonard’s turn: He kicked up his right leg. Slava kicked up his right leg. Leonard swigged, Slava swigged. They went around the living room, the others singing and yelling. Slava must have revealed an unforeseen aptitude for the primary maneuver, because soon he was alone in the middle of the living room, Leonard seeking respite in Galina’s arms and pushing Vera out onto the dance floor. “Ve-ra! Ve-ra!” the crowd chanted, dividing her name into the syllables that Slava had mouthed so many times as a boy. The room swimming, he summoned her with an open hand. Rolling her eyes, she rose to join him, swirling and twirling, demurely coquettish, as he kicked and sprang. They hadn’t planned, but somehow they fit together. Grandfather’s tutelage, so useless at Bar Kabul, directed his arms and legs, and she — she danced on heels as if on bare feet, though after a while she kicked them off to applause. Finally, the song ended and they collapsed on the carpet. The room thundered, feet stamping the floor.

After they were done, everyone wanted to try it, the dining table pulled back and the carpet rolled up until the living room resembled a dance floor. “Tomorrow the people downstairs are going to have my head.” Lara shook her head. “Take this down, apologize, and everything will be okay,” Vera said, holding up an unopened bottle of cognac. “See what we started?” Leonard slurred to Slava even though he was buried in Galina’s considerable bosom. Slava walked up to Leonard’s slumped form and laid a wet kiss on his cheek. “Oh, Galinochka, you frisky, frisky…” Leonard mumbled, and everyone burst out laughing. They danced until the clock showed midnight.

Downstairs, waiting with Vera for the cruiserweight’s taxi in the stifling air of the street, Slava bristled with a child’s excitement. He repeated a maneuver from their pas de deux.

She smiled. “I’m happy you’re happy,” she said. He toed the curb, recalling the evening, and laughed to himself. “So, listen,” she said. “I have an idea for how to get them together.” She had switched back to English.

“Who?” he blinked.

“Our parents.”

“Ve-ra!” he said, trying to be playful. “Let it be. It’s not our business. They’re grown-ups.”

She shrugged and looked away, disappointed. “I told my mother we talked.”

“Was she angry?” Slava said.

“No, she was happy,” she said. “She can’t do it herself, but if I do it, it’s okay. We are too small here to divide from argument. Did I say that right?”

“Sure.”

“You speak like an American, like you were born here.”

“We came here at the same age,” he said.

“But I stayed in Brooklyn. I speak Russian most of the day. Sometimes full days with no English. In Italy, my parents always wanted me to play with you. Slava is a good boy, he studies his translation book. You run away and I stay, and my parents still always say: Why you can’t be more like Slava?”

Slava’s excitement was emptying into the overheated air. There was a honk, and a second later, Vova skirted the curb with a flourish. Slava, until now no ally of the cruiserweight, felt a tremor of gratitude.

“How was it?” Vova asked cheerfully when the young pair was once again lodged in his rearview mirror.

“Very nice,” Vera said quietly.

“And where is my care package from the table?” Vova said flirtatiously. Slava wanted to brain him.

“Oh my God, I am so embarrassed,” Vera said, covering her mouth. “And it was a good table. Lara’s mom was by earlier and cooked everything. Let me go upstairs.”

Vova peeled off before his martyrdom could be compromised. They rode the rest of the way in a merciful silence. Slava thought of Arianna. Despite having been overcome with guilt after she called, he hadn’t thought of her again all evening. Only a week had passed since Bar Kabul — he couldn’t see friends one night? Then why did he lie about where he was? He moaned in annoyance, raising a look from Vera. “Nothing, nothing,” he said.