Aleksandar Hemon - Nowhere Man

“Thank you,” he said, his stomach suddenly empty.

“Johnny and Grace might join us,” the woman said. “I might need you to go and get some sprouts.”

Let me suggest that if Pronek were a building with an elevator sliding up and down the chute between his brain and his stomach, at that particular moment the elevator would have dropped a hundred floors, pulled down by horrendous gravity, and it would have slammed into the ground, collapsing whoever was in that elevator into a painful, mushy pile.

“And you could have called me to say you would be late,” the woman said. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head admonishingly.

“I am not,” Pronek said, his throat tight, “who you think I am.”

“Oh, I know you better than anyone,” the woman said, waved her hand toward him and frowned benevolently.

A jungle of lush plants was arrayed on the windowsills. A calendar with a picture of a street in Saigon and things written in an impenetrable alphabet hung on the wall, smiley faces in some date boxes. The woman’s skin was dark and she had a wide, cheeky face, framed by thick black hair. She might be Vietnamese, Pronek thought, but who am I?

“I am with Greenpeace,” he said to the woman, and exhibited as evidence his clipboard with a green-and-blue-planet leaflet. The year on the calendar was 1975, Pronek realized.

She laughed heartily, clapping her hands, applauding his performance.

“You always make me laugh,” she said, and touched her stomach, as if laughing hurt her.

“Ma’am,” Pronek tried again, but had no will to push it further, as he could not remember how he got here, how he had become what he was. He sat down into an embracing armchair facing an extinguished TV. There was a pair of man’s slippers, blue and soft, carefully aligned next to the armchair, within his reach. He closed his eyes, hoping that the woman would vanish when he opened them. But she was still there. What would happen, Pronek thought, if he simply took off his shoes and put the slippers on his feet, swollen from walking? If he had some of that won-ton soup? Who would get hurt? Pronek saw himself trudging to the kitchen in his slippers, taking his seat and eating his soup, the woman gently rubbing his back. Why couldn’t he be more than one person? Why was he stuck in the middle of himself, hungry and tired?

“Ma’am,” he said, still hesitant, whispering, his words teetering on the edge of silence. “I am very sorry, but I am not somebody you know.”

“Don’t worry about it so much,” the woman said, softly, moving closer to him, a touch away. “The soup is getting cold.”

Rachel unlocked the door, and a large cat tried to push its way through, only to be pushed back by her foot.

“This is the cat,” she said.

“What is her name?” Pronek asked.

“I call him the cat. He’s Maxwell’s cat. He calls him Zora.”

“Who is Maxwell?”

“My roommate.”

“Oh.”

Rachel turned on the light and locked the door behind her. The Cat sniffed Pronek’s shoes, then looked up at him. “ Zora ” he said, “means very early morning in my language.”

The walls were painted turquoise with a thick red line going wall to wall along the middle. The Cat leapt on the sofa and crawled under a cushion.

“Well, he’s no early morning. Maxwell spoils him beyond words.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Maxwell is beautiful,” she said. “Unfortunately, he’s gay.”

“Oh.”

Rachel then dimmed the lights. Pronek slumped onto the sofa and felt fatigue dropping to his pelvis and his thighs.

“Maxwell’s a musician, plays the trumpet. Has a jazz band with his boyfriend Aaron. He thinks he’s the hip-hop Miles.”

“Who is the hip-hop Miles?”

“You know, Miles Davis, the hip-hop version.”

“Oh.”

There was a black-and-white photo of a man crossing the street, slouched, one of his feet about to land on the ground, as if he were stepping on a spider. Rachel sat next to Pronek, put her hand on his thigh, and said:

“Would you like something? To drink?”

Her eyebrows were converging toward each other, the gossamer glistened on the convex slope above her nose, her eyeballs glossy — he imagined touching them with the tip of his tongue and thought: Blago.

“No.”

“Well, I would. A man can use some whiskey after a hard day’s work.”

“Okay, give me one whiskey.”

It was while Rachel was in the kitchen — glasses clinking, water running, indeterminate noises ebbing — that he imagined himself imagining himself in this room, dimly lit, waiting for a woman who could only know what he told her in his sloppy English and distorting accent. He saw clearly that who he thought he was and who she thought he was were two different persons. He imagined himself doubled, the two of them sitting next to each other on the damn sofa. The Cat was suddenly across the table, nestling in the armchair, panning from Pronek to his twin and back. Rachel appeared out of the dark hall with two glasses and said: “Let’s go to my room.” Pronek slowly got up, pushing himself with his fists off the sofa.

I wait for a moment, then lurch forward, scaring the Cat. I follow him to Rachel’s bedroom, and slip in before they shut the door.

They sit on the bed, Rachel backlit with the bedside lamp, Pronek’s back to me, as I soundlessly deposit myself at her desk in a dark corner, breathing in through my mouth and out through my nose, barely, inaudibly.

They sip the whiskey, in desirous silence, probably looking into each other’s eyes. Rachel kisses his mouth, then pulls back, waiting for his move. Pronek gulps his whiskey then leans toward her and grabs her pate, pushing her face toward him. In his other hand, the glass is slowly leaning on his knee, until the diluted whiskey starts dripping on the floor.

They slowly stretch on the bed, their feet still on the floor. Oh, I’ve seen it many times before, the foreplay. I know the disbelief, the doubt as he’s peeling off layer upon layer of her clothes, as she unbuttons his shirt. I look at the things on her desk: a message from one Daren, a Ciccione Youth CD; an application for an ESL teaching position. There are contact copies with small photos of an empty picture frame; of a light post broken in half, like a pencil; of an anonymous suburban porch; of Pronek looking out of the picture, the American flag limp above his head. There is a thick stack of papers with notes scribbled on them in handwriting leaning down, like wheat in the wind. I read them:

They swallowed cheeseburgers like pills. Yet they were sad.

My violence is a dream.

Rachel is taking off her shoes, having some trouble untying them, giggling.

Jozef had a blues band back home. He is a good man, but there are bubbles coming up from the creature at his bottom.

Fall arrived August 28, around noon. Suddenly the light was soft, the sun rays were coming at you with their heads bowed, chaffing their cheeks against your sides like a purring cat.

Rachel has unbuttoned Pronek’s shirt, her legs are bare, I can see her crotch and her panties. Pronek is looking down at her hands. She slides the shirt down his shoulders, then pulls up his undershirt, laughing and shaking her head. “I was cold,” Pronek says. She kisses his chest and tickles his left nipple with her tongue. Pronek gasps.

Dog eyes crusted with dog tears.

Pronek works on unfastening her bra, as she rakes his hair with her fingers. “It is dirty,” Pronek says. “Not yet,” Rachel says, and laughs again, leaning back just as Pronek solves the bra riddle — her breasts lunge forward.

Outside I can hear squirrels cackling. How can I know they are not talking to me if I don’t know their language?