Хлоя Бенджамин - The Immortalists

‘Raj.’ She faces forward to stare at the nailed-over door of the Burger King. ‘I’m not happy.’

‘I know.’ He comes to sit in the passenger seat and scoots the chair back until his legs can stretch forward. He wears his hair in a ponytail – it’s been days since he washed it – and his eyes are watery with exhaustion.

‘I never wanted this for us. I wanted something better. I still do. For her.’ Raj jerks his chin at Ruby’s crib. ‘I want her to have a house. I want her to have neighbors. I want her to have a fucking puppy, if that’s what she wants. But puppies aren’t cheap. Neither are neighbors. I’m trying to save, Klara, but what we’re making? It’s better than it was, but it’s not nearly enough.’

‘Maybe this is as far as we go.’ Klara’s voice is uneven. ‘I’m tired. I know you are, too. Maybe it’s time we both got real jobs.’

Raj snorts. ‘I dropped out of high school. You never did college. You think Microsoft’ll want us?’

‘Not Microsoft. Someplace else. Or we could go back to school. I’ve always been good at math; I could do an accounting course. And you – as a mechanic, you were talented. You were brilliant.’

‘So were you!’ bursts Raj. ‘ You were talented. You were brilliant. First time I saw you, Klara, that little show in North Beach, I looked at you onstage and I thought: That woman. She’s different. Your dreams were too big and your hair was too long, it kept getting tangled in the ropes, but you spun at the ceiling like nothing I’d seen and I thought you might never come down. I’m not ready to give up. And I don’t think you are, either. You really want to settle down? Get a job shuffling papers or working with other people’s money?’

His speech moves her in deep, buried ways. Klara has always known she’s meant to be a bridge: between reality and illusion, the present and the past, this world and the next. She just has to figure out how.

‘Okay,’ she says, slowly. ‘But we can’t keep going on like this.’

‘No. We can’t.’ Raj’s eyes bore straight ahead. ‘We need to think bigger.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Vegas.’

‘Raj.’ Klara presses her palms into her eye sockets. ‘I told you.’

‘I know you did.’ Raj shifts in his seat and leans toward her over the armrest. ‘But you want an audience, you want impact – you want to be known, Klara, and you can’t be known here. But people come from all over to visit Vegas, looking for something they can’t get at home.’

‘Money.’

‘No – entertainment. They want to break the rules, turn the world on its head. And isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you do?’ He grabs her hand. ‘Look. I never wanted to be the star. You never wanted to be the assistant. You’ve always felt you were meant to do something great, something better than this, right? And I’ve always believed in you.’

‘I’m not like that anymore. Something’s gone. I’m weaker.’

‘You’ve been doing better since you stopped drinking. You’re only weak when you get into your head, when you get stuck down there and can’t climb out. You have to stay up here,’ he says, holding his hand flat under his chin. ‘Above water. Focus on what’s real, like Ruby. And your career.’

When Klara thinks of Ruby, it’s like trying to hold on to a rock in the middle of a river, like trying to cling to something small and hard while everything is pulling her away.

‘If we go to Vegas,’ she says, ‘and I can’t do it. If we don’t get hired. Or if I . . . if I just can’t. What then?’

‘I don’t think that way,’ Raj says. ‘And neither should you.’

Vegas,’ says Gertie. ‘You’re going to Vegas.’

Klara hears her mother’s hand muffling the receiver. Then she hears her shouting.

‘Varya, did you hear me? Vegas. She’s going to Vegas is what she said.’

‘Ma,’ says Klara. ‘I can hear you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s my choice.’

‘No one said it isn’t. It certainly wouldn’t be mine.’

There is the click of another receiver being picked up.

‘You’re going to Vegas?’ Varya asks. ‘For what? A vacation? Are you bringing Ruby?’

‘Of course we’re bringing Ruby. What else would we do with her? And not for a vacation – for good.’

Klara looks out the window of the RV. Raj is pacing while he smokes. Every few seconds, he glances at Klara to see if she’s still on the phone.

‘Why?’ asks Varya, aghast.

‘Because I want to be a magician. And that’s where you have to be if you want to be a magician – if you want to make money doing it. And besides, V, I have a kid; you don’t know how expensive that is. Ruby’s food, her diapers, her clothes –’

‘I raised four children,’ says Gertie. ‘And I never once went to Vegas.’

‘We know,’ says Klara. ‘I’m different.’

‘We know.’ Varya sighs. ‘If you’re happy.’

Raj is walking back to the car before she’s put the phone back in its cradle.

‘What’d they say?’ he asks, swinging into the driver’s seat, putting his key in the ignition. ‘Disapprove?’

‘Yup.’

‘I know they’re your family,’ he says, veering onto the road. ‘But if they weren’t, you wouldn’t like them, either.’

They stop in a campground in Hesperia to sleep. Klara wakes to the sound of Raj’s voice. She turns over and squints at Saul’s watch: three fifteen in the morning and Raj is sitting next to Ruby’s crib. He’s peering at her through the bars, whispering about Dharavi.

Sheet metal painted bright blue. Women selling sugarcane. Houses with walls made of jute bags; enormous pipes that rise, like the backs of elephants, in the streets. He tells her about the electricity goons and the mangrove swamp, the shanty where he was born.

‘That’s Tata’s house. Half of it was demolished when I was a kid. The other half is probably gone by now, too. But we can picture it that way. Picture the half still standing,’ he says. ‘Each floor is a business. On Tata’s floor are glass bottles and plastic and metal parts. On the next floor up there are men building furniture; on the one above that, they’re making leather briefcases and handbags. On the top floor are women stitching tiny blue jeans and T-shirts, clothing for children like you.’

Ruby coos and waves a hand, bluish white in the moonlight. Raj takes it.

‘They say that your people are untouchable, worse than the ones who came from beneath Brahma’s feet. But your people are workers. Your people are shopkeepers and farmers and repairmen. In the villages, they aren’t allowed to enter temples or shrines. But Dharavi is their temple,’ he says. ‘And America is ours.’

Klara’s head is turned toward the crib, but her body is rigid. Raj has never spoken of such things to her before. When she asks him about Dharavi, or the insurgency in Kashmir, he changes the subject.

‘Your tata would be proud of you,’ Raj says. ‘And you should be proud of him.’

Raj stands. Klara presses her cheek to the pillow.

‘Don’t forget it, Ruby,’ he says, pulling the blanket up to her chin. ‘Don’t forget.’

In Vegas, they stop in an RV park called King’s Row. It’s fifteen minutes from the strip and costs two hundred dollars a month, which Raj hands over resentfully, because the pool has been drained and all the laundry machines except one are broken. ‘It’s just for now,’ he tells Ruby, kissing her button mushroom nose. ‘We’ll sell this thing soon.’ While he levels the rig with electric jacks and hooks up the utilities, Klara explores the grounds. There’s a rec room with a ping-pong table and a half-empty vending machine. The RVs seem to have been anchored for months, with wooden decks on which residents have placed potted plants or American flags.