Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Nevertheless, he would persevere. Wisdom came with age. Already, Vladimir could see himself declared an elder statesman. Another way to look at it: Despite their relative youth, the nouveau-nerds were hobbled by their unremarkable suburban demographics, while Vladimir, as a former New Yorker, was a freak by nature. But he was not the only freak. Others who tried particularly hard to stand out included Plank, a thin and nervous man who carried a yapping bite-sized dog—some kind of cross between a Chihuahua and a mosquito—in a little homemade pouch that was wrapped with silver lace. Women passing by took turns telling him how cute his dog was, its grimy, sorry little head constantly peeking out from its mobile home like a furry earflap with two eyes. But Plank, true to the game, wouldn’t smile or acknowledge them beyond a nod, knowing how out-of-season such sentiments could be. Cohen told Vladimir that Plank bred these customized minidogs in his panelak for the old Stolovan ladies, but Plank did not warm to Vladimir, stating: “There’s not much money in it, you know.” Oof, was that an antibusinessman slur? Did he not realize that Vladimir’s true love was the muse?

Vladimir did better with Alexandra: tall, slender, dark-haired, with a round, full Mediterranean face and a small, intelligent curve of bosom. In fact, she was (dare Vladimir think it) not unlike Francesca except her face was too conventionally pretty with its high cheekbones and long natural lashes stretching upward in two parabolas. With Fran you had to find the beauty and fall in love with the blemishes, while Alexandra’s ready-made good looks seemed the perfect physical match for Cohen. The way Cohen’s eyes were firmly fixed on the silhouette of her body, sheathed in nothing but a tight-fitting black turtleneck extending into matching hose (no glam-nerd threads for her, thank you), certainly confirmed as much on his part.

Before Vladimir could be formally introduced, Alexandra grabbed his head and pressed the furry thing into the soft, bare crux of her neck. “Hi, honey!” she said. “I’ve heard all about you!” She had? But how? Vladimir had only met Cohen three hours ago.

“Come! Come with me!” She draped her arm around his and was leading him toward a kind of Art Nouveau tapestry hanging from a velvet wall—long swirls of multicolored swan feathers encircling what seemed to be a stylized Pietà. Yes, dear old Art Nouveau, thought Vladimir. Thank heavens, Abstract Expressionism and Co. had slain that gaudy beast. “Look! Look at this!” Alexandra shouted in her throaty, smoky voice. “A Pstrucha!”

A what? Oh, who cares… She was heavenly. That collarbone. You could see it through the turtleneck. She was like a swan herself. Red lipstick, black turtleneck. A haiku right there.

“Are you familiar with Adolf Pstrucha? I’ve got Pstrucha on the mind. Look at my book bag. Look at it!” It was, indeed, crammed with a dozen or so colorful books on the P-fellow. “Now Pstrucha wasn’t really Stolovan. He belonged to Slovene Moderna. Are you familiar with Slovene art? Oh, my dear boy, we must take a trip to Ljubljana. You mustn’t deprive yourself any further. Anyway, our man Pstrucha was practically laughed out of Prava. It was such a reactionary place in the early 1900s, the shithole of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But…”

She lowered her head conspiratorially and brushed her collarbone against Vladimir’s shoulder, so he could feel the immense weight of it, her body armor, her naturally occurring breastplate. “But personally I think the Stolovans were laughing at his name. Pstruch. It means ‘trout’ in Stolovan. Adolf Trout! It’s too much! Don’t you agree? Say, have you ever been trout-fishing? I know you Russians love to fish. I went fishing in the Carpathians with this French guy who knows Jitomir Melnik, the prime minister, and I just know the frog would be interested in your PravaInvest. Would you like me to introduce you? Would you like to have dinner? Or we could do lunch if you’re busy. Or, nowadays, I’m trying to wake up in time for breakfast.”

Yes, yes, yes. Yes on three counts, Vladimir thought. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then maybe we can take a nap together. No, best to keep her awake and talking. Her words, so soft, so light, the consistency of a flan… Vladimir wanted to reach over and eat her conversation. Follow it right into her little mouth. But, horror of horrors, Alexandra had a boyfriend, or what passed for one—a chubby Yorkshire fellow named Marcus who looked like he could have been a rugby player before all this Eastern Bloc a-go-go stuff happened. While Alexandra pleasantly queried Vladimir on his writing (“About your mother? Oh, how interesting!”), her boyfriend loudly attacked the café’s other patrons with his hip Briton-on-the-edge routine ( Wot? Wot did you say? C’mere y’cunt!), eliciting forced laughter from Cohen and Plank. It was clear that everybody looked up to this Marcus runt; they looked up to him because he was dating Alexandra, the crown jewel of Prava.

Then there was Maxine, introduced as a student of American culture, dressed entirely in polyester and sweating accordingly in the warm caffeine haze of the Nouveau. Her short hair had been gelled into one blond upward-pointing clump that seemed ready to take off for the stars, and she had moist blue eyes that looked at everything, including Vladimir, with amazement. She was also a diplomatic conversationalist, talking to everyone in turn, first Cohen, then Plank, then Marcus, then Alexandra, then finally Vladimir. “I’m writing a treatise on the mythopoetics of Southern interstates,” she said to him. “Have you ever been?”

Vladimir liked her expressiveness and the warmth of her hand. He told her of his experiences with Midwestern interstates. How driving behind the wheel of his Chicagoan girlfriend’s Volvo in college he had nearly killed a family of chipmunks. It was a safe and pointless conversation, certainly safer than Vladimir’s driving, until gutsy Vladimir dared ask her why, as a self-proclaimed student of American culture, she was living in Prava. She lifted her latte to cover her mouth, and mumbled something about needing distance. Ah, good old distance.

Overall, Vladimir felt he scored well at the café portion of the popularity contest, despite Marcus and Plank’s uniting to grumble about rich little pissers, meaning, well, Vladimir. But Vladimir would not succumb. His mental reflexes, sharpened by the afternoon’s initial sparring with Cohen, saved the day once more as he announced what he planned to do with his riches. Why, of course, he was going to start a literary magazine. Cohen at first seemed offended at not being told of the endeavor beforehand, but soon the whispers of “lit mag” suffused the room and, before they knew it, the regulars at Cohen’s corner were doing their condescending best to shoo away the literary hopefuls at the gates.

Vladimir, still amazed at his own idea, played it down. How the hell was he going to sell this one to the Groundhog? But then he remembered that the students at his Midwestern college used to have not one but two literary magazines, so how hard would it be to start up a little press in Prava? Besides, they were already doing glossy brochures for the “company.” It wouldn’t take too much more to print up a few hundred copies of something half-decent on the side. “Does anyone have editorial experience?” he asked his new crowd. Of course they all did.

AFTER THEY HADdrunk enough coffee to keep them floating at an arm’s length from the ceiling for a week, the crew retired downstairs where a primitive-looking disco was pounding out something not entirely avant-garde. “How Cleveland,” sneered Plank at last year’s music, yet no one turned their backs on the scene (was there any alternative?), venturing instead to their own rickety side table, one of many bracketing the amorphously shaped dance floor. “Beer!” cried Maxine. And soon bottles of Unesko lined the table—an additional line of defense against the bodies moving without grace or surety in the revolving police-car beams and the lethargically thumping strobe lights. “This is all we have,” Plank said to Vladimir, Vladimir having clearly grown on him since the announcement of the literary magazine. “I hope you weren’t expecting New York on the Tavlata.”