Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Jan lifted up the shiny black object in his hand as if to strike her again, but Baba Véra was too dazed to even flinch. “Jan!” Vladimir said. He could only think of his own grandmother tying a red handkerchief around his neck, feeding him a prized Cuban banana for breakfast. “Jan, no!”

Jan had hit her with his radar detector.

IN THE NEXTminute or so, the earth continued to revolve around the sun. Jan continued to tower over the toppled grandmother. Baba Véra continued to kneel before him. Vladimir continued to retreat to the safety of the BMW, although his car was now lost in a different, non-Bavarian dimension. And Morgan… Morgan was standing there, chin up, fists curled, nursing her vast and incomprehensible grudge, momentarily silent but ready for more.

They were all bound up now in a single gesture.

A FEW MINUTESlater Vladimir was dismally eating his oysters, Morgan helping herself to a large pitcher of lukewarm sangria. Vladimir’s personal table was located beneath the Blue Room’s skylight, so that when he looked up he could see a billowy coal cloud settling over the Foot like a flared trouser. It was uncanny: The damned Foot was determined to follow him wherever he went. He felt like one of those blighted rural folk who keep imagining black U.N. helicopters chasing them during their interminable possum hunts.

The maître d’, a slick, modern man of Vladimir’s age, kept coming by the table to apologize to Morgan and Vladimir “on behalf of all the young Stolovans.” It was he who had ended the showdown at Big Toe, sprinting out of the Wine Archive with a knotted rope and quickly lashing the grandmas into a panicked retreat. “Ah, the old… The old are our misfortune,” he said, shaking his head, pausing to check the mobile phone holstered to his belt. “Dear grandmothers! It is not enough that they stole our childhood. Not enough for them… Only the whip they understand.”

Soon a complimentary roast boar was placed between Vladimir and Morgan, but the disturbed Vladimir spent the entrée portion of the meal picking at his laminated teeth, leaving the little pig-carcass to slowly suffocate in juniper oil and truffle foam. He was trying to modulate his anger, guide it toward the realm of sadness, wondering how much of an outburst he could get away with within the dignified sanctum of the Blue Room.

Only by dessert time, when their deep silence had become more uncomfortable, did Vladimir open his mouth, did he ask her what it meant: Morgan to the Gulag?

She spoke without looking at him. She spoke in a begrudging tone not terribly different from the tone she employed with the Guardians of the Foot. She spoke in the guise of the Other Morgan, the Morgan who evidently found Vladimir untrustworthy, unsympathetic, or, worse yet, positively irrelevant. Here is what she told Vladimir: She told him that she had a Stolovan friend, his parents jailed under the old regime, his grandparents executed in the early fifties. Once her good friend had taken her to the Foot, and they had a terrible fight with the grandmothers. The babushka s had been itching to purge her ever since.

Was her friend named Tomaš, perchance?

She answered his question with more questions: Was Vladimir implying she could not have friends of her own? Did she need his approval now? Or was she obliged to spend all her time listening to Cohen and Plank whine about their fat little lives?

Vladimir opened his mouth. She was right, of course, but nonetheless he found himself oddly protective of the Crowd. At least a soft and rudderless fellow like Cohen was not capable of betrayal. Cohen was Cohen and nothing more. He had mastered the American art of being entirely himself. And speaking of betrayal, where did she learn such flawless Stolovan?

She allowed herself a tiny victorious smile and informed him that she had taken many classes in Stolovan at that polyglot Ohio university of hers. Was Vladimir surprised that she could master a foreign language? Did he have a monopoly on being foreign? Did he think her an idiot?

Vladimir shuddered. No, no. It was nothing like that. He was just asking…

But what Vladimir was doing was this: He was losing her. He was groveling for her reassurance in a scorned lover’s voice. The familiar aphorism “in love there is always someone kissing and someone being kissed” came to mind.

Yes, he imagined it was all over. It was time to forget the holy trinity of Arousal, Affection, and Normalcy, to forget their little sojourn in the tent, the way she had brushed the thistles off his person, unzipped his janitor pants, hoisted him atop of her, pushed him forward. To forget the way she had handled his weaknesses, with kindness and complicity both.

Instead, he was left now to mull over a new word, a word that practically annulled the past three months with this woman. The word was “distance,” and as he stirred his espresso and poked at his pear strudel, he was thinking of ways to use it in a sentence. I’m becoming increasingly aware of a distance… No, that wouldn’t do.

There’s a distance between us, Morgan.

Yes, there certainly was. But even that was an understatement.

And finally it came to him. The words he couldn’t say.

Who are you, Morgan Jenson? Because I think I’ve made a mistake.

Yes. Right. Once again. On a different continent, but with the same blind, stupid vigor, with the same debilitating faith of the Jew-walking beta immigrant.

A mistake.

BEFORE THINGS GOTbetter, they had to get worse. The day after the debacle with the Foot, it was time for an evening of pain and uncertainty, the long-awaited Night of Men —Plank, Cohen, and Vladimir out on the town with their Y chromosomes, facial stubble, and early 90s white-male ennui in tow. Looking for beer.

In truth, Vladimir was not averse to this manly endeavor. After the previous night of kissing and not being kissed, he wanted, once more, to embrace whatever embraced him back, and at this point the Crowd was it; the last bastion of no surprises. That morning, however, there had been a sign of hope on the Morgan front. After flossing and gargling for work, she had come over to Vladimir (he was sitting glumly in the bathtub sprinkling his chest with soapy water) and kissed his tiny bald spot, whispering “Sorry about last night,” and helping him rub his daily dose of minoxidil into the bare bull’s-eye of his crown. Vladimir, shocked by her unexpected affection, squeezed her thigh a little, even pulled, in a desultory way, a clump of pubic hair peeking out of her robe, but said not a word in response. It wasn’t time for that yet. Sorry, indeed.

AS FOR THEnight of men, the chosen venue, a bar, was Jan’s suggestion and a good one. As Stolovan as the New, Improved & Euro-Ready Prava could get in those days, with tables of thin, pimpled conscripts and off-duty police officers accounting for most of the patronage. All were still in uniform, swilling good beer poured from a row of spouting taps, which had been so well trained in the art of dispensation that even in the “off” position they continued to gush. There was no decor, only walls, a roof, and a minimal outdoor garden where folding chairs were scattered about, creaking under the weight of the military and security organs that occupied them. A plastic statue of a pink flamingo brought back by “the first modern Stolovan to visit Florida,” according to the barmaid, stood watch on one leg over the clinking of mugs, and the cheerful trading of insults.

Cohen and Plank at first seemed uneasy about the local scene. Vladimir could see them clutching their American Express cards inside their trouser pockets as if they feared being eaten alive by the natives after failing to cover the tab. An understandable fear, as the soldiers looked hungry and the kitchen was closed. But as the tab built, the boys let their shoulders stoop and took their unused hand—the one not handling the mug—out of their pockets, setting it on the bar next to the beer where it tapped along to Michael Jackson’s entire oeuvre as it unfolded from the sound system. He still sounded good after all those years, that strange bird.