Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Lena dipped a lone curly fry into a pool of hot sauce. “House of Girl, maybe?” she suggested.

“Yes, yes. Exactly such house. And so he is sitting down and Madame is coming in and she is introducing Hog to such and such girl and Groundhog is, like, Tphoo! Tphoo! He is spitting on the ground, because is so ugly. One, maybe, has face black like Gypsy, another having big nose, another speaking some Pygmy language, not Russian… And Groundhog is looking for, you know, special girl.”

“He is very cultured,” Lena said, patting his enormous hand. “Tolya, you should declaim for Morgan famous poema by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, called, eh…” she looked imploringly at Vladimir.

“The Bronze Horseman?” Vladimir guessed.

“Yes, correct. Bronze Horseman. Very beautiful poema. Everybody knows such poema. It is about famous statue of man on horse.”

“Lena! Please! I am telling interesting story!” the Hog shouted. “So Groundhog is leaving House of Girl, but then he hearing beautiful sound from room of love. ‘Okh! Okh! Okh!’ It is like wonderful Slavic angel. ‘Okh! Okh! Okh!’ Voice tender like young girl. ‘Okh! Okh! Okh!’ He is asking Madame: ‘Tell me, who is making Okh?’ Madame is saying, oh, is our Lenochka making such Okh, but she is only for valuta, for, you know, hard currency. Groundhog is, like: ‘I have dollar, Deutsche mark, Finnish markka, nu, what you want?’ So Madame is saying, okay, sit down on divan for twenty minutes and soon you will have this Lena.’ So Groundhog sitting and sitting and he is hearing this beautiful ‘okh’ sound like bird singing to another bird, and he is suddenly becoming, eh… How do you say, Vladimir?”

He whispered a word in Russian. “Well…” Vladimir looked to Morgan. Her face was ashen and she was nervously twisting a drinking straw around one white finger as if applying a tourniquet. “Engorged, I guess,” Vladimir translated, softening the hard meaning a bit.

“Yes! Groundhog is becoming engorge in the foyer and he shouting, ‘Lena! Lena! Lenochka!’ And in the room of love she is shouting ‘Okh! Okh! Okh!’ And it is like duet. It is like Bolshoi opera. Shit! And so he get up, still gorged, and he run down quickly to local laryok and he is buying beautiful flowers…”

“Yes!” Lena said. “He is buying scarlet roses, just like in my favorite song, ‘A Million Scarlet Roses’ by Alla Pugacheva. So I know God is watching us!”

“And also I am buying expensive chocolate candy in shape of ball!”

“Yes,” Lena said. “I remember, from Austria, with each ball having picture of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I once study music in Kiev conservatory.”

They looked at each other and briefly smiled, mumbling a few words in Russian. Vladimir thought he heard the endearment “las-tochka ti moya,” which meant roughly “you’re my little swallow.” The Hog quickly smooched Lena and then looked back at his tablemates, a little embarrassed.

“Aaa…” the Groundhog said, losing the thread of his tale for a moment. “Yes. Lovely story. So I run up to House of Girl and Lena is already finish with her bad business, and she is washing up, but I don’t care, I open door to her room, and she is standing there, wiping with towel, and I have never seen this… Oh! Skin white! Hair red! Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi! Oh, my God! Russian beauty! I am getting down on my foot and I give her flower and Mozart ball, and, and…” He looked to Lena and then to Vladimir and then back to his beloved. He put his hand to his heart. “And…” he whispered.

“And so four months later, we are here with you at table,” the practical Lena summed up for him. “So tell me,” she asked the near-catatonic Morgan, “how did you meet Vladimir?”

“At a poetry reading,” Morgan mumbled, looking around the room, perhaps trying to find a fellow law-abiding American to connect with. No such luck. Every second customer was a horny Stolovan biznesman in a double-breasted purple jacket, a pleasant twenty-year-old companion on his arm. “Vladimir is a very good poet,” Morgan said.

“Yes, he is maybe poet laureate,” Lena laughed.

“He was reading a poem about his mother at the Joy,” Morgan said, trying to take the high road. “It was about how he went to Chinatown with his mother. It was very beautiful, I thought.”

“Russian man loves his mother.” The Groundhog sighed. “My mama died in Odessa, year 1957, from death of kidney. I was only little child then. She was hard woman, but how I wish I could kiss her good night one more time. All I have in entire world now is papa in New York, he is sailor-invalid. This is how I hear of Vladimir. He help my papa get U.S. citizenship by making crime against American immigration service. So he is also criminal laureate, my Volodechka!”

Morgan put down her Road 66 garden burger and glared at Vladimir, a bead of ketchup on her upper lip. “Yes, what can I say?” Vladimir said, shyly addressing the Groundhog’s charge of criminality. “There was some intrigue with the INS. I helped out as best I could. Oh, what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

“Groundhog one day tell me funny story,” Lenochka said, “about how Vladimir take money from rich Canadian and then he sells horse drug to Americans in club. You have very clever boyfriend, Morgan.”

Morgan painfully nudged Vladimir’s shoulder. “He’s an investor, ” she said. “He invested Harold Green’s money into a club. And he’s not dealing drugs. It’s that Finn. MC Paavo.”

“Take, invest, what’s the difference?” Vladimir said. But he made a note to ease up on the jolly candor, lest it imperil his pyramid scheme. Morgan, after all, remained friends with Alexandra and, by extension, the Crowd, PravaInvest’s trendy cornerstone. Still, when he leaned over to wipe the ketchup off Morgan’s shaky upper lip he also managed to whisper into her ear, “Morgan to the Gulag!” and “Death to the Foot, honey!”

He just wanted to let her know where things stood.

THE FIGHTING STARTEDin the car, right after Vladimir’s final wave to Lena and the Groundhog. Jan was cruising past the darkened townhouses of the Brookline Gardens (some homes still wearing their holiday wreaths and “Merry Xmas” signs), trying to find Westmoreland Street, the smooth, paved artery which connected the Groundhog’s suburban fairy tale with Prava’s pot-holed municipal highway, its dying factories, and crumbling panelak s. Meanwhile Morgan was loudly exploring her feelings.

“He met his girlfriend at a whorehouse!” she was shouting as if that had been the most egregious news of the evening. “He’s a fucking gangster… And you! And YOU!”

“Quite a surprise, eh?” Vladimir said in an ambiguously low tone. “It’s terrible when people aren’t honest with one another.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, Morgie… Let’s see. Tomaš. Death to the Foot. What do you think?”

“What does Tomaš have to do with anything?” she shouted.

“You’re fucking him.”

“Who?”

“Tomaš.”

“Oh, please.”

“Then what ?”

“We’re working on a project together.” She pulled a used soda can out of a cup holder and began crushing it with all of her considerable strength.

“A project? Do tell me more…”

“It’s a political project, Vladi. You wouldn’t be interested. You’re more into stealing money from poor Canadians and getting your friends hooked on that horse shit.”

“Mmm, a political project. How fascinating. Maybe I can help. I’m a pretty civic-minded guy, you know. I’ve read Lenin’s State and Revolution at least twice in college.”