Rufi Thorpe - Dear Fang, with Love

“Excuse me?”

I cleared my throat. “I would like to nominate myself as a fish.”

She considered me. “Why haven’t you married anyone? Is it that you’re still in love with her, with Katya?”

I considered this. “Possibly,” I said. “I think maybe there is something wrong with me, but I can’t say for sure what it is.”

She motioned to the waitress for the check. I didn’t know what more to say, if I should try to make a joke or take it back or break the tension. But Susan just went about stacking plates and tidying our table and when the bill came, she reached for it.

“No,” I said, “let me.”

She shook her head, slid her credit card in the slot. “I’m going to tell you the truth, Lucas. I don’t care why you haven’t been able to commit or get married or what exactly is wrong with you. I don’t care. Right now, I just want an adventure.”

I nodded. I wanted an adventure too.

—

The bar where Nikolai Azarin was going to read was tiny and absolutely jammed with people. It seemed crazy that the event had been planned in such an unsuitable venue. There was no stage, just a microphone in one corner and wall-to-wall people drinking beer and wine. Susan and I waded into the crowd, holding hands. I was amazed I didn’t see more people from the program. Almost all the people were impossibly hip young Lithuanians. Why did they know of and seem to care about the poet Nikolai Azarin? Why had they chosen to cram themselves into this sweltering, tiny space?

At the bar, we had to wait for an eternity, and just when I was beginning to panic that we had not yet found Vera and Judith, I saw them through the window out on the street, huddled against the glass. They must have ordered drinks and then gone out there to avoid the crowd. I brought Susan out with me to meet them once we had gotten our own drinks. The relief from the noise and crush was instantaneous.

“This is crazy!” I said. “Are we allowed to have our drinks out here?”

“Who knows,” Vera said.

“I don’t know if I can stay,” Judith said and took a sip of her glass of wine, which she was holding with both hands, as though it were not a wineglass but a tiny glass bowl with an annoying protrusion on the bottom. “It’s so crowded and I’m tired, and I am afraid I don’t terribly admire Azarin.”

“You know Azarin?” I asked.

“Oh, everybody does. He’s always at these things,” Judith said. “Po-biz! He’s one of the ones who is constantly trying to fuck pretty young things, that’s his main line of business. He sees me as nothing but an old hag, I’m sure, and when I was introduced to him on this trip he didn’t remember me, but I’ve met him at least a dozen times over the years, and of course I’ve read his work, and I’m afraid it isn’t good enough to cause me to want to stand upright in an enclosed space with a bunch of drunken Lithuanian teenagers. I find their collective blondness overwhelming.”

Susan laughed and Judith gave her an appreciative smile.

“So we might go home,” Vera said. She was sipping her own glass of wine, which I didn’t exactly like, even if she was voluntarily going home early. But that ship had sailed, rather brutally, the night before when she had laughed at me, her mouth filled with cheese.

“Vera convinced me to at least have a drink and see if it becomes more bearable, and the drink is very nice, but it is not causing anything to be more bearable, I’m afraid,” Judith explained.

If anything, things continued to get even more unbearable. An hour past when the reading was supposed to have started, there was still no sign of Azarin and there were more people crowded into the bar than ever. I kept scanning the room for Justine and Herkus, but I didn’t see them.

“I’m really afraid we have to take our leave,” Judith said finally, even though the four of us had been having a nice conversation standing on the sidewalk. All of our glasses were empty, though, and I understood Judith’s desire to go. If I were not waiting to meet Herkus, I would certainly have chosen to go elsewhere.

“I’m actually going to head off as well,” Susan said.

“No!” I cried. “What? Really? Don’t go!” I had imagined us spending all night drinking and talking and maybe stopping by her hotel on the way home that night.

“I’m exhausted,” she said, “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’m sorry. Those pits! But tonight I will sleep for sure. I know it!”

I didn’t like that she was leaving, but I was glad she would sleep. There had been a steady electric current between us all night, ever more daring forays into holding hands, touching each other’s arms, leaning too close when laughing, and it was all delicious. Maybe it was good to let it be slow. Nothing needed to happen tonight. Even if there were only five days left of the trip. I accepted their empty glasses and kissed each of them on the cheek before they waved and walked away from me, a cluster of beautiful women, all roughly the same height, one young, one old, and one in between. They seemed like something from a fairy tale, as though there was symbolism in their triptych that I must decipher. But even as I was thinking this, I felt the itching need to get another beer, and as I headed inside, feeling like a sweaty bear among all these beautiful young people, I already knew that I was going to get very drunk.

—

When the reading finally started, I was standing in the crowd, bleary, trying to understand whether the poetry was very good or very bad. Azarin seemed at least as drunk as I was, and that made me feel kindly toward him. There was also a vulgar honesty in some of the poems that seemed slightly magical, which made the otherwise self-indulgent imagery light and playful. One poem that had gone on for some stanzas being about Putin suddenly ended with the lines, “Or perhaps I only feel powerless because so few women are willing to sleep with me. Who would want to sleep with an old goat like me? Flee from me, beautiful girls! Run away before you catch what it is I’ve got — that is killing me.”

It was really very hard to tell whether or not it was good, but I found myself liking it anyway. When the reading was over, there was no sign of Justine or Herkus. I’d been jilted, but the bar also became significantly emptier and I was finally able to get a seat.

“Another beer?” the bartender asked, and I nodded, though I suddenly felt extremely drunk and worried vaguely about whether or not I would be able to find my way home.

“Lucas?” someone asked, and I turned to see that it was Justine and a man who simply had to be Herkus, so eerily did he look like a better, fitter version of myself. I don’t know why I had assumed he would be younger than me, perhaps because Justine was so young-looking, but he was easily in his forties, though he crackled with vitality and health. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing a possible future for myself. He even had the same narrow, fluted nose that I and my mother and Grandma Sylvia all shared. It was a very beautiful, Meryl Streep — ish nose, though in her darker moments my mother referred to it as “the teacup handle.”

“We could not find you in the crowd,” Justine explained, and she and Herkus took the stools next to me. I was terrified at how drunk I was. I would never have gotten this drunk if I had known there was still a possibility of meeting them tonight. I tried to bring on the sensation of sobriety through sheer force of will.

“So nice to finally meet you,” I said.

“I know — so weird, right?” Herkus said, in such a sweet and goofy way that I liked him instantly.

“So your mother was Henryk’s daughter?” I asked.

“No, no,” Herkus said, “my mother was Sylvia’s daughter.”