Karolina Waclawiak - How to Get into the Twin Palms

He cornered me against the wall, near my hallway door, somewhere I couldn’t wiggle out of. It wasn’t sexual this time.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Cabs.”

I just looked at him and before I could ask again he responded.

“My business is mine.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

He didn’t like my back talk and I could tell from his face he wasn’t used to it.

I held my hands up and he stared at their rawness.

“What’s wrong with your hands?”

“Nothing.”

He grabbed one of them and I winced.

“What did you do to yourself?”

I tried to pull it away but he wouldn’t let me. Finally he let me loose, a little.

“It’s a burn. Or something. I don’t know. I’m fine.”

He looked at me and brought me into the kitchen. He looked through my cabinets and took out some items. Honey, baking powder, yogurt, something I didn’t even know I had, and took out a bowl, started mixing. He slowly slid the mixture over my hands and held them over the sink. Some dripped off. He didn’t say a word. My hands were shaking, all of me was shaking.

He was close. The kitchen was small and I stared at his shoulders, his leather-covered shoulders and his close-cropped haircut. Gray was creeping in between the deerskin color. I wanted to nuzzle my face in his shoulder but he wasn’t that kind of person to me and I didn’t have the guts. He looked at me and shook his head.

“What is it?”

“From the old country.”

I looked at him and smiled. He leaned in and kissed me on the neck. Quietly and softly. His breath on my neck made my skin cover in bumps, and I blushed. He turned me toward him, ass against the sink and got down on his knees and breathed against me. Goose pimples crawled up and down my legs, my thighs, and I held my arms up because I didn’t know what else to do. He looked up at me and he looked so small.

“What did you do to yourself, Anka?”

“It was an accident.”

He kissed my stomach and unbuttoned my jeans and then he just stayed on his knees and kissed my underwear, lightly and gently. I stared down at him, unable to put my hands down. He was a different person now.

“I want to lie down,” I said and went to wash the salve off my hands. When I finished, he led me into my room and stared at the bare mattress.

“What happened here?”

“Someone stole my sheets.”

He stared at me, like he pitied me and I didn’t like it.

“I’ll buy you new.”

“I don’t need new. I can get some myself.”

He shook his head, looked back at the mattress as he walked out of the bedroom. He was already on the couch when I walked in. He tried to make room for me on the couch to lie down next to him and I slid down, trying to get comfortable. I had one leg on and one leg off. I twisted around and slid my hands against his chest, but nothing was working. I pressed my face against his chest and waited to fall asleep.

I opened my eyes and looked at the creases on his face, the hair on his chest, and the tattoos on his fingers. He was handsome, I thought. Not like the man at the Downtowner, he was a different kind. He was surprising. His eyes were deep-set and the skin cracked in the pockets. His arms wrapped all the way around me and I finally felt small to someone.

He had been around. He knew things. I wanted to know those things. He wrapped his arm underneath me and I tried to like it. My neck was aching, and still nothing was working. He didn’t stir as I got up. I went back to my room to lie down and put my head down on my mattress and I inhaled.

“WAKE UP, DEVOCHKA .” HE WAS RUBBING ME,my stomach, kissing me lightly.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Late. I want to take you somewhere.”

I had trouble opening my eyes. He kept rubbing. “Where?”

“Wake up, devochka. ” I could feel him kissing my face and smelled his sour breath. I inhaled deeply while he whispered to me.

I opened my eyes and he was still leaning over me, rubbing me.

“Give me a minute,” I said. He walked away and left me alone in my room. I tried to pull it together. I looked at the clock. 4 a.m. I didn’t know where we were going so I didn’t know how to properly prepare.

“Where are you taking me?” I said. He yelled that it was a surprise. He didn’t sound sinister when he said it so I put on a skirt.

When I got into his car I looked around for a sign: a pair of cubic zirconium, clothes, a lost mirror, a pair of women’s shoes, a cigarette with a lipstick ring around it snuffed out in the cigarette tray. I made a mental note, listing the possible objects in order of importance. If I were to find… a lost mirror, what would it mean as compared to a pair of earrings? Which loss was more careless? I decided that the shoes would be the worst. They would mean she was coming back.

He pulled out of the street and headed up Fairfax, away from the Twin Palms. He didn’t say anything while we drove. I noticed his car smelled new and was spotless, as he turned right on Sunset, toward Little Armenia. He kept everything clean. I wanted to open the glove compartment and so I asked him if there was anything inside. I thought about what I would find, the usual things. Thug things. He told me to open it and I saw that it was vacuumed clean. I decided to stop searching for things then. There was no life in this car.

“Where are we going?”

“Anka, you don’t trust. Stop asking.”

I stared at who was still walking down the street. There was a man with a backpack walking by the All American Burger; he looked lost, tired, and young. The yellow light from Roscoe’s was spilling down Vine and onto Sunset. I wanted to go there but I didn’t think Lev would want to so I didn’t even ask, and as we passed it, I saw that it was closed anyway. The light flickering, still yellow and bright.

Two women further up the street were sitting on the bench in front of the gas station near Bronson. They were arguing and I couldn’t tell if their hair was real. Lev kept driving.

“Anka, where is your family?”

“Texas.”

Lev turned to me and smiled. “I’ve never been to Texas.”

“It’s not worth going.”

He went back to concentrating on driving. “Are there any Polish people there?”

“A Polish ghetto.”

“Your family doesn’t mix with them?”

“They want to be American so they only mix with Americans.”

“And you want to be something else entirely.” He looked at me as he said it.

“I don’t want to be anything at all.” I said it but I didn’t mean it. My passing wasn’t working and everything was jumbled in my head.

Lev thought about this and I stared at him while he did. I wondered if he could tell I was lying.

“And in Poland? Where are you from?”

I thought about this. City or village. I could say either. I was from both. Well, I had spent time in both. Born in the village, a house with an outhouse, soot-colored walls, and spent the rest of my time in the apartment in the bloki .

“Łódź.”

“City of Industry,” he said.

It used to be. People still walked around with missing limbs, mangled hands, lost in the textile factories. I knew six people with a left arm only. They were old now. The young people didn’t work because there were no jobs now, factories long closed. The industry had left the city behind.

“I wouldn’t mix with Polish either,” he said.

Then, he looked at me and smiled. I snapped out of it and stared at him. He had a gold tooth, back lower right. I hadn’t noticed it before because he never really smiled.

“But you are different, Anka.”

I smiled at him. I felt like I had won something. I was better. Different. He didn’t say better but I thought better.