Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

“What a good friend you were,” Ben said.

“Why?”

“You shared your salami even after she stole your iron!”

“Huh, I guess so!” Lena laughed. “We locked the door so the kids wouldn’t see our feast, and rushed to get at the food.

“ ‘Look, look!’ Inka screamed, pointing to the tiny envelope made out of foil. ‘He wrapped some salt for the cucumbers. I can’t believe this guy, he is so thoughtful.’ The only problem was that we didn’t have a knife. We tried to slice the salami with Inka’s tiny scissors, and then with Inka’s nail file, but we didn’t get very far. We had to take turns biting into the whole piece, while munching on the bread, cucumbers, and chives.

“Inka said that I should definitely date Vasyok. Our illicit lunch put her in such a good mood that she even offered her lip gloss and rosewater perfume for the date.

“As I put my lip gloss on, I thought what an idiot I’d been to think that Danya was in love with me. So what if he made those straps for me? He helped me with my work. Maybe he did that for everybody. It didn’t mean anything. But then I remembered his face, his blue eyes, his carved features, the gentle way he held that brush for me. I still loved him, even if he didn’t love me back. But now I was going on a date with Vasyok.

“I went onto the porch at exactly nine-thirty, wearing my flimsy white top and smelling like Inka’s roses. Vasyok wasn’t there. I didn’t worry, I thought he just got held up. I had thought that the rose perfume was very elegant, but the longer I stood on the porch waiting for Vasyok, the less I liked the smell. By nine forty-five the smell started to make me sick, like the disgusting air freshener that my mother liked to use. Around ten, I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore. Plus, it was getting cold. I ran up to my room to change. But as I was rummaging through my suitcase to find a sweater, I suddenly had the distinct feeling that Vasyok wasn’t coming. I waited for him for another ten minutes or so, but I knew that he wouldn’t come, and he didn’t.

“ ‘Inka, he didn’t come,’ I said.

“ ‘What?’

“ ‘Vasyok didn’t show up.’

“ ‘Congratulations. That’s the second one that stood you up.’

“She sat with the jar of cream in her hands. She looked ugly, I noted with satisfaction. In her droopy nightgown, with dabs of white cream all over her face—still bright pink after the shower. Her eyes looked really tiny without makeup.

“The next night it was Inka’s turn to go on a date. She came back really late. I was already in bed, leafing through The Arabian Nights but unable to concentrate. Inka looked tired and sulky. She pulled her nightgown out from under her pillow, grabbed a towel, and went straight to the shower without saying a word to me. Then finally the water stopped, I heard the screech of the rusty knob, the angry rustle of the shower curtain, and Inka’s heavy steps in the hall. She was wearing a nightgown and her hair was gathered in a ponytail. She carried her jeans, her shirt, and her underwear in a pile and threw them into her laundry bag, not bothering to separate them. That was not like her. I asked how her date went, but she only said ‘Ah.’ She plopped onto her bed and took a jar with face cream from her drawer.

“And then I noticed that Inka was crying. She didn’t want me to see; she would jerk her face up so that the tears wouldn’t fall. I sat next to her on her bed and said, ‘Inka?’ She pushed her face against my shoulder and said that she’d dumped Andrey because he was a pig. ‘What did he do?’ I asked. She shook her head and said that she didn’t want to talk about it. We sat like that in silence. I was stroking her hair. Then she whispered, ‘My period started.’ I asked, ‘What?’ ‘My period started while I was with Andrey. I didn’t even notice until he put his hand down there. He said it was disgusting,’ and she started to sob. I hugged her, thinking about Kostik and Vasyok, and how they stood me up. Then I thought about Danya and started to sob too.

“The next morning Vasyok wasn’t at his usual station. A scrawny guy with thin red ears stood ladling kasha at the counter. Apparently, he was new at this job. He didn’t know that you were supposed to stir kasha before ladling—the first portions came out too thin, and the last portions came out too thick. And also he didn’t know how to hold the ladle, he tipped it over too quickly, and kasha spilled over the bowls, and slid down the edges onto the tray. He didn’t flirt or talk to the counselors. In fact, he avoided making even the slightest eye contact with us.

“ ‘Hey, where is Vasyok?’ Inka asked him.

“The new guy shook his head. But then Dena came up to us and said: ‘Don’t you know? They caught him stealing salami. I heard Vedenej yelling at him last night.’ And she winked at me as if she knew I was the one to blame.”

Ben sighed and rubbed his neck.

“So you were a femme fatale after all,” he said.

“I guess I was.”

“Listen, your story is making me hungry. Are you hungry?”

She nodded.

“There’s a diner at the next exit, we can stop there. I can’t promise you anything as exciting as stolen salami, but the food is pretty decent.”

“Okay.”

But about five miles before the exit, the traffic came to a halt, so suddenly that Ben barely managed to hit the brakes in time.

“What the fuck?” Ben said.

She rolled down the window and looked ahead.

“I don’t know—I can’t see anything. Probably an accident.”

They drove closer to the source of the jam and saw a bunch of cars parked on the curb on both sides of the road. A crowd of about fifty people stood on the bank of the little pond right off the highway, with more people getting out of their cars and approaching. A group of teenage boys armed with their iPhones crossed the road right in front of their car. Lena rolled her window down and asked what was going on. One of the boys ignored her, another made a face at her, but the third smiled and said: “There’s a moose in the pond, ma’am. People are snapping pictures.”

“I couldn’t care less about a moose,” Ben muttered.

But when they drew close, the moose was still there. Munching on some grass, perfectly oblivious to the crowd. It didn’t have antlers.

“Must be a female,” Ben said.

“No, I think it’s a male. It looks resigned.”

“And that’s a male quality?”

“I don’t know. It just looks like a male to me.”

The moose wasn’t pretty. Skinny, with ribs sticking out, a dingy worn coat, strange lumpy protrusions over its eyes, and long wet strings of grass stuck to its chin. It looked like the moose was drooling. Lena felt an urge to wipe his chin. Cameras big and small (from professional to tiny iPhones) kept clicking, whirring, and clicking again. Some people even knelt down to get a better perspective. “Come on, Moosey, baby, come on, turn your beautiful face! That’s a good boy!” Apparently, this woman took the resigned, oblivious, antlerless moose for a male too. On the whole, the scene reminded Lena of a press conference. A couple of greedy and excited journalists, yelling at, and snapping pictures of, their tired subject. “Mr. President,” Ben said, “care to comment?”

It was then that the moose stopped eating and retreated into the depths of the woods.

“I hate moose,” Ben said.

“Why?”

“I had a very unpleasant encounter with a moose when I was a child.”

“What did it do to you?”

“It looked at me.”

“Ooh, that is so scary!”

“Don’t laugh. It was scary! My dad had taken me hiking. There were many unmarked trails around the cabin, and Dad insisted we explore all of them. I was six, I had a blister on my foot, and I kept whining. So Dad said that he’d just walk ahead and if I couldn’t keep up with him, it was my problem.”