Vera reappeared in the doorway. “Yes, sweet Mother.”
“You have to get dressed,” Lyuba said. Then, to Slava: “Go up with her, Slavchik.”
“Up with her where?” he said.
“Well, don’t go in the room, Slava, you seducer,” Aunt Lyuba laughed, baring her teeth in satisfaction. “Stand outside the door and talk to her while she’s changing. You young people have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Leopard-print or the jean skirt with the blouse with the ruffles?” Vera said from the doorway.
“Let Slava decide,” Lyuba said.
He followed Vera up the stairs, the skin of her thighs near his nose. “It’s nice to see you again,” he said, to say something.
“You, too,” she said absentmindedly.
“I should let you get dressed,” he said. “We’ll talk downstairs.”
“No, it’s okay,” she insisted. “Talk to me.” She walked into a room decorated with a girl’s hearts and pinks. She jumped onto the bed, one leg folded under the other, and shelved her chin on her knee. In front of her was a binder filled with costume-party outfits: sailors, maids, prisoners. She motioned him inside. “Talk to me for two minutes, and then I’ll get dressed.”
He asked about the binder.
“Work.” She swatted the air. “Big event on Monday. So, leopard-print or jean skirt?” She leaped off the bed and rifled through a hundred hangers. A mound of shoes collapsed around her ankles. Kitten heels, stilettos, flats, pumps, platforms, sandals, boots, knee-high and ankle.
“But you don’t live with them,” he croaked, thinking of the place where Vova the Cruiserweight had dropped her off.
“What? Speak up.” The mass of clothes was like an enchanted wood: It killed sound.
“You live here?” he yelled.
“No, I got that place,” she said.
“Why did you call?” Slava shouted. The closet was as large as the rest of the room.
Her round face peeked out of the wardrobe. “What do you mean? We needed your help.” Slava saw tiny Vera’s eyebrows sitting together as she peered at Slava tracing out prices for the paper scallions and plums of their childhood supermarket. How odd that her parents recommended him — in his memory, she was the serious one. His hands were always clammy when she gave him an assignment. But she could be playful as well. One day on their way to the market, she found an opera record, a plump, heavily rouged sufferer weeping on the cover. Vera played it over and over, vocalizing soundlessly into his ear as the singers roared on their thirdhand stereo. Himself, he wasn’t enchanted by the music, but he loved watching her.
After coercing an opinion from Slava, Vera settled on the leopard-print dress. She squeezed into it while he stood outside her door. Her heels sank into the furry carpet as she made her way downstairs ahead of Slava, his eyes fixed on the geometrically essential sphere of her ass. Like a gentleman, he had insisted that she take the stairs first.
As they made their way down, two male voices entered the house. Garik, Lyuba’s husband, clutched a singing cabdriver’s materials: a two-liter Pepsi bottle half filled with water, a seat cushion, and several slovenly sections of Novoye Russkoe Slovo. With his free hand, he pushed Lazar, Vera’s grandfather. The older man seemed not to recognize Slava even though they had seen each other at Grandmother’s funeral dinner only weeks before, but Uncle Garik brightened.
“Slava, you’re an oak! Look at him.” He came close and hugged. “What’s more historic, the Germans giving us money or Slava Gelman showing up in this house? This is an occasion for a glass. Come, let’s eat. Lyuba, why isn’t the table set? Papa, let’s eat. Papa, it’s Slava!”
While everyone was trooping to the table, Slava’s cell phone rang. He excused himself into the hallway.
“I called the big one, but no one picked up,” Grandfather said.
“What big one?” Slava said.
“The earth line. You said I can try you on the little one if no one answers the big one. What are you, sleeping?”
“I’m not at home,” Slava said.
“Did I ever tell you about Misha Grandé?”
“Who? No.”
“There was a guy in my barbershop back home — Misha Grandé. They’d given him a real shoe box of an apartment, and he had to live there with his wife and his mother. He had begged them for something bigger, he even tried to bribe a guy. Of course, he found the one guy in Minsk who wouldn’t take bribes. Then the shah of Iran comes for a visit.”
“Is this a joke?” Slava said.
“No, it’s a real story, listen to me. The shah of Iran comes to Minsk. And Misha knows the motorcade has to pass by his house, because it’s the one road in from the airport. So in the middle of the night, Misha drags his bed into the street. And when the shah rides by in the morning, they all see Misha Grandé snoozing. Naturally, the shah wants to know why there’s a man sleeping outside.”
“What did they do to him?” Slava said.
“They gave him a bigger apartment.”
“Oh. I thought something worse. Look, I’m not at home. I’ll call you later.”
“With a lady?”
“Yes, with a lady. I need to go.”
“Let’s talk like men — is she going to pass through your bed?”
“What? I don’t know.”
“You have to wear a rubber. Because if she’s lying down with you, she’s lying down with Ivan, and with Sergei, and Isaac.”
“It’s Vera!” he yelled.
“Aha!” Grandfather said. “Attaboy. Ass like a pear. I guess we’ll see each other.”
“Not a tomato?” Slava said. “How will we see each other? I have to go home afterward.”
“Never mind. I’ve got bad news.”
Slava straightened. “What happened?”
“Volodya Kleynerman. Uncle Pasha’s uncle on his mother’s side. You don’t know him.”
“What about him?”
“They got a letter. They sent in their application a long time ago. They got on it early.”
“And?”
“And they just got an answer.”
“My God, just tell me.”
“They got a rejection. ‘Ineligible.’ What does that mean? They can appeal? If they can send different information? I don’t understand it.”
“And their story was… the truth?”
“And their story was the truth. At the Jewish Center, they told me they’re trying to get the deadline extended,” Grandfather said. “And the rules expanded for who’s eligible? I don’t really understand it. You need to come over here and talk to someone. Those goddamn Germans — Volodya Kleynerman was a tank commander. You know what that means? How many Jewish Red Army tank commanders do you think there were?”
“But you know Red Army doesn’t qualify,” Slava said, feeling relief. “If that’s what they said, of course they didn’t get it. They told the truth?”
“He’s got metal in two hundred places in his body.”
“I’m sure it’s not two hundred.”
“Oh, who can talk to you?”
“Have you thought for one moment what happens if they catch us?” Slava said.
“I’m an old man, Slavik. My wife just passed away, and Section 8 is raising the rent by twelve dollars this year. Did I tell you that? The letter came the other day.” He added resentfully: “Mama translated.”
“You’re an old man, you don’t speak English. You’re just drooling into your shirt cuff.”
“I am an elderly man.”
“Have you thought about what happens to me?” Slava said. “Do you know what an indictment is? Extradition?” He had to say the words in English.