The soiree in honor of Century magazine was taking place in the home of the first girl Slava Gelman had kissed in America. Elizabeth Lechter had just had her braces removed, and her teeth shone in a perfect white row you could make out from across the room. However, Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen — it was as if Century had agreed to have the party at the Lechters’, all the way in suburban New Jersey, only if the Lechters made themselves scarce. This was a relief to Slava because his eyes were on Arianna, floating around the room in a red sheath dress, sleeved to her forearms, that ended midway down her thighs, and he didn’t want to make Elizabeth feel bad.
Beau, for some reason, wore a cape, mauve with white polka dots. Avi Liss nursed a gin and tonic by himself. Peter Devicki was chasing Charlie Headey’s girlfriend around the Lechters’ white leather couch, Headey’s girlfriend squealing and their drinks spilling on the leather, to Slava’s guilt and dismay. Beau ordered Peter to stop, and Peter wandered over to confer with his boss. Charlie Headey tried to confer with his girlfriend, but she waved him away; there was a kiddie pool in the middle of the Lechters’ living room, and that was where she decided to rest. Arianna regarded her with a head-shaking smile from across the room.
A poster board was mounted above the Lechters’ fireplace. It displayed the winning article in Beau Reasons’s recent competition for a story about the adventures of an urban explorer. Above the article, in the unmistakable Century font, the byline said: Peter Devicki. Slava strained to make out the story from his perch across the room but couldn’t.
After he finished conferring with Beau, Peter disappeared from the room. When he reentered, he held a black Sharpie in his hands. “That’s a big kitchen,” he said. “To the Lechters!” Beau shouted. “To the Lechters!” Mr. Grayson seconded. “To the Lechters!” Charlie Headey’s girlfriend shrieked. The rest of the room joined in.
While the staff of Century celebrated the Lechter family of Ridgewood, New Jersey, Peter Devicki went up to the poster board displaying Slava’s article, uncapped the Sharpie, and drew a fat line across the byline. Above it, he wrote: Slava Gelman. Again, the room erupted in cheers. “To Peter Devicki!” people shouted. “To the Lechters!” “To the Lechters and Peter Devicki!” Even Avi Liss had risen from his seat, thrusting his glass outward, the Lechters’ white couch by now covered with the colors of a half-dozen drinks.
Slava sat motionlessly. He couldn’t rise, though he needed to. He watched Arianna, who was not toasting with the rest of the group, walk up to the poster board and study it like a painting. Then, she turned around and walked toward Peter, who stood by a wall covered with brick faceplates to resemble a wall of exposed brick in the city. She wrapped her hand around his forearm, lowered her eyes, and began whispering into his neck.
A terrible feeling entered Slava’s chest. He had to intervene but couldn’t move. Was he there? He was there. One person noticed him. His grandfather noticed him. He stood in a corner across the room, like a schoolboy who had been disciplined. Slava felt a needle of irritation — the old man would say something to embarrass him.
His grandfather was wet, head to toe. He wore clothes, his usual clothes, corduroy pants and a wool sweater even though it was summer, but he was soaked and shivering, his teeth chattering, gold knocking on gold. Inside the corduroys, it was as if there were no flesh covering the bone of the knees — the left kneecap rattled against the right. The hands that emerged from the sweater, however, were fully fleshed. One over the other, they covered his balls as he cried out from fright.
Slava awoke with a start, ramming his head into a shelf above Arianna’s bed. Whose idea had it been to build a shelf directly above the place that one slept? Was its use, whatever it was, not outweighed by the uselessness of ramming one’s head into it immediately upon waking, as Slava had expected to since his first night with Arianna — the expectation haunted his sleep, and when he wasn’t dreaming about Peter Devicki, he dreamed that he had rammed his head into the shelf, only to wake up and realize no, not yet. Finally, it had happened, and the dull ache, along with the weary recognition of something one has expected to take place for some time, spread across the back of his head as Arianna shifted in her sleep.
She slept like a tank. War could erupt on West End Avenue. Not that he could say a word about the shelf. She kept her books there, or her night glass of water. “You’re not concerned that a glass of water is going to end up on your face in the middle of the night?” he asked one morning. “You’re expecting an earthquake?” she answered, and he was made to dissolve in double entendres about earthquakes in bed. When they had sex afterward, he pushed with extra energy because he wanted the cursed glass to fall and show her, but it didn’t. The second time he mentioned the shelf, it wasn’t funny anymore. The third time, she simply pretended she hadn’t heard him.
Now she turned toward him and draped her hot leg over his thighs. This one’s body temperature rose to dangerous levels in the night, a fever that broke only with dawn, Slava massaging her suddenly blue fingertips until the color returned to them. For this reason, she had no air-conditioning, only ceiling fans attached to peeling, ornately molded ceilings by threadbare chains. Slava spent the night expecting to have his head mashed by the items on the shelf above his head and his legs by the fan dancing above him. That was the reason for his stupid dream! He slept in a state of constant anxiety.
She stirred. “I can hear you being angry in my sleep. What is it?”
He looked over. “I just rammed my head into the shelf.”
She rolled her eyes. “Slava, for Christ’s sake, we’ll remove the shelf. You’ll be a handy guy and remove the shelf.”
“I need coffee,” he said to say something.
“Make me a cup?” she said, trying to sound gentle, and turned to face the other side of the room.
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned his head gingerly against the perfidious shelf, a peace offering.
“You had a bad dream?” she said from the other side of the bed, her lips in her pillow.
“You ever think what you would do,” he said, “if someone said… You have two children, and someone says, ‘Choose which one lives.’”
“Jesus, Slava.” She sat up and looked back at him. “No,” she said flatly. “Can I answer after we have coffee?” She tossed aside the covers and rose. He watched her walk toward the bathroom, the sleeves of her T-shirt rolled up to her shoulders. At some point, she had started to wear underwear and a T-shirt to bed instead of the usual nothing. He wondered now if it was a small gesture of distance. All the same, Arianna Bock in underwear and a T-shirt was better than most girls naked. He swept aside his cover and followed her into the bathroom. Unwilling to miss the action, the cat darted inside after them.
She stood with her hands on the edge of the sink. Whenever she stood in place like this, she rested one foot against the ankle of the other, making a triangle of her legs. Sometimes, as she washed dishes late at night, he would sit at the kitchen table behind her and trace the curve of her ankles as they met each other at the tip of the triangle, an infinite loop.