“Tell me something,” she whispered, her breath humid with the carbon smells of my khui, the saline waft of our afternoon’s sturgeon, and the fading echo of an interim breath mint.
It was not the time to mention that I loved her, not before confirming it with Dr. Levine. Besides, there were things more elusive, symbolic, and somehow more important to share with her. I thought of what these things could be. I thought of that distant island lodged between two mighty rivers and the ways it had made us who we were—two fine people trying to overcome (we shall overcome, my friend). I thought of a possible future spent fucking, loving, and eating side by side. I thought of a little red book, not Mao’s, exactly, but a volume of far greater importance, one I decided to quote to her from memory.
“ ‘This ain’t your grandfather’s Lower East Side,’ say devotees of this ‘cramped,’ ‘walk-in-closet-sized’ temple of New American cuisine where Chef Rolland Du Plexis holds sway to a crowd of admiring dot-commers, local hipsters, and the occasional ‘bridge-and-tunnel Visigoth.’ Although some say the kitchen may have ‘slipped on a banana’ since ‘the limos with Garden State plates rolled in,’ a reasonably priced wine list and frequent celeb sightings ‘keep ’em coming.’ Food—26, Decor—16, Service—18.”
I could feel her breathing hard against me. She grasped my toxic hump and rubbed it up and down. “That’s that place on Clinton Street,” she said. “I’ve been there.”
“Muh-huh,” I groaned. Her hands on my hump, kneading the dark, molten rock, were as natural as her vagina deep around my khui. I couldn’t think of the English word, but when I did, I nearly cried out in recognition. Soothe. She soothed me.
“Go ahead,” she said, “tell me some more.”
“What do you want to hear?” I said.
“Go north,” she whispered.
I walked with her down Rivington, making a turn on Essex Street; her hand on my back rubbing my hump; her erect bosom arousing the looks of Latino passersby, male and female, papi and mami, with its untrammeled young girl’s freshness, its simple “I’m just Nana from the block” honesty.
Avenue A was ablaze with sordid colors. A tectonic shift, an influx of Eurotrash and computer money, had taken place in the past two decades, turning the neighborhood into a roaring volcano of hipness beneath which the cute multicultural citizens of the Lower East Side cowered like the Pompeians of yore. Soon the disaster would be complete, and the whole of Lower Manhattan would be covered by a lava slide of laptops and lattes, 1’s and 0’s standing in for the khuis and pizdas that once kept this ’hood pumping, the nights punctured by the wails of newborns hungry for nipples the size of caramels.
I swiveled my Nana around Sixth Street, past First Avenue, and up a flight of stairs. “Tell me,” she said.
“ ‘It’s always Christmas’ at this reliable Curry Row standby lit up ‘like your stomach after a bad vindaloo.’ While dissenters call the cooking ‘uninspired’ and the harried atmosphere akin to ‘life during wartime,’ the cheap tabs and free mango ice cream make sure ‘the party never stops.’ Food—18, Decor—14, Service—11.”
“Tell me more.” She clutched me tight. One of my kneecaps, a solitary outpost of bone amid flesh, was wedged provocatively between her loins. I decided to walk her westward, pushing my knee into her moistness even as I chanted my singsong:
“ ‘Painfully long lines’ take the ‘Zen’ out of this garden spot, but with sushi so fresh ‘it water-skis down your tongue’ and a sake selection as ‘long as Japan,’ even the ‘most jaded downtown samurai’ will scream ‘Banzai!’ Food—26, Decor—9, Service—15.”
“More,” Nana said. I rubbed my knee inside her, but she did not encourage my gathering lust. “More,” she said. I walked her along the breadth of the city to the edge of the West Side Highway; I gave her everything I knew, Food, Decor, Service; I recited from memory, and when memory failed, I reached into imagination, cobbling together restaurants that didn’t but should exist, bustling places where the tablecloths were a little dirty, the waiters a little dodgy, but the food was cheap and good and meant to fill you up through and through. And then, once the bill was settled, once the need of both toilet and bidet pressed into you from all sides, you would take a taxi back to your flat high up in the sky, falling asleep in your loved one’s arms even before the elevator sounded its bell tone, announcing your arrival to the empty gray corridors, the churning waste-disposal system, the solid anonymous door with the apartment number you would so proudly write, with vestigial Cyrillic curlicues, on the back of envelopes bound for less fortunate lands.
The doorknob turned, the lights clicked, the cable television came on with a roar. And wouldn’t you know it, Nana, my sweet brown rider. Just…like…that. We were home.
27
The Men from SCROD
I was feverishly filing my nails when there was a knock on the door. A knock on my door! The last two weeks on the town with Nana had convinced me I was in a sexy full-bodied thriller, but all that awaited me on the other side of the door was Larry Zartarian’s balding head and that of his mother peeking out from behind an ice machine a few paces back. “We’ve got to talk,” he said.
I offered him a bucket of buffalo wings, which he spurned. “Are you popping Nana Nanabragovna?” Larry asked me.
“Her body’s mad ripe,” I said in my defense. “I’m having dinner with her family tonight. All the SCROD bigwigs are going to be there.”
The hotel manager walked over to the window and shoved the curtains aside. “Something’s going on,” he said.
“What now?”
“The airlift. Those Chinooks that landed at the Exxon. I thought they were evacuating everyone, but they were bringing people, too. Eighty-five foreign nationals, mostly U.K. and U.S.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Even Josh Weiner got his little ass out of here.”
“They airlifted out the embassy personnel and most of the oil majors—Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron,” Zartarian said, “but now I’ve got eighty-five new guests. And they’re all…” He motioned me to come closer. He leaned over and whispered into my ear, “KBR.”
I raised my shoulders and let out a heavy sigh to indicate that I had no knowledge or interest in the affairs of the ubiquitous Golly Burton. There was a civil war going on, or a cease-fire, or something—I was interested in that, in the ethnic strife and the killing, and in my own possible role in making things better for Nana’s sweet absurdist people.
“There’s a KBR rooftop luau planned for next week,” Zartarian said, nodding meaningfully.
“A luau sounds like fun,” I said.
“It’s to celebrate the Figa-6 Chevron/BP oil fields coming online.”
“Even the whores in the lobby have been talking about the Figa-6,” I said.
The hotel manager poked a stubby thumb at the tinted windowpane. “That’s Figa-6,” he said, inviting me to look inside his thumbprint. I scanned the distant horizon until I made out another inevitable skyline of oil rigs. “That’s the future of the Absurdi oil sector,” Zartarian said.
“Looks good to me,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t look good at all,” Zartarian said. “There hasn’t been activity on those rigs for months. It’s a Chevron/BP concession, but most of the Chevron and BP oil monkeys flew out with the airlift. And now there are all these empty KBR trucks all over the place. KBR’s buying trucks left and right, even the crappiest Russian Kamaz models. And they’re just sitting there.”