“I’m really not available,” I tell him.
He sounds genuinely disappointed. “Oh.”
Alfred makes a plaintive mewling sound from under the sofa.
“Okay,” he says. “What if I said I was lying, and I don’t want you to clean my apartment, but maybe go out for beer and pizza? Unless you’re not a beer and pizza kind of lady. Maybe wine and cheese. Or Thai and whatever goes with Thai food?”
This is a mistake. It can’t end well.
“Beer goes with Thai food,” I say.
The restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall establishment in what was once a bookstore and which will one day probably be a coffee shop or internet café. Everything in the city changes constantly. Mike Hennessee shows up wearing a blue shirt that matches his eyes and shows off the long muscles in his arms. He probably gets those muscles from carrying children out of burning buildings or lifting wrecked vehicles off elderly pedestrians.
“Most of what we do are medical calls,” he says when we talk about his work. “Heart attacks, diabetics, sometimes a woman in labor.”
I’ve bypassed the Asian beer on the menu for an icy watermelon drink. It’s about a zillion degrees outside, and if I keep my arms just right maybe he won’t notice the sweat stains under my arms. Not that I was worried about this date, but I changed blouses three times before leaving the house and swapped my shoes twice. My best friend Maryanne is on speed dial, ready to show up and help me escape if Fireman Hennessee turns out to be a crackpot or serial killer. So far, so good.
“How long have you been a fireman?” I ask.
He stabs at some basil eggplant. “Four years, three months and a week.”
“In my experience, people who count aren’t always the happiest at what they’re doing.”
“When I was growing up I wanted to be an actor,” he says. “Three years of casting calls cured me of that. Now I get twenty-four hour shifts, lots of spaghetti dinners, and people who throw up on me. But what about you? The cleaning business is okay?”
Already we’re in tricky territory. “It’s just moonlighting. I like meeting people.”
He nods. But he doesn’t look convinced. “It’s just … look, Tania, I know some cops, some lawyers. You can trust me. If you’re in trouble and need some help, they’ve worked with cases like this before.”
Now I’m confused. “Cases like what?”
His gaze is intent and serious. “Your English is very good. I mean, you could pass for a local. And Ivan, he’s a good guy. But lonely. I know how these things work. They get you a visa, they promise you all sorts of jobs, you get to America and now you’re making house calls that last all night long—”
The realization that this handsome guy thinks I’m part of a sex trafficking ring makes my Pad Woon-Sen go right down my windpipe. Suddenly I can’t breathe at all. Before I can make the universal sign for choking, Mike’s out of his chair. He wraps his arms around my mid-section and levers his fists under my ribs. He smells nice, but this is not how I imagined ending up in his arms. One Heimlich thrust later, I’m ejecting broccoli and wheezing for breath.
“You okay?” he asks, breath warm in my ear.
“I’m going to throw up,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
I lurch off to the bathroom, sure that everyone in the restaurant is staring at me, and when I find the back door next to the kitchen it’s an opportunity for escape too good to pass by. I feel humiliated and sick and I’m sure I have brown sauce on my face.
So maybe it isn’t nice to leave him like that, but I don’t know any happy couple who started off with the misunderstanding that one of them was a Russian sex girl. Luckily Mike doesn’t know my real name or where I live. I throw away my cell phone, tell Alexi that I need a new client, and spend the next few weeks buried in work. Vlad the murderous cabbie gets a break when the two punks get busted for trying to rob a hack in Astoria. Igor and Boris stop fighting about Igor’s useless nephew and instead start arguing about Boris’s niece’s son, who is in trouble with the IRS for several years of back taxes. My friend Maryanne starts dating a police officer; he’s got a friend and we could double-date, she says.
“I’m never dating again,” I tell her. It’s not worth the trouble. I wish my were-curse turned me into a superhero or asset to society but that’s the thing about Old World curses; they’re not useful at all. Mom transforms into a wolf but in her animal stage she doesn’t drag children from swollen rivers or rescue Alzheimer patients who’ve wandered away from home. She eats things, and licks herself, and sheds hair all over the carpet. I can mop up a crime scene but not tell you who the perpetrator was; I can scrub smoke stains off walls but I don’t save people from blazing infernos. I just clean.
Maryanne sighs over the phone when I turn down the double date. “You have to get over this Jason thing.”
“I’m just not interested,” I say. It’s not like I think about Mike every night, wishing we’d met under other circumstances. Or that I checked with some friends and found out that he’s stationed at Engine Company 234, and was honored last year for volunteer work getting homeless people off the streets during the winter.
“Meet us for drinks tonight,” Maryanne says. “For me. Just this once.”
Tonight’s the full moon. I’ve never told her about the curse, and now doesn’t seem like a good time to try.
“Boris is yelling for me,” I say. “Bye.”
Boris isn’t yelling for me at all. He’s sitting in his rolling chair, clipping his fingernails. Goodness knows that if all else fails, I could break in here and free his desk blotter from all those yellow pieces of fingernail that have accumulated over the years. I could dust the ceiling fan and venetian blinds, scrub and wax the floor, organize the shelves—but like Mom always said, you don’t want to bring your curse to your job. Actually, she said don’t piss in your own yard, but it’s the same principle.
Ivan is at his own desk, ostensibly leafing through the pages of a Russian newspaper, but his gaze is firmly on Boris and is so obviously affectionate that I start to feel bereft. No one looks at me that way now. Certainly no one will look at me that way when I’m gray and wrinkled and seventy years old.
“Let’s get some tea,” Boris says to Ivan.
Ivan shrugs without looking up. “Who’s thirsty?”
“Tea,” Boris insists, and you don’t have to be especially insightful to know that’s not exactly what Boris has in mind.
I’m depressed and lovelorn, and unless I find a way to lock myself into my apartment tonight, come moonrise I’ll be a madwoman roaming the streets with a carpet sweeper. Luckily Alexi calls around three o’clock. He has the name of “a nice old lady in a wheelchair, you’ll like her” over in Brooklyn Heights. It’s certainly a very nice neighborhood, with views of Manhattan and well-kept tiny gardens. She lives in a two-story brick house and answers her own door. She’s seventy or so years old, with a gray braid of hair coiled to her waist and sharp eyes in a wizened little face.
“Alexi said you were pretty.” Mrs. Vasilyeva wheels her chair aside to let me in. “I’m afraid it’s so messy. I wish I could clean it on my own.”
I get two feet inside the doorway before a snarl stops me. Sitting in the shadows is the most enormous dog I’ve ever seen—a big black hulk of a canine with wary eyes and a mouth of very sharp teeth.
“That’s just Rocco,” Mrs. Vasilyeva says. “He likes you.”
Maybe he’d like me for dinner, sure.