“Where were you on election night 2008?” people will ask, the way they still ask each other about 9/11 or about the day JFK was shot. When I was a kid in Moscow, older people sometimes asked, Where were you when He died? and they meant Stalin. Where were you?
But this time, this night, we’ll remember it differently, this life-changing event. We did it!
On the TV, there are all the faces, people crying, older black people unable to stop crying. There’s Jesse Jackson in Chicago, face swamped with tears. Enough to break your heart.
“We want Obama,” a guy near me in the club shouts. He says something in Italian. In English he adds, “Fuck Berlusconi, we want an Obama.” An Irish guy is hanging all over me, moaning, “I love this place. I love you guys.”
“Now I can stay in America,” says Tolya. He’s never loved America the way I do, but tonight it’s different. He hugs me. “Now I can stay here.” In Russian, he adds, “Maybe I buy nice house in Harlem. Become black Russian.” He laughs and can’t stop.
I put my arms around Lily. I can smell her hair, feel her against me. I kiss her. She doesn’t seem to mind, maybe because everybody is kissing, and for a moment, she’s with me again, and I’m lost.
“ ‘Where were you that night?’ We’ll say that, won’t we?” she says, half to herself. “We’ll be able to say to each other, ‘Where were you that night?’ And we’ll be able to say, ‘I was there. I saw him elected.’ We did it.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
And then Lily is pulled away from me, dancing now with a good-looking black guy, a young guy.
They’re holding each other tight on the floor, and I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything, that tonight everybody’s dancing, everybody’s in love, it doesn’t mean anything at all. Does it?
For a second I lose sight of her, then she surfaces near the bar, her back to me.
I think to myself: If she turns in my direction in the next five minutes, I’ll go to her. If she turns around, I’ll go over, I’ll tell her how I feel.
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t turn around.
By the time I got off the Drive, the snow was coming down heavy, and I took a wrong turn. I found myself on the Harlem side street where I’d parked on election night, then turned the car around. For a second or two, I was lost. I felt uneasy. The streets were empty.
Finally, I pulled into Edgecombe Avenue. I found Lily’s building. Over the front door a plaque read T HE L OUIS A RMSTRONG A PARTMENTS. I looked up. The tall building was made of old brick. From a second floor overhang gargoyles-grotesque stone animals-leered down at me. The snow had settled onto the creepy figures.
I got out of my car, left it near the front door, and ran up the steps to the building, bumping into an elderly man in a tweed coat and cap, who muttered at me. A woman trying to get a little girl zipped into a pink jacket looked up at me and looked pissed off, maybe because I was parked in a delivery zone, or maybe she didn’t like my looks. Or my color. Dog walkers emerged from the building, one of them stopping, fussing with her hand to get the snow off her shoulders. Except for me, everybody was black.
I dialed Lily again. No answer. Anxiety, the kind that feels like a gust of icy wind on the back of your neck and along your spine, suddenly got to me. I stopped for a second, then I went inside.
CHAPTER 4
Red hair held back with a rubber band, face white, Lily looked frightened. Green sweatpants, an Obama shirt. She was waiting for me as I came out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor.
“God, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, taking hold of my sleeve. “Thank you for coming.” Her voice was flat, but she was shaking. With cold? With fear? She led me down the long corridor, stopped in front of a door marked 14B and hesitated.
“This is your place?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go inside. It’s cold.”
“No. Across the hall.” Lily gestured to the door opposite hers.
“What is it?”
“Come with me.” She unlocked the door. We went into the apartment.
“Whose place is this?” I said.
The woman lay on a worn brown velvet sofa. Lily, who had locked the apartment’s front door behind us, pulled back a purple shawl to reveal her face.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” said Lily.
I felt the woman’s neck for a pulse. “Yes.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I never saw a dead body, not somebody I knew. Wars and stuff, but when you’re a reporter, it’s different. I thought I should cover her face.”
“You did the right thing.”
“She was my friend.” Lily shivered. The room was freezing. “Who left the terrace door open?” Lily asked nervously.
I went to shut the terrace door, where heavy silk curtains the color of cranberries-that Russian color somewhere between wine and blood-billowed in the bitter wind. When I turned around, Lily was staring at the dead woman.
“She always said she could only sleep in a cold room because she was Russian,” said Lily.
“Who is she? ”
“Marianna Simonova. She was my friend.” Lily put her hand on the oxygen machine that stood near the sofa. I had seen one like it before. The oxygen tank was enclosed in a cube of light-blue plastic. It stood on wheels. A coil of transparent tubing ran from the tank to the woman’s nose. The oxygen was still on; it sounded like somebody breathing.
“I left it like that,” said Lily. “I didn’t want to touch her.” She started to cry silently.
“She was sick,” I said.
“Yes.” Lily stumbled a little, moving back from the sofa. I got hold of her hand to keep her from falling.
Her hand was ice cold. I rubbed it to make it warm. I could feel the electricity between us even now. It had always been like that with Lily and me, and I knew she felt it too. Abruptly, she pulled her hand away.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” she said. “It’s not fair.”
“I’m glad you called. Talk to me.”
“Marianna was so sick, and I couldn’t help her.”
“What with?”
“Her lungs were shot. I think her heart couldn’t take it. She drank. She smoked like crazy. You can smell it everywhere.”
I looked around the room with its high ceilings and fancy plaster moldings. The building must have gone up around 1920. The apartment needed a paint job. The yellow walls were grubby. The stink of cigarette smoke was everywhere; it came off the furniture, shabby rugs, the red silk drapes, off the dead woman.
“What should I do?” said Lily.
“Tell me what’s going on. You said she was your friend.”
“Help me.” Lily sat down suddenly in a small chair with carved wooden arms; she sat down hard, as if her legs wouldn’t support her.
I asked if Lily knew who the woman’s doctor was.
“What for?”
I told her somebody had to sign the death certificate. She said there was a guy in the next-door apartment who was a doctor. Maybe he could sign it. “They were friends,” Lily said. “Him and Marianna.”
“Didn’t she have her own doctor?”
“Of course. Sure.”
“You have a name?”
“Why?”
“It’s better if somebody who was taking care of her signs the certificate,” I said, and wondered why Lily was suddenly wary.
“Lucille Bernard,” she said finally. “Saint Bernard, Marianna called her. She could be pretty funny. She was funny.”
“You met her? The doctor?”
“Yes.”
“You have a number?”
“I took Marianna to an appointment once or twice,” Lily said. “At Presbyterian. Bernard’s office is in the hospital. I might have the number.”
“Let’s call her.”
“Why can’t we just get Lionel? I’ll go next door and get him.” Lily’s eyes welled up. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve.
“Lily? Honey? It was you who found her?”
“Yes.
“How come you didn’t call 911?”
“Marianna was sick. I didn’t think it was an emergency, not if you die from being sick. Was that wrong?”