The man who interviews her for the job is a fifty-year-old from Nicaragua who speaks faltering English, which makes Hana a little more relaxed. He explains that she will have to check the cars as they come into the parking lot and give them a ticket to put on their windscreens. Then, when they go out, she’ll have to take the ticket back and get the money. She’ll have to keep the cash register in order, and keep track of the daily cash flow. And she’ll also have to make sure cars don’t park in the spaces reserved for monthly season-pass holders. If they do, she’ll have to call the towing company and have them removed.
Hana is sitting rigidly on the edge of her chair and can’t seem to find a position in which she would look more natural. The guy from Nicaragua runs three parking lots like this one.
‘During your working hours, you are in charge of the lot,’ the man tells her. ‘The first funny business you try, you’re out. Is that clear? It’s the first time I’ve hired a woman as an attendant — for obvious reasons I’d prefer a man. But Steven is my cousin’s boss at the street maintenance company, and my cousin says he’s a great guy, so that’s why I’m giving you the job. It’s up to you now: if you work as hard as he does, we’ll both be happy. That’s it, Hana. Call me Paco. My name is Francisco, but everyone calls me Paco.’
Shtjefën is waiting outside. Paco asks her if she speaks any Spanish. Hana shrugs: no.
‘Pity. If you have problems with English, a bit of Spanish will always save you around here. But your English is more than enough for what you need to do. Today you’ll be on trial, and for the first four hours there’ll be one of my guys here to teach you everything you need to know. His name is Jack.’
Hana thanks him and goes outside, followed by her new boss. She feels drained. Shtjefën exchanges a few words with Paco, then tells Hana he has to leave her now to go to work. He’ll be back to pick her up at around seven, but she shouldn’t worry if he’s late, it’ll just depend on the traffic.
He leaves.
Hana has a kind of good-luck charm in her pocket. It’s a stone from Rrnajë with a hole in the middle. She strokes it without taking it out of her pocket.
‘Hana,’ Paco calls out to her, ‘Jack’s here.’
Jack is black and rough looking, and very kind. Unfortunately he expresses himself in incomprehensible slang. She asks him shyly to speak more slowly because she’s new to the country, but he says sadly he can’t speak any other way. He asks her what her name is. She says Hana, but when he repeats it the ‘a’ turns into an open, nasal ‘e.’ Hana explains that she really cares about the way her name is pronounced; she wants him to get it right. He stops chewing his gum for a moment, looks at her with a curious expression, and smiles.
As the day goes by, she begins to appreciate Jack. He tells her a lot about himself, though she only understands half of it. At the end of the four hours he holds out his hand, shakes hers hard, says they will see each other that evening, and leaves.
Hana breathes in the unhealthy air of the parking lot. It has three floors, two of which are underground. She has the sensation of a breeze blowing through her brain. One by one, in her mind she goes over the things Jack has shown her.
‘I’m sorry for your sake,’ Jack had said twice during the final half hour of her training. ‘You’ll be on your own here. It’s the only thing about this job I don’t like. If I can’t talk to someone, I go crazy.’
Hana told him that for her it wasn’t a problem.
‘You’re only saying that because you have no idea what it means not to talk for hours at a time.’
The day of the shooting competition at Rrnajë, Mark Doda had been caressing the stone with the hole in the middle intensely. It was always in the same right-hand pocket. The men had been noisy. Senseless, Mark had thought, all this was senseless, over the top; their senseless words the result of senseless excitement. Lul, the owner of the scruffy café in the village, had suggested starting with the easiest targets, middle-sized stones perched on bigger rocks. The shooting was to be only with Kalashnikovs; every kulla had more than one in the house. In Tirana they had broken into the military arsenals. The whole of Albania had gone crazy, shooting wildly in the streets. In two months it would be 1998. Weapons traveled through Montenegro and Kosovo all the way to Serbia, and the ‘cursed mountains’ happened to be in their path.
The café owner had suggested a shooting competition rather than firing like crazy at nothing in particular like those idiots in Tirana. They had chosen a clearing near the village, in a narrow gorge. After each round they had drunk a shot of raki. The first round had been on Lul, but then they all had to pay their way. The targets had grown smaller and smaller.
Mark had been sweating, but had continued to caress his secret amulet. It had gone surprisingly well, considering. He had been eliminated more than halfway through the competition and was amazed he had made it that far. Shkurtàn, from the Gjetaj clan, had won. When it was all over, and silence had enveloped the mountains once more, the air had reeked of gunpowder and raki.
The men had collapsed on the ground or slumped in broken chairs, soaked in their melancholy, until deep into the night. The day after, the village kids had gathered up the cartridge cases; and the boys in the Gjetaj clan had enjoyed a few weeks of glory thanks to Shkurtàn’s skill with an automatic. Then, yet again, there had been the usual emptiness.
Hana is smiling, sitting all alone in the cramped guardian’s office. Remembering herself as Mark, whatever else it makes her feel, can’t not give her pleasure. She even smiles at Jack, just like that, without saying a word. The world is at her feet. Less than three months have gone by since she left Rrnajë and here she is, thanks to Shtjefën, with a job. She’s so happy that, if she could, she would give herself a big hug.
If the job is like this first day then everything will be ok. She just needs to pay attention. She needs to be hard-working, punctual. Not be scared of the language. Speak to the drivers when they want to know things, pronouncing every word carefully. Not be in a hurry. She’s new to the country, and she can say so without raising any red flags, Lila has explained over and over. In America having just arrived is no big deal. In Europe you’re immediately labeled inferior, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. If you say you’re Albanian you’re toast. America’s much better from this point of view. It’s tough for newcomers, but the Americans are so used to foreigners they hardly take any notice. And then they don’t pry into your private life. No questions asked. They’re always going someplace else in a hurry, and they mind their own business. Hana likes the part about minding their own business more than all the rest put together.
A high-powered car is pulling into the half-empty parking lot. The woman driving is massively overweight and Hana catches herself thinking she will find it hard to get out of the vehicle. She gives her the entrance ticket, which the woman puts on her dashboard. So far, so good.
The day goes by without incident, marked by nothing other than cars coming in and cars going out. Hana irons out the crumpled, mostly one-dollar bills with her hands and puts them into tidy piles. She goes over everything three times, just to be extra sure.
Jack comes back to pick up the day’s earnings. The guy doing the night shift is with him. From Poland originally, he speaks in monosyllabic grunts. If he were a bit friendlier, she might even tell him she’s Albanian — after all, they were once in the same communist bloc — but the guy clearly has no intention of starting a conversation.