Killing Time
I sit in the Russian bar post midnight. Gruff-voiced troubadour rasps rousing anthems, seems to take requests. “Popeye the Sailor Man!” someone shouts. Another calls out a Russian tune.
Troubadour rasps lustily, obliging; feet start pounding on the wooden floor, dance being had.
Tatiana asks me what I’m writing. I don’t want to talk right now.
Persistent thing, she asks again… Again.
“I’m writing a short story.”
“Yes…?” she mewls. “On what?” (she mewls).
“I’m workin’ it out,” I try and stay polite. But brusque, and business-like.
She doesn’t get the hint, continues: “Wait! I’m trying to understand.” She has a glass of wine before her, takes a sip. “You say you write?”
“I’m trying to… ”
“But what is it?”
“Just… trying to work a story out,” I tell her.
“What is it about?”
“Relationships, I guess,” I lie.
“Relationships… ”
“Mm-hmm.” I try and go back to the thoughts I’d had and meant to sift when I sat down.
Tenacious Tanya shakes me like a surfer in her jaws.
She motions for another glass of wine… speaks Russian to the bartender, who actually seems to understand it!
Then a turtleneck comes over with a cognac and installs itself.
This listens with a poker face as Tanya speaks to him in Russian… Tears into a giant, silent laugh and lifts his glass to me. He says something, in English, which I cannot understand… I simply, silent, giant-laugh his way, and nod until my neck snaps off.
“A book about ‘relationships’,” she mocks me. “Now we’re getting smaller!” Got two hands in front of her, she’s recapping events thus far: “A book… ,” she says, hands wide apart. “About? Relationships!” She pulls them in about a foot or so. “Keep going!”
“I don’t know,” I shrug.
“You have to have a thing to write about,” she coyly flips her wig.
The Turtleneck’s white teeth start parting luminously. “Yes,” it grins.
… I take this in. “You’re right,” I lift my glass to him. “He’s absolutely right!” I say to Tanya. “… wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Yes,” the Turtleneck repeats, and puts his poker mask back on.
The room goes dead. Guitar strings snap… A woman climbs unsteadily onto a loaded table. Starts to stamp a wooden rhythm as the Troubadour clap-claps his hands.
“You’re here,” Tatiana tells me. “Russian bar. Do you speak Russian?”
“Nyet.”
“Then why… No, wait! I have to know! Why are you here?” She flips her wig. “You say you are writing a book… Me, too!”
“Oh, yeah? What’s yours about? A story,” I remind her.
“Mine’s about having sex in English.”
I fill up the empty stool between us! Turtleneck inhales deeply, says (I think), “She knows your story!”
“Go to the movies!” Tatiana says. “My brother.”
“Ah.”
“Why are you here?”
We’re leaning confidentially, two comrades, elbows on the bar. Our shoulders touch. We breathe each other. “Why are you so interested?” I ask. “Not getting any work done… ”
“You don’t want to write,” she states. “You came in when you saw me here.”
“What!? That’s ridiculous!” I snort. “Please!” Tanya’s got one eyebrow raised. “Alright, that’s only partially true… I came in ’cause I heard the music, actually. That’s quite a voice.”
The Troubadour is rasping out in Russian, that old theme from M*A*S*H.
“You saw, you came… ” I interrupt her. “How’s the Russian wine?” I ask.
She starts to moan a little bit: “Oh, pleease… I’m cold! I hate it here… ”
Her brother laughs uproariously.
“Nice… That’s very nice!” say I. “Hey, shouldn’t you be at the movies, Vlad?”
They rap a little bit in Russian. Turtleneck cuts out to buy some cigarettes, ostensibly. “So where’d you send him?”
“Just to get some cigarettes.”
Ostensibly. “So tell me about your book,” I leer. “It was something to do with sex, wasn’t it… ?”
“Oh, that. No! I… ”
“’Hot Sex in English’?”
“Not ‘hot’ sex! No, not hot sex! No… Well! Guess it ’twas, a little bit… It ‘twas! No, ‘twas… ”
“… A little bit.”
“I find I’m hard to keep up with.”
“Oh, really!?”
“Sometimes. More than others!”
Spill the glass of beer I’m working on. It dribbles off the bar top.
“You haven’t said what you’re doing here!” she laughs, flipping her wig again.
“I did! I’m writing!”
“A book! On ‘relationships’. Or so you say.”
“It’s a story… And why is that impossible?”
She holds her fingers out to count on. “You’re in a Russian bar. You don’t speak Russian… ”
“So?”
“It’s two AM… You can’t understand anything he’s singing.”
“It’s music!”
“This is private party! What has made you choose this bar? Of all the places in New York… Does it matter to you?”
“No, why? Why should it?”
“I don’t know… ”
“It was the only place open on this street.” She settles down for thirty seconds. “I could just as easily be… in Prague!”
“Or home in bed, for that matter.”
“Where’s Vlad the Impaler?” I testily snap… impatient at her wonderings...
“Imp… Why are you calling him Vlad?” she asks. “His name is Chris, not Vladimir!”
“Let’s rumble!” someone bellows from the table with the Troubadour. Two Russian bears are grappling like a nuclear face-off… Troubadour growls balalaikan limericks like a fisherman: old, crust and salted rasp, throat straining hard against its breaking point…
“Sing Popeye!” someone cries again.
The Greco-Roman Russians roll about the floor, then kiss each other.
Tanya says she’d learned English in Michigan, been married there. She says she’d like to learn some Greek: “My third alphabet!” she hopes with pride.
“Right! Then you could have some sex in it!” I’m desperate. “Shouldn’t’ve brought it up… ”
“My God! You’re really quite horny!”
“Why thank you. Tell me about your book!”
“My book? You’re here with pen and notebook!” Smiles and slides down off her barstool… Pulls the belt waist of her slacks out, sucks her tummy in and stretches. Walks around the bar and squirts some water in a glass of ice.
“You’d like another beer?” she asks.
“You work here?”
“Cold!” the Turtleneck grunts as door (and wet dreams) crash behind him… Reinstates himself above his bulb of cognac, poker-faced.
I take the beer she offers and I raise it to the Turtleneck.
The Troubadour is dancing on the table now, clap-claps his hands… A bistro down the street had looked inviting in its intimacy; here, the place, I’ve chosen, all lit up like a drunk’s smile.
But there’s vibe between us! She and I…
An icy hand upon my shoulder. “Yes?” I laugh and turn and say.
“You have to sing with us!” a face says (beat and golden-toothed like James Bond).
“Yes!” the Turtleneck delights.
“Go on,” says blithe Tatiana. “I might wait for you.”
I sing and dance… Clap-clap my hands. “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man, I yam!”
A table crashes to the floor. The Troubadour is bleeding. “Why you’re idiot?,” Tatiana yells.
He doesn’t understand.
She yells again for him, in Russian. Rushes over to his side and kneels; pries the used guitar from his near-death grip and relaxes him. They’re rasping to each other lightly, Russian, humming tenderly. The guests begin to filter out, and me…
Filter dejectedly.
At 56th Street (almost home), I pop into a deli. “Hey, what’s up?” I say. The clerk nods, stares.
I pay him seven-fifty for my bottle of spring water, and I squint back out into the darkened street.
I’m almost home.
I pull my jacket collar up and walk erected down my side street… What was up with that? Her book on “having sex in English”! Wine, and dirty intrigues… She was interested, and interesting! She wanted…
Something, clearly!
I think of going back there momentarily… the Russian Party. Waiting, as Tatiana makes her rounds and fast goodnights. She’d been estranged. Clearly detached, somehow. Turned off by all the drunks and rasping Troubadour, and Vladimir… that stupid brother!
Chris, she’d said his name was. Like it mattered! Clichéd creature…
Then I catch him round the corner of my side street, dark behind me.
