Mesopotamia Read online

  “That waitress, Olia,” he said, “who is she?”

  “You still nearby?” Anton asked after a pause.

  He stepped out of the bar a minute later and sat down in the passenger’s seat, carefully shutting the door.

  “Got any cigs?” he asked Thomas.

  “I quit,” Thomas answered apologetically. “I’ve been chewing gum. It doesn’t help. Want some?”

  Anton looked at the gum in disgust, but held out his hand for a piece.

  “Well, um, Olia,” he started, concentrating on chewing through the hard shell of his piece of Stimorol. It looked as though he was chewing through every single word. “You know, she used to be a prostitute, before.”

  “How do you know that?” Thomas started chewing in response.

  “Well, she lives in the next building over. I’ve known her for years. I’m the one who got her this job . . . well, it’s not as if there were a ton of people dying to work here.”

  “Uh, how come she’s not a prostitute anymore?”

  “How should I know?” Anton answered, clearly irritated. “Prostitutes are like boxers; their careers are spectacular, but short.”

  “Gotcha,” Thomas replied.

  He rolled down the window and spat, his Stimorol rocketing through the air. Anton rolled down the window and spat his gum out, too. They shook hands wordlessly and went their separate ways.

  “Is being a prostitute really that bad? Does it really mean your life’s a complete wreck?” Thomas reflected. “What is it about these women that repels us? Society’s scorn for them? Well, public prosecutors elicit much more scorn. If you think about it for a second, what kind of people decide to join the ranks of prostitution? People who’ve gotten a raw deal from fate and walked a troubled and uneven path through life. Jilted lovers, deceived brides, unloved children. Students deprived of their families’ support. Workers tossed out of garment factories, single mothers, alcoholics, orphans, interlopers, and widows. Do widows become prostitutes? Probably. What else could they do? Who am I to judge? What grounds do I have for thinking poorly of them? Moreover, I suspect that most of them lead lives much more interesting than mine, packed with much more adventure and danger. It’s self-­evident—it’s the women who want for love that go into prostitution, without a doubt. Who else? Women capable of sharing their tenderness, women capable of arousing jealousy and putting an end to depression. I’m sure that many highly educated and well-­read individuals have dabbled in prostitution, settling upon this odd form to express their astonishment at the world and venturing toward a fuller and deeper kind of understanding. Obviously, most of them are well versed in human psychology and medicine and are capable of lifting fatigue and eliminating memory loss; most of them wear silk lingerie or have piercings in the most unexpected places. They are all fiercely passionate about music and their work; they are all trained to blend those two passions together. In the evenings, they run to their rooms to giddily apply their precious makeup, put on their masks and jewelry, and lay out their red sheets in anticipation of brave and generous men. They open up the windows to their abodes to let in round green moons that silver their skin and make their teeth as white as chipped porcelain. They burn herbs in their rooms that make men dream of foxes and black rivers with unknown cities on them; they stay awake at night and catch up on sleep during the day, like vampires. In the mornings, they gather on terraces wrapped in grapevines and talk of music and astronomy, pick out constellations on the black canvases of the predawn sky, observe the flight of birds, taking auguries for the upcoming days as they sip their sweet rum, and then retire to their homes, draw themselves cool baths, and lie there for hours. Their knees flash in the dark water like moons.

  He came by the next morning, after struggling for an eternity to put on his best tie and nearly choking himself to death in the process. He parked under the pirate flag and called Anton, who ran outside, gloomy and preoccupied, shook Thomas’s hand, and accepted a piece of Stimorol.

  “In today?” Thomas asked.

  “Yep, she is,” Anton replied.

  “I’m gonna stop in, all right?”

  Concentrating, Anton started chewing.

  “Listen, man,” he said, then paused. “Do you really need the hassle?”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “I’m just saying, what do you need all this hassle for?”

  “To balance things out,” Thomas explained.

  Anton got out of the car and slammed the door. Thomas sat there for a bit, waited, then followed him. The bar was empty. He nodded to Anton, who turned away, visibly irritated, and picked a seat across from the bar. The same soccer game as yesterday was on TV. Thomas realized he’d managed to memorize both teams’ rosters by now. This was his third time watching the game in three days, but he was still on the edge of his seat. Olia ran out of the kitchen about ten minutes later, exchanged a few whispered words with the bartender, and then disappeared again without even looking into the seating area. Thomas became anxious, watching the match and anticipating a 0–0 tie with disgust.

  She came over a little later and asked what he would be drinking. Thomas was at a loss. “What should I say to her?” he thought. He asked a question or two, inquired about something else, and started automatically rooting around in his pockets.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “My phone ran away on me,” he answered, his voice surly.

  “Lemme call it for ya.”

  Olia took out a battered Nokia held together with tape. Thomas told her his number, she dialed, they waited. Anton was scrubbing some dishes over at the bar. Thomas said something sheepishly as he was leaving, waved at Anton, and didn’t even bother waiting for his signature nod. Well, there was no signature nod this time around. His cell was in his Fiat, lying on the floor under the driver’s seat. Thomas picked it up, looked at the missed call, and dialed her number.

  “What time do you get off today?”

  “Why you wanna know?” she asked, not surprised one bit.

  “I’m gonna come by and pick you up, all right?”

  “Come on by,” Olia consented readily.

  He wanted to say something else, but what was left to say?

  In July, these empty buildings appear especially desolate. The grass on the windowsills loses its freshness, dryly indicating the direction of the morning drafts. The trees that grow inside apartment buildings suffer from a lack of moisture. The bitterness of crushed stones, sunny, sticky spiderwebs, and stray dogs, as slow and sensitive as pregnant women—July stretches out shadows and burns out colors; long evenings fall suddenly and unexpectedly, old men sit outside in quiet neighborhoods, soaked with light, their skin becoming warm and their wrinkles deep; summer crests the city and descends on the other side, singeing the red-­brick foundations of old factories and warehouses on the opposite bank. The sun drifts with the current like a burglar hurled from a bridge; flashes of light dot the horizon until nightfall. Old freeloaders die in their cluttered rooms at the end of July, starved of attention and love, since all the love to be had on those days goes to the young people. Girls, listless from the heat, descend into the water, hanging on to its freshness, wary of the plants along the shore. The streets are especially resonant, so every impertinent step and sudden outburst startles the pigeons on the rooftops and the weary, sun-­drained urchins who inhabit abandoned, bombed-­out dwellings in the summer. You want to speak quietly so nobody can hear you—or understand you if they do.

  Olia was already walking up the steps before he could park. She saw his Fiat and sat down in the passenger seat. Thomas leaned over to kiss her; she touched his shaved cheek with dry ambivalence, like they were old friends or a husband and wife who’d just decided to get divorced. She was wearing a short dress, which made her legs look even longer. She kept fixing her hair, squinting into the evening sun.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “I just quit,” Thomas answered.

  “Good for you,” Olia said,
taking out a cigarette and lighting it. She noticed his look of despair, gave a skeptical snort and rolled down her window.

  “Where are we gonna go?” Thomas finally overcame his anxiety and got down to business.

  “Nowhere at all. Let’s just sit here.”

  “Here?” Thomas was confused. “Sure, that’s fine.”

  “Did you want something?” Olia asked without even looking in his direction.

  “I just wanted to talk.”

  “Okay, talk away.”

  And then she turned toward the window.

  Thomas realized he’d hurt her feelings. “Maybe Anton told her everything. Maybe she’s figured out that I know. Maybe she thinks that I’m treating her like an ex-­prostitute. Maybe that’s what’s weighing on her mind. Taking advantage of her past errors—what kind of swine would play that kind of game with her? She started a new life a long time ago, and here I am trying to pull her back into her old ways. Obviously her feelings are hurt. Telling her that you know simply isn’t an option. Don’t even hint at it, not even as a joke. You have to put her at ease and show her you’re not planning on blackmailing her. Just make small talk.”

  “Tell me about yourself,” Thomas said. “What were you interested in when you were a kid? Boys?”

  Damn, he thought. Now she’s gonna tell me to screw off.

  “Chemistry,” Olia answered.

  “Chemistry?” Thomas was incredulous. “Okay, I get it. All those formulas, beakers, and acids. Did you have a lot of partners? Lab partners, I mean.”

  Damn! Slipped up again.

  “Yep,” Olia replied. “We had a big club.”

  “So were you actually doin’ it at your meetings?” Thomas inquired. “You know, doing chemistry?”

  Damn! Damn!

  “We did experiments.”

  “You experimented together?”

  !!!!!!!!!!!!

  “All of us girls,” Olia said suddenly, “were in love with our chem teacher. He was old and handsome. Do you like older men?”

  “Nah, I don’t like older men—I mean I don’t like men . . .” Thomas was flailing, feverishly thinking about what to say next.

  “He had beautiful fingers,” Olia said, not letting him interject. “My skin would turn cold when he touched me, and then it’d start burning all over.”

  “He touched you?”

  “Yeah. I was fifteen. I wanted to get to the bottom of all life’s mysteries and enjoy all the delights of this world, so I chose him—an experienced, grown-­up man with those beautiful fingers of his. He was my first.”

  “What do you mean?” Thomas asked, confused.

  “My first, you know, sex-­wise,” Olia said, turning toward him. “We did it in the classroom after school. My uniform skirt was so short he didn’t even have to undress me.”

  Olia took out another cigarette.

  “And then what?” Thomas swallowed some saliva and loosened his tie.

  “Then he died,” Olia said, and explained without any prompting. “Not right away, of course—not right after we had sex, I mean. In about a year or so. Heart attack. Our whole class went to his funeral. He left behind a beautiful wife. She was a little pudgy, but still pretty good looking for someone her age. Can you give me a ride home?” she asked unexpectedly.

  They drove in silence. It was only a few minutes away, though.

  “Widows,” Thomas thought, “widows—they’ve gotta be the ones who wind up being prostitutes. That profession welcomes them with open arms. Widows are the best lovers—they’re the least calm and they have the most stamina.” His first woman was a widow, which was pretty much the only thing she had going for her. She was his parents’ friend. A full professor at the university. As a child, Thomas was convinced that the majority of people in town were full professors. Lecturers were in the minority. They had their share of lecturer friends, too, though. Thomas came from a respectable family, and he was raised with wholesome values. Given the sheer number of full professors in their social circle, it was hard to imagine his first time being with anyone else. His widow took the initiative, promising to help him get into college and offer guidance during the admissions process. They wrapped up one of their sessions at her home with some quick sex—excessively quick, as a matter of fact. Thomas just went along with it, thinking, “Sure, my first time can be with a full professor, why not?” Then she actually did help him get into college, although nothing else ever happened between them. “I hope it wasn’t good for her,” Thomas thought. Nevertheless, after that he was always cautious when dealing with widows. “You never know what you’re getting into with widows,” he thought, smoking on his balcony and taking in the golden light glowing inside the old buildings above the river. In fact, he was so cautious when it came to dealing with widows that he tried to only hire married women, preferably middle-­aged ones. Preferably with gold teeth. That kept him in line.

  That night, he decided to send Olia a text, something about how at such a late hour, when demons whiz by overhead through the sticky air and the smoke thickens in kitchens smelling of poppy seeds and cacao, he, like a grizzled old pirate, could spot the glow exuded by her apartment in the middle of the lilac night and sniff out the tender aroma of her skin with his acute, ratlike sense of smell, feel her fluttering down into a pool of dreams, as into fragile and weightless Christmas snow. Something about how he was keeping watch, protecting her tranquillity and warding off the demons with the smoke from his Cuban cigarettes while frosty crystals coalesced on her lips. He reread it and thought that the part about the poppy seeds was a bit much. He decided to destroy the message but pressed the wrong button, so it got sent to her after all. He stood there, waiting with trepidation for a reply. At around four in the morning, when the last few demons melted away in the morning twilight, his phone died.

  She called after lunch.

  “What were you texting me about cacao for?” she inquired.

  Thomas got defensive, fabricating a mysterious, convoluted story about the events of last night, about shady characters and their family problems, about late-­night calls and nighttime drama, about his futile attempts to comfort and reconcile everyone, about taxi rides and journeys across the city by night, about unveiled threats and solemn oaths. Obviously, the smell of cacao had no place in this story; he got himself so mixed up all he could do was suggest they get together soon.

  At the Georgian joint where they met up, she greeted the waiter, who responded cheerfully, seeming to recognize her, then nodded reverently at Thomas, immediately starting to recommend some specials and caution against ordering others. Thomas had made a point of dressing casually—a short-­sleeved button-­down shirt and khaki pants—so he was feeling pretty self-­conscious without his signature tie, like a dog who’d been let off his chain for the night and was just dying to get back on it. “How does he know her?” he thought, looking at the waiter suspiciously. “Is he somehow part of her past? Just how many men are there in that past of hers? Is she going to be saying hello to all of them?” Thomas was anxious and he got hammered without even realizing it. Olia got a kick out of it all. “Good work, man,” she said. “Keep drinking. You’re more fun drunk.” He drank but remained vigilant. “Just keep it under wraps. Don’t let on that you know. Just don’t drop any hints,” he reminded himself. At first, he talked about work, said his clients just whored themselves out for money and then bit his tongue; he discussed politics, started telling a story about members of Parliament from the ruling party hiring young male escorts, then changed gears halfway in and recalled a gruesome crime scene from the paper—some priests had gotten busted in a closed sauna—but then she told him to cut it out. Eventually, he switched to sports, sizing up the waiter and saying that he clearly used to be a boxer.

  “His nose is all flat and stuff.”

  “Yep, he did used to be a boxer,” Olia said, confirming his suspicions. Thomas couldn’t take it anymore.

  “How do you know him?”

  “Whate
ver happens happens,” he thought, floating through a haze of alcohol. “I just have to know.”

  “What do you mean? He comes to our bar. He’s a Manchester United fan. He comes to my joint and I go to his. Isn’t that funny? Sometimes it feels like most restaurant customers are just waiters from other places around town. Do you like waiters?”

  “Waitresses,” Thomas answered hastily. “I like waitresses.”

  “Oh, I like waitresses, too. I used to date one. Her name was Kira. She lived by the tractor factory, did yoga, and could go without taking a breath for a long time . . . a long, long time. You’re looking at her and thinking, ‘I gotta call the ambulance, get up, get dressed, and run down to the police station to report her death.’ And then she exhales. I felt so sad and empty; I was eighteen and life seemed unbearable. That’s when we met. Want me to introduce you to her?”

  “I do,” Thomas said, nodding his head sloppily. “I really do.”

  “All right, I will,” Olia promised. “Want me to call her up right now?”

  “I do,” he said, sucking the last gulp of a Georgian red straight from the bottle.

  He wanted to meet all her girlfriends, size up all her men, peer into all her acquaintances’ eyes, hug all the boxers and duke it out with all the wrestlers in town, challenge all the bartenders to knife fights, and trounce all the valets at dice. He wanted to hear from her girlfriends what they said to her before she went to bed with them, what arguments they presented, and what they promised. He wanted to hear from her men about how she looked before she got that boyish haircut—what her natural hair color was, what she looked like in the morning—untouched by all that black makeup—what she said in her sleep after everything that had transpired the night before, how she spoke when she was drained by exertion and silence. He wanted to sit down with her teachers, he wanted them to tell him about her accomplishments, about her good behavior, about her passion for chemistry and sports, about the color and cut of her school uniform. He wanted to have a drink with her shop teacher and bond with her history teacher, gaze deeply into her assistant principal’s eyes and smother her homeroom teacher with kisses, he wanted to be in her life, be next to her, close enough to feel the blood flowing under her skin. He wanted to be privy to all her secrets and all the riddles she had tucked away in the depths of her memory, know all of her countless stories word perfect, correct her mistakes, dispel her doubts, become part of the action, explore her life like a suitcase found in the attic of someone else’s house, sit there and sift through precious evidence of other people’s emotions, other people’s laughter. He wanted to manage it all, he wanted to be involved in everything.