Mesopotamia Read online

  “Dude, the women in your country!” they yelled, looking at Bob’s thick sideburns enviously. “Dude, the women in your country! They have fiery red hair, like squirrels. As pale as jellyfish! As tall as mast pines! Spangled with freckles like the constellations captains use to guide their ships!”

  They didn’t take Bob back to their place for the night, however—they limited their appreciation to words and expressions of their deep admiration for Irish women. “What are they telling me all this for?” Bob thought, weeping and lying on a bench warmed by the hot sun outside a Protestant church. “Why are they wringing my heart out? What do Irish women have to do with me? I’ve never been with an Irish girl. I’ve never even been with a Northern Irish girl! I’ve never been with a Puerto Rican girl, a Brazilian girl, or a Peruvian girl, either. I don’t know what their love tastes like, what it feels like, what it sounds like coming from their lips. I just want to go home—to that city of sun that I left so heedlessly. I’ve drifted dangerously far from it, completely lost the sensation of it. I lost all sensation a while ago.” This thought raced through Bob’s mind because it was actually true—he couldn’t feel his throat, his tongue, his pain, or his life. That’s how he fell asleep . . . He dreamed of the queen of England.

  The morning brought hope and relief. His temperature had gone back down; his blood, stagnant during the night, was now bubbling throughout his body, and pigeons were sitting on his suitcase, pecking out the eyes of the East German girls. A young dark-­skinned girl was doing some unbelievable exercises in the park across the street. Her legs were tangled up in such unfamiliar knots that Bob’s cheerful morning mood was wrecked instantly; yesterday’s wistfulness and uncertainty had returned. He headed for his classmate’s apartment, taking great pains to dodge the sunny waitresses carrying chairs outside and unfurling snow-­white tablecloths and the elderly postwomen looking at passersby with tremulous attention, as though they were potential addressees. He dodged the ancient nuns flashing their ceramic dentures and the portly policewomen—their powerful arms made him want to give himself up to their embraces and their handcuffs made him want to be fettered for the rest of his life. His classmate still wasn’t home. Making inquiries with his neighbors didn’t do any good—if anything, it made matters worse. A Japanese girl sprang out of the next apartment down, poorly concealing her private parts with a blanket. Actually, she was just waving it around like a flag. Bob’s eyes unconsciously, yet unwaveringly, slid up her dark, shaved calves, her hips, tinted gold by the light, and everything else she had to show, although that wasn’t a whole lot, considering her age. Nevertheless, it was enough to send him into a deep melancholic state; he thanked her vaguely and said goodbye, slinking off to a nearby park, where he bummed around all day. In the evening, he found a soup kitchen, had a meal, and told the women dishing out the food all about his trials and tribulations. They listened attentively but didn’t offer him seconds. “Those whores! Is this what their faith teaches them? Is this the kind of behavior their pastors recommend? Why couldn’t they let me stay in that damn soup kitchen until morning? Bunch of whores,” he repeated to himself. “Yeah . . . whores! Prostitutes are the only ones in this city who could possibly understand me! They’re the only ones I can count on. They’re the only ones who could actually help me. I’ve got this damn hundred-­dollar bill in my pocket—am I just gonna take it home with me? No way!” He tried thinking it through logically. “Souvenirs? I can get the same souvenirs cheaper back in Ukraine. A hostel? They’re for wimps. I just have to find a woman here. I have to fix everything, start anew, like I’m filling an old riverbed with fresh water. I just have to nab some Surinamese girl. Or an Ethiopian girl. An Ethiopian girl would give me a breath of joy and serenity. She really would. Or a Japanese girl,” he kept pondering, still lying on the same bench, head now resting on his suitcase. “Japanese women can resurrect the dead with their tongues. They’d raise me up like Lazarus, dust the clay and dark seaweed off me, and set my internal organs, stalled like frozen steam engines, into motion. Or a Brazilian girl,” he thought, already sound asleep. “The queen of Carnival, with feet like red-­hot coals and palms as damp as rocks on the shore in the morning. She’d have incredible stamina and flexibility; she’d take me to where the gates of the airport stand open to travelers, make sure I got on the correct flight, and then send me short, funny letters about nothing.” That night it started raining. Bob woke up with a stuffy nose, and his temperature had come back. There were twenty-­four hours left until his departure.

  But even his stuffy nose could detect all the smells and smoke of this city, its August skin, scorched by the sun and bleached by the ocean. He looked at the pigeons, surprisingly calm in the constant commotion, the yogis and monks, observed the dragons on the rooftops and the hyenas rooting around in the dumpsters, shielded his eyes against the bloody rays of the morning sun, and wrapped his sodden jacket around his shoulders, but he wasn’t getting any cozier. Just as the thought of heading to the airport and waiting out the last twenty-­four hours before his flight popped into his head, a bunch of jovial drunkards, who had noticed him earlier yet decided against tearing him away from his brooding and melancholic morning reflection, understanding the true delicacy of the matter, as jovial drunkards so often do, shouted to get his attention. Once they saw that Bob was really hurting and the demons of morning blues were absolutely devouring him from the inside, they hollered at him to join their merry festivities and hospitably handed him some strange beverage. The natives themselves didn’t know what it was called; all they could tell him was that some Poles sold this poison at their nearby store, though not even they could pronounce its name.

  “Polish has so many hushing consonants,” they shouted excitedly, pouring Bob drink after drink. “One shudders to imagine how their church services sound! Hymns cluttered with all those consonants have gotta wake God up in the morning!” They were talking to Bob, and he even answered them, but nobody was listening to him; they kept talking and talking as the hyenas scurried into the shade and yellow snakes wove nests in the metal trash cans. The sun was blazing over church bell towers and billboards, bouncing off the windows up where the city’s warm air hovered, where rooms were filled with life and August drafts were skipping down fire escapes. The women walking down the street smiled at him, waved their hats and kerchiefs amiably, shouting cheerful and tender words, exclamations so tightly interwoven with hushing consonants and palatized vowels that Bob didn’t dare touch these nodes of language, golden, like cells in a beehive, packed with joy and delight. Joy and delight were just what he had the direst need of when he woke up that morning and found his dad’s old suitcase unscathed; it was for the sake of joy and delight that he charged into the late evening twilight, searching for public transportation and brotherly love.

  He made for the Bronx, crossed the river, and found them. They were standing outside some banks and clothing stores, closed at such a late hour. One might even have concluded that they bought their outfits at those very stores. Bob stood still, warily sniffing around like a seasoned stray dog, thinking about turning back . . . but then he realized it was now or never: “I’ll keep reproaching myself for being so weak-­willed and I’ll continue to search for some sort of justification for my fears and insecurities if I don’t go for it. C’mon, Columbus, move your flippers,” he said, pushing himself toward all the Puerto Rican and Surinamese girls of the Bronx. There’s plenty of fish in the sea, and he soon came upon one, a short, rail-­thin woman with dyed black hair, a sharp nose, and an improbably large bust—which made her all the more tempting. Her velvety voice halted him, causing his heart to spring back out of the realm of oblivion.

  “Wanna chill out for a bit?” Her tone inspired trust.

  “Chill out how?” Bob answered with a question, his heart aflutter, listening to the falling tone of her voice.

  “I’ll show you a good time for fifty,” she promised, moving her hand back and forth as though she were brushing her teeth. �
�Two hundred for everything else. Don’t worry, I’m on the level and it’s all legal. What’s your name?” Bob answered; she didn’t even bother trying to remember, immediately introducing herself as Mel.

  “Mem?” he asked.

  “Forget it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  They settled on fifty bucks. Mel-­Mem took him by the arm with an air of confidence and led him down the street. Her girlfriends avoided making eye contact with her.

  “We almost there?” Bob asked.

  “Another quarter-­mile,” she assured him. “It’s slow going in these heels, though.”

  Bob finally noticed them. It probably wasn’t too easy for her to walk . . . but they had to keep going. “Let me get us a cab,” she suggested. Bob tensed up, but didn’t object. She waved at a taxi that seemed to be waiting for them. They hopped in, drove half a block, and stopped.

  “Pay him,” she said quietly. Bob handed the cab driver a ten-­dollar bill; he thanked them cheerfully. For some reason, the cab driver put him at ease. “He could have taken us outside the city,” Bob thought, “and dismembered us. Well, that’s what I would have done at least.” They passed a Chinese restaurant, then ducked through an arch, crossed a courtyard, skirted some shiny metal dumpsters, ascended some stairs, and opened a dark, inconspicuous door. Two security guards were sitting on chairs by the entrance to the building. Their unfriendly, inattentive eyes slid down Bob and Mel-­Mem, and then they resumed their conversation. She snatched a key from one of them and dragged Bob up another steep flight of stairs. There were red lamps hanging on the walls and the floor was covered with shaggy white carpeting. The place felt like a darkroom. It smelled like one, too.

  They walked to the end of a hallway; she opened a door and stepped through. He peered inside—the room was gloomy and dank. There was a small, empty desk off to the left, while a large bed with some strange curly wooden banisters, silk sheets, and other crap loomed off to the right. “Uncle Alex’s bed looked just like this one,” Bob recalled suddenly, which made him even more dejected. Off to the side, an open door led toward a small shower. The lights were on, and there were clean towels hanging up. She immediately took charge, like a chipper hostess.

  “All righty then, do you want to take a shower?”

  “I’ve been wanting to for three days now,” Bob answered.

  “Okay. Give me some money and I’ll get us something to drink. You have to buy drinks here,” she explained. “What do you want?”

  “Is there any Polish booze?” Bob inquired.

  “I’ll find out,” she said, taking his money. “What’s the matter with your nose?” She was referring to Bob’s sniffling. “Drugs?”

  “Boxing,” Bob explained. “The bridge of my nose is all busted up.” Then she turned around and left without saying a word.

  “She’s not coming back, obviously,” he thought, lying on the bed and contemplating the shadows on the ceiling. “She’s clearly left this building and evaporated. She’s long gone. I probably won’t ever see her again. Obviously, I won’t even recognize her if we do cross paths again. Mem, oh Mem, where have you gone? Why’d you drag me over here onto these fiery sheets? Why’d you ditch me in the middle of the stuffy summer night—without any love, without any compassion, and without any alcohol to boot?”

  The door opened quietly, and she slid inside.

  “How ya doing?” she asked. “How’s the shower?”

  “It works,” Bob answered succinctly. Not sure what he was getting at, she simply handed him a glass filled with golden poison. “If I don’t die, I’ll inherit eternal life,” Bob thought, and drank it in one gulp. Then she got down to business. She had a certain fierce intensity about her. But there was something mechanical, disheartening, and utterly unpromising about that intensity; too many frills, too much facade. At first, she made Bob lie down and keep still, as if she didn’t know what to expect from him, and the mere fact that he could move of his own volition was unnerving. She followed his changing facial expressions warily, listened closely to the gurgling sounds coming from the back of his throat, and groped at his crazy-­ass shorts, either to please him or just because—or to check if he was packing some psychotropic substances or, at the very least, some kind of knife or switchblade. She started moaning immediately—without interrupting her task. She was moaning with stubborn passion. At one point, Bob started feeling like an infant being rocked to sleep. He even lifted his head to make sure she was doing all right. Unlike him, she was doing just fine—she was toiling away, two-­handed, as though she were trying to light a fire with soggy kindling. Eventually, she lifted her head, too, intercepting his gaze. She stopped brusquely and tossed back a strand of hair that had fallen into her face.

  “What’s the deal? Too much alcohol?” she asked.

  “Yep, that’s part of it,” Bob answered dejectedly.

  “Well, how ’bout this . . .” She took her job seriously, and something about this cowboy with Irish deer running around his hatband had gotten to her, so she wanted him to get his money’s worth. “Throw in another fifty bucks and I’ll let you touch my breasts.”

  “What will you let me do?” Bob didn’t understand what she’d said. But she was already releasing her incredible, cosmic, synthetic bust, dangling it in the bluish pink twilight of this darkroom. What else could he do but go with it? “I’ll bum a ride to the airport,” Bob thought.

  “Mem,” he said quietly, yet firmly. “This is all I’ve got left. I don’t have fifty bucks . . . but I don’t want anything else. Come on . . .” She agreed, snatching his last few crumpled bills and getting back to work, just like last time—firmly intent on not giving up until she got to the finish line. When that didn’t help she took a short breather, and then informed him in her dry yet still deep and velvety voice, like an employee at the DMV, that if he didn’t come within the next hour he’d have to pay extra, and since he was out of cash (she knew that for a fact!) there was no telling where that would lead. Well, you know how these kinds of things generally play out—you’d think some secret, some hidden and unspoken visions and stirring experiences would surface, and he’d see the faces of the most beautiful women imaginable in the translucent, placid darkness and recover his greatest hopes and dreams from the back alleys of his past. But none of that actually happened. The mechanics of a woman’s tender touch and lengthy intimate labor can generally be relied upon to work their sweet magic, so after a few short minutes all those involved reached a happy ending, without any financial complications, any unpaid debts or unperformed duties. She wiped him off with some paper napkins, he looked at her dark silhouette and thought of how his fingers had come upon the thin, tender, and nearly imperceptible scars under her breasts, left behind when she pumped them with all that gel, making them soft and bouncy. The scars didn’t go away, though. And they never will.

  Then she sat there with him in the dingy room for a bit, mightily pretending that she was in no hurry, that customers were treated with respect around here, that she wasn’t just interested in making that happen (who could be, really?), but also in what was on his mind. She tried making conversation, told him about herself, saying that she was one-­hundred-­percent American, born and bred (“Well good for you,” he thought), was raised with wholesome values (“I can see that”), graduated from a respectable community college (“about thirty years ago”), then got married (“to some fag”), but then she wound up here (“It could have been much worse”), and now she has to do this degrading work (“Well stop fucking whining and do it, then”), but she still believed that everything would work out (“I highly doubt that”) and she’d eventually go back to school and get a four-­year degree (“Yeah, maybe if you buy one in Ukraine, Mem”).

  “What are the women like where you come from?” she asked Bob.

  “Our women have one odd trait; they can get pregnant without having sex.”

  “Huh? How does that work?”

  “They can . . . they are impregnated by th
e wind and rays of sunlight, just like flowers. They use bees and butterflies to conceive; in the spring, they expose themselves to the sun and moonlight and they bear their fruit gladly and easily, like knowledge imparted by an institution of higher learning.”

  “Yeah, but what about sex?”

  “They perceive sex as the highest demonstration of their love, as the finest line showing their deepest affection—a line so fearful to cross, but so hard to spurn. They grow up to love; they’re raised to prepare themselves for their glorious time of love and devotion, for that heart-­wrenching dependence on waiting for and parting with loved ones. Our men know this, so they prepare themselves to take on women whose tenderness is inexhaustible and whose passion is unmanageable. There’s so much love where I live. The men see no point in leaving their women, because they’ll fall in love with them again sooner or later anyway, so why bother?”