Good Clean Looks
by Gaither Stewart
June
2000
There are four of them in the Buick,
three men and the woman. They’re speeding along the
Shore Expressway. A certain gaiety is in the air, as if they
were going to the country for a picnic. They’re joking
and ribbing each other. Except for Volodya in the back, the
youngest, who suddenly doesn’t want to be here at all.
The others are strangers to him. And they’re
frightening, like the suspicious characters hanging out in
the shady areas near his home in Kiev. He knows the others
think he is provincial but he wasn’t born yesterday
either. Nobody was, where he comes from.
Volodya is 20, a sturdy type with short-cropped blond hair
and lively blue eyes. He’s wearing a blue T-shirt with
the image of the Empire State building on the front, a beige
wind jacket, jeans and red and white Reeboks. He has twelve
dollars in his pocket and a paycheck due tomorrow. He has
come to believe that New York will soon be at his feet.
Everyday is an adventure. Each day brings something new.
The taciturn driver, Oleg, is about 35. He has long black
hair, needs a shave and wears a permanent scowl. The woman in
the front passenger seat, Olga, has stiff blond hair and is
over-dressed for Brighton Beach -- a red and brown satin
dress and a showy fur jacket. She has smoked constantly since
they set out, occasionally glancing over shoulder at him and
winking vaguely toward the back. Volodya doesn’t know if
she is with Oleg or Alex, the huge man next to him.
One thing is obvious – something unusual links the three
of them. And the boss is Alex whose bulk is now crushing
Volodya against the door. Broad-shouldered with a big belly
and fat legs and wearing a brown felt hat pulled down
gangster style over his eyes, Alex talks constantly -- about
the weather, about Russia and America, about
“business” that he says in English in his heavy
Russian accent, intermittently slapping Oleg on the shoulders
or touching Olga’s neck.
The weather is sunny. It’s Indian Summer. The haze has
not yet burned off the black surface of the bay. Thin shards
of light reflect half-heartedly upward in the sunshine from
the east. It’s too hot in the car. For a moment Volodya
feels drowsy. Lazily he looks toward the islands in the bay.
Then he reads to himself the signs indicating the Verrazano
Bridge that he has seen only in the distance from Manhattan.
He’s never been in Brooklyn. The last place he wants to
be today is Brighton Beach – Little Odessa.
They could almost be a family. Alex the father and his three
children -- Volodya, the kid brother. Or by some stretch of
the imagination, Volodya as Olga and Oleg’s son and a
fat youngish grandfather, Alex. They all live on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan, Volodya in a room in an old
third-floor apartment on 81st
Street, the others together in a big apartment up closer to
Columbia University.
It all started when Olga came into the copy/fax store in the
cellar where he’s been working for two months. She spoke
pretty good English. But when she heard his accent she looked
at him for a moment and switched to Russian and immediately
began flirting with him in the wanton way some Russian women
of a certain age do with younger men. Another day she brought
him coffee and bagels. She hung around for a while asking
questions and asked him to join her for lunch. Then a few
days ago she arrived with enormous Alex who immediately spoke
of lucrative work for an ambitious young Russian and
suggested, or rather ordered with his unqualified authority
that he accompany them today out to Brighton. To avoid any
kind of trouble, he accepted. He was off anyway. Why not see
the famous Russian town? he thought then. Only at the
Brooklyn Bridge this morning did he begin to grasp what kind
of work Alex meant.
At this early stage in his new life Volodya didn’t like
to leave Manhattan. He was still learning the ropes and the
new language. Instinctively he avoided other Russians.
They’re so competitive, dangerously jealous of each
other. Overall it’s been a hard seven months for him
– immigration, finding jobs and a place to live and
starting out in English. Now his money from home was running
out and his fare was deprivation of old home joys. Yet he had
a job he can handle, a girl and lots of hopes. He didn’t
need these Russian hoodlums.
He starts when Alex’s heavy hand falls on his knee.
“We’ll teach you the ropes, Vovochka. You
won’t have to worry about a thing. You can quit that
silly job. Eh, Olezhek … eh Olenika.” It’s
disconcerting the way the big man addresses everyone in the
diminutive in that deep voice. Nobody has called him by that
name since he was six or seven. But everything Alex says
seems pregnant with mockery and threat.
“I’ve got a lot to learn,” Volodya ventures
and feels the pressure of Alex’s powerful hand. A hand
that can break bones. A hand that has broken many bones,
he’s certain. Volodya could have gone to Moscow instead
if it was only a question of adventure. Or to Europe. But no,
his dream has always been “Amerika.” His
fundamental strength, he knows, is his sense of adventure and
his will to succeed. He can do anything he sets his mind on.
Anything is possible. He got that iron will from his
grandfather who’d survived Stalinist Russia. His dedushka
who before he fell asleep for his afternoon nap used to tell
the little boy lying beside him about the magic he’d
learned in his years in the gulag. The magic of will power.
And the importance of doing the right thing. Volodya’s
will power and his desire to do the right thing now seem
innate -- his inheritance from his mother and her father, his
favorite relative. If the family wanted to know whether a
thing could and should be done, they’d always looked to
Grandfather Konstantin for the answer. Konstantin Gregorich,
as everybody called him, was the family oracle. Not that
Volodya’s father agreed with the world outlook of his
father-in-law – for hadn’t the broken old man spent
15 years in a gulag for making wrong decisions in life. Only
by a stroke of fortune – Stalin’s death – had
he escaped. Yet Grandfather was the eternal optimist. And the
stoic. He wasn’t the kind to throw himself to the floor
and holler and scream and curse unfair fate. He never
expressed his worries. Never related dreams as bad omens. No,
he always saw life as full of opportunities for change.
“Go Volodya,” Dedushka said. “Life is full of
promise. Go to Amerika.”
“Da, da, ochen ochen mnogo,”
Alex insists. “You have much to learn. The thing to
remember, young man, is that they’re all fucking sons of
bitches. All mean and evil … but all stupid. They never
change. You just have to know how to exploit their
weaknesses. That’s the secret. Now look at our Olezhek
there at the wheel! Six months ago he was nothing. Sitting
out there at Brighton in a stinking apartment full of
children and mothers-in-law and ugly women. Look at him
today, driving a Buick. Eh, Olezhek, eh? eh?” The big
man slaps Oleg again on the shoulders, scratches the back of
the driver’s head and caresses his ear.
Olga looks over her shoulder and laughs loud. Her red, red
lips twist grotesquely -- she is nearly chewing on the
cigarette hanging from one side of her mouth. “He’s
too green, Sasha,” she says, addressing the big man by
his diminutive. “Can’t you see that? The boy
doesn’t understand.”
Oleg snickers. “He’s not like us, Sasha. Not like
us. You’re wasting your time.”
Alex snorts and ignores them. “You just listen to me,
young man. Forget that whore Olga and that thug Oleg. The
main thing to understand is that Russians are our meal
ticket. Stick to your own people. You know them best. There
are over a million of them around here. Too many to be a
colony. Those in Manhattan, the computer specialists and the
financiers, they’re not for us. Only about 50,000 of
them are our target -- the newcomers fresh from our rodina
who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. All
concentrated in Brighton Beach.”
“An elephant cemetery,” Olga says with a sardonic
laugh. “A town of losers. Where the old Russian Jews
feel secure. A Russian town!”
Alex scoffs. “It’s our town!”
Volodya is embarrassed. He leans forward to see better the
great bridge on their right. He will drive it someday in his
own car. He feels they don’t live on the same planet.
Their New York is Russian. His city is an ethnic laboratory.
It’s creating the new man of the 21st
century – a short dark man speaking a kind of world
English, a minimum language of survival. What is the man
behind the counter in the deli on the corner of Broadway?
Hispanic, Mongol, Indian? A cross category. What confusion!
You don’t know where he comes from or who he is. WASPs
are more confused than anyone. They either don’t notice
what’s happening or they walk around like exiles in
their own land. The future is change, is his motto. He’s
more than just Russian. He’s a man of the new century.
Of the new millennium.
“It’s the biggest bridge in America,” Alex
boasts. “Vyerazana,” he pronounces it. “Like
we in America say, it leads also to heaven.”
'America?' Volodya thinks. Early that morning he’d run
up the steps three at a time to street level just to feel the
cold air. It felt good like on an early winter morning in
Kiev. He felt the new world. So what is he doing here in this
car? Is it the smell of money? he wonders.
****
Oleg drives slowly under the tracks of the elevated. Main
street is animated like the streets of Kiev. Gangs of men in
black jackets are lounging on the corners. Cars and trucks
everywhere. Grocery stores and cafes with their signs in
Russian. The Russky Samovar on the corner. Women and children
eating hot pirozhki and bliny sold on the sidewalk. The kiosk
under a banner advertisement for Novoye Russkoe Slovo. It’s
a total society -- Brighton Beach, Russia. Russian doctors
and Russian lawyers, Russian mechanics, butchers, bakers,
grocers, insurance agents and real estate brokers, used car
dealers, shippers and movers, gas station owners. Russian
bars, restaurants and night clubs. And the con men and
gangsters of the Russian mafia, they say the world’s
most powerful.
“Little Odessa,” Volodya mutters. Alex slaps him on
the knee and mutters again, “it’s ours!”
The subway rumbles past overhead. In the car silence falls.
They’re all excited for their own reasons. Oleg is
returning home. Alex anticipates upcoming deals. Olga looks
supercilious.
Oleg turns right a couple times. On a side street he stops at
a wide parking space blocked precisely in the middle by a new
car. Oleg blows his horn loud and hard. The swarthy driver
behind the wheel merely glances over his shoulder and with
his lips and his finger says 'fuck you.'
Without a second of hesitation Alex slides gracefully
out the rear door and balanced menacingly on the balls of his
feet, a hard grin on his face, his hat in his hand like a
weapon, walks slowly toward the car. The guilty driver,
startled, quickly flips on his left turn signal and drives
away.
Alex laughs. “I’ll find that sukin
syn,” he promises Oleg.
In pairs they walk down main street like conquerors.
Oleg swaggers, Olga looks around haughtily, Alex holds
Volodya’s arm in a firm grip. Abruptly they enter a
restaurant. Alex steers Volodya in front of him up a flight
of narrow stairs in the rear of the Samovar. They go into a
private banquet room with a small stage on one side.
A middle-aged man with a heavy red face dressed in a brown
tight-fitting suit and a bright tie is sitting at the end of
a long table, flanked by two younger men in identical black
leather jackets. Two cell phones are positioned in front of
him, one near each hand. “Priviet
Sasha,” he says, standing and extending a ham-like hand.
Volodya shifts his feet, puts his hands in his jacket pockets
and looks around at the others. They just nod.
“Borya,
this is our new friend.” Alex puts a hand on
Volodya’s arm. “You’ll be seeing a lot of
him.” “Very good,” says the other with a blank
look on his wide face, hardly looking at Volodya. “The
others will be dropping by soon.”
Volodya
sits with Olga at the other end of the table. Immediately she
puts her hand on his leg and grins at him. He blushes.
“He’s here to make money,” she whispers.
“You’ll see. He wants you as an errand boy. You
look so innocent. You have to make up your mind quick.”
Volodya grins weakly. It’s obvious, piles of cheap money
is there. Russian money. His face is pale. “Thank God
they don’t like me.”
“They don’t like your blond hair and blue eyes
… they’re just a bunch of criminals anyway. What do
you care?”
He watches Alex and Boris talking softly at the far end of
the long table. Boris wears a permanent frown. Alex is all
smiles. From time to time they look toward him and Olga or
nod in the direction of the others. Occasionally a cell phone
rings. Oleg has moved from the wall and is standing just
behind Alex. They hear constant steps on the stairs.
Ostentatiously Alex ignores each new arrival until Oleg
whispers something in his ear and the other steps in front of
him and they shake hands. He acts like the Padrino. Leather
jackets fill the room, occasionally a dark suit without tie,
swarthy men in their late twenties and thirties with
permanent solicitous looks on their faces. Words and bits of
phrases arrive to Volodya and Olga – new immigrants and
empty apartments and rents and loans and interest payments
and TV sets and stereos and shipments of cigarettes and
insurance rebates and arrests and police and courts.
Alex switches to broken English when a tall gray-haired man
of about fifty in a gray suede jacket sits down heavily next
to him. There are no hand shakes. Just a nod. The newcomer
looks around at the others, registering each individually.
His glance seems to pause on Volodya. He nods at Boris. Did
he not ask, who’s the blond kid?
“A cop,” Olga whispers.
“A cop!” Volodya didn’t come to America for
this. This is much more than rackets and Russians.
“A crook,” she adds. “Amerikanskoe
gavno! One of those public officials
dedicated to violating the law. The dirty shit who extorts
money from illegal immigrants. He protects gambling -- she
grins again -- and also prostitution out here in the
boondocks. He and Alex do a lot of business with Boris who
also owns a towing company -- the cop gets six dollars for
every car the police order towed. They make thousands every
month! Most people never catch on. Makes me want to change
professions.”
Russian-speaking waiters serve them steaming bowls of borscht
and sour cream. Black bread and zakuzki arrive and a
carafe of cold vodka. Olga serves herself, Volodya refuses.
“No?” she asks. “I never liked it,” he
says a little embarrassed that he seems so green.
“Here’s to money,” she says. “You only
have to say, yes.”
“Drugs?” he asks.
“Not as far as I know. Alex is against it although that
thug Oleg keeps pushing dealers his way. No, not yet anyway.
You know he’s a pretty good guy, Alex. Better than the
rest of them! He made you come today only because he took a
liking to your clean looks. He misses that…. So do
I.”
All of a sudden Russian pop music explodes in the room. Olga
grimaces. “That’s Alexander Rozenbaum. From Sankt
Petersburg. Must be his latest CD -- he thinks he’s the
new Vysotsky! He even bought his own restaurant just down the
street and flies back and forth between Russia and the
States. Comes over here like a conquering hero! Volodya, you
can’t imagine the money moving between Russia and
America. They’re
probably doing some business with him too,” she says,
nodding at the trio at the head of the table.
“Look, what do you say we get out of here,” Olga
says after a long silence. Her hand is again on his thigh.
Alex and the cop are drinking vodka and Boris keeps making
toasts. Phones are still ringing. The dark men occasionally
look at Olga with suggestive expressions on their faces. Even
Alex now ignores Volodya. “Look at them … what a
gang of cheap crooks,” Olga whispers. “They have no
morals.”
“They look like all the hoods in Big Odessa,” he
ventures. They both snicker.
“I was never in Odessa but it must be more …
let’s say more refined than this,” Olga says.
“We don’t have to stay here, dear. You know you
should see Coney Island – even if everything’s
closed down there.”
“Da, da, poshli!”
Away from this cesspool! He’s beginning to like her. She
might have a rough way of talking and looks … well, she
looks pretty cheap but she’s straightforward, honest --
even a little motherly. Actually she’s better than she
looked at first -- and also sexy. She is sex. She laughs and
squeezes his thigh. He blushes again.
Downstairs under the elevated she hails a taxi and climbs in
showing a lot of her very good legs. He grins. She reaches
forward and pulls him into the back seat.
“Won’t he miss us?” Volodya is bewildered by
the new slant the day is taking. On one hand he feels
liberated from a great misunderstanding with Alex. On the
other hand he’s no saint but fooling around with a
Russian gangster’s woman is something else. Grandfather
would have an adage for it -- Risk and enjoy, risk and pay,
two sides of the same coin. Or something like that.
His love life has been going well. Shortly after he arrived
he’d met a girl. Anne. His same age. Anne is a student
at Columbia sharing an apartment with another girl up near
the university. Anne is not flashy but she’s pretty.
American healthy, bright and rich. A well-to-do family in the
city of Syracuse. And she likes him. Sometimes he spends
nights with her -- when her roommate is away. Their sex
together is all right but hardly fiery. American women, he
thinks, are different. Always agreeable. Childish. But always
so secure. Safe sex. A safe ride. No risk. Someday she wants
children. Maybe they’ll get married, she says. She made
photos of Volodya and her together in front of St. John the
Divine and sent them to her parents. She’s Catholic,
he’s nothing. She says she loves him. He’s not
certain what that means. They are very different but
he’s flattered by her love. She’s also his most
solid contact with America. The whole thing seems workable.
He doesn’t want to exploit her but he doesn’t want
to lose her either. Anyway he’s not in a hurry --
marriage is a long-range matter.
“He doesn’t own me! Alex keeps me around only as
decoration. I make him look good! Ha! No! No! I just come
along each week for the ride. It’s usually not bad,
eating and drinking in the Samovar. They see to their shitty
rackets and I do what I want, mostly shopping in the Russian
grocery stores. Don’t know where they get all that
Russian stuff. Besides they’ll be busy after lunch and
we’d just be walking around among all these creeps. Oleg
will go to see his children – and maybe fuck his wife.
That svoloch! You
know what Alex does? He visits an old Jewish lady he’s
helping to get American citizenship. That’s another of
his activities. He’s got lots of influence in
immigration offices -- dollar influence. She’s been here
ten years and immigration keeps losing her papers. So
he’s taking care of it.”
“So why does he do it? He’s a gangster, no?”
“Just to prove to people here he’s not
anti-Semitic! Ha! He does a good deed in the Jewish community
and collects 1000% profit. Good old Alex!”
Coney Island is deserted. They walk slowly down the boardwalk
among boarded-over stands. He imagines the Ferris wheel
turning. Lights should be ablaze. Maybe an ice rink and
joyous shouts of women and children. There are no trees. No
grass. The water is dark and forbidding. The sun is bright
and warm. The wind from the ocean runs around their feet and
up under their jackets.
“Do you like America, Volodya?” She is again
whispering. It’s the silence of the place. He likes that
better than her raucous voice in the car. She hasn’t
smoked since they left the restaurant.
“New York is fantastic … but I don’t know
America. I know I don’t like Brighton Beach
America.”
“That’s not America. Who can live here besides
those insecure immigrants? Not that I’m in love with New
York! It’s too hard for me. Too cruel. New York is work
for me. Otherwise I’m bored. As soon as I have enough
I’ll return to Europe.”
“Europe?”
“Paris. I spent two years there before I came here.
That’s home. I’m a European, you know? I think most
Russians are. After a while you’ll feel what I
mean.”
“Not me! I’m going to be an American. Not a Russian
in America. I had enough of Europe in Kiev. Enough of Russia
too.” He’d never even gotten a driver license over
there. He learned computers in school but had never owned
one. He’d played soccer but now he’s mad about
baseball, which he doesn’t understand. Volodya never
knew Soviet times. He only knew about Gorbachev from hearsay.
His father despised him but Dedushka called him the Saviour
of Russia. A Russian, Volodya was a stranger in the new
Ukraine. He’d never belonged anywhere except to his
family. And that was not enough.
The wind has turned colder. There’s an open space
between two stucco structures. A little park with benches and
a kind of protected porch.
“Nichevo,”
Olga says, guiding him toward the shelter with her arm around
his waist. “No matter. We understand each other, no? You
me and I you. That’s what counts.”
She turns toward him. He’s surprised that she’s his
same height. She didn’t seem so tall before. For an
instant he hears music from farther down the boardwalk. He
listens. It’s Louis Armstrong. Some love song.
There’s something romantic about the moment in the
desolation. Like he imagines the desert. Her red, red lips
glisten. Her mouth is about an inch from his. He feels her
breath. He too is breathing hard. He stiffens slightly. No
need for sweat, he’s not that green, he thinks.
He’s had some women before. He had his regular girl in
high school. She was sexually wiser than Anne.
“You must have lots of girl friends in New York.”
She speaks straight into his mouth. Her arms are around his
waist, pulling his body toward hers. He feels her hips
undulate. His thighs are now sweaty under his jeans. His body
must be drenched. His heart has begun thumping. His legs are
shaky.
“Would you like to stay here with me for a while?”
she says.
What he wants is … is … he doesn’t know what.
This is risky. If she’s sick? If she tells Alex? But
what would he care? “You’re pretty,” he says.
She laughs softly. He likes her hot breath in his. She does
look different. “I mean you’re very pretty …
and sexy too.” He feels flustered and not knowing what
he should do.
Then her hand is on his groin. Her mouth is in his.
They’re breathing together. No more blushing. No more
not-knowing. He hadn’t wanted anything like this to
happen. Maybe. They go to the bench under the shed. In an
instant she’s astride him and the wind and the sun the
sound of the ocean are all one. Her mouth is open, her eyes
closed. He watches the regular motion of her thighs and her
stomach. They don’t feel the cold. She is so light. Her
body is no bigger than Anne’s. He’s surprised
she’s so delicate. She’s a good woman. A good
woman. So good.
Later, she says, “I’ll walk you to the train. The
train to Manhattan.”
“What about Alex? Won’t he be mad? At me or at
you?”
“Don’t worry about him. I’ll tell him
you’re just not like us. That you changed your mind.
He’ll understand. It was only a whim anyway. He’d
probably have forgotten you by tomorrow. Alex is a man of the
moment.”
The subway car is nearly empty. Lights in the houses of
Brooklyn burn weakly in the twilight. Darkness is beginning
to fall to the east. Coney Island disappears behind him.
Occasionally the headlights of a car blink toward the train.
He’d liked it when Olga blew him a kiss as he walked up
the station. He isn’t sure he understood when she said,
“thanks.” Slava Bogu
he didn’t have to see Alex. Or Oleg’s sneer. That
was over.
He presses his face against the window. All at once a complex
vision comes to him of the different futures vying for him.
The future taught by Dedushka, a future of change,
uncertainty and final success -- if you have the necessary
will to succeed. And underneath, as if traced on thin copy
paper, the future of the dark men in leather jackets -- also
a future of uncertainty but of final darkness. No, he would
take New York.
Tomorrow? What will tomorrow bring? Tomorrow is payday. In
the evening after work there will be Anne. They will go out
into New York. Maybe he will spend the night with her. She
will talk about marriage and children. They will talk about
the future when he too will study at Columbia.
He stares out the window. It’s now dark. He takes a deep
breath and slowly lets the air out through his mouth and
watches the window pane fog over. It’s too early for
marriage. But no, he will never return to Brighton Beach --
Little Odessa. That’s a vow. It’s fear. Russia is
behind him.
Yet, maybe, not tomorrow, but another day, Olga will come. In
a way she is part of Russia. The good part. She will remain
his good friend. He hopes she will come. Anne doesn’t
have to know. Nor Grandfather either.
