—but we’ll talk
—we’ll talk
—and you won’t be quiet like that
—i won’t
—ever?
—never
*
Then came those several years I don’t remember clearly. The government changed overnight, the Berlin Wall came down, protesters were killed in the streets of Romania, and evil things were happening in Yugoslavia. I wished something profound would come about at home, too, something earth-shattering. Something that would make me put on my black leather jacket dramatically and leave Stella at our door crying, not knowing whether she’d see me again.
I remember the night was cold. I put on my black leather jacket, zipped it up, took a blanket and a pillow under my arm, a thermos full of hot tea, kissed her as we made plans about where to have coffee in the morning, since the college was going to wake up to an occupied campus and the cafeteria would be closed.
The occupation. In our Alma Mater that night, we watched TV, listened to the radio, cursed the communists, and waited for instructions to come from somewhere. I was elected to be part of the occupation committee. Now I can’t actually remember what we were protesting about. I think it was because of “. . . better get the tanks rolling.” I think we demanded changes to the Communist Constitution, and free and democratic elections. Really, I can’t remember why we were protesting.
The second night. Stella came to spend the night in the occupied building. Student activists had already turned the dean’s office into their headquarters and had put on new worried faces, which they wore as they paced up and down the corridors. They started using the copy machines, faxes, and telephones with such businesslike efficiency—as if they had practiced for this occupation their whole lives. The rest of us lay around on the floors, read books, watched American soldiers in Arabian deserts on CNN. The next day Stella decided that there was no point in her spending any more time there; nobody needed her, the floor was too hard, it was boring, and most of all she wanted to paint, but she couldn’t there. I walked her home and went back to the campus, cutting through an old graveyard so I could keep up the anti-communism. I remember that night there was a power outage, and with nothing else to do, some friends and I gathered around the piano in one of the auditoriums. We lit candles and lanterns, and a guitar appeared from somewhere, and a real party broke out. We sang The Beatles, The Crickets, and Pink Floyd, we took breaks with Gershwin, and then with renewed strength we screamed “Bohemian Rhapsody” in our broken English.
After midnight, the activists sent a freshman to tell us to stop the commotion—we were not making a good impression. What if somebody passed by the university campus? What would they think? We were taking part in a serious endeavor; the occupation was no joke; we had to be responsible and accountable for these events, which were oh-so-important for our future; after all, we had not come here to party and sing.
I slammed the piano shut and we all fell silent. I folded up my blanket, said goodbye and took off, walking down the candle-lit corridor toward the exit. On my way, I kicked the upholstered door of the dean’s office and walked back to our cozy apartment. Stella was my velvet revolution. I decided never again to miss a night next to her warm body. I swore that I’d never ever waste my time with made-up coups and fabricated riots. After all, the real changes are invisible and the rest simply are not worth the pain.
*
I find a pay phone and dial the familiar office number. Scott picks up. His voice starts buzzing in the receiver and I hang up in disgust. I pull my thoughts together and call Danny in New York.
“Hello?” He sounds as if I have just woken him up.
“Hello.”
“Hello-o-o?” Drowsy.
“Danny boy!”
“Zack, is that you?”
“It’s me. What’s happening in the Big Apple?”
“Nothing.”
“We’ll have to do something about that, then.”
“Well, let’s do something about that, then.”
“I’m coming to New York.”
“You’re coming.”
“I’m coming.”
“How about Stella?” Here we go again.
“I’m coming on business.”
“Are you being transferred, or what?”
“I’m transferring myself.”
“And what are you going to do here, if it’s not a secret?”
“No secrets from you, friendo. I’m going to sell marijuana.”
He laughs. “Marijuana?”
“Pot. Grass. Cannabis.”
“Nice! You’ll make it big!” Danny keeps laughing. Then he stops. “Come on, man, tell me!” I guess I didn’t sound serious enough.
“I told you. I’m gonna sell marijuana.”
“Well . . . no problem then. You’ll have tons of customers. Half of them undercover cops, too!”
“I know.”
“So what’s with the bullshit then?”
“No bullshit. Just fresh marijuana.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I might be. But I have a bag of weed in my trunk.” This paralyzes him for sure. For one long minute I listen to his breathing. I can hear a car honking in the background. The building next to his is a bar that closes at 2 A.M. It’s never too quiet around Danny. It’s never too dark, either. I remember how the orange light from the street lamp in front of the bar cast stripes through the broken blinds as Stella and I tried to make love silently on his hard mattress.
“Where did you get it?”
“What?”
“The bag.”
“I found it.”
“You found it?”
“Yeah!”
“No one finds bags of marijuana on the street!”
“I never said I found it on the street.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In a van.”
“And how about the van?”
“Two guys wanted to shove me inside it and do something awful to me, I’m sure, and I . . .”
“And you?”
“I somehow managed to . . . Come on, man. Something happened and maybe it wasn’t supposed to happen. Now, I have a bag of grass. About fifty-sixty pounds . . . maybe more. I don’t know anybody here who could help me get rid of it all at once. If I start selling it ounce by ounce, I’ll stumble across some asshole and end up in jail. I have no idea how to reach a serious player. And, I suspect some local douche is in trouble because of this bag. There’s no way they wouldn’t be looking for it, right? What I’m saying is, if I try to sell it locally, I’ll either bump into a cop or someone who knows someone who has heard of someone else who is missing a bag of weed. You get the picture. So, I want to get rid of the whole thing and I want to do it safely! I expect you to help me resolve this situation. I think thirty percent will convince you to cooperate.” Long pause. “So what do you think? Can we do something about this?”
“Look here . . .”
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you do me a favor and don’t start with look here? Just don’t look here me, OK?”
“OK.”
“OK. If it were easy, I wouldn’t have called you in the first place!”
“Give me some time to think. I’ll ask around. I need to talk to some people. I’ll call you as soon as I know more. You said about fifty pounds?”
“Something like that.”
“Fresh?”
“Aromatic, pungent, strong . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it! How can I reach you?”
“I’ll call you, Danny,” I say matter-of-factly. I hang up the receiver and slowly walk across the sun-scorched parking lot.
*
We were poor. Although I never stopped inventing ways to earn the next buck, we were poor, always on the edge, and sometimes beyond it. In between midterms and finals I bought and resold jeans with the Gypsies at flea markets; I smuggled duty-free coffee from Romania; boom-boxes from Macedonia; beach towels from Greece; and le
ather jackets from Turkey. One summer we were in such dire straits that I had to steal corn from some fields, boil it in a barrel over a fire made from stolen pallets, and sell it to the tourists on the beaches of Varna. Humiliation.
How was I so arrogant as to ask her to marry me? How was she so foolish as to accept? Stella, I know now, often prefers saying “yes” instead of inconveniencing herself with explaining why no means no. She has a natural talent for minimizing situations in which she has to say either one. Perhaps back then I was one of those few cases in which she needed to give an answer. Maybe she had said yes. I think I remember where it happened. It was winter. A smoke-filled tavern at a train station in Pleven (what train were we waiting for there?). It was a white, cold night outside, warm and dim inside. I held her soft hand in mine, touched it to my cheek and I knew, I so ruthlessly and clearly knew that I did not want any other hand touching my cheek. I tenderly kissed her fingers where I was supposed to place an engagement ring and asked her to marry me. I did it instinctively. Tears streamed down my face (did I have any idea how this would end?). I promised her, I remember, “I’ll always take care of you.” What was I thinking then?
*
I decide to stay in the Los Angeles area one last night before I go. I find the closest Walmart and supply myself with a pair of shorts, blue jeans, socks, T-shirts, sandals, towels, toilet paper, bottled water, and air-fresheners for the car, as well as Toblerones. I get in line at the cash register along with the usual clientele—fat white women and their ice-cream-stained, pink-tank-top-wearing, snot-nosed kids hanging off the shopping carts, and fat black women with their oversized-shorts-and-shiny-basketball-jersey-sporting, buzz-cut, boogery kids hanging off the shopping carts. The cashier is unfriendly and slow. Next to her a kid with Down’s Syndrome wearing an “Our People Make the Difference” pin bags the purchases. I wait in line for a long time to get to the register. Then the cashier screws up and the system crashes. My credit card is not working, and we all wait for the store manager to come and fix the mess.
Walmart: a leech sucking on the flabby back of democracy. I leave in the usual misanthropic mood the place inspires. I unload my purchases in the car, unwrap the coconut air freshener, and inhale its trashy scent. Stella loathes it. So do I.
I find an ATM and withdraw two hundred dollars from our joint account. No more credit cards. No more complications. No more comfort. I want to go back to the beginning of things. I want to touch, feel, taste . . . I want to live again, God damn it.
*
Things were somehow going well with the rock band. The tapes of our first album sold before we were totally sick of the songs. Musically, we were supposedly reaching a new level. I needed a better guitar. Good instruments were not easy to find in those days. Needless to say, they were expensive. My grandpa stepped up and gave me his old Zhiguli as a gift. I fixed it, painted it red, and sold it. With the money, I bought a stolen Fender Stratocaster. For the first time, I realized what it meant to have the right instrument. I kept on writing songs, which we played in front of ever more people. At one of the gigs in a neighborhood bar along with the band Lucifer, our speakers blew and we sat on the edge of the little stage, dejected, waiting for a new amplifier. A gray-haired, serious-looking man approached us. He dropped some compliments and offered to organize a concert for us the next Sunday in the center of a nearby industrial town called Devnya. The money was good, too. He said they had professional sound and lighting equipment—we just needed to show up. We accepted the offer, of course. This was our first paid gig.
This time, I took my camera, along with the Fender, to capture the memorable event. A beat-up Chavdar bus drove us into a gray town, covered in what seemed to be ashes. The gray houses had gray roofs. On the gray streets we passed gray people bent over gray bicycles. It was as if I had ridden into a black-and-white dream.
We got off the bus, instruments in hand, and we found ourselves in the middle of a large crowd of old people waving red flags. Up on stage, under a giant red banner with the slogan of the newly reformed Communist party, a much decorated veteran from WWII was finishing his speech, thrusting a bony fist in the air. After him, schoolteachers got up, then nurses, then machinists, bakers, crane operators, factory workers, retirees, school girls, and even one local artist. Our promoter had conveniently forgotten to inform us about the nature of our audience. We, on the other hand, had never asked. He was nowhere to be seen, and we were forced to deal with his assistant—a round-faced, plain woman, with the well-intentioned and energetic radiance of a Girl Scout leader. She assured us that we could do anything we wanted and say whatever we wanted on stage—they were modern people. We put our heads together and decided that we would better serve democracy if we made ourselves heard instead of refusing the red party paycheck and going back to the bus stop and waiting for a bus (which would not come for another hour anyway).
After the communist rally was over, the crowd started thinning out, for it was almost time to drink some rakia. The murky sun was setting behind the bellowing smokestacks of the largest cement factory in Eastern European, which had discolored this town. We plugged in our instruments and blasted away with our most ferocious songs. From time to time, we shouted anti-communist slogans. The communists left the town square one by one, angrily turning gray overcoated backs on us and shaking gray heads.
And, of course, we didn’t get paid. Those were the times.
I didn’t give up. I kept at it, living in my own world, where things would always happen one way or the other. I somehow managed to conceal my technical impotency on the guitar. To the band, I elaborated theories on how I was looking for new musical structure and new ways of expression. I spoke of punk rock and heavy metal, but secretly listened to Bach, Beethoven, Paco De Lucia, Al Di Meola, Pat Metheny, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Stravinsky, Pink Floyd, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg . . . Eventually, I started digging deeper into jazz. I was reading more and more. I began having less and less time for rock and roll with the boys. We weren’t rehearsing as often anymore. I wasn’t satisfied with the conversations we had anymore. Often, I felt like I was sitting at a dinner table with some distant relatives. We didn’t have much to say to each other. When all of us were hanging out together, Stella and I could not wait to ditch them, so we could switch back to our own frequency.
I read like a maniac then—Nietzsche, Kant, James Fraser, Berdyaev, Hegel, Levy-Strauss, Propp, Mircea Eliade, Freud, Jung, Barthes, Bachelard, and Schopenhauer, especially Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Idea . . . whatever I came across, whatever was translated. I would spend hours drifting away with Castaneda’s visions, listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra. How indelibly did I mess with my head then?
*
I check into a shoddy motel a block away from Grand Ave. This neighborhood has a long-standing reputation for its nightclubs, pubs, striptease joints, hookers, and dope dealers. In the parking lot, there are old, beat-up Jeeps hung with surf boards and drying wetsuits. A bumper sticker showing a dog licking his thing reads: “Because they can.” This almost makes me smile.
I take a shower and shave. I register that the bruise on my face is even more noticeable. While deciding what to wear, I realize that I have forgotten to buy underwear, damn it. I put on my blue jeans, run down the stairs, cursing in my head, cross the dim lobby, pass the dark reception desk, and step outside.
The sun bursts in my eyes and, for the first few seconds, the police cars and the pointed guns don’t seem to have anything to do with me.
I freeze.
A very long moment passes until everything penetrates my mind and I understand that this is real.
Just then I reach down to zip up my still-open fly.
“Get down! Hands in the air! Let me see them! Get on the ground! Get down, get down, get down!” There are cops everywhere, leaning on the hoods of their vehicles, guns pointed at me.
I lift my hands in the air and fall face down on the hot asphalt. Here I am, you motherfuckers! Catch
me! Cuff me and take me away from here. Shove me in the darkest prison, in its dankest cell. Rid the world of me. Take my health, my youth, my life, my time, take everything. I need nothing if she is not here.
And she’s not here.
Someone grabs my neck, pushes me down. Two strong hands search me for weapons. Handcuffs tighten around my wrists. All this hurts. My right cheek and the burning asphalt. The black shoes of the police officer pushing me to the ground. He pulls my wallet out of my back pocket. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him flipping it open with one free hand, looking at my driver’s license, and then dropping it on my back. He seems disappointed. They drag me behind the cars. I notice that none of the cops have changed positions. Then I realize that I might not be the only one with a problem in this motel. In the doorway I had just come out of a moment ago, a brown, muscular, tattooed body appears, throwing his hands in the air:
“OK, OK, OK, I’m here. Here I am, here I am.” The man looks calm.
He’s almost smiling, obviously resigned to his fate and the number of cops. Our eyes meet. The cops again start screaming for him to lie down. He breaks into a big grin as he’s kneeling down. He bends forward and, just before his body hits the ground, his face twists. His right hand disappears behind his lower back, and reemerges quick as a snake, holding a pistol.
“Die, bitch, die!” He yells, shooting at me. Gunshots from everywhere blend into a single, long, deafening bang.
Seconds later, it’s strangely quiet again and his body is lying in the parking lot. One of his legs is trembling. My ears are shrieking. Gravel chips are stuck in my cheek, the back of my head itches, my eyelid twitches. And I am handcuffed.
Blue uniforms swarm the body. I hear the wailing ambulance and police sirens. Onlookers appear out of nowhere. Somebody shoves me into the back seat of a squad car. As we take off, I see how trickles of blood begin creeping out from under the dead body.
The next hours pass in taking fingerprints, running a background check, and a long Q&A session. The detective interrogating me is more or less my age. He assures me that this is something he has to do, it’s nothing personal. He offers coffee and I turn it down. He tells me about the shoot-out. The suspect who was shot and killed was a gang member wanted in several states for the possession and dealing of narcotics, gun trafficking, racketeering, rape, and the murder of a police officer, etc. . . . He most likely thought that I had ratted him out or that I was an undercover cop helping with his arrest. He most likely wanted to take me with him wherever he was going. Who knows what actually passed through his head along with the bullets.
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