While dragging my sorry feet around the city, I went through the long list of my miseries, and finally concluded that nothing exciting was happening in my life. I was fat and I didn’t know how to lose weight; I had an evil bitch for a boss and I didn’t know how to defend myself; I had no boyfriend and I had no idea how to find and reel one in. “Yep, I’m pretty pathetic,” I thought to myself as I walked home, counting the cement slabs on the sidewalk.
There’s a dusty deli around the corner from my apartment that hasn’t changed in years. My friend Craig calls it the Salmonella Deli, because its meager shelves have held the exact same products ever since I moved into the neighborhood.
The only things I buy there are nonperishable goods, like toilet paper or dishwashing soap. The Salmonella Deli is always open, but it’s always empty. As I walked by, I wondered if my life was just like the Salmonella Deli: open, but empty, with a few untouched goods collecting dust on the shelves, destined to remain the same way forever and ever.
I climbed the three flights up to my apartment, and slammed the door behind me.
I checked my answering machine—no messages—and I felt like the most unwanted monster on the face of the earth. I bit my lower lip and sat alone on my couch, ready to throw myself a bigass pity party.
But just when I was about to strap on my pity-party hat, a strange thing happened. My bag, which I had left on the couch just as I always do, tipped over by itself—yes, by itself—as if an invisible hand had pushed it on the side, and one single item fell out of it. A business card made of the most exquisite watermarked paper I have ever touched. It read: Madame Natasha Sokolov.
I picked up the phone and called her.
CHAPTER 5
The trip all the way down to Coney Island from Manhattan can be a pain in the ass, but it’s always rewarding, because, after spending almost an hour in the dark tunnels of the subway, the train comes out into a parallel universe. The subway runs aboveground in some parts of Brooklyn, so even before you get out of the train you can get a glimpse of what you are going to find in this area.
Coney Island still had some of the old buildings and rides that were world-renowned in the twenties, but now were run-down in an oddly wonderful and magical way. It was like going to the ruins of Disneyland. I couldn’t help imagining the era, the people, and the smells of that time. It was a lot like going to a ghost town, in that you knew that something happened there but you have to guess what it was. On top of that, you had the Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach, with rows of stores that didn’t even bother to advertise their merchandise in English. Entire Russian families were hanging out on the boardwalk, or—because their homes lacked porches—on the sidewalk in front of their houses. I’ve never been to Cuba myself, but when I hear my mother talk about La Habana in the fifties, I imagine that it must have been a lot like this, the men playing dominoes by their stoops and the women gossiping and looking at the people walking by.
That Saturday morning I got off the subway at the Brighton Beach station and rushed down Surf Avenue to meet Madame. I walked by a group of old Russian men who had turned the sidewalk into a traveling casino. Comfortably seated around a folding table with assorted dining-room chairs, they played cards while chain-smoking. As I passed by their table, I heard them saying something in Russian that—obviously—I couldn’t understand, but I sensed that it had to do with me. I crossed to the other side of the street, and then I heard them laughing. Not knowing what they were saying made me feel paranoid, so I sped up until I couldn’t hear them anymore.
Following Madame’s instructions, I walked past the old Nathan’s with its famous hot dogs, and the Cyclone, the ancient wooden roller coaster. I’ve heard that roller-coaster lovers think that the Cyclone is the best ride in the world, but it scares the hell out of me. It squeaks and screeches on every dip and turn, as if it’s about to fall apart.
“You gotta be crazy to get on that thing,” I said to myself as I finally made a right into an alley that led to the boardwalk. Just as Madame described it, I found a Russian diner that had large trays of knishes in the window.
I stood outside for a minute and started to hyperventilate. I had been preparing myself very carefully for this meeting. “This is going to be just an informative interview to quench my curiosity,” I told myself. I wasn’t planning to let this woman lure me into something I didn’t want to do. But I desperately wanted to know in more detail what she meant when she said that men would pay for me. What kind of men were these? What would they want me to do? How much money would they pay? Actually, money was the last thing on my mind, but that someone would actually pay for my company sounded like a bad joke to me.
Maybe the whole thing was a deadly trap. I fantasized that Madame was going to sell me to a horde of Russian mobsters that would lock me up in the basement of a creepy Long Island whorehouse, forcing me to scrub dirty floors while the skinny girls pleasured nasty senior citizens.
As irrational as these fears were, I confess that I was truly scared. I had brought my tiny can of Mace with me—just in case—and I left a note in my apartment explaining where I was going, and who I was going to meet, in case I disappeared. I figured that eventually Lillian would come to my apartment with her copies of my keys, discover the letter, and call the police. With some luck the cops would find me—or whatever was left of me.
I walked into the diner and found Madame sitting comfortably at the counter, having a knish. She looked as regal as she had in the tax-preparation office. She was wearing another fine white silk blouse, an olive-green pencil skirt with a high cut on the back that playfully showed her calves when she walked, and, to top it off, a light wool coat that was perfect for the crispy April wind.
Call me crazy, but the lack of hordes of Russian mobsters willing to abduct me somehow disappointed me.
“I was starting to think that you had been abducted or something,” she said with her Russian accent. Was her concern a coincidence, or was she reading my thoughts?
“I’m so sorry for being late…”
“I’m just teasing you, honey.”
She had a funny way of saying “honey.” She would pronounce the “h” in a hard and throaty way, the same way Spaniards pronounce the “j.” She also turned her “w”s into “v”s, so every time I talked to her I had the impression that I was talking to a Russian Cold War spy.
“Joney, vy don’t vee get a couple of potato knishes and then vee go for a stroll on the boardvalk?”
“I’m trying to stay away from carbs,” I replied politely, mentally calculating, then cringing from, the barrage of calories I supposed were contained in those Russian delicacies.
“Nonsense!” she said. “These are the best knishes in New York! Good food doesn’t make you fat, it makes you beautiful.” She ordered me to eat one, as she handed it to me on a paper napkin.
“Okay, I’ll just try a little piece,” I replied.
“And what are you going to do with the rest? Feed it to the pigeons? Come on!”
“I’m down to one piece of bread a day,” I said, thinking of Jorge’s croissants. “I really can’t…”
“Joney,” she said, pushing her throaty “h,” “we could be dead tomorrow. Eat the knish. Live for today.”
I couldn’t say that she was manipulative, but she certainly knew how to present a hard-to-defeat argument, so I grabbed my knish, and after one bite I realized that she was right: it was delicious. I tried to eat it without guilt as we made our way out of the diner and strolled down the boardwalk.
“What a beautiful day,” she said, taking a deep breath. “It’s one of those days when you feel that the world is yours to take, right?”
I had never felt that the world was mine to take, but I nodded as if I understood the sensation that she described. Knowing that I was lying, she looked at me with her Mona Lisa smile and went straight to the point: “So we have to make this fast, because I have a business to run. First, let me ask you something, honey. Are you by any
chance a law-enforcement agent?”
“Me? No!”
“I thought not. I can smell them a mile away, but I had to ask anyway.”
Okay, I’m not that naïve. I watch HBO. This is your classic crime-safety question. Law-enforcement agents can’t lie, so if a drug dealer or a prostitute asks that question, the agent has to answer with the truth. That’s how they avoid getting arrested.
The fact that she asked me that freaked me out in a major way; and yet it made our meeting much more appealing. Wow! She was real! A real pimp! I don’t think I had ever met anyone who could be accused of a felony, so being in her presence was like hanging out with the star of a movie, or with a character from a TV show. As these ideas were rushing through my head, she came up with a line that totally threw me off.
“So tell me, how can I help you?”
“How can you help me?”
“Sure. You are the one who called me.”
This woman was smart. In one sentence she turned the tables around. All along I was thinking that she wanted something from me. But, as she pointed out, I was the one who wanted something from her. I’d requested the meeting—she just made a remark and gave me her card. But I was well prepared mentally, so I didn’t fall into the trap right away. I acted like a seasoned real-state buyer and requested more information.
“Well, I was very intrigued by what you told me.”
“What? That you are a beautiful woman?” she said, looking at me straight in the eye. There was something about the way she said it that freaked me out. She noticed my reaction and laughed out loud.
“Don’t worry, honey, I’m not a lesbian—not that there’s anything wrong with being one.”
Then she softened her tone, and with the trustworthy warmth of a loving grandmother she said, “Why are you so intrigued by my compliments?”
“Well, it’s just that I don’t hear them very often…” I choked up as I said this.
She realized that what I was saying was extremely painful to me, so, very softly, she took me by the arm and, leaning gently on me, as if she were telling me where a treasure was hidden, she whispered, “You don’t hear them very often because you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd. If you are interested, I can introduce you to men who will shower you with compliments. Men who would very much enjoy your company.”
Here we go again with the emotional roller coaster. I went from trusting this woman to wanting to run away from her as fast as I could. I stopped in my tracks and looked at her.
“What exactly are you talking about?”
She pulled me by the arm again and, without giving any importance to the tone of alarm in my voice, said, “Let’s go to a place where we can talk.”
Okay…if you don’t believe what happened next, I can’t blame you, but I swear on my ancestors in Cuba, Africa, Spain, and Ireland—yes I have a bit of Irish in me—that the following events actually happened.
Madame took me to the Cyclone. Since the old roller coaster was made out of wood, it was loud as hell, and every time the cars took a turn, or a dip, it rattled as if the whole thing was about to fall apart. This was the spot that Madame was referring to as “a place where we can talk.” I guess you could talk at the Cyclone, but who the hell could hear you? It’s like trying to have a conversation inside of a maraca. And, to my surprise, that was exactly the point.
We stood on the platform waiting for the cars to stop and unload a pack of screaming teenagers, but I noticed that at least four of the cars remained occupied by rather old, rather serious, rather mobster-looking fellows. The car adjacent to ours was occupied by two Italian guys in their late sixties. They didn’t move out of their seats, they just pulled a long string of tickets and gave a couple more to the attendant.
“Ciao, Rocco,” Madame said to one of them.
“Ciao, Madame,” the man replied, taking off his hat for a second. “Signorina…” he said to me, bowing respectfully. I smiled and nodded.
“Who are these guys?” I asked Madame as we sat in the roller-coaster wagon and strapped ourselves to our seats.
“A lot of people come here to discuss business,” Madame simply replied.
To discuss business? The noise in there was enough to defy any FBI microphone, so you can only imagine the type of Business that they were discussing. Those guys could be disclosing the location of Jimmy Hoffa, or even the Lindbergh baby, and not even God could hear them.
The roller coaster started moving, and as soon as the rattling noise began, the mobsters behind us continued with their calmed conversation. Madame smiled at me and continued with ours.
“First of all, let me explain that I have been arrested, but never convicted, because what I do is not illegal.”
A chill went down my spine.
“So if this is not illegal why do we have to talk in a roller coaster?” I said.
“Better safe than sorry.”
Who could argue with that logic? Madame continued, “This is the deal. I run a very special agency. I connect my customers with women like you. Women who can provide comfort to them.”
“Are you running an escort service?” I asked point-blank.
“No,” she answered without flinching. “My customers don’t buy sex, which as you know is illegal. They are men who have a lot of money, and they’re willing to pay top dollars for…certain services.”
I have to pause right here to analyze that last exchange. In two sentences, Madame disclosed that:
a)She had been arrested.
b)She ran something that sounded a lot like an escort service.
c)Her clients were so kinky that they didn’t even buy sexual favors. They paid for something way more expensive than sex.
As I was pondering all these thoughts, the roller-coaster car started slowly climbing up the first hill of the ride, loaded with the Italian mobsters and the two of us.
“So what type of ‘services’ would I have to provide to your customers?” I asked, arching an eye-brow.
“Comfort, you just have to provide comfort to them.”
“And how is that comfort being provided?” I asked, trying to corner her.
“Oh! Comfort can be provided in so many ways! It depends on the customer. Some need a hug, some need a little slap on the butt. Some like to be heard, some like to be ignored. The bottom line is that these are men who appreciate voluptuous women, and they would pay a lot of money to worship a body like yours,” she answered.
“Wait a minute!” I said, “Worship a body like mine? I’m sorry, but that sounds a lot like sex to me. What do you mean, worship a body like mine?”
“I meant exactly what I said: they’ll pay to worship a body like yours. That makes them feel good.”
At that precise moment, the roller coaster took a sharp dive and I screamed, but I couldn’t tell you if it was the dive or her statement that made me shriek.
As the car started climbing the next hill, I managed to ask another question.
“So what will they do to me?”
“Oh, you can make them so happy with so little! These are guys who’d feel honored if you let them give you a massage, or…I don’t know…even smell your feet.”
“Smell my feet?” I uttered in complete disbelief.
“Are you interested or not?” snapped Madame impatiently.
The car dived again, I screamed again, and I threw my hands over my mouth. I had to stop talking for fear of puking out the potato knish, which was starting to rise in my digestive tract. I wanted to get the hell out of there, excusing myself with a line like “Okay, this has been fun, but it’s time to get going,” but on a roller coaster, once you’re on, you have to stay for the whole ride. I was on for a ride with Madame too, and I could already tell that jumping off was not an option anymore.
I was feeling dizzy when we left the Cyclone. We walked in silence. Madame was letting me take it all in.
I looked at the ocean. The seagulls were flying low, and some were eating breadcrumbs that a child was
throwing on the boardwalk. A young couple in Rollerblades swirled around us, and then skated away, laughing and holding hands. Seeing them was inspiring and depressing at the same time. I felt that I had a question stuck in my throat, but I didn’t have the courage to speak.
I finally broke the silence with, predictably, my biggest concern.
“Okay, the part that I don’t understand is why anybody would worship my body. Do you realize that I can hardly remember the last time I got laid?”
Talk about timing—as we walked by, an old man sitting on the boardwalk said something to me in Russian that made Madame laugh out loud.
“What did he say?”
“It’s a catcall. He said that he would eat you with all your clothes on, even if he had to spend a month pooping rags.”
“Eeeeeew!” I said
“What’s your problem?” she said, offended. “It’s a compliment! I find it flattering.”
“Not from him!”
“From anybody.”
“But he’s a dirty old man.”
“Why is he dirty? Because he is speaking out his mind?”
“That eating-and-pooping thing is disgusting,” I replied.
“It’s a metaphor. He’s just telling you that you are a sexy woman.”
“But he must be a hundred years old!”
“He is someone who finds you attractive,” Madame said as if she had never said anything more serious in her life. “Be humble, and be grateful to anyone who pays you a compliment.” Her tone was so ominous that for a second I thought she was quoting the Old Testament.
The strange part is that she was somehow right. Here I was—whining about being rejected—and then, when some guy paid attention to me, I felt entitled to dismiss him. I realized that I was wrong, but I still tried to defend myself by beating on a dead horse: my self-esteem.
B as in Beauty Page 6
