Becoming the Talbot Sisters

by Rachel Linden

  Charlie shook her head, struck anew by the complex reality of Bosnia and its neighboring countries. If you didn’t know to look, you might never glimpse the underlying web of ethnic and religious conflict that lay beneath the Balkans, a gridlock of mismatched puzzle pieces with no clear solutions.

  The two sisters wandered through the old city, through the maze of streets crowded with low red-tile-roofed shops and restaurants. Waverly stepped inside a shop to browse, and Charlie waited outside for her. She shivered, pulling her leather jacket closer around her. The air was colder here, and wet. While Budapest was warming and budding for spring, Sarajevo was still chilly with the long touch of winter. The city lay in a long valley surrounded by mountains on every side. The location was perfect for skiing, and Sarajevo had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. Charlie wrapped her arms around herself and wished she’d remembered to bring her winter coat. A few minutes later Waverly returned and showed off her purchase, a pair of rose-colored Turkish house slippers elaborately embroidered with gold thread.

  “Come on, let’s go get some supper,” Charlie said, eager to be somewhere warm. She briskly set off toward her favorite cevapi place, ready to introduce her sister to the wonders of Bosnian grilled meat. It was growing dark, but the old city was bustling, the shops spilling warm light out onto the smooth sand-colored paving stones of the ancient streets. They squeezed their way into Cevabdzinica Zeljo, a small restaurant crowded with wooden tables and chairs. A couple of Russian tourists were just leaving, and Charlie grabbed their spot by the window. It was warm in the restaurant from the open grills of the kitchen, the steamy air laden with the mouth-watering smell of grilling meat. Waverly sniffed appreciatively as she slid into the chair across from Charlie.

  “Whatever that is, it smells heavenly,” she called to her sister, pitching her voice above the loud chatter of other diners.

  A hard-faced waitress approached them with two plastic-coated menus, but Charlie waved them off, giving an order for the both of them. The woman nodded and headed for the grills at the back of the restaurant. In a few moments she came back, sliding two metal plates onto their table. Each held a fresh hot pita stuffed with chopped raw onion and cevapi, the fast food of the Balkans, finger-size skinless minced-meat sausages grilled to perfection. A white substance that looked like cream cheese lay mounded on the side of the plate.

  “Wait till you try this.” Charlie grinned, cutting a chunk of pita and cevapi and smearing it with the white spread.

  “What is it?” Waverly asked, pointing to the spread.

  “Kajmak. It’s like butter and cream cheese had a love child.” Charlie chewed and swallowed, closing her eyes to better enjoy the experience.

  “Oh my. It’s delicious. So creamy.” Waverly rolled a bit of cevapi and kajmak around in her mouth, analyzing it. “Maybe we should use this on the show.”

  Someone tapped on the glass behind Charlie’s head, and she turned, mouth full of cevapi, staring for a moment in incomprehension at the handsome, dark-haired young man waving at her through the window. Then she recognized him: it was Arben’s brother, Ilir. He grinned, and Charlie motioned him in.

  Ilir slipped into the crowded restaurant and found an empty chair at another table. He dragged it over to them and straddled it backward. “I found you,” he said proudly.

  “What in the world are you doing here?” Charlie said, pitching her voice loudly to be heard over the noisy din of other diners.

  Ilir shrugged. “I came down with Arben yesterday. He’s got a meeting about a Roma kids camp, and I came along. I ran into your producer in town, and he told me you were in the old city.”

  “So you just wandered around until you found us?” Charlie asked.

  Ilir nodded, looking pleased. The waitress stopped by their table and scowled at him, waiting for his order.

  “A Coke,” he said, unfazed by her glower. She returned in a moment and thumped the glass bottle onto the table.

  “I found a great location for your show,” Ilir said, taking a swig. He seemed jittery, full of nervous energy. He tapped his foot against the leg of the chair, looking from Charlie to Waverly expectantly.

  Waverly leaned forward, instantly intrigued. “Tell me about it.”

  Ilir grinned. “My cousin’s getting married this weekend, and she says you can film the whole thing if you want. My aunts are making traditional food, and you can watch them and learn. It will be great—real Albanian food, dances, crazy Albanian traditions. The Americans will love it. You want to see the real Albanian culture? This is your chance.”

  Waverly’s eyes lit up. She put down her fork and looked at Ilir with a calculated expression. Charlie could see her sister already estimating the viewership numbers that an Albanian wedding could draw for her show.

  “Where is it?” Charlie asked, trying to think about logistics. She needed to make sure she could make it back to Belgrade from wherever they were in time for the trial on the seventeenth.

  “Near Tirana,” Ilir announced proudly. Seeing her hesitation, he assured her, “But don’t worry. I’ve got a van. I’ll take you.”

  In the end Waverly and Ilir prevailed. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, Waverly insisted when Charlie tried to convince her to stay closer to Belgrade. But there would be music and special food at the wedding, maybe some shenanigans they could capture on camera. It was a golden opportunity, one Waverly didn’t want to miss.

  “This wedding could help save the show,” she wheedled, trying to cajole Charlie into saying yes. “Anything we can do to draw viewers is a step toward securing Simply Perfect’s future. Come on, it will be fun.”

  “Okay,” Charlie reluctantly agreed, “but I have to be back in Belgrade by April 17. No exceptions.”

  “Of course.” Waverly waved away her sister’s concern. “We’ll just go for the weekend, and then you’re free to be wherever you need to be. Ilir says it’s only a few hours away.”

  Charlie raised her eyebrows, unconvinced. “Nothing is only ever a few hours in the Balkans,” she muttered, but Waverly was already texting Beau about the change of plans.

  Two days later they were waiting in the lobby when Ilir arrived. He rattled up to their hotel in an ancient blue Ford Transit. Charlie yawned, a bit bleary-eyed, watching as he parked in front of the entrance. Waverly was texting instructions to Beau, who would follow the next day with the rest of the crew after they finished shooting additional footage of Sarajevo. Waverly and Charlie were going on ahead to meet Ilir’s aunts, scout out the wedding location, and start brainstorming the new episode.

  Ilir honked his horn twice, and when they came through the hotel door, he jumped out of the driver’s seat and helped load Charlie’s small backpack and Waverly’s massive rolling suitcase into the back of the Transit. He seemed less sociable than he had a few days before, more distracted, almost curt. Charlie shrugged it off. Maybe he wasn’t a morning person. She could sympathize. Waverly was remarkably chipper in the mornings, bright-eyed and inquisitive, going full speed ahead as soon as her eyes opened. Sometimes it was a little too much to handle.

  Although Charlie had initially been reluctant about the entire trip, she had to admit that it was probably time to move on from Sarajevo. Albania seemed like as good a place as any to hide out. Staying in one place for more than a few days felt too risky; she already had a feeling they’d stayed in Sarajevo too long. It was a small city where gossip traveled fast. And Waverly and her film crew weren’t exactly inconspicuous. Charlie was glad to be headed somewhere new, somewhere she could hide before heading to Belgrade for the trial.

  “Should we be concerned about riding in this?” Waverly asked sotto voce, casting a skeptical look at the rusted body of the van.

  Charlie shrugged. “No more than anything else you’ll find around here. It will probably get us there okay.” She climbed up onto the passenger seat and beckoned to her sister. “Come on. Albania’s waiting.”

  They sped south out of Sarajevo toward Montenegro
, Ilir pushing the van as fast as he dared on the narrow winding roads. The drive was taxing, hours of sharp, never-ending turns as they climbed mountain after mountain and descended into one valley after another. It was also breathtakingly beautiful, with sheer rock walls, deep green lakes, and jagged cliffs rising above them. When they reached a summit, the world spread out around them in a panorama of snowcapped peaks as far as the eye could see.

  While the vistas were stunning, the ride was by no means comfortable. The van was drafty and creaky, the suspension bone-jarring. Waverly and Charlie talked little, by turns staring out at the gorgeous scenery and hanging on for dear life to avoid being thrown sideways as the Transit rounded yet another hairpin turn at startling speeds. Luckily neither of them was prone to motion sickness, but even so, Charlie was feeling a bit queasy by the second hour. She stared straight ahead, concentrating on a fixed point in the distance, willing the ancient vehicle to stay on the road, willing the minutes to fly by faster.

  Several hours in, Charlie asked Ilir to pull over so she could relieve her full bladder. There was nothing around them, just a vast expanse of sky above the gray boulders and shrubs on the top of yet another mountain. They were in Montenegro and had not passed a town in a long while. Occasionally they would see a house in the distance, perched on a rocky incline, smoke curling from the chimney. But nothing else existed except the gray ribbon of road and the seemingly endless mountains. Charlie crept behind a boulder and crouched to relieve herself. When she was done she joined Waverly at the nose of the van, both of them pausing to stretch their tense muscles. Ilir stepped away and pulled out his cell phone. Amazing, thought Charlie, that in the middle of such desolation there was still cell reception.

  “There’s nothing here,” Waverly mused, taking in the vast, empty landscape. “I’ve never felt so alone in the world.”

  Charlie yawned, nodding. The fresh air was settling her queasy stomach. “When the Ottomans came through they took one look at these mountains and decided whatever was on the other side wasn’t worth the trouble,” she said, joining her sister on the edge of the cliff. “I can see their point.”

  Ilir rejoined them, texting on his phone. He looked up. “We should go now,” he said, heading back to the van. “We’re late.”

  “Late for what?” Charlie asked. She’d been unaware they were on a time schedule. Ilir slammed his door shut as Waverly and Charlie clambered into their seats, Charlie riding shotgun and Waverly on the bench seat behind them.

  “We’re meeting friends,” he said briefly. “They are helping with the show.”

  As he started the van and pulled back onto the road, Charlie surveyed him for a moment. He was just nineteen, handsome and cocky, with a bit of a swagger and an endearing smile. There was something effortlessly charming about Albanian men, a confidence and warmth that could be thoroughly disarming. Although Charlie knew Arben had been worried about his brother in recent years, disapproving of the company he was keeping, Ilir was one of her favorites around the office.

  After driving for an hour on another almost deserted stretch of road, they stopped in a small town in the south of Montenegro. It was just a dot on the map, a handful of tired houses, a gas station, and a restaurant with a bar. Ilir pulled the van into the parking lot of the restaurant, a squat building with one other vehicle parked outside, an ancient blue Lada. In the restaurant window was a yellow sign for Jelen pivo, a Serbian beer. Out front by the road on a long spit was what looked like the carcass of a sheep roasting over a bed of live orange coals.

  “We eat here,” Ilir announced. “The owner is the father of my uncle’s wife.”

  Waverly peered between the front seats at the spit. “What is that?” she asked. The animal took another rotation over the coals. With its legs trussed together, it looked as though it were making a graceful leap over the grill.

  Ilir shrugged. “Maybe lamb. Come on, food is inside.”

  It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dim and smoky interior. Three large Balkan men were hunched over a square table, sharing a platter of food and bottles of Jelen. As they passed the table, Charlie glanced over at them. One of the men met her eyes. He was huge, with a shaved head and a tattoo of a double-headed eagle on his neck. She looked away from his unfriendly stare, down at the platter on the table. It was the partially eaten head of a sheep, its face bald and beaky with one wide, blank eye turned toward the ceiling. Waverly saw it too and let out a muffled exclamation, hurrying to follow Ilir. The men cast stony glances in their direction, and Charlie didn’t look back. She could feel the men’s eyes following her as she walked away.

  Once they were seated at a corner table, the proprietor shuffled over, greeting Ilir familiarly with an embrace and a kiss on both cheeks, then handed them all sticky plastic menus. Ilir spoke to him in Serbian and the man nodded and replied, eyeing Charlie and Waverly with an air of tired disinterest.

  “I told him who you are,” Ilir explained. Two of the men at the table with the sheep’s head were smoking cigarettes, and the smoke drifted lazily across the room.

  Waverly wrinkled her nose. “Are they allowed to smoke in here?” she hissed to Charlie. “It’s bad for the baby.”

  Charlie only nodded, not bothering to explain to Waverly that cigarettes and most Balkan men were inseparable. Many had been smoking since puberty or before. She studied the menu, trying to make out the Cyrillic letters. She could read a little. Most of the dishes were variations on grilled meats—stuffed with cheese or plain—with sides of bread and pickled peppers. She recognized csevapcsicsa, the Montenegrin version of cevapi.

  “I’m feeling a little light-headed from the road,” Waverly announced, scanning the menu even though she had no chance of understanding anything on it. “Do they have anything light—a vegetarian option or a salad?”

  Ilir consulted the menu, then beckoned the proprietor over and questioned him. The man rattled off a reply, and Ilir shook his head at Waverly. “Unfortunately, they do not have salads. Only peppers in vinegar. And ajvar.”

  “Ajvar?” Waverly looked confused.

  “It’s a condiment,” Charlie muttered. “The one with the roasted red peppers you were so excited about.”

  “Oh.” Waverly looked disappointed. “Well, how about some fresh fruit? A fruit salad maybe?”

  Ilir asked the question and translated the reply, although the proprietor’s nonverbal was a giveaway. He was looking at Waverly suspiciously from underneath bushy gray brows.

  Ilir relayed the message. “He says fruit is for children.”

  “Well, what do they have?” Waverly asked, scanning the menu.

  “They have meat,” Ilir explained, gesturing to all of the items. “And chicken.”

  Waverly looked nonplussed. “Isn’t chicken a kind of meat?”

  Ilir shrugged. “It’s different. And they have sausages.”

  Charlie raised her menu slightly to cover her smile and ordered the grilled pork stuffed with cheese. Waverly gave in and ordered chicken with ajvar and a side of pickles.

  During lunch Charlie noticed the table of men watching them. They had finished their shared sheep’s head and were sitting smoking and drinking another round of beer. She bent over her meal and ate quickly, eager to leave. There was a lonely air of menace about the place. If something happened here, the outside world might never know. For the first time she realized how alone she and Waverly were. If not for Ilir, they could easily disappear off the map.

  When she looked up, the men were gone. No one else came into the restaurant. The proprietor was behind the long wooden bar, smoking a cigarette and watching a grainy television mounted in the corner high on the wall. When they had finished the meal, he reappeared with the bill and a tray with three shot glasses of clear liquid.

  “Homemade rakija,” Ilir explained. “From plums in his garden. You have to try. It’s the best.”

  “It’s like strong brandy,” Charlie said, taking a shot glass from the tray but not tasting it.
“Everyone has a cousin or uncle who makes it in their basement.”

  Waverly took a glass and eyed it skeptically. “Is it safe?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Usually.” She pushed her glass over to Ilir. “I can’t because of the baby,” she explained, gesturing to the mound of her stomach.

  Ilir addressed the proprietor, and wordlessly the man took back Charlie’s shot glass, returning a moment later with a small open bottle of pear juice. “For you.” Ilir nodded to her. “For free.”

  “Hvala.” Charlie thanked the man in her very limited Serbian and took the bottle. She didn’t really want pear juice, but it seemed rude not to accept it. She took a few sips as Ilir and Waverly clinked their shot glasses and downed their drinks in one swallow.

  “Oh my goodness, that is potent.” Waverly coughed and sputtered, eyes watering. “It’s like drinking gasoline.”

  Ilir stood. “I need to make a call,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “I’ll be back. Stay here.” He lingered for a moment at the table, and Charlie had the impression that he was waiting for something. After a minute he headed toward the front of the restaurant and went out to the parking lot. Charlie craned her head and peered out the window behind her. The three men who had been in the restaurant were still in the parking lot, sitting in the old blue Lada. Ilir crossed to the car, and the driver rolled down the window. Ilir bent down and gestured to the restaurant, talking to them.