Gorgeous East

by null

  “I want you to get the fuck out of here right now,” he said in a low voice, and a black something in his tone made Smith feel afraid. “Get up and get out and don’t you ever call her, don’t you fucking ever come to Istanbul again! If you do, I’ll fucking . . .”

  He rose out of his seat, about to lunge at Smith, his thick fingers curling to choke the life out of him; Smith casting about for a weapon—a bottle, a plate a fork, anything—when Jessica’s voice came from behind.

  “Kasim! Stop it right now!”

  Smith allowed himself a sigh of relief.

  The Turk looked up, glowering, as Jessica stepped back around the table.

  “I want this bastard gone!” he said, raising his voice. “He came here from Paris on the Orient Express just to fuck you!”

  “Kasim, stop it!” Jessica said, horrified. “That’s out of line! John and I have known each other for years. We went to grad school together, we starved in New York together. We’re always going to be friends.”

  Vatran made a broad, denunciatory gesture, reminiscent of an actor in a silent melodrama. Then he seized her arm in a brutal grip. “You’re coming home with me!”

  But Jessica pulled away angrily. “Like hell I am!” she said between her teeth. “Not when you’re acting like a real Turkish son of a bitch!”

  Smith smiled to himself at this, remembering the similar scene, roles reversed, at that taverna in Cihangir. One thing about Jessica—she couldn’t be coerced into doing anything she didn’t want to do.

  “Yalanci orospu!” Vatran shouted and a gasp went up from surrounding tables.

  Smith knew the second word meant whore; the first he didn’t know, but figured it was probably bad.

  With a quick swipe, Vatran knocked the remaining meze plates to the pavement in a dramatic spray of white crockery shards and olive oil, and, still shouting in Turkish, stormed off. Two waiters ran after him shaking their fists, their blue-and-white comic opera caps askew, but he was already gone and they turned around and came back. The manager, an elaborately mustachioed fellow wearing the unlikely combination of business suit and white apron, emerged from the interior and began yelling at Smith.

  “What’s he saying?” Smith said.

  “You don’t want to know,” Jessica said, turning to engage the furious little man. “ Yavas, yavas . . .” she began, trying to calm him. And she managed to resolve the dispute after a few minutes haggling, using a combination of personal beauty, effusive apologies, and 375 Turkish lirasi—a little under 200 U.S. dollars.

  “Sorry about all that,” Jessica said as they were walking away.

  “Don’t you think you should go after Vatran?” Smith asked, though he didn’t mean it.

  Jessica considered this for a moment. “He needs to cool his jets for a while,” she said. “That kind of juvenile-slash-macho-slash-asshole behavior is completely unacceptable.”

  “I don’t get it,” Smith said. “I thought the dinner was his idea.”

  “Well, sort of,” she equivocated. “I mean you can’t visit a Turk’s woman without visiting the Turk, right?”

  Smith realized suddenly that it hadn’t been Vatran’s idea at all. That it had been part of some obscure scheme of Jessica’s—to make the man jealous; to relieve the boredom of living a settled life in Istanbul with an hour’s worth of of psychodrama.

  They came down Nevizade Sokuk onto the main thoroughfare and walked along past the European-style shops with scantily clad mannequins in the windows or sleek, white kitchen appliances. And suddenly, it was two years ago. They were in Istanbul again, on vacation, with the night ahead of them. Smith closed his eyes and imagined she was his once more.

  “Well, ex-boyfriend,” Jessica murmured at last. It seemed she had read his thoughts. “What do you want to do with me now?”

  8.

  Saturday night and all the bars and clubs this side of town were packed with Westerners—the usual mix of tourists and backpackers, leavened with the occasional secular Turk. Smith and Jessica went to several popular spots up and down Istiklal Caddesi: First to the Argentine-themed Bescini Peron, which was like a bar in Buenos Aires, with vino tinto by the carafe and framed photos of Argentine celebrities on the walls (Evita, Borges, Juan Manuel Fangio, Carlos Gardel). Then to the Cafe Salonika, a Greek place where divorced, middle-aged European women on package tours drank too much ouzo and danced on tables. Then Cicek Bar, a sleek modern lounge favored by Turkish media types, all steel and glass, grafted uncomfortably into the remains of a gutted Byzantine-era chapel. The antiseptic postmodern interior, Jessica pointed out proudly, had been designed by Vatran himself.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Horrible,” Smith said. “Awful.”

  “You’re just jealous,” she said.

  “True,” Smith said. “But it’s still awful.”

  Jessica turned away, annoyed, and spent a half hour talking to an acquaintance, an Istanbul television personality, a balding, shifty-eyed man who did canned government-scripted political commentary on Istanbul Dokuz. Jessica didn’t bother to introduce Smith, who sat by pouring more raki down his throat. When they exited Cicek after a while, Jessica left a barely touched glass of white wine on the counter. She’d done this at each stop so far, remaining—at least to Smith’s increasingly drunken perspective—obstinately sober. He was beginning to slur his words, approaching that maudlin, sodden hour after which he’d remember nothing in the morning.

  “I never did get why you left me, Jess,” he said, trying to keep the obvious whine out of his voice. “What happened to us?”

  “Let’s not go there,” Jessica said, taking a dainty sip of her new glass of wine.

  They were at Buyuk Londra now, a dead-on imitation of an English pub: warm bitters on tap, rugby on the tele, tasteless pub grub (broiled chicken and creamed peas) wilting under heat lamps on a steam cart.

  “Come on,” Smith persisted. “I just want to know. For my own peace of mind.”

  Jessica sighed. “Haven’t you been reading my e-mails for the last two years? I thought we went through all that.”

  “Oh, I read them,” Smith said. “Then I printed them out and stapled them to my chest.”

  “One thing’s clear”—she couldn’t suppress a grin—“you’re a fucking masochist.” Then: “Seriously, Johnny, you’ve got to move on.”

  “I know that,” Smith said. “But I still love you.”

  “You don’t love me,” Jessica said. “You love the idea of me.”

  “O.K.,” Smith said. “What idea’s that?”

  “You know—healthy, big-titted, friendly blond slut. Like Anna Nicole Smith, only with some brains.”

  “You’re thinking of Vatran,” Smith said. “That’s his idea.”

  “So you’d still love me if I were some skinny, ugly chick with no tits at all?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Fucker,” Jessica said, but she laughed.

  “So what about Vatran,” Smith persisted. “Does he love you?”

  “Honey.” Jessica wagged her head. “He loves every piece of me.” Then she looked away, and when she looked back, her eyes were serious. “I needed a huge change, Johnny. That’s what happened to us. I couldn’t take that bohemian bullshit anymore. Disgusting tiny apartments and no money, no health insurance. You on the road half the time. A gig here, a gig there, nothing steady. And me, waitressing. How I fucking hated waitressing. And you know what? You can’t take it anymore either. Look at yourself—you look positively haunted. You need to call it quits, go to law school, join the Marines. Anything.”

  “I’m an actor-singer-dancer,” Smith said grandly. “That’s what I am. Triple threat!”

  “An unsuccessful actor-singer-dancer,” Jessica corrected.

  “I’ve got a great voice. Perfect for musical comedy—the Cleveland Plain Dealer said so. Hell, I’ve done LORT A! One step, baby, one step below Broadway!”

  “How long ago was that?” Jessica shot back. />
  “Tell you what”—Smith put an exploratory hand on the curve of her ass, which she shrugged away impatiently—“come back to New York with me and I’ll go to law school. I’ll join the Marines. I’ll do anything you want.”

  “You’re completely pathetic,” she said, but she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  9.

  They emerged arm in arm from Buyuk Londra into the cool air a little before midnight, pausing for a moment at the summit of one of the narrow streets that led out to the Bogazkesen Cadesi. Across the Bosphorus hazy with low-lying mist, along the Asiatic shore, the closed summer palaces of Uskudar sat crumbling and derelict.

  “Everything’s spinning,” Smith said, leaning his head against a shuttered garage. Its metal door showed layers of spray-painted graffiti: Islamist slogans, the hammer and sickle of the PKK—the Kurdish Workers Party—and an odd symbol, so recently done Smith could still smell the sharp tang of the paint: An eye or a fish, crossed with three dark lines.

  “Take some deep breaths,” Jessica said. “If you’ve got to puke, puke. But I don’t think I can carry you home.”

  “I’m fine,” Smith said. “Just resting . . .” Then he spun around suddenly and put his arm around her waist and kissed her on the lips. She pushed him away, but didn’t seem particularly annoyed, so he tried it again a moment later. This time, she kissed him back and he felt her tongue gently in his mouth and the erection stiffening in his pants before she pushed him away again.

  “Whoa! Tamam, tamam!” she said. “Blast from the past. If Kasim saw us now”—she shivered with genuine fear—“he’d kill us both.”

  “Fuck Kasim,” Smith said.

  “Oh, I do.” Jessica grunted. “He wants it all the time, like three or four times a day. He’s a fuck machine. Comes home from work sometimes in the middle of the day just to fuck me. And let me tell you something, his cock”—she made a fist—“fat as a baby’s arm holding a sausage.”

  “Oh, shit.” Smith grimaced. “Did I need to hear that?”

  “You asked for it,” Jessica said.

  Smith deflated, sagging against the metal garage door. He felt tears of self-pity welling up from the weak place in his soul, soft as rotten wood, and didn’t bother to stop them coming. His mission to Istanbul had been a failure; his dreams of Jessica, delicate as castles carved out of ice, were melting away as he stood there in the dark. Kasim was rich and exotic and he had a cock like an elephant. What could he do against such a man?

  “Look, I better be getting back to the hotel,” he managed. “Thanks for dinner . . .”

  “Don’t be such a kid.” Jessica made a face. “It’s only midnight. Kasim’s already pissed as shit. Might as well stay out ’til dawn.”

  “No thanks,” Smith said mournfully. “I’m tired. Just tell me where I can get a cab—”

  “One more place,” Jessica insisted. “I’m more or less off the booze lately, for various reasons that I won’t discuss, but booze isn’t the only game in town.”

  At that moment, as if on cue, a taxi pulled up at the curb. It was an old, rakish Citroën DS, its sleek shark nose much dented and deformed from encounters with crazy Istanbul traffic. Jessica pushed Smith into the back and slid after him across the patched leather seat. She directed the driver to Kurtulus, a dangerous, impoverished neighborhood beyond the Tarlabasi Bulvari—she wasn’t sure of the exact address, she said, but would know it when they got there. Smith opened his mouth to protest, but didn’t, and let himself be driven along through the steep, narrow streets to an address on the wrong side of town.

  10.

  Curtained booths lined the walls of the vaulted underground chamber, so full of fragrant smoke and so dimly lit, Smith could barely see Jessica’s face. They waited a while in the dark, narrow antechamber, where Jessica pushed him against the wall and kissed him openmouthed, this time without being prompted.

  Finally the attendant, wearing an illegal fez and striped pantaloons like an old-fashioned harem master, led them to a booth in the corner that had just been vacated. He prepared the narghile—an ornate Turkish water pipe—changing the water and replacing the ivory mouthpiece. Jessica handed over a neatly rolled wad of lirasi; the attendant secreted this money somewhere in the folds of his pantaloons, padded off into the dim recesses of the place, and returned a few minutes later with a black, pasty mixture in a small rosewood box. He kneaded the stuff into a little black ball, pressed the ball into the bowl of the narghile, and lit it with a long fireplace match. Then he withdrew, closing the curtains discreetly behind him as he went.

  The only light here was given off by a small, red-shaded oil lamp, Jessica reduced to a voluptuous shade, pressed back against the high-backed divan. An unmistakable moaning emanated from the booth next door.

  “You want to go first?” Jessica said, holding out the mouthpiece.

  “I don’t know,” Smith said doubtfully. “What is that stuff?”

  “Specialty of the house,” Jessica said. “Dried rose petals, opium, a chunk of myrrh, and a small black pearl, crushed. The Ottoman sultans smoked it all day, then fucked their harem women all night long. Gets you high and makes you superhorny”—she leered—“it’s the big reason they lost their empire and everything went to hell.”

  She took the first hit, taking the ivory mouthpiece between her teeth and drawing in. Smith leaned close and watched her face go slack with pleasure, eyes fluttering as she exhaled a narrow stream of gray smoke.

  “Nice,” she murmured. “Very, very nice.”

  Smith picked up the mouthpiece from where she let it fall and took a hit. The smoke was cool and flavorful, like roasted apples, like roses, like cinnamon with a pinch of something terribly bitter, an assassin creeping up behind. He felt things go loose around the edges, felt himself shedding some of the sorrow he’d been carrying around like a tight, black tumor in his heart. It floated up with the smoke and was gone; a definite prickling in his loins accompanied this lightness.

  “Wow,” he said, when he could speak. “If you could smoke a quaalude, that . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought. A second thought flapped around the inside of his head on powdery blue moth wings and flew away.

  “Lie here with me, baby,” Jessica said lazily, easing herself back on the divan.

  Smith lay down beside her, his head on her shoulder.

  “Put your hand on my tits,” she breathed.

  He did so at once, gently kneading one, then the other. They felt solid, heavier than he remembered. Then he trailed down and pressed his hand firmly between her legs. He felt the dampness there as she angled up to meet him.

  “Oh . . . ,” she breathed, excited. “This . . . this is just what Kasim was afraid of . . . oh!”

  After a while, she took his face and held it between her hands, her blue eyes dark and glassy in the dim light of the oil lamp.

  “You can’t fuck me,” she whispered. “Absolutely not. Swear you won’t try and fuck me.”

  “Why not?” Smith said.

  “You just can’t,” Jessica repeated. “Swear!”

  “All right,” Smith said. “I swear.”

  “Kasim would know if you fucked me. He’d smell you on me. I could take a shower, I could take two showers, it wouldn’t matter. He’s got a nose like, umm—” She paused, thinking hard, but just couldn’t say what kind of nose he had. “But listen, he won’t . . . I mean he refuses to . . .” She hesitated. “He won’t go down on me.”

  “What? That’s crazy!”

  “Yeah, he says men don’t do that in Turkey, some macho bullshit. So would you . . . I mean, you know how I like, umm . . . would you please . . . I mean that’s not fucking, right?”

  “Only fucking is fucking,” Smith said. “Look at Clinton.”

  “Just swear you won’t fuck me. O.K.?”

  “O.K., O.K.,” Smith said.

  “You swear?”

  “Jesus! Do you want me to go down on you or not?”

  Jessica smiled and arrange
d herself across the cushions and Smith knelt between her legs and peeled her out of the beige pants embroidered all over with paisleys and a pair of matching paisley panties underneath. She had stopped shaving down there—the way Kasim liked it, she said—and as Smith lowered himself to his task, he began working surreptitiously on the buckle of his belt. A few minutes later, he pulled up and slid out of his jeans and boxers and was inside of her in a single efficient motion. She thrashed against him, pounded her fists on his back.

  “No!” she said. “Stop! Now! Get off me!” But not loud enough for anyone beyond the booth to hear her. “No! You swore! Bastard! I told you, no! I . . . ah! Ah!”

  A long, violent spasm overtook her; arms flailing, she nearly knocked the narghile off its stand. Smith followed a moment later, releasing two years’ worth of pent-up frustration, longing, mental anguish, sleepless nights, the dark and bitter juice of his broken heart, deep into her body.

  11.

  Afterward in the same battered Citroën on the way back to Beyoglu, Smith watched the faltering lights of Terebasi pass out the scratched window, feeling drained but very pleased with himself. He had come all the way from New York just to fuck her and now he’d done it, the first personal goal he’d met successfully in several years. But Jessica sat trembling with anger, pressed away from him against the far door. Tears had blurred the mascara down her cheeks into a grotesque kind of Rorschach test—showing, perhaps, a cobra eating a mouse. Smith reached for her hand but found it clenched into a tight fist. She jerked away at his touch, then brought the fist up suddenly and coldcocked him, a powerful blow to the left side of his jaw. Smith actually saw stars—

  “Oww!” he exclaimed, and the force of the punch knocked his head against the window. “What did you do that for?” Though he knew. He looked up, rubbing his jaw, and saw the driver watching them in the rearview.