Every Man a Menace

by Patrick Hoffman

  There were no bombs, no war, and half-naked women as far as the eye could see. They took trips to Jamaica, the Bahamas, Brazil. They were living the good life, a sunny Miami American dream, and yet Semion Gurevich wasn’t exactly happy. He was lonely. He wanted a family.

  And then he met Vanya Rodriguez.

  He found her at Ground Zero, the first club they’d opened. Semion, feeling drunk and dull, had been sitting with Isaak and a man named Jimmy Congo and a few of their other friends. Jimmy was telling an endless story; Semion, his shoulders tense, was finding it hard to focus. His eyes drifted toward the bar.

  She was wearing red heels and a white dress: A sail filled with wind, he thought. He’d sniffed some Molly and drunk vodka, and the combination had made him poetic. She held a clutch in her hand, and he instantly imagined what it contained: The lipstick—to be that lipstick, and gloss those lips. The credit cards, an ID card with her address—she lived somewhere, owned a bed, towels that she dried her nakedness with, sheets that she slept on. She had curly brown hair, tan skin, and could have been almost any ethnicity—Latina, Italian, Jewish, Arab. Semion felt a magnetic pull. He smiled.

  She stood near a few other girls, but they were a blur to him now. He stared at her with his head dropped to the side. A strange feeling opened in his chest, something like fear mixed with happiness, mixed with the high from the drugs. After a moment he realized his mouth was open. He had to force himself to look away. This was a new feeling.

  Eventually, the woman drifted closer to his table. He poured more vodka into his glass, dropped in a single ice cube, swirled it around, and drank. He noticed Isaak staring at him. The music was incessant; Semion wished that the DJ would make the song stop, that he could spend a moment in silence and appreciate this woman. He looked over and the DJ, meeting his gaze, pointed at him and grinned. You’re the man.

  What was it about her? He watched her laugh, watched her throw her head back. She was beautiful, of course, but that wasn’t it—there was something more. The moment, there in the club, felt predetermined. It felt arranged somehow. In an effort to compose himself, he drank more.

  The man sitting next to him, a loud Russian, was making a joke—something about a dog wanting meat. The other men laughed. Semion smiled at them, raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said. Cunts, he thought.

  He swallowed his drink and turned back to her. Now, he told himself. Now.

  She turned toward him and met his gaze for what felt like an endless moment. He tried to smile, felt foolish, clamped it down, raised his eyebrows, fixed his mouth into its best shape, and—without even knowing what he was doing—gave her the same two-fingered come here gesture that the Russian man had used on him a few years earlier.

  The effect was not the same. She simply looked away. He turned his head back toward his friends and wiped at his face. Stupid, ugly face, he thought. Then, recognizing the negativity of the thought, he willed himself to stay positive: No, no, no, a king, a king, a Jewish king, a gentle Jewish king. He licked his lips, looked at Isaak for help. A tall king, a rich, tall king. He tried to turn back to her, but he felt himself wilting, felt himself becoming depressed.

  When he turned to look at the woman again she was walking straight at him. Time slowed; he took a deep breath and steadied himself to stand. He gave his nose a final wipe and saw that her shoulders were moving to the music. He looked at the white dress, studied the face, studied her walk, her collarbones, her hips. Remember this, he thought. She was a few steps from him now, within reach, and he knew he should smile, but instead he acted cool, shifting his eyes to the group of women she had just left. The beat from the speakers matched his heart.

  “Hey, bitch!” she said, in accented English, walking right past him.

  Isaak had been sending a text message, but Semion watched as he looked up, saw the woman, shook his head slightly, smiled, and said, “Oh, shit.” He held his arms open to her, and she stepped into them. They exchanged kisses on both cheeks. Then, the greeting done, his arm still draped over her shoulder, Isaak turned her toward the group. Semion looked away. He forced a look of boredom on his face before turning back.

  “E’rybody in the club gettin’ tipsy,” said Isaak. He let his arm fall from her shoulder. Semion stared. Suddenly the woman stepped toward him with a serious look on her face and held her hand out like an American businessman.

  “Hello,” he said, his face frozen. “I’m sorry, your name?”

  “Vanya,” she said. “Vanya Rodriguez.”

  Semion felt himself sway on his feet. He looked at Isaak for help, a sign, anything, but his friend was busy talking to the other men again.

  “And your name?” she said.

  “Semion Gurevich.”

  “Simon?”

  “Semion,” he said. He realized he’d missed his chance to kiss both of her beautiful cheeks. Do I have dandruff? he wondered. Am I going bald?

  “How do you know him?” he asked, nodding toward Isaak. Does my breath smell?

  “I met him here,” Vanya said. “Two nights ago!”

  Two nights ago? thought Semion. They’ve fucked. I’ll kill him.

  “You’re Brazilian?” he guessed.

  “I am. I’m from Rio.”

  “You guys dating?” he asked, cupping his hand over his mouth, yelling over the noise. He looked her in the eyes. A wave of depression had washed over him.

  “No, stupid, you crazy?”

  They were standing next to each other, and, in order to hear her he had to lean in. Their shoulders touched and stayed together for a moment. Isaak turned and motioned at Semion, pointing toward the back office and touching his nose. Semion waved him off. He asked if she wanted a drink, and she said, “Yes, a vodka Red Bull.” Her accent made it sound like hedge bull.

  Semion went to the bar and got two drinks. Normally, women didn’t make him nervous, but now he found himself unable to come up with a line of conversation. She looked like a normal Miami girl, but he could tell she wasn’t. He imagined her asking him what he was interested in, and he planned a vague speech about wanting to produce films, then cursed himself for stupidity. Films, no, stupid, you want to help children. You want to produce films about helping children.

  When he returned to her she was applying lipstick, tilting her head back and using a small mirror. She turned, looked at him, and licked her lips.

  “I have to go in five minutes,” she said. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday.” She nodded vaguely toward the door.

  “I’ll come with you.” He felt, suddenly, as if he was on firmer ground.

  “It’s not that kind of party,” she said. She touched his arm, took a sip of her drink, stood on her toes, and looked around the club. “You guys own it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We own five clubs in Miami.” Stupid, don’t brag.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Move the party here!” he said, licking his lips. His time with her was ending already. He could feel it.

  She turned and looked him in the eyes. “Text me later,” she said. “Maybe, I come back.”

  She gave him her number. He entered it into his phone and showed it to her when he was done. “Right?” he asked.

  “Not I-A,” she said. “Y-A: V-A-N-Y-A. Ciao.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Then she walked away.

  Semion found Isaak with their friends in the office upstairs. “Who is she?” he asked in English. Then, switching to Hebrew, he said, “Did you fuck her?”

  Isaak had been bent over the desk sniffing Molly. He looked up, smiled, shrugged, and said, “No.”

  Semion took a moment to analyze his friend’s body language. The shrug bothered him. He asked again, this time without words. He simply raised his eyebrows and stared.

  Isaak smiled again. “No. No. No,” he said. “Don’t worry. She’s yours and yours alone. She’s probably a fucking virgin.” The other men laughed. “Fuck,” he said. “Have some.” He motioned at the powder on the desk.
“Have some!”

  After cursing the men in his mind, Semion walked to the desk, took the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill from his friend, bent his head, and breathed one of the lines of powder into his nose. It hit the back of his throat, and he tasted it in his mouth.

  “The last Brazilian virgin,” said Isaak. The men laughed again.

  The night felt transformed after that. Semion found himself loving all of the people in the club. He moved around, greeting everyone. Women flirted, and he flirted back, but that’s all he did. His mind was on Vanya, and he kept checking the time on his cell phone; he had to give her at least an hour before he texted. But each time he looked, only a minute had passed.

  After an hour, he sent her a short message: You coming back?

  She didn’t respond. And even though it took a heroic amount of self-control, he didn’t text again. He was satisfied. He liked a challenge.

  At five in the morning, after checking his phone for the hundredth time, he took two Xanax, drank a seltzer, and lay down on his bed. This is my life, he thought.

  When he woke up—at noon—she was there in his mind already, the first thing he thought of: her face, her lips, her hair. He picked up his phone, convinced there would be no messages, and saw that there was one: Sorry sleepy. Xo. She had sent it at 6:14 a.m.

  We have a doorman, he thought. I could ask if Isaak had any visitors.

  Two days later he took her out to dinner. He’d spent the day at the gym, the tanning salon, the hairstylist. He’d gotten his eyebrows shaped, his back waxed. He’d bought a new shirt from Sartori Amici. A nervous dread filled his stomach, but he vowed to fight it. In his apartment, in front of the mirror, he stood for a few minutes turning and looking, squinting and pulling his face into different shapes. I will smile, he thought. I will act excited.

  They met at his favorite sushi spot. You like Japanese food? he’d asked. I love it, she’d texted. He knew the chef and called ahead. Nothing spared, he’d said. The best, the best, the best. The chef had laughed. Fins and scales? he’d asked. Yes, fins and scales, Semion had said.

  She arrived ten minutes late. He had waited for her out front, and seeing the way she held herself as she came walking around the corner made Semion feel stooped over. He fixed his posture and suffered through a sudden wave of pessimism: This can only end in pain, he thought. He felt dizzy as she approached.

  She wore a yellow dress this time. They kissed on both cheeks; he lingered, maybe too obviously, and noticed the scent of gardenias. He looked at her face, saw a small scar on her forehead. I love you, he thought.

  “You like Japanese?” he asked again, wincing at having repeated himself.

  They sat at a table near the window, a small candle between them. The chef, a man who appeared on magazine covers, came over personally with their first dish. After setting it down he bowed to Semion, rubbed his shoulder, and said, “Welcome back, Mr. Gurevich.”

  Semion felt himself flush with pride. He hid it by rubbing at his face like a tired businessman. The chef gave a minute-long explanation of the dish to Vanya, who listened with shiny eyes.

  They ate course after course of expertly prepared fish. When Vanya said she liked oysters—“I love the way they taste like the beach,” she said—Semion had the chef bring her a dozen. She tilted the shells to her mouth and slurped them up.

  The food kept coming, and she told endless stories in a singsong voice. Semion, unable to think of anything to say, felt thankful that she had decided to carry the burden of the conversation.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I talk so much.” She mimicked a puppet with her hand. “Da-da-da-da-da.”

  One story, in retrospect, stood out. It was the only one she told him about her family.

  “I’m not rich, you know,” she said. “Most of us here, in Miami, Brazilians, are rich. Not me. When I was a child, we lived in a favela—you know—Jacarezinho,” she said, sounding out each lovely syllable. “I had a sister, a little baby sister, who got in trouble with a group, and one of them tried to be in love with her, but she already loved a different boy. And the man—he’s a scary man; he had the long fingernails—he yelled at her in public, and she cut him with a knife in the stomach.” She laughed after that, and put a whole piece of sushi into her mouth. She shook her head while she ate it.

  Semion stared at her while she chewed, trying to picture a smaller version of her—a little baby sister—stabbing a gangster in the stomach. Why do I love you? he wondered.

  She asked him if he’d been to Brazil then, and he told her that he had, that both he and Isaak—instantly, he regretted mentioning Isaak—had gone to Rio last year.

  “And you didn’t call me?” she said—truly angry.

  “I didn’t know you.”

  She laughed again, and her phone buzzed: facedown on the table, it lit up and shook. Someone had texted her. She didn’t check it, didn’t turn it over, didn’t acknowledge it, nothing. Semion watched her ignore it. The significance of this, he thought, could be revisited later.

  Their date ended abruptly. When they finally stepped out of the restaurant, Semion, his mind working over the problem of what to do next, could only watch as Vanya turned and—in the strangest moment of the night—lifted her arm, sniffed her underarm, and, after making a face like she’d been confronted by a bad smell, closed her eyes and leaned forward for a kiss. He stared at her, and the street became quiet. Then he kissed her once, softly, on the lips.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It was the best dinner I’ve ever had in my life.”

  When he offered her a ride home, she refused, pointing vaguely at a few towers to the west. She had to meet someone, she said.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s a girl.” She kissed at the air in front of his face, and then turned and walked away.

  Who walks in Miami? he thought.

  On their second date, after dinner at a French restaurant, she suggested they go back to his place and have a drink.

  “Oh! Let me take a picture,” she said, when they entered his apartment. She walked around the living room taking photos with her phone. She was looking at his furniture like she was shopping in an expensive store. “I wanna make a house like this,” she said. He was thankful he’d hired a designer, proud of the place’s white elegance, the view of the bay from the windows. He went to the kitchen to open a bottle of Krug Clos du Mesnil.

  He popped the cork, poured the champagne, and put the bottle on the counter label side out. Then he returned to the living room, took her hand, and led her to the balcony overlooking the water. They toasted, sipped, and she asked where the bedroom was.

  Startled, he pointed toward the hall. She led him that way, sat down on the bed, and then flung herself back. He kissed her; they pulled each other’s clothes off. She wore plain underwear. This is how I want to die, he thought.

  They had rollicking, brawling, sweaty sex. When they were done, tangled in sheets, her hair a mess, he looked at her and she pretended to pant like a dog. He laughed, and then they lay there while he wondered what he had gotten himself into.

  Semion had, of course, slept with many women during his time in Miami. But since he’d left Israel, he hadn’t had a serious relationship with anyone, and now he wondered if maybe this woman, this strange Brazilian shiksa who sniffed her own armpits and walked around Miami at night, this woman with a man’s name, might end up being the girl he married.

  She had fallen asleep and lay breathing next to him. She smelled spicy, he decided, like coriander mixed with mango. And then, just like that, in the midst of all this happiness, a gray cloud moved in: he pictured Isaak, saw his face, imagined him kissing her. He tried to push the thought from his mind, but the harder he pushed, the stronger it became. He stared at her for a moment, and then, quietly, he got out of the bed.

  In the kitchen, after sipping champagne straight from the bottle, he noticed her bag sitting on the floor. I’m a drug dealer, he thought. I have an obligation to protect myself. He pick
ed up the bag and brought it over to the marble counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. A man can’t be too careful, he thought.

  It wasn’t the little clutch she’d carried that first night; this was bigger, an expensive-looking black leather handbag. He wondered who had bought it for her. He sprung the latch and spread the bag open.

  There was a clean pair of plain black underwear on top—the kind someone might wear to the gym. Next, a pair of socks, white and worn. He set them to the side and found her phone, a gold iPhone. He pressed the button on the top and the screen came to life, no passcode needed. He thumbed the photo icon first.

  There were only three pictures: they showed his living room and bedroom. He didn’t know she’d taken a picture of his bedroom; it gave him an odd feeling. He checked her call history next, and saw that it had been cleared. He moved to her contacts: hundreds of names and numbers, some just first names, some first and last, but nothing that jumped out. He didn’t recognize anyone.

  Finally, he checked her text messages. There were none. Zero. Maybe it was a new phone, he thought. But he could see paint missing from the corners, scratches on the back, a few scratches on the screen. He angled it under the light and saw that it was covered in oily smudges. An uneasy feeling spread through his chest.

  She’d wiped her phone for some reason. Maybe she was recently divorced, or going through a breakup. Maybe she was married. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

  He went back to the bag. There were other womanly things: tampons, hair bands, makeup, some kind of face powder, eyeliner, red lipstick, lip balm, tropical-flavored gum. He found a condom, one lone gold-foiled Magnum. He pulled out her wallet, fingered every pocket. She had $387 in cash, a lot of money for a young lady. He found a California driver’s license, and spent a moment looking at the large photo of her smiling face. Between it and the smaller ghost image on the right was her date of birth: 2/21/88. And, of course, her name: Candy Hall-Garcia. His breath caught.