Every Man a Menace

by Patrick Hoffman

  What game was she playing? He looked back at the face on the license: it was her. The memory of her spelling her name for him on that first night played through his mind: V-A-N-Y-A. The license listed an address in San Francisco, on Oak Street. He found his phone, snapped a picture of the ID, and slipped it back into her wallet. She had one other card in there—a credit card, also bearing the name Candy. Nothing else.

  He put everything back into the bag, set it on the floor, and walked to the window. Candy Hall-Garcia. He thought back to the dinner they’d had that evening. “I love Miami,” she’d said. “It feels just like home, you know? Sun, beach, music, Brazilians—but not dangerous like home. No kids in the street, no gunfights—well, yes, gunfights, but not like Brazil, ba-ba-ba-ba.” She’d pantomimed firing a machine gun. He’d listened to her, smiling at the way she spoke with her hands, the way she shook her head while she talked, smiling at her accent.

  “But here,” she’d said, “in Miami, the only problem is everyone is fake. Nobody is who they say they are.”

  When he got back into bed, she scooted over to him. She didn’t open her eyes, but she spoke.

  “I had a crazy dream,” she said. “I was at the airport and I’m taking all this stuff out of my suitcase, and there were all these lights and people everywhere. Like a stadium.”

  Semion stared at her face, trying to discern if she knew what he’d just done. Taking stuff out of my suitcase. She stopped talking. She had fallen back asleep already.

  In the morning, when he woke, she was gone. There was a note on the counter: Bye-Bye baby.

  Later, Semion went down to Isaak’s apartment. He pressed the buzzer on the door and waited. Isaak, wide awake and not hungover at all, opened the door, smiled brightly, and waved Semion in.

  “Where were you last night?” he asked. They tended to speak Hebrew when they were alone together.

  “I need you to answer a question,” Semion said, walking into the living room. It had the exact same layout as his own, and had been decorated by the same American woman; it made Semion feel like they were living in a luxury hotel. “Did you fuck her?”

  “Who? The Brazilian?” asked Isaak. “Stupid, I told you: I’m not going to do this every time you meet someone. Look at you. You’re acting crazy. No, no, no.” He shook his head. Semion studied his friend’s face. If he was lying, he wasn’t showing it.

  “I never have known this woman,” Isaak said, switching to English. “Look at me—never. Never kissed her. I met her one time at the club, two nights before you did.”

  “I like this one,” said Semion, wiping his hands together and flopping down onto Isaak’s leather sofa. “I like her big-time.”

  “She’s poor, you know?” said Isaak.

  “What?”

  “I can tell. I can tell when women grew up poor. I get a vibe from them. It’s fine if you’re into it. I like my girls to be rich. Better educated.”

  As soon as he was back upstairs Semion called their American lawyer friend, Jimmy Congo. The man was a criminal defense attorney. He had access to private investigators and was always willing to give out favors in return for a little VIP treatment at the clubs.

  “Wait—wait a second,” Jimmy Congo said. “You’re saying you looked at her driver’s license and she had a different name?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what? This is Miami, she’s probably a fucking illegal alien! You of all people should show a little sympathy on that issue.”

  Semion had already thought of that. “Can you look into it?” he said.

  “It’s dangerous to start looking into things—you know that, right? It’s like an old house,” Jimmy Congo said. “You never know what comes up when you start moving shit around.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Give me her name.”

  “Supposedly, Vanya Rodriguez. That’s what she told me. The name on the license was Candy Hall-Garcia. There’s a hyphen—you know, Hall-Garcia.”

  “And the DOB on the card?”

  “February twenty-first, nineteen eighty-eight.”

  “Got it. What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Jesus, Gurevich, you know I charge four hundred an hour, right? You ever heard of Google?”

  That night, Semion went to a bar owned by a friend of theirs. Isaak was there already, with two Russian girls. The Russians wore skirts and sleeveless shirts and dark red lipstick. They were absorbed in their iPhones when Semion joined them at the table and kissed each girl on the cheek. After having his first drink—vodka on the rocks—he proceeded via text message to get into his very first fight with Vanya.

  She had texted him just after he arrived, asking what he was doing. With Isaak, he responded. She said she could meet him. He replied, using an American expression: Boys’ night. She sent an emoji of a crying face. He smiled and thought the conversation was over. His phone remained silent for a few minutes, and then a flurry of texts came in: I meet u later. Then: Boys’ night how? Then: Misericordia. Then: Isaak and 2 sluts.

  The last message landed on target; he turned in his seat and looked at every person in the bar. It was a small place, and there were only about twenty people in it, counting the staff. The owner, a man named Carlos, was behind the bar making cocktails for a trio of soft-shouldered women. Semion looked toward the window facing the street. Had she passed by and seen them sitting there? It didn’t seem likely. He looked at the two women seated across from him. Isaak was showing them some photos on his own phone, making them laugh. How had she known? Or had she guessed? Of course she’d assume that he and Isaak (two men) would be accompanied by two women (two sluts).

  Semion excused himself from the table. In the bathroom he received another message: If you busy with sluts I find my own fun.

  He put the phone in his pocket, washed his hands at the sink, fixed his hair in the mirror, and felt his paranoia collapse into depression. Shit, he thought. She’s crazy. His phone buzzed again. He took it out and read the message: Just kidding, ha ha. I’m playing.

  He felt so relieved that his hands shook. He punched in three hearts and sent them to her, watching the emojis pop up on the screen.

  When he got back to the table, Isaak, his eyebrow raised—it was the kind of look that says, I know exactly what you’ve been up to—lifted his glass in a toast. Semion saw that his drink was empty and motioned to the bartender to come fill everyone up.

  Two nights later, back at Ground Zero, he ran into Jimmy Congo. The lawyer—apparently still dressed for work in a black-and-white-striped button-up shirt with white cuffs and a white collar—approached Semion at his table and massaged his shoulders in a way that seemed meant to say: This is my friend; this is how I can touch him.

  “Let’s go to your office,” he said, bending down close to Semion’s ear.

  Upstairs, Jimmy produced a brown glass vial, patted a small pile of cocaine on Isaak’s desk, chopped out two fat lines, rolled up a hundred-dollar bill, and offered it to Semion. After they’d both sniffed a line, Jimmy wiped his nose and assumed the posture of an attorney in front of a jury—fingertips steepled in front of his chest, head cocked just so.

  “I’ll tell you, my guy—and my guy is good, ex-cop, the whole thing—he looked into your girl, and she came back clean,” he said. “Candy Hall-Garcia, February twenty-first, nineteen eighty-eight, lives in San Francisco, just like the card says.”

  “San Francisco?” Vanya had never mentioned California. The card must be fake, Semion thought. In Miami, the only problem is everyone is fake. “And what about Vanya Rodriguez?”

  “He said no obvious matches. Nobody her age with that name in Miami or San Fran. Blank walls, baby. Not much for Candy online, either. No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blah, blah, blah. There was one, I repeat, one news article from seven, eight years ago—Walnut Creek, California—regarding a high school track meet. Take my advice: a girl like that, no online nothing …” He shook his head.

  “What?” aske
d Semion.

  “These days, you gotta watch out for a person like that,” Jimmy Congo said.

  He saw her two nights after that. She’d told him she lived in Kendall, and he said he’d pick her up out there. He wanted to see her house, even if it was just from the outside. But at lunch, he got a text from her: Get me instead in Calle Ocho mall. Shopping pretty clothes crazy.

  He picked her up at the mall. “Ave Maria!” she said, jumping in his Range Rover with two large shopping bags. “So much shopping! Look, look, look,” she said, waving her painted nails. “I got my nails painted for you!” She leaned in for a kiss, received it on her cheek, leaned back, and looked at him. “What?” she said. “You looking at me like I’m crazy!”

  “You are crazy,” he said.

  “Shh, no, he found out! Let me out of here!” She pretended to bang on the window. “And you? Oy! You crazy! Where we going, McDonald’s?”

  In fact, he did take her to a cheap place, El Palacio de Los Jugos. He wanted to see how she reacted to a regular restaurant. When he pulled into the parking lot she grabbed his arm and said, “No!” She stared at him with what seemed at first like horror, but was actually joy. “I love El Palacio,” she said. “How you know about it? It’s my favorite place!”

  They ate fufu, salmon horneado, arroz con camarones, pollo a la milanesa. They drank guayaba juice and finished with flan. Vanya was in heaven. “Like Brazil!” she said. “How you know me so much?”

  “I just do,” he said.

  “You do?” she asked, looking at him from across the table, her eyebrow raised. A car honked from the street, and a child cried from a nearby table, but all Semion could comprehend was her face. Her beautiful, perfect face. Something about it reminded him of his grandmother.

  When they got in the car, she pointed at her stomach, round with food. “I’m pregnant!” she said.

  He took her to one of their other clubs, a place called the Factory. It was early in the evening; a few groups of people dressed in work clothes sat at scattered tables. The bartenders stood at attention when he walked in.

  He had chosen this club because he knew Isaak wouldn’t be there. He ordered two drinks and took Vanya to a small windowless office in the back.

  “Do you want to do something crazy?” he asked.

  “I am crazy,” she said, stepping right in front of him.

  “You like to sniff Molly?” he asked.

  “Oh, my—what?”

  “Does that mean yes?” he asked. He pulled out a small glass vial just like the one Jimmy Congo had used two days earlier.

  “Yes!” she said. She danced with her shoulders. “Then we dancing, we talking,” she said. “All night, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

  He tapped a small pile of powder out onto a desk, then touched the pockets of his pants. “Do you have a card I could use?” he said.

  A shadow passed over her face and vanished. “Yeah, yes,” she said.

  She opened her purse and pulled out her wallet. The same one she’d had in his apartment. Her face looked calm, but she was quiet. She handed him her driver’s license.

  “How cute,” he said, then made himself pause. “Candy Hall-Garcia?”

  She sniffed, breathed, thought. “My fake ID,” she said finally, and seemed to blush. Then she looked him in the eyes.

  “I need a green card,” she said, her accent disappearing. “Need a green card,” she said again, sounding like an American. A chill passed through him. She smiled big. “Ha ha, you like my American voice?” she said, switching back to her Brazilian accent. She brushed her chin, blinked like she was thinking, then sang: “I wear my stunna glasses at night” in accentless English. She looked at the drugs.

  “I’m an actress,” she said, reverting to the voice he knew. “I do voices. You like?”

  He did like it. It thrilled him. He liked it so much that he forgot his doubts.

  They sniffed the drugs. Drank their drinks. He hugged her. She put her mouth near his ear. “I’m going to fuck you tonight,” she said.

  He didn’t want to wait. Normally, he didn’t feel particularly sexual on Molly; tonight was different. He backed her against the desk. He could taste the guayaba juice in her mouth when they kissed, a hint of the drug underneath it. He kissed her neck, smelling her skin, her hair. She breathed loudly. He reached under her skirt and touched her thighs. But when he tried to pull her underwear down she pulled away, fanned her face, and said they needed another drink.

  For Semion, it was a perfect evening. They went to different spots, places he’d never been, little bars with outdoor seating. Old men sat gathered in groups. They walked in together, his arm over her shoulder, her hip pressed to his. He listened to her talk, watched her eyes while she told stories. They sniffed more Molly, and even that felt new. It felt youthful.

  He told jokes, and laughed at hers. He felt loose instead of rigid. The people around him all seemed lovely—perfectly lovely people in a lovely city. The weather matched his mood. The air, carried past them by a breeze, smelled like the sea. The only thing that seemed strange was the way Vanya kept checking the time.

  If Semion’s romantic history was to receive a grade, it would read: incomplete. He’d had only a handful of meaningful relationships. The most serious was with an Israeli named Bina. He’d lived with her after the army for two and a half years. The rest had lasted a night, a week, a month. You’re a coward, Bina had said. Perhaps he was. He’d been beaten enough times—as a boy, a teen, a young man—for it to have had an effect on his psyche. His face, when he looked in the mirror, reminded him of this: the nose crushed by the older Russian boy who’d taken his first skateboard, the eyebrow scarred in a drunken brawl in high school, the pale line above his lip, earned in a fight with a fellow soldier.

  So why, on that night with Vanya, was he feeling such optimism? There was something about her that made him want to do things he never did. He wanted to cook for her, drive her somewhere, take a trip. He wanted to confess everything he’d done and start over. All because of some combination of voice, look, smell, spirit. He couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Why you looking at me like that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her again. He couldn’t help himself. He smiled, but she pulled back.

  “You seem crazy!” she said. “Let’s go, bagacera, come on.” She banged on the table. “You said we go dancing.”

  She directed him to a Brazilian club. After pulling over a block away to sniff more Molly, they valeted the car. Inside, a small crowd was dancing to a battery of drummers onstage. She pulled him forward. Brazilian men pointed at him, smiled, gave him the thumbs up. He felt inspired. She was laughing and dancing; the drumming filled the room. Everything was perfect.

  The last thing he remembered was her standing in the kitchen of his apartment—her hair tied back, her forehead slightly damp, her eyes dark. She’d said, “I make us one more drink.”

  Pain in his head. Sharp, like nothing Semion had ever felt before. It was worse than a hangover. He stayed still for a moment, his eyes closed, as a wave of nausea passed through him. Guilty feelings, shame. A vague memory of a dream, something about a crowded room. He moaned quietly, touched his face, and wondered what the hell had happened.

  He tried to open his eyes, but even in the dark, even with the blackout curtains drawn, it felt too bright. Fuck me. He reached out to where the girl should have been, but she wasn’t there. Empty space on the bed, and something wet. The bed was wet. He cracked his eyes open; the bed was covered in black paint. Why is the bed covered in black paint? He sat up a little more, then reached for the lamp and switched it on. The black became red. The paint became blood. The bed looked as though someone had butchered a lamb on it.

  He cried out, fell to the floor, and dry heaved a few times. The pain in his head was unbearable. “Vanya!” he called out. Shit, shit, shit. He pushed himself up, the ground tipping and heaving, and stumbled out of the bedroom
. The hallway, blindingly bright, stretched in front of him; he staggered to the bathroom, and in a slow movement, as though frightened of what might be on the other side, he pushed the door open.

  The bathroom was empty and clean. He had expected to find her in there. Impossibly, he had convinced himself that the blood in his bedroom was somehow related to her period; now, the idea was absurd.

  “Vanya!” he called out again.

  He looked down at himself; he was wearing only his underwear. He realized now that there was blood on him, as well, blood on his right leg, his right arm. He lifted his right hand and twisted it. It looked like it had been dipped in blood.

  He searched every room in the apartment and found nothing. Besides the blood on the bed, and the blood on him, there was no sign of violence anywhere. Vanya’s bag was gone, along with her clothes. He checked the closets, pulled the couches away from the walls. She was nowhere.

  He went to the front door, examining it for blood, and peeked out into the hallway. Nothing. He closed the door and locked the bolt and the chain. The pain in his head was unbearable. There was a bitter taste in his mouth he couldn’t place. His stomach cramped.

  Okay, he thought. Okay, breathe. He closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down. Steps, he told himself. There are steps that need to be taken.

  He went back to his bedroom and turned the overhead light on. There was even more blood than he’d thought: It had pooled in the middle of the bed and dripped and smeared all over the floor. There were spatters on the wall above the headboard. Even the ceiling—fourteen feet up—had been specked with blood. He bent down near the bed and sniffed: it was real, unmistakable.

  In the bathroom he found two Xanax and four Advil. He took them with a glass of water. He found his phone in his pants and took it with him to the kitchen. Think now, he told himself. Before you do anything, think. He pressed the button on top of his phone and entered his passcode. It was 11:14 a.m. Nobody had called or texted. He checked his call history and confirmed that no calls had been placed from his phone since he’d met Vanya last night.