The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013

by Dave Eggers

  Calls to police, calls to her friends, relatives, none of it turned up anything. Thank God Sid wasn’t alive to see it, though I guess if he’d been alive, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Just the two of us together, me and Rose, was too much for that house. Sid diluted us; together, we were too strong.

  “Listen, you little fucker,” Trisha says to Cyril now, pointing her French manicure at him, “you tell us something about Rose or I’m going to kick your ass from here to Sunday.”

  She’s all sparkly in her fancy dress and her jewelry and her shiny striped hair. In retrospect I can’t 100 percent blame Cyril for what happens next, which is that he laughs.

  “Oh my God, you little punk,” she says, and hits him smack across the face.

  “Trisha!” I say.

  Cyril’s standing there with his hand pressed to his cheek, very still, eyes blank. He looks like someone who has a lot of practice getting hit. I grab hold of Trisha’s arm and pull her back. The supervisor is coming from across the room, I can see her making her way. I realize that I’m extremely drunk, like maybe going to be sick right on the table drunk. “You’re pathetic,” Cyril says to Trisha.

  “You’re pathetic, you crystal meth-snorting piece of shit!”

  Not for the first time I hear Sid’s voice in my ear, calm and gentle. It’s OK to lose, he used to say, as long as you prepare for it.

  I look at Cyril. The room is swimming, the lights from the casino dancing unhappy steps. “She’s still alive, right?” I say. “She’s OK?”

  He doesn’t say anything. Those black eyes give nothing back. Trisha’s expensive rings have cut a line along his cheek. By the time the supervisor gets to us, I am crying.

  We sit in the car for a while, our breath clouding the interior.

  “God, I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “That was pretty COPS back there, Trish.”

  “What a punk. I used to think you were exaggerating, but now I know you weren’t.”

  “I’m too drunk to drive.”

  “Let’s just sit here for a while.”

  We turn on the radio. Trisha hums along off-key and if I were more myself I’d be irritated and tell her to shut up. I think of my daughter sleeping in a tunnel beneath New York City. I think of her in Canada, huddled in a snowstorm. I think of her with a strange man in a bad house in some dark city without a name.

  I don’t know how much time passes before I wake up. The radio is still playing and Trisha is still staring out the window at nothing, scratching shapes into the condensation. Suddenly the back door behind me opens and Cyril gets in the car. I don’t turn around, just look at him in the rearview mirror. It’s so dark that I can barely make out his face.

  “Last time I seen her, we was in Baltimore,” he says, speaking quickly and without any mumbling. “Staying with a guy named Hank. He was all on top of Rose and she left one morning, didn’t say where she was going or nothing. We didn’t get along too great by that point anyway.”

  I nod, though I’m not sure he can see me. “Was she still using?”

  In the shadows, I imagine him smirking the way kids do when adults try to talk about drugs like they know anything. Using. But when he answers, his voice sounds sincere.

  “Sometimes. She mostly stopped though. After—”

  “After what?”

  He sighs, and then talks fast. “After one time in Newark when she OD’ed and I had to take her to the hospital. She was fine though,” he says. “They fixed her up real good.”

  I’m holding my breath. Trisha seems like she’s holding hers, too. Out of the corner of my eye I can sense her looking at me, and all I want is for her to shut up and keep out of it.

  “Cyril,” I say, and I try to pronounce it gently this time, as gently as if he were my own son, “do you think she’ll ever come home?”

  This time he doesn’t even pause. “No way she coming back. She hated it here.”

  I flinch, but I know he’s right.

  He opens the door and gets out of the car. The last I see him he’s running away across the parking lot, his white shirt ghostly in the headlights of my car. Jesus, I think, that idiot child didn’t even put on a coat to go outside in January. I hope Rose has more sense than that. I don’t know if she does or not.

  Trisha clears her throat. I wait for her to tell me the truth: that Rose is probably involved in some terrible situation. That I might never see her again. That I’m the one who drove her away. See, Sherri, see? Instead, she offers to drive home.

  “I’m not sober yet but I’m close,” she says.

  I shake my head and say let’s just wait a bit. We sit in the parking lot, watching people stream out of the casino and into the darkness, heading to their cars. They’re all bundled up against the cold, young people chattering, couples leaning against each other. It’s funny how they all seem thrilled and happy, their breath like flags in the dark. How you can’t even tell from looking at them whether they won or lost.

  MIROSLAV PENKOV

  East of the West

  FROM Storyville

  IT TAKES ME THIRTY YEARS, and the loss of those I love, to finally arrive in Beograd. Now I’m pacing outside my cousin’s apartment, flowers in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, rehearsing the simple question I want to ask her. A moment ago, a Serbian cabdriver spat on me and I take time to wipe the spot on my shirt. I count to eleven.

  Vera, I repeat once more in my head, will you marry me?

  I first met Vera in the summer of 1970, when I was six. At that time my folks and I lived on the Bulgarian side of the river, in the village of Bulgarsko Selo, while she and her folks made their home on the other bank, in Srbsko. A long time ago these two villages had been one—that of Staro Selo—but after the great wars Bulgaria had lost land and that land had been given to the Serbs. The river, splitting the village in two hamlets, had served as a boundary—what lay east of the river stayed in Bulgaria and what lay west belonged to Serbia.

  Because of the unusual predicament the two villages were in, our people had managed to secure permission from both countries to hold, once every five years, a major reunion, called the sbor. This was done officially so we wouldn’t forget our roots. In reality, though, the reunion was just another excuse for everyone to eat lots of grilled meat and drink lots of rakia. A man had to eat until he felt sick from eating and he had to drink until he no longer cared if he felt sick from eating. The summer of 1970, the reunion was going to be in Srbsko, which meant we had to cross the river first.

  This is how we cross:

  Booming noise and balls of smoke above the water. Mihalaky is coming down the river on his boat. The boat is glorious. Not a boat really, but a raft with a motor. Mihalaky has taken the seat of an old Moskvich, the Russian car with the engine of a tank, and he has nailed that seat to the floor of the raft and upholstered the seat with goat skin. Hair out. Black and white spots, with brown. He sits on his throne, calm, terrible. He sucks on a pipe with an ebony mouthpiece and his long white hair flows behind him like a flag.

  On the banks are our people. Waiting. My father is holding a white lamb under one arm and on his shoulder he is balancing a demijohn of grape rakia. His shining eyes are fixed on the boat. He licks his lips. Beside him rests a wooden cask, stuffed with white cheese. My uncle is sitting on the cask, counting Bulgarian money.

  “I hope they have deutsche marks to sell,” he says.

  “They always do,” my father tells him.

  My mother is behind them, holding two sacks. One is full of ter-litsi—booties she has been knitting for some months, gifts for our folks on the other side. The second sack is zipped up and I can’t see what’s inside, but I know. Flasks of rose oil, lipstick, and mascara. She will sell them or trade them for other kinds of perfumes or lipsticks or mascara. Next to her is my sister, Elitsa, pressing to her chest a small teddy bear stuffed with money. She’s been saving. She wants to buy jeans.

  “Levi’s,” she says. “Like the rock star.”r />
  My sister knows a lot about the West.

  I’m standing between Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma is wearing her most beautiful costume—a traditional dress she got from her own Grandma, which she will one day give to my sister. Motley-patterned apron, white hemp shirt, embroidery. On her ears, her most precious ornament—the silver earrings.

  Grandpa is twisting his mustache.

  “The little bastard,” he’s saying, “he better pay now. He better.”

  He is referring to his cousin, Uncle Radko, who owes him money on account of a football bet. Uncle Radko had taken his sheep by the cliffs, where the river narrowed, and seeing Grandpa herding his animals on the opposite bluff, shouted, “I bet your Bulgars will lose in London,” and Grandpa shouted back, “You wanna put some money on it?” And that’s how the bet was made, thirty years ago.

  There are nearly a hundred of us on the bank and it takes Mihalaky a day to get us all across the river. No customs—the men pay some money to the guards and all is good. When the last person sets his foot in Srbsko, the moon is bright in the sky and the air smells of grilled pork and foaming wine.

  Eating, drinking, dancing. All night long. In the morning everyone has passed out in the meadow. There are only two souls not drunk or sleeping. One of them is me, and the other one, going through the pockets of my folks, is my cousin Vera.

  Two things I found remarkable about my cousin: her jeans and her sneakers. Aside from that, she was a scrawny girl—a pale, round face and fragile shoulders with skin peeling from the sun. Her hair was long, I think, or was it my sister’s hair that grew down to her waist? I forget. But I do recall the first thing that my cousin ever said to me:

  “Let go of my hair,” she said, “or I’ll punch you in the mouth.”

  I didn’t let go because I had to stop her from stealing, so, as promised, she punched me. Only she wasn’t very accurate and her fist landed on my nose, crushing it like a Plain Biscuit. I spent the rest of the sbor with tape on my face, sneezing blood, and now I am forever marked with an ugly snoot. Which is why everyone, except my mother, calls me Nose.

  Five summers slipped by. I went to school in the village and in the afternoons I helped Father with the fields. Father drove an MTZ-50, a tractor made in Minsk. He’d put me on his lap and make me hold the steering wheel and the steering wheel would shake and twitch in my hands, as the tractor plowed diagonally, leaving terribly distorted lines behind.

  “My arms hurt,” I’d say. “This wheel is too hard.”

  “Nose,” Father would say, “quit whining. You’re not holding a wheel. You’re holding life by the throat. So get your shit together and learn how to choke the bastard, because the bastard already knows how to choke you.”

  Mother worked as a teacher in the school. This was awkward for me, because I could never call her “Mother” in class and because she always knew if I’d done my homework or not. But I had access to her files and could steal exams and sell them to the kids for cash.

  The year of the new sbor, 1975, our geography teacher retired and Mother found herself teaching his classes as well. This gave me more exams to sell and I made good money. I had a goal in mind. I went to my sister, Elitsa, having first rubbed my eyes hard so they would appear filled with tears, and with my most humble and vulnerable voice I asked her, “How much for your jeans?”

  “Nose,” she said, “I love you, but I’ll wear these jeans until the day I die.”

  I tried to look heartbreaking, but she didn’t budge. Instead, she advised me:

  “Ask cousin Vera for a pair. You’ll pay her at the sbor.” Then from a jar in her nightstand Elitsa took out a ten-lev bill and stuffed it in my pocket. “Get some nice ones,” she said.

  Two months before it was time for the reunion I went to the river. I yelled until a boy showed up and I asked him to call my cousin. She came an hour later.

  “What do you want, Nose?”

  “Levi’s!” I yelled.

  “You better have the money!” She yelled back.

  Mihalaky came in smoke and roar. And with him came the West. My cousin Vera stepped out of the boat and everything on her screamed, We live better than you, we have more stuff, stuff you can’t have and never will. She wore white leather shoes with a little flower on them, which she explained was called an Adidas. She had jeans. And her shirt said things in English.

  “What does it say?”

  “The name of a music group. They have this song that goes ‘Smooook na dar voooto.’ You heard it?”

  “Of course I have.” But she knew better.

  After lunch, the grown-ups danced around the fire, then played drunk soccer. Elitsa was absent for most of the time, and when she finally returned, her lips were burning red and her eyes shone like I’d never seen them before. She pulled me aside and whispered in my ear:

  “Promise not to tell.” Then she pointed at a dark-haired boy from Srbsko, skinny and with a long neck, who was just joining the soccer game. “Boban and I kissed in the forest. It was so great,” she said, and her voice flickered. She nudged me in the ribs and stuck a finger at cousin Vera, who sat by the fire, yawning and raking the embers up with a stick.

  “Come on, Nose, be a man. Take her to the woods.”

  And she laughed so loud even the deaf old grandmas turned to look at us.

  I scurried away, disgusted and ashamed, but finally I had to approach Vera. I asked her if she had my jeans, then took out the money and began to count it.

  “Not here, you fool,” she said, and slapped me on the hand with the smoldering stick.

  We walked through the village until we reached the old bridge, which stood solitary in the middle of the road. Yellow grass grew between each stone, and the riverbed was dry and fissured.

  We hid under the bridge and completed the swap. Thirty levs for a pair of jeans. Best deal I’d ever made.

  “You wanna go for a walk?” Vera said after she had counted the bills twice. She rubbed them on her face, the way our fathers did, and stuffed them in her pocket.

  We picked mushrooms in the woods while she told me things about her school and complained about a Serbian boy who always pestered her.

  “I can teach him a lesson,” I said. “Next time I come there you just show him to me.”

  “Yeah, Nose, like you know how to fight.”

  And then, just like that, she hit me in the nose. Crushed it, once more, like a biscuit.

  “Why did you do that?”

  She shrugged. I made a fist to smack her back, but how do you hit a girl? Or how, for that matter, will hitting another person in the face stop the blood gushing from your own nose? I tried to suck it up and act like the pain was easy to ignore.

  She took me by the hand and dragged me toward the river.

  “I like you, Nose,” she said. “Let’s go wash your face.”

  We lay on the bank and chewed thyme leaves.

  “Nose,” my cousin said, “you know what they told us in school?”

  She rolled over and I did the same to look her in the eyes. They were very dark, shaped like apricot kernels. Her face was all speckled and she had a tiny spot on her upper lip, delicate, hard to notice, that got redder when she was nervous or angry. The spot was red now.

  “You look like a mouse,” I told her.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Our history teacher,” she said, “told us we were all Serbs. You know. Like, a hundred percent.”

  “Well, you talk funny,” I said. “I mean you talk Serbianish.”

  “So you think I’m a Serb?”

  “Where do you live?” I asked her.

  “You know where I live.”

  “But do you live in Serbia or in Bulgaria?”

  Her eyes darkened and she held them shut for a long time. I knew she was sad. And I liked it. She had nice shoes, and jeans, and could listen to bands from the West, but I owned something that had been taken away from her forever.

  “The only Bulgarian here is me,” I told h
er.

  She got up and stared at the river. “Let’s swim to the drowned church,” she said.

  “I don’t want to get shot.”

  “Get shot? Who cares for churches in no-man’s-water? Besides, I’ve swum there before.” She stood up, took her shirt off and jumped in. The murky current rippled around her shoulders and they glistened, smooth, round pebbles the river had polished for ages. Yet her skin was soft, I could imagine. I almost reached out to touch it.

  We swam the river slowly, staying along the bank. I caught a small chub under a rock, but Vera made me let it go. Finally we saw the cross sticking up above the water, massive, with rusty feet and arms that caught the evening sun.

  We all knew well the story of the drowned church. Back in the day, before the Balkan Wars, a rich man lived east of the river. He had no offspring and no wife, so when he lay down dying he called his servant with a final wish: to build, with his money, a village church. The church was built, west of the river, and the peasants hired from afar a young zograf, a master of icons. The master painted for two years and there he met a girl and fell in love with her and married her and they, too, lived west of the river, near the church.

  Then came the Balkan Wars and after that the First World War. All these wars Bulgaria lost, and much Bulgarian land was given to the Serbs. Three officials arrived in the village; one was a Russian, one was French, and one was British. East of the river, they said, stays in Bulgaria. West of the river from now on belongs to Serbia. Soldiers guarded the banks and planned to take the bridge down, and when the young master, who had gone away to work on another church, came back, the soldiers refused to let him cross the border and return to his wife.