1
It was the way he looked at me. It had to be.
His pale, gray gaze burnt with an intensity, a naked knowingness, that you wouldn’t expect from this hunk of a guy who had the air of a marine, or an ex-convict – a bit louche. He was standing by the buffet table, towering a head above everyone else. It was in February, one year after my divorce from David. Lulu had just turned eight. And me, I was still in the blur and craze of post-divorce mania, let loose after a nineteen-year marriage, and trying to write a novel that constantly eluded me. I had come to the party on impulse, after Jack, the Columbia University student I had been having an affair with, had cancelled our plans for the evening at the last moment. It was a Carnival party in a French photographer’s loft. There was a wall of windows overlooking the Empire State Building in tight close-up. All you had to do was to screw your neck up and there it was, the needle piercing the yellow sky, so close you could almost stretch your arm and touch it. A Manhattan postcard. Everybody was turned out in silly get-ups – Roman toga, Marie-Antoinette, Tarzan - except him and me. I was in neck to toe black, my downtown uniform. He was all in white, loose cotton pants and T-shirt, as if he had come straight out of a yoga class – unless it was his idea of a disguise.
Or else it was his Russian accent. Those rolled “r”s, those “w”s that slip into “v”s are unmistakable.
“From Moscow.” His pale eyes coolly ran up and down my low cut, black silk top and high-heeled boots. With his blond buzz cut, his massive shoulders, his long, callous fingers that brushed against mine when he brought me a glass of wine – “sorry, no vodka left” – he stood out in this artsy crowd. I asked him how he knew the photographer.
“At Chelsea Flea Market. Right below, 26th Street. Many Russians. Ever been there?” He picked up a handful of peanuts and spilled them all at once in his mouth, looking me in the eyes.
“Yes.”
“And you, how you know him?”
“Actually, I hardly know him. We have mutual friends. I am French too.”
The hard mask of his face melted, making him look very young. His eyes lit up with glee.
“You are! Did you see that French movie about young barman and older woman?”
That was too uncanny! I knew exactly what movie he was talking about. L’Ecole de la Chair. The School of Flesh. I had seen it the week before at the Quad on East 13th Street with Jack. It was about an attractive, successful fashion designer in her forties who picks up a twenty-year old, penniless barman/hustler. She relishes her sense of power and control as she pays him for his services. But when she falls in love with him and invites him to move in with her, the balance of power between them shifts, and he turns the tables on her.
The Russian shifted his weight from one leg to the other and looked at me with an amused expression, as though challenging me. I took a sip of wine and held his gaze.
“You often go to the movies?”
“No. But I like French movies. And I liked that it was about older woman and younger guy.” He drained his glass and set it down, adding: “You’re not twenty.”
I repressed a smile at his bluntness. This was going to be fun. Certainly a lot more than with Jack, who kept breaking off our dates. “No. You’re right. And you, how old are you?”
“Thirty.” He shot me another naked look. “I like older women.”
“Why?”
“Because they are deeper, more interesting.”
I couldn’t tell whether it was a line or if he meant it. Both maybe. It was obvious I was older than him, although he may not have known by how much because people usually thought I was younger than my age, fifty-two. But he wanted to make sure I knew that he knew. His wide-set, pale eyes looked at me calmly, not giving anything away.
Or maybe it was the way we danced.
It was one of those classic, fast-paced rock n’ rolls, a Chuck Berry or a Fats Domino. I was surprised how good a dancer he was. Hadn’t rock n’ roll been forbidden in the Soviet Union? But of course he was young enough to have been a teenager under Perestroika. For all I knew Moscow had been flooded with American music after the Berlin wall came down. I knew so little about where he came from, and all of it from the Western press, which, presumably, wasn’t to be trusted. He guided me so confidently my body just fell into step with him. Each time he slid his arms along mine his muscles brushed against my skin like steel ropes. During the next dance, which was a slow, I laced my hands around his neck and in response his sex pushed against my stomach, as stiff and unyielding as the muscles in his arms. He reminded me of those men who would press themselves against us, the girls on summer vacation from Paris, in the darkness of the Côte d’Azur nightclubs. We let them come close the time of a dance, like you bring a flame to the tip of your finger, then fled. This guy had trouble written all over him.
After the slow, I noticed the Russian by the wall of windows in heated discussion with a dark-haired woman, or perhaps it wasn’t so heated, it was hard to tell from a distance. I lost sight of the woman and he returned to the edge of the dance floor. Without looking at him I went to get my coat and my bag. He waited for me by the door.
“Can I take you home?” he asked. I said no, my car was parked at the curb. But when he handed me his cellphone, I punched in my number, and he gave me his card, which was engraved in red, with a view of the Red Square and a silhouette of St-Basil’s Church, with all its cupolas. Printed below were the words From Russia with Love, a phone number in Connecticut, a P.O. Box number, and his name, Yuri P. He was not an ex-marine, after all, he sold Russian souvenirs at crafts fairs and flea markets.
When I got home I tossed his card in the box where I kept the phone numbers of all the men I had dated or slept with since the divorce – the tangible accumulation of cards and torn pieces of paper or scribbled napkins slowly filling up the hole left by David’s absence – and went straight to sleep. Lulu was coming back the next day from David’s and I had to be rested to absorb the onslaught of her fiery energy, tossing about her backpack and weekend bag, her shoes and jacket, and ravenously demanding dinner. But I when I woke up the next morning, it was the image of the Russian that flickered at the edge of my mind, his smoky voice and his pale eyes peering into mine.
