What things?
You know, she watches what TV shows, if she has a birthmark, where it is located. Things.
She brought her boyfriend to the wedding, Ramon said.
Of course.
I didn’t like that. It was unnecessary.
In two years, once she has her green card without conditions, she will divorce you and bring him here in turn. And they will marry and be Americans.
Maybe. Maybe the lovers will not be able to wait that long. He will come for a visit and I will kill him.
Yes, of course, Leon said smiling. Listen, Ramon, she is just a dumb Hunky. No class, from the sound of it.
She is still my wife, Ramon said.
I say split the difference with them. Sign the paper and you’re good for two years. You wait tables and make some decent money. She gets the card with no strings, and you go on to be a famous movie director.
HE DID KNOW a thing about her, that she had English as a schoolgirl because she spoke it well enough. And that she wore a navel ring, a silver bar with three teardrop crystals hanging from it. But, of course, everyone knew about her navel because Jelena made sure that they did. She was the one waitress at Borislav’s and so her red jacket was cut for the female figure and between it and the short black skirt a flat band of flesh was visible, the teardrops dangling from her navel and sometimes catching the light as she walked with the tray held high and balanced on her palm.
Of course the patrons ogled her and the regulars asked for her tables, but that was all right — her tips went into the pool.
Ramon himself had picked up the waiter’s craft quite easily, after all his time busing, and he discovered that his formality and careful, quiet demeanor and efficient service had the effect sometimes of raising the manners and lowering the voices of the boors he served.
Jelena smoked. She would take a drag in the kitchen and leave the cigarette burning in a dish as she went out through the doors, and it would be there smoldering until she came back in for another order and another hit.
She did not match the photograph of the smiling blonde with the sunglasses in her hair. She was, instead, an ordinary working girl with a life of serious plans and no time to pose for a picture, with her long legs in the sun and a European city behind her.
He wanted to learn everything about her, maybe for insurance as Leon advised, but more because he felt he had rights as her legal husband. It was Jelena’s habit, when she had a moment, to step into the alley to use her cell phone. He saw her cast in a red glow from Borislav’s electric sign. He listened at the slightly opened door, hearing her voice despite the kitchen shouts and the clatter rushing past his ears. She spoke loudly as if to cover the great distance to her boyfriend in Europe. Of course it was her boyfriend, that heavy fellow with the sloping shoulders who had been at the wedding. Who else in Europe would she be calling at night? With the time difference, she had to have awakened him, or maybe he had not yet been to sleep. Perhaps she was making sure that he was not with someone else, because sometimes she seemed about to cry — this could be inferred from the tone of voice, never mind the language.
Jelena lived in Borislav’s house, a few blocks from the restaurant. I’ll walk you home, Ramon would say at the end of a night’s work. Good night, Ramon, Jelena would say, but made no further effort to stop him as he walked beside her. On these occasions, he would ask her about her family, if her parents were alive, what her father did, did she have brothers and sisters, where she went to school. She would not answer.
It is not wise for you to keep things from your husband, Jelena.
Ramon, you are a pestilence, you know that?
Not a pestilence, Jelena, you mean a pest. Nevertheless, the time may come in front of the authorities when I need to know these things, for your sake, not for mine.
And when that time is here I will tell you.
He would wait in the street while she climbed the steps and entered the house and wait some more until the light went on in her room on the top floor. Then he would continue on to his own room, several blocks away. He thought in the moonlight of the things he knew about her: the jewelled navel, the thin face and high cheekbones, the gray eyes that slanted upward at the corners, and her long stride for a girl.
IN THE FALL, Leon was sprung and called Ramon to invite him to a party. It was to be on a Monday night. Borislav’s was closed on Mondays, so Ramon could go. He insisted that Jelena go with him. She needs to know about me, he said to Borislav, just as I need to know about her. She will meet my family and have some idea in the event that we are ever questioned by the authorities. Borislav nodded and informed Jelena. She was furious. Don’t talk to me of government, Uncle! Why did I come here and risk losing everything if not to have an end to government in my life?
What is the everything you risk losing? Ramon said.
Oh, shut up, you — going to Borislav like a child.
When Monday came, Ramon picked her up in a car supplied by Leon. She was clearly taken aback by this luxury — a town car with a driver in a black suit — but she pretended to be unimpressed, just as he’d expected she would. It was a warm night and she wore her white jacket from the wedding, but with pale olive slacks and a flower-patterned blouse, with an Orthodox cross hanging in her cleavage. Ramon supposed that the cross and the pendant on her navel were in a direct line. She saw him looking and grabbed his tie and pulled him toward her. Listen, Mister Ramon pest, you can wrap Borislav around your finger, but I know what is in that mind of yours and I’m telling you it will never happen, you understand? Never! Is that clear to you, my husband? Never! And she let go and sat back in the car.
Ramon adjusted his tie. He said, I don’t like you, either, Jelena, but if you required me to perform the conjugal duties of a husband I would comply, if only to honor our sacred bond.
THE PARTY WAS in Leon’s loft and it was filled with glamorous people, sinuous and of high fashion, all of them dancing intensely. A DJ was running the show. Music throbbed up from the floor and colored lights rotated slowly over the dancers, as if examining them. Jelena shook her head and he got her to say something. She said that the lights reminded her of her childhood, when searchlights had moved over the rooftops at night.
Ramon found a place for them among glass tables for two in a far corner of the loft, where on wheeled carts food was set out for the taking: platters of shrimp, sushi, slices of roast beef, a sculpted pyramid of caviar on a salver with points of toast, diced onion, sour cream, capers, and lemon in attendance.
Jelena’s eyes widened. She sipped her Coca-Cola. She moved her chair closer to Ramon’s. Let me ask you something that I don’t understand, she said. This is your brother, a very rich man, I guess, to have all this. I see his place with its paintings and big windows overlooking the river and all his friends of every color, who are what is called beautiful people, yes? But Ramon the brother waits tables in Brooklyn. How is this explained?
Ramon said, I love my brother, but I do not share his life’s values.
Saying this, he looked over the crowd and recognized several of Leon’s men.
Two had been at the door as he came in. For a moment, he’d seen a question in their eyes, perhaps because of Jelena, but a moment later Leon was there and the brothers hugged and Ramon said, Leon, this is my wife, Jelena.
Leon saw them now and came over. Why aren’t you dancing? he said to Ramon.
She chooses not to.
Come, Leon said, and without giving Jelena a choice in the matter he took her by the hand and led her to the dance floor.
Ramon watched them, Leon flushed with exuberance, with freedom, a graceful dancer with creative moves, and Jelena clearly feeling out of her element, seeing around her the young women in all the fashions of planned carelessness and comparing herself badly, a provincial, maybe smart enough in the cafés of eastern Europe, and a star at Borislav’s, but here a poor relative. Ramon felt sorry for her.