THAT NIGHT, as she lay in bed on her stone-hard mattress, Luda continued to think about Milena. There had been this moment, when Luda took off her cardigan and hung it over the chair, that Milena actually sniffed the air and moved deeper into her seat. It was true that Luda hadn’t showered in a while, but this was not because she was lazy or had a dislike of cleanliness; it was simply because she had a dislike of cold. She had always preferred hot baths to cold showers, but after being submerged in water that was warmer than air, it felt unbearable to get out. Freezing. Freezing. Trembling. Groping for a towel. Shaking. For some reason cold always filled her with panic. If only there was a way not to become cold afterward, she wouldn’t have minded taking a bath. Really. If, for example, there were somebody waiting for her with a large thick towel stretched in his arms…. She had a fleeting image of Aron standing in her bathroom, wearing his silly shorts. The image was both touching and ridiculous at the same time.
Luda groaned as she turned onto her side. “It’s Sealy orthopedic mattress, Mother, very expensive,” Luda’s daughter had said. She gave it to Luda after her husband had tried it and hated it. Luda’s apartment was almost entirely furnished by her daughter. There was a rickety kitchen table that Luda’s daughter had used when she first came to America. There was a flowery sofa that Luda’s daughter’s friends found too tacky. There was a black bookcase that appeared in Luda’s apartment after her daughter had bought a set of light-brown furniture. Only one thing was Luda’s own acquisition — a leather armchair with scratched legs and a big cut on the back. Luda had found it standing by a pile of garbage about six blocks away from her home. She called a taxi and paid a driver five dollars for delivery and another five to drag the huge thing upstairs. When they made it to her apartment, Luda felt happy and generous, so she added two more dollars and half of an Entenmann’s apple pie as a tip. The armchair had been Luda’s prized possession ever since. She especially enjoyed the low groan the armchair made when she sat down. It was the groan of somebody who was profoundly annoyed with Luda but still loved her very much.
MILENA’S APARTMENT was barely furnished at all. She slept on a narrow sofa that she had bought from her brother for sixty dollars. Her TV stood on the floor, and her video player was placed on top of it, which was wrong because it caused the VCR to overheat, as Milena’s brother repeatedly pointed out. He had sold her his VCR after he bought a new DVD/VHS player for himself, and he felt it was his duty to ensure that the VCR would be used right. Milena ignored his warning, as she ignored his offer to sell her a large chest of drawers. Her favorite pieces of furniture were her chairs, all nine of them, all different, all bought at one or another garage sale, the price ranging from eight dollars to fifty cents (that one didn’t have a seat). She used eight of her chairs as stands for her large photographs and posters, as shelves for vases, and sometimes as hangers for her dresses, because the sight of good clothes never failed to cheer her up. The ninth chair served as a nightstand. It was a wooden chair with a square seat, a perfect size and shape to hold a couple of books and a large shoebox, where she kept her pills, some squeezed-out tubes of expensive antiwrinkle cream, some of her old photographs, and a pencil sketch of the man who had been her lover for over twenty years — including several breakups, other lovers, his never-ending marriage to another woman, and her short-lived marriage to another man.
Milena opened the shoebox and started looking for her sleeping pills, wondering if Luda really used to be as famous and successful as she said. There were so many people who lied. That old Haitian hag in class said she owned a chain of expensive boutiques. A chain! Or that pathetic little man who claimed that he used to be the most famous psychiatrist in Minsk—“You won’t believe the bribes they were willing to give just to get an appointment.” But Milena didn’t really blame them for lying. Actually, when the teacher asked them to introduce themselves, Milena was tempted to lie too. Other people’s introductions made her whole life seem like a mocking string of nones, nevers, nos, and so-sos. She didn’t have a husband. She didn’t have any children. She’d graduated from a mediocre college. She had worked at the same boring job for thirty years. Once they had offered her a very promising position in Moscow, but she wouldn’t leave St. Petersburg, because her lover was in St. Petersburg, and because Moscow was known for being populated by pushy, conceited, obnoxious people. Just look at Luda, with her conferences in Bulgaria!
And then Milena remembered that she had lied in class after all. Her documents stated that her first name was Ludmila. It was her lover who had come up with Milena, claiming that her real name didn’t suit her. He saw a Ludmila as a tall languid woman with a thick braid dangling down her spine, and both Luda and Mila, the name’s usual diminutives, were too common for her. Milena sounded just right. An exotic name, light, nimble, and unique. She used to enjoy that name. She used to enjoy being a small, elegant, irritating puzzle. Now she was too tired to enjoy it. Now she wished she could slump in somebody’s arms — to be easy and reachable and to be stroked on the head with tenderness and pity.
THE INTERNATIONAL FEAST, Angie wrote on the white board the next day. “We’re going to start this Friday, and then we will have it every week.” She had a large blue marker stain on her cheek, but this didn’t prevent her from looking enthusiastic. “We’ll create a wonderful informal atmosphere, so you all can improve your conversational skills and get acquainted with your diverse cultures. You don’t have to bring expensive or complicated dishes, just something simple, something typical of your country.” Luda wrote it down: Fris, feast. Bring Rus. food. Diversity. Culture. Simple. She looked over Milena’s shoulder and saw that Milena had put a fat red star over Friday in her calendar. Of course, Luda thought. An International Feast with all its food, culture, and informal atmosphere was a perfect opportunity to get a man to notice you, and Milena knew this as well as Luda.
On Friday, they pushed some of the desks to the wall to create a makeshift informal space, and put the foil, plastic, and paper containers with food on the teacher’s desk in the center. The diverse cultures were represented by fried plantains, duck gizzards, pastelitos, tostones, corn fritters, shrimp spring rolls, two kinds of Russian potato salad, a pack of hard, ring-shaped Russian pretzels, and an extra-value meal from McDonald’s brought by the couple who wanted to show their respect to the United States by learning its language. “Our country is America now, we eat American food,” the man explained, with the same proud expression. But Angie wouldn’t allow her students to start eating. “Mingle, guys, mingle, you have to mingle first,” she kept saying. So they all crowded around the desk, sipping soda from plastic cups, trying to ignore the food and make conversation.
Luda studied the room, trying to think of a way to approach Aron through mingling. She was wearing a bright scarf pinched a day before from her daughter’s drawer and dark lipstick found at the bottom of the same drawer. “Wipe it off, Grandma,” her six-year-old granddaughter had said. “You look stupid.” She was afraid that her granddaughter might have been right. Another thing that made Luda uneasy was that she couldn’t figure out how to mingle with her classmates. The two Chinese couples wouldn’t mingle with anybody but themselves, Dominicans clearly preferred other Dominicans, and the two Russian couples stuck together, with the wives expressing visible displeasure whenever Luda tried to approach them. She had experienced this kind of displeasure before. Her very presence seemed to irk married women of her age, and this was not because they saw her as a threat but rather because her widowhood and loneliness reminded them that they could soon end up like that too. They looked at Luda with wary squeamishness as if she were a scabby dog. Oolna was the only person who didn’t mind talking to Luda, but she was too old, and Luda didn’t want to appear old by association. As for Aron, he clearly preferred the company of Jean-Baptiste, the handsome young Haitian, seeing kinship in the fact that they were the only two single guys in class. “So tell me, Jean-Baptiste,” Aron asked. “Do they try to fix you up? They try to fix me up a lot. But I don’t know, I don’t know. You know what they say, marry a dancer when you’re in your twenties, a masseuse when you’re in your forties, and a nurse when you’re in your sixties. But what about me, my friend? I’m seventy-nine.” Luda sighed. There was no way she could break into this conversation.