After a few minutes, an unsmiling waiter emerged from a side door, which, Marlene assumed, led to the kitchen. "You would like tea, no?" Helena asked Marlene as he approached. He came to a standstill in front of the table and just stood looking at them through heavy-lidded eyes as Helena ordered in Russian.
The waiter still hadn't said a thing when he turned on his heel and headed back to the kitchen. A moment later, he emerged with a pot, which he set on the table, and he quietly retreated from whence he came.
"So, want a shoulder to cry on?" Marlene offered.
"I don't understand," Helena said. "You want me to cry?"
"No, it's a saying. I meant, would you like to talk about what was making you cry outside on the bench?"
Helena bit her lip. "I should not trouble you. But I am in a strange country, and I know small number of people…no friend to talk to." The woman hesitated as if weighing Marlene's trustworthiness and apparently decided that she would do. "It is about my husband, Alexis…"
An hour and several pots of tea later, Marlene had the whole story-at least what Helena knew of it. The long and short of it was that Alexis Michalik was a visiting professor of Russian poetry at New York University who'd been accused by one of his graduate students of drugging and raping her one night in his office on campus.
He'd admitted "flirting" with the woman but denied having sexual relations with her. Yes, he'd met her at his office that night but, he said, it was at her insistence and to discuss her master's thesis. However, the next morning, the graduate student had returned to his office and accused him of raping her. He said she'd threatened to go to the university administration and the police with her allegations unless he approved her master's thesis and sponsored her admittance as a doctoral student. He'd refused to be blackmailed, and that afternoon, she'd made good on her threats.
Helena didn't know exactly what they were, but apparently this student had "proofs" of her husband's transgressions. They were enough for the NYPD to have arrested him. He'd since been released on bail, but the university had immediately suspended him without a hearing. Meanwhile, the district attorney's office had not yet decided to bring charges, but the Michaliks feared it was just a matter of time.
Although hurt by the confession of flirting, Helena said she loved her husband and did not believe he would have raped a woman. But she was fearful of what would happen. If Alexis did not beat the charges, he would go to prison. And even if he won, it appeared he would be fired and lose his work visa.
"Then we will have to return to Russia," Helena said, "where the only peoples paid less than Jewish professors of Russian poetry are Russian poets." She laughed at her own joke, but her fear was evident in her eyes and shaking hands.
The Michaliks believed that the "mean bitch" who ran the New York District Attorney's Sex Crimes Bureau wanted to make an example of her husband and that the case had not been well investigated before the police and university jumped to the conclusion that Alexis was guilty. In the meantime, the press had got wind of the case-presumably from the accuser-and was having a field day with it.
As Helena talked, Marlene remained largely silent, not volunteering that her husband was the district attorney or that she knew the "bitch," Rachel Rachman; indeed, she'd been another of Marlene's protegees, though they'd since had a falling out. When Helena mentioned the press coverage, she remembered the New York Post's headline Russian Casanova Rapes Student, though she had not read the story.
Marlene wasn't sure what to think. It wouldn't be the first time a college professor diddled a coed, who then thought better of the whole thing. She'd decided not to get involved when she heard herself tell Helena that she might know someone who could look into the case. And then that in fact she, Marlene, could still practice law in the state of New York and was willing to take on the case "on the condition that after I talk to Alexis, I believe him." She was so surprised at what she'd said that she forgot to be embarrassed when the other woman burst into tears, grabbed her hands across the table, and kissed them as she thanked her over and over again.
"Uh, look Helena," Marlene said, taking her hands back. "I should warn you that I might not be able to do much more than represent your husband while he gets convicted of rape."
Helena dabbed at the tears in her eyes with a napkin and nodded her head. "Yes," she said, "I understand. But now I feel at least that we have…um, how do you Americans say it…a fighting chance? Thank you, Marlene. My Alexis…sometimes he is, um, filled with emotions and doesn't think straight, but he is a good man and I love him very much."
Marlene felt the tears in her own eyes welling up. Love was a great thing, she thought, even if something like Alzheimer's came along later and made you fight to hold on to it. All of a sudden, she wanted very much to be back in her loft, curled up on the lap of her husband, watching her twin sons tumbling around on the floor. She dug in her purse and plunked a twenty-dollar bill down on the table.
"I'm sorry, but I need to go. Here's my telephone number," she said and handed Helena an old business card she found at the bottom of the bag.
"Yes, of course, I have kept you too long," Helena said.
"No, it's just time to get home and I-" Marlene was interrupted when she was nearly trampled in the aisle by a thin, pale-looking young man who stumbled in through the door and ran to the back of the room. She noticed that he had only one arm and that the empty sleeve was pinned up near the shoulder.
The two big men in the back had jumped from their seats when the young man blew in through the door. She noted that they both had reached behind their backs-and not to scratch an itch-with one hand while holding up the other to intercept the intruder.
Seeing Marlene's appraising look of the situation at the back of the restaurant, Helena grabbed her by the elbow and steered her out the door. "Those are bad men…is best not to look too closely," she warned.
The younger woman walked her to the avenue and waited until Marlene could hail a cab. When Marlene got in, Helena leaned in the door. "If you change your mind about helping, I will understand. I am a stranger."
"Hey, didn't we just drink three pots of tea together?" Marlene asked.
"Yes?" Helena said, puzzled.
"And didn't I show you photographs of my children and husband…and didn't you show me photographs of your husband and parents?"
"Yes."
"Then we're not strangers anymore." Marlene turned toward the taxi driver. "Crosby and Grand," she said, "and make it snappy, please."
5
Several hours before he nearly trampled Marlene Ciampi and Helena Michalik, Igor Kaminsky had hurried down the steps at Grand Central Station to catch the number 4 subway train to the Bronx. His brother was supposed to meet him on the platform and together they planned to celebrate his release from prison. First, they'd score some Ecstasy and then hook up with a couple of sisters they knew who lived near Yankee Stadium.
Igor could hardly wait for the sexual pleasure of the drug and its impact on whatever morals the girls might possess. He was barely five hours from his release from Auburn State Prison, where he'd served two years of a seven-year sentence for armed robbery, and was ready to start enjoying life again.
However, at the moment he was on edge. Part of it was the bus ride back to Brooklyn; he worried that at any moment the bus would be pulled over by the cops and he'd be taken into custody again. He thought he was supposed to have been released to an agent with the INS for deportation back to Russia, but God-or the Russian mob in Brighton Beach for which he'd done a few odd jobs-had smiled on him and he'd been given a bus ticket and set free.