Every few minutes he stopped to take a deep breath. “The food stores in Russia stink of rotting food,” he told Callie. “The vegetables were never fresh unless you bought them on the black market. We had to wash them very carefully. Some of the vegetables were grown on radioactive soil.”
A few minutes later, Goncharov asked, “Do all Americans buy their food in places like this?”
“There are supermarkets in every city and town in the nation,” she replied.
“Are the items expensive?”
“In relative terms, no. Food is not a huge expense for most people.”
“My wife used to shop for hours every day. When she found something we needed she bought all she could carry. Cakes in boxes, baked goods in bags… there was nothing like that.”
He said no more, merely watched as Callie filled the cart with the items she wanted and they joined a line at a checkout counter.
“The mall,” Callie murmured to Jake as he piloted the car from the parking lot.
“We need to get this food in the refrigerator,” he objected.
“We won’t stay long,” she replied.
He thought he knew why she wanted to go there. They entered through one of the anchor tenants, a Sears store.
Goncharov was visibly shaken as Callie led him through the usual crowd of shoppers of all ages. He looked at the clothes, the appliances, the tools — he was fascinated by the tools, picking them up, fingering them, then parting with them reluctantly. The display of televisions filling one wall, all showing the same channel, mesmerized the Russian. Callie led him on, out into the mall past shop after shop filled with toys, clothes, electronic gadgets, more clothes, posters, stuffed animals, sporting goods, jewelry, watches, and still more clothes.
Goncharov came to a stop, finally, at the top of an escalator where one could see the crowds and stores on both levels of the building.
“If the Russian people had seen this in 1991, they would have murdered all the Communists,” he said to Callie. “Everything they said about the West was a lie. Everything!”
On the way back to the car the archivist said, “I lived in the prison that they ruled, watched them all my life, and one day I realized that they were in it only for themselves.”
“Isn’t that true of most rulers?” she asked gently.
“Perhaps,” he admitted grudgingly. “I copied the files because I wanted the world to know what the Communists did. I wanted their victims to know, so they could never do it again. And it cost my wife her life. Was I a fool?”
American political conventions today are built around television prime time, probably for historical reasons since the modern primary system has eliminated the drama of who will win the presidential nomination. Still, the politicians arrange the convention so that speeches by bigwigs take place in the prime viewing hours of the evening, when presumably the political faithful are home glued to the boob tube, waiting to cheer every carefully honed syllable. The political groupies come to the convention to bond, cheer, and get interviewed, sure that somehow, in some way, it all matters. And maybe it does, although I doubt it.
Watching partisan political speeches ranks on my list with watching paint dry and grass grow. The conventioneers who crammed every bar and restaurant in Manhattan that weekend seemed to share my opinion. They ignored the governors, congresspeople, and senators dropping ten-second sound bites on the televisions mounted high in the corners and lubricated their throats while indulging in loud conversation, handshaking, and backslapping.
A weeklong party was under way, and the folks from the hinterlands were there to enjoy it. Renewed my faith in America, so it did. That Saturday night Willie Varner, Joe Billy Dunn, and I circulated through three Irish bars — we were seriously into Guinness — mixing and mingling. We met car dealers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, implement dealers, two guys who owned dry cleaners, and a bunch of teachers and state officeholders, all here to party and make their voices heard in the national arena. We also met a couple of hookers, one of them a high school teacher who normally worked Vegas in the summer but thought that this year she would try New York, and a working girl from Chicago who looked like she would be a lot of fun. Both of them knew how to party. They soon had a crowd of admirers buying them drinks, so we circulated on. The whole scene reminded me of a plumbers’ convention I stumbled on in Vegas a few years back, although the plumbers were more high-toned.
We spent Saturday night at a motel in Jersey and drove back Sunday to check out the scene. Our New York Hilton parking garage pass worked like a charm. Dorsey checked out of the hotel at eleven that morning after a spa treatment; Joe Billy met her at the desk and took her luggage to the van, then Dorsey went shopping. While Dunn went back to the van to monitor the bugs I had planted, Willie Varner and I purchased a tube steak from a sidewalk vendor. I got kraut and mustard on mine.
I was still munching when my cell phone vibrated. Trying to get the phone out of my pocket and juggle the dog, I managed to smear mustard on my shirt. Joe Billy was on the phone.
“The only spot I could find in the garage was three floors below the hotel. I can’t activate the bugs from there or receive their signals.”
“How about aboveground in the garage?”
“Not in a commercial van. I even offered the valet a twenty.”
“Okay.”
“We’ve got to get this buggy out on the street.”
“Where are you now?”
“Out of the garage, cruising Fifth Avenue. Even the cell phone won’t work down there.”
“Okay. Let me see what I can do. Call you back in a little while.”
I explained the problem to Willie as we walked. “We need a street parking pass,” I remarked superfluously.
“Doesn’t seem like a difficult problem,” he replied. He finished his dog and tossed the napkin in a corner trash barrel. We hailed a taxi and rode over to the Javits Convention Center.
The street around the center was lined with television and radio service trucks, corner to corner, one after another. People were everywhere, coming and going, carrying equipment and boxes, rolling loaded dollies. One outfit was using a small forklift. There were cops around, but only a few, strolling and observing.
“Even if we get a pass, we have to find a space near the hotel to park,” Willie said.
“The space is tomorrow’s problem,” I told him. “The pass is today’s.”
The passes were taped to the passenger’s window of the trucks.
We intended to walk around the entire building, looking for a likely truck, but we were only halfway when our moment came. A crew was unloading the back of a truck using dollies. The passenger door was standing open; the cab was empty. Without a word Willie climbed into the cab and closed the door.
I stood on the sidewalk with my back to the cab, watching the men loading boxes on a dolly at the back end of the truck.
Two minutes later Willie joined me. “Got it,” he said. “Cut it off with my pocketknife.”
We walked away. When Joe Billy motored by the corner we were on ten minutes later, we gave the pass to him. All he had to do was tape it in the window. And find a parking place near the hotel.
Willie and I rode the subway out to Yankee Stadium to improve our minds. We bought tickets from a scalper on the sidewalk for a mere ten-buck premium and settled into seats way up high behind first base.
Joe Billy called in the second inning. He had found a spot near the hotel. The bugs worked. He was now on his way back to Jersey. The game was a dilly, the Yanks versus Boston. Low clouds hung over the city all afternoon, but it didn’t rain.