Zurab and Sasha stepped forward; I was about to follow them, but then Luke reached out and held my elbow gently.
“How are things between you two?” he asked, voice low, nodding toward her setting the table.
“I don’t know yet.”
“She pregnant?”
“How can you tell?”
“You just can. Pregnant women are calm and reflective. She never used to be like that. What do you think about all this?”
“Don’t know what to think.”
“It isn’t your kid?”
“Probably not.”
“Whose is it then?”
“Don’t know.”
“Does she know?”
“Not sure.”
“Stick with her. If you quit on her, you’ll regret it. Try to hold on to her. She’s worth it. All right, c’mon, let me show you my apple trees.”
Warm apples lay in the grass. Luke picked up a few, holding them in his hands for a moment, and then putting them back on the ground.
Everybody started trickling in. Maria, who was everyone’s acquaintance, showed up, tired after work, with a big bouquet of flowers. Zhora had made the long haul out here. I hadn’t seen him since spring, when he was constantly griping about his trainee program at the 24-hour pharmacy by the metro. He wasn’t sure if they’d be taking him on full time, but they did. Everything went smoothly; Zhora looked confident and happy and kept giving everyone unsolicited medical advice, which was a bit inappropriate under the circumstances. Nobody really acknowledged the circumstances that had brought them together that day, though; everyone was taking in the fresh August air, the river flowing by a few dozen yards away, the ripe apples, and the evening sky. Zhora’s cousin Bob had tagged along with him. His hair neatly combed, dressed in a fancy suit, he looked like a young Protestant missionary. Bob had recently returned from a trip to America, but from the way he was acting, you’d have thought he’d just returned from the depths of hell, or someplace much worse. He was bubbling over with stories to tell. He gave Luke a bottle of dry California wine. Sasha Tsoi, a young rebel, the son of Korean exiles, an active member of the poetry club at the Jewish Center back in town, and Bob’s best friend, showed up soon after and bestowed one of his manuscripts upon Luke. Luke promised to read it when he had the time. Pasha Chingachgook limped over with his wife, Margarita, who was carrying a big basket of fish; she immediately scurried to the kitchen to start cooking, leaving Pasha to hobble around by himself among the trees. Alla the Alligator, the apple of everyone’s eye, and the muse of the poor and the humiliated, made an appearance, sending them all into a frenzy. She brought a chocolate cake and hugged Luke, holding on for a long while. He looked at her, his gaze full of tender sadness. I remembered that a billion years ago, at some drunken party, Luke had confided in me that he was the Alligator’s first man, that he’d taught her everything she went on to share so generously with all her friends and acquaintances.
“She came over wearing her mom’s dress. Can you believe that? She didn’t have any grown-up clothes,” Luke said.
“How’d you know it was her mom’s dress?”
“Well… I was with her mom for a while.”
Alla was with Yura, my old friend, a former guitar player, with a finger missing on his left hand. He had a resentful yet open expression on his face. He wouldn’t drink with us, saying that he was taking medication. He didn’t specify what it was for, but everyone already knew—TB. Luke’s friend Kira came, too. She looked sad and lonely, a silver ring dangling from a chain around her neck. She’d also brought Luke flowers. He asked why she’d come by herself. Kira explained that she and her girlfriend had split up, but that everything was fine and she didn’t want to get into it. John showed up late. On paper, he was the assistant director at a factory in town. He’d rented out one of the labs there to Luke so he could use it as a studio. He greeted everyone rather dryly and stiffly and shook Luke’s hand for a long while. He slouched even more than he used to, and it seemed as though he’d lost even more weight. A few more people had come along with him. I’d seen one of them at a protest in support of somebody or other, I couldn’t remember who. One of Luke’s friends, a girl from his past life, buried deep in his memory, came with John. The last one to show up was some really young girl with long, dyed black hair. She was wearing a brightly colored dress and light sandals. She only said hello to Luke, because she didn’t appear to know anyone else here. Nobody recognized her, either. At first, they all focused their attention on her, whispering to one another, and exchanging significant glances. Luke noticed, and it made him feel uneasy, so he invited everyone to the picnic table. The girl took a step off to the side and stood alone under the apple branches, and everyone instantly forgot about her. Then she joined them at the table, sitting there and drinking wine, not saying anything.
Everyone started getting rowdy; a heated argument broke out. Bob was especially loud. He sure had some stories to tell his fellow Ukrainians now that he’d had some firsthand experience abroad, felt the otherworldly breath of fire; now he was presenting the incredible details of his recent voyage to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, to the cold heart of America, interrupting everyone, leaning confidentially toward everyone, and choking on a barrage of words. Eventually all the other side conversations stopped, because everyone realized it’d be best just to hear him out and give him some sense of affirmation instead of interrupting and shouting over him. Luke sat there smiling, his eyes shifting from Bob to the girl who was sitting on the other side of the table.
“Two hot ocean currents sweep against the shores of America,” Bob said. “This dictates its climate and the complex character of the locals. This affects its flora, as well as its fauna. In America, animals living in the wild are quite serene, and most of them are tame. Foxes trot briskly into the suburbs and sleep at bus stops, howling at the moon come nightfall, which is quite a nuisance when people are trying to sleep. Birds weave their nests on people’s balconies and in children’s strollers. Turtles infiltrate the cities’ sewer systems, where they live out their famously long lives. Hot ocean currents burst through the soil in the interior of the continent. Take New York for example—it rests on hot water and damp clay. The streets smell of sulfur, and the sun hides away in a warm haze. Twilight is constantly hovering over the city—black seaweed and tall, orange grass grow beneath it. There’s only one city that can compete with New York when it comes to twilight—that’s San Francisco, obviously, the city founded by none other than Saint Francis himself, who initially came on an official visit but wound up settling on those sandy shores to strengthen the natives’ faith and light up the city at night as Russian and Chinese commercial ships sliced through the ocean’s blistering heat, heading toward the shore.”
“Yeah, yeah, we get that part,” his captivated listeners said, “but what about the women? What are the women like in America?”
Bob appeared to have been anticipating this question; he fired off an answer immediately. “The women… they’re an interesting bunch,” Bob said. “Naturally, most of them are Surinamese. Or Ethiopian. As is their custom back home, Surinamese women carry water from the river in large clay jugs. They have big families with no men. They only bring men into their homes to conceive. They mostly work in the service industry, eat fruits and herbs, and age quickly but gracefully. Ethiopians… now they’re a different matter entirely. They aren’t as tight-knit; they only congregate at church—Ethiopian Christians have built more than a hundred churches in New York alone! They don’t make love with outlanders,” Bob stated in a sad voice. “I tried. They live a long time. It’s pretty easy to meet an Ethiopian woman over the age of ninety—really, there’s nothing to it. Some attribute their longevity to the water they drink, while others attribute it to all the praying they do—but it’s the Japanese women over there that act the strangest,” Bob interrupted himself. “There are some who say that they never fall ill, not ever. They just don’t have time for that nonsense. It is said that they can treat themselves with their own saliva. They all have marble skin and a barely perceptible glow hovering over them—some of them even have two heads.”