“Acid reflux.”
“You’re a doctor like our president now?”
“Vinod’s been in remission for three years now. It was only stage two.”
Masha started to cry. The drama of crying was anathema to her, a memento of distant childhood, and even back then it was her departed sister, Inna, who was prone to the attention-getting tears of a younger sibling. But it was the only way she could present herself to her husband as someone wounded, someone other than “Stalin in an apron.”
“Masha,” Senderovsky said. All of his emotions were peaking. He had asked Karen about the prognosis for the Actor vis-à-vis Dee and she had told him that he might be in a pliant state now, confused, disorganized, searching for direction. All this might prove valuable, might put the Actor in a vulnerable place when it came to the pilot script. Was this why he had invited Dee and Karen all along?
He followed his crying wife into the bedroom. “Mashen’ka,” he said.
“Don’t touch me. You might give it to me.”
“But we sleep in the same bed,” he said in Russian.
“I’m not even sure that’s a good idea,” she answered in English. It was rare for her to use the nonmelodious language of their adopted land this close to midnight. Senderovsky knew he was in trouble. In bed, he curled up to one side, facing away from her, blood pumping through the brick of his forehead with the force of Elektrosila. People of his class were both too rich and too poor to divorce. Some had even given up on fighting just as a precaution.
“You don’t love me,” she said.
“I do, sladkaya.”
“You don’t love anyone, really.”
He did not answer. “What’s in that Teva sandals box?” she asked. “What are you hiding from your so-called friend? What have you done this time?”
Senderovsky did not answer.
9
Vinod lay beneath the Gujarati lullaby in his T-shirt and jeans.
He knew the moment he shut his eyes, he would dream of the tube. Waking up with the tube deep in his throat, trying to pull it out with his hands, choking on it. He had read about a much younger and healthier man in New Orleans who had been felled by the virus and woke up trying to scream, trying to get it out, eyes wide with fear, more helpless than Vinod had been when he was told that the massive heartburn he thought had been the result of a pepper haunting one of his uncle’s outrageously spicy shaaks was actually lung cancer. Unless this was all a dream and he was already intubated. The dancing with Karen, that lipstick-smudged joint passed directly from her lips, the care and concern of Masha and his friends, the unblemished purple mountains behind him as he floated across the river, the spectral presence of the Actor? How was any of this not a dream? Any moment now he would wake up to the horror.
Karen was showering. She knew the hot water always ran out in the daytime, Senderovsky’s bungalow colony not having shed all of its Soviet pedigree. She felt her right hand between her legs. Not touching herself after sitting across the table from the Actor was like visiting a Swedish furniture emporium without indulging in the cheap comforting meatballs. Still, it took a long time, the rhythm of the water along her back carrying her across the finish line, her forehead pressed against the shower stall’s linoleum, her entire being feeling guilty and small. She squeezed some more liquid soap into her hand. She pictured Vinod laughing like an adorable nerd out of an eighties movie, high out of his mind. Even his laugher had an accent. She heard a radiator wheezing against the baseboards as if issuing a complaint against her. Of all the guests, she had two rooms. Two rooms for one person. A thought struck her. She ran into her bedroom and grabbed her phone, thinking for some reason that her sister had left her a message. But there was no reception in the bungalows, and without connectivity the phone was but a dark obelisk, its display a liquid retina of false stars.
Dee also slipped a hand down the elastic of her underwear. Let’s just do this, she thought. She hadn’t fallen for him, but didn’t a film of his make her cry? This was back in the day when she was trying to transition from quasi-suburban Southern shitbox to incense-reeking Bushwick studio and spent her days in a state of enhanced vulnerability. He was inspiring, wasn’t he? How many young women like her did he help carry on his shoulders from the minor metros to the major ones? Hadn’t she started writing so that she could one day meet someone like him? But it was work nonetheless, her breathing not cooperating, the anger that could reliably drive her forward this time holding her back. Portrait of a social class, she thought bitterly as she let out a final exhale, her pelvis rumbling quietly to a stop, the framed Joan Didion staring down with cool compassion. Afterward she felt giddy, as if she had won some small literary prize or an online flame war. “You’re lucky,” she heard herself say into the darkness of the tiny room. Why on earth had she said that? Because she had escaped the virus-ridden city? Because the Actor now seemingly loved her? Because she had entered a world where Spanish hams bore many guises and names? When she closed her eyes, Senderovsky’s wine-stained immigrant teeth appeared before her, broken and fatherly. “Hot dog!” he said.