28. AMBUSH.

AT BIG TOE.

THE STOLOVAN WINE archive was found right by the Foot, in the shadows of the so-called Big Toe. The Toe was the site of daily protests by angry babushkas brandishing portraits of Stalin and jerry cans of gasoline, threatening to immolate themselves on the spot if anyone ever tried to knock down the Foot or cancel their beloved Mexican soap opera, The Rich Also Cry.

Nu, as far as Vladimir was concerned, the country's senior citizens needed to keep busy, and their discipline and dedication were kind of cute. The self-proclaimed Guardians of the Foot were divided into several divisions. The feistiest grandmas were out in front, waving their high-concept placards ("Zionism = Onanism = AIDS") at the patrons of the Stolovan Wine Archive and the local Hugo Boss outlet, the two institutions that ironically thrived astride the Big Toe. Looking at the babushkas' jowly red faces and subtracting some slack and residual anger, one could almost see them as brownnosing young pioneers back in the forties, plying their teachers with potato dumplings and copies of working-class president Jan Zhopka's love poems, Comrade Jan Looks at the Moon. Oh, where did the years go, ladies? How did it come to this?

Behind these chanting grandmas, a lesser cadre was assigned the task of caring for the dachshunds of the agitators, and these grannies also performed admirably, spoiling the tiny agit-pups with bottled spring water and bowls of the choicest innards. Finally, in the third and last rank, the artistic babushkas were building a giant papier-mache doll of Margaret Thatcher, which they burned voraciously each Sunday while howling the former Stolovan national anthem, "Our Locomotive Hurtles Forward, Forward into the Future."

NEEDLESS TO SAY, alighting from a chauffeured BMW in front of the Wine Archive was guaranteed to drive these old folks out of their thick, wooly minds, but then Vladimir always enjoyed getting them a little riled up before ascending the stairs to the Blue Room to slurp down oysters and muscadet.

They had made their way through the Old Town in silence, Morgan still playing with her jacket's zipper, rearranging her legs this way and that, rubbing her haunches against the car's sleek Montana leather. Perhaps she was thinking about what she had said up on Repin Hill, all that nonsense about her panic-stricken university days; perhaps she was finally accepting just how much worse Vladimir's life had been than hers. He could certainly tell her some stories; that could be an interesting dinner topic right there. Should he start her off with the Wonders of Soviet Kindergarten or go straight to his Floridian adventures with Jordi? "Triumph over adversity," he would conclude. "That's the story of Vladimir Girshkin, or else he wouldn't be here wiping chutney mayo off that button nose of yours . . ."

BUT THAT CONVERSATION wasn't to be. Here's what happened instead.

Immediately upon their pulling up to the Archive, the car was surrounded by grandmas screaming for blood. The babushkas were livelier than usual today, stirred up by the recent change in weather, the need to keep warm through agitation. Vladimir could make out a few of their chants, including that old chestnut "Death to the poststructuralists!" and the crowd-pleasing "Epicures, go home!" It was remarkable how so many cumbersome words had found a ready home in the mouths of peasants, how communist slogans sounded perfectly similar in any Slavic language.

Morgan opened her door. There was a moment of relative calm as she made her way out of the auto, a moment Vladimir used to note that Morgan--despite all her absurd talk of panic attacks and lashing out--was really just a quiet, steady woman in cheap dress shoes. This realization made Vladimir feel soft-hearted and protective. He was reminded of the Ohio driver's license he had found in her wallet. Portrait of a high-school girl with a Big Dipper of acne arching across the nose, a teenager's gloomy hue, shoulders hunched over to conceal the embarrassing contents of a baggy suburban sweatshirt. He felt a new font of tenderness opening up for her. "Let's go home, Morgan," he wanted to say. "You look so tired. Let's get you some sleep. Let's forget all this."

It was too late.

Just as Vladimir slammed the car door behind them, one of the grandmas, the tallest of the Foot Guardians, a long, canine face, a tuft of chin hair, a red medal the size of a discus around her neck, shouldered her way past her colleagues, cleared her throat, and spit the warm results at Morgan, the sizeable spew floating right past her shoulder to land on the Beamer's tinted window.

A gasp of amazement. A German auto worth two million crowns had been so cleverly defaced! The counterrevolution had begun in earnest! History, that slut, was finally on their side. The Guardians of the Foot stood up on their toes, the hero-invalids leaning forward on their crutches. "Speak, Baba Vera!" the crowd encouraged the spitter. "Speak, lamb of Lenin!"

The Red Lamb spoke. She said but one word. An entirely unexpected, uncalled-for, and decidedly uncommunist word. "Morgan," Baba Vera said, the English name coming off her tongue rather naturally, both syllables intact. More. Gahn.

"Morgan na gulag!" another old woman shouted.

"Morgan na gulag! Morgan na gulag!" the rest of the grannies picked up the war cry. They were jumping now like youngsters on a May Day float--oh, happy days!--spitting freely at the car, tearing at their sparse hair, waving around their spiffy woolen caps, all except for one sad-eyed, bedraggled babushka who was quietly trying to sell Vladimir a sweater.

What the hell was this? What were they saying? Morgan to the Gulag? It couldn't be. There must have been a terrible misunderstanding. "Comrade Pensioners!" Vladimir started to say in Russian. "On behalf of the fraternal Soviet people . . ."

Morgan pushed him back.

"Stay out of this," she said.

"Sugar cane," Vladimir mumbled. He had never seen her like this. Those dead gray eyes!

"This isn't about you," she said.

Everything was about him. He was the king of Prava, and she was, by extension, its denim-clad queen. "I think," Vladimir said, "I think we should go home and rent--"

But there would be no Kurosawa tonight. In a flash of bared teeth, Morgan had turned on her tormentors. It all happened so fast. The tongue was pressed firmly against the upper palate . . . The letter R was thoroughly trilled . . . There followed several frothy explosions in the guise of C, S, and Z . . .

The grandmothers pulled back in horror.

It was as if some devil, some kind of Slavic devil with a horrible American accent, was speaking through Morgan. "Shaker Heights," Vladimir whispered, trying to console himself with geography. South Woodland Boulevard.

But he was thinking of someone else, another Morgan, because in place of that warm, nature-loving creature, a far-fetched, worldly one was now shouting at the grandmothers in remarkably fluent Stolovan, dropping the word "polemical" as easily as the real Morgan drove tent stakes into the topsoil.

"S merti k nogu!" the sham Morgan was hollering, her face twisted into unlikely anger, a white-knuckled fist raised in solidarity with some mysterious non-Ohioan life-force. Death to the Foot!

"Eh," Vladimir said, instinctively making his way back to the car.

Meanwhile, Baba Vera, all bad teeth and vitriol, her red Medal of Socialist Labor flapping in the wind, had come snout-to-snout with Morgan and was conveying any number of sentiments Vladimir could not quite make out. The name Tomas kept coming up and Vladimir assumed blyat' meant "whore" in Stolovan as well as in his native tongue.

"Morgan!" Vladimir shouted in exasperation. He was on the verge of asking Jan to start up the Beamer and spirit him away to the Joy or the Repre, someplace full of velvety throw cushions and fuzzy expats, someplace where the entropy factor was nil and everything was primed to go Vladimir's way.

Because, to be honest, he could no longer abide this impostor who spoke an obscure Eastern European language, who dueled communist grannies to the death over a hundred-meter galosh, who maintained (sexual?) relations with some mysterious Tomas, who kept a sealed, secret room in her panelak apartment, and whose life clearly extended beyond dating Vladimir and teaching English to hotel clerks.

"Morgan!" he cried once more, this time without any conviction.

And then, just as Morgan was turning to face her befuddled Vladimir, Baba Vera ambled up and pushed her with one gnarled paw.

Morgan stumbled back a little, there was a moment when her balance seemed lost, but in the end those strong twenty-three-year-old legs kept her aloft. The next thing Vladimir realized was that Jan had somehow made his way between Morgan and the old woman. There was the sound of hard against soft. A shriek. Vladimir's eyes did not react as quickly as his ears. It took him some time to register the situation on the ground.

Baba Vera was on her knees.

There was a collective rumble of disbelief.

A shiny black object.

Baba Vera touched her forehead. There was no blood. Just a circle of red, a smaller version of the medal cradled between her breasts.

The Guardians of the Foot were wordlessly backing away from their fallen comrade. The wiener-dogs were yapping their tiny lungs out.

Jan lifted up the shiny black object in his hand as if to strike her again, but Baba Vera was too dazed to even flinch. "Jan!" Vladimir said. He could only think of his own grandmother tying a red handkerchief around his neck, feeding him a prized Cuban banana for breakfast. "Jan, no!"

Jan had hit her with his radar detector.

IN THE NEXT minute or so, the earth continued to revolve around the sun. Jan continued to tower over the toppled grandmother. Baba Vera continued to kneel before him. Vladimir continued to retreat to the safety of the BMW, although his car was now lost in a different, non-Bavarian dimension. And Morgan . . . Morgan was standing there, chin up, fists curled, nursing her vast and incomprehensible grudge, momentarily silent but ready for more.

They were all bound up now in a single gesture.

A FEW MINUTES later Vladimir was dismally eating his oysters, Morgan helping herself to a large pitcher of lukewarm sangria. Vladimir's personal table was located beneath the Blue Room's skylight, so that when he looked up he could see a billowy coal cloud settling over the Foot like a flared trouser. It was uncanny: The damned Foot was determined to follow him wherever he went. He felt like one of those blighted rural folk who keep imagining black U.N. helicopters chasing them during their interminable possum hunts.

The maitre d', a slick, modern man of Vladimir's age, kept coming by the table to apologize to Morgan and Vladimir "on behalf of all the young Stolovans." It was he who had ended the showdown at Big Toe, sprinting out of the Wine Archive with a knotted rope and quickly lashing the grandmas into a panicked retreat. "Ah, the old . . . The old are our misfortune," he said, shaking his head, pausing to check the mobile phone holstered to his belt. "Dear grandmothers! It is not enough that they stole our childhood. Not enough for them . . . Only the whip they understand."

Soon a complimentary roast boar was placed between Vladimir and Morgan, but the disturbed Vladimir spent the entree portion of the meal picking at his laminated teeth, leaving the little pig-carcass to slowly suffocate in juniper oil and truffle foam. He was trying to modulate his anger, guide it toward the realm of sadness, wondering how much of an outburst he could get away with within the dignified sanctum of the Blue Room.

Only by dessert time, when their deep silence had become more uncomfortable, did Vladimir open his mouth, did he ask her what it meant: Morgan to the Gulag?

She spoke without looking at him. She spoke in a begrudging tone not terribly different from the tone she employed with the Guardians of the Foot. She spoke in the guise of the Other Morgan, the Morgan who evidently found Vladimir untrustworthy, unsympathetic, or, worse yet, positively irrelevant. Here is what she told Vladimir: She told him that she had a Stolovan friend, his parents jailed under the old regime, his grandparents executed in the early fifties. Once her good friend had taken her to the Foot, and they had a terrible fight with the grandmothers. The babushkas had been itching to purge her ever since.

Was her friend named Tomas, perchance?

She answered his question with more questions: Was Vladimir implying she could not have friends of her own? Did she need his approval now? Or was she obliged to spend all her time listening to Cohen and Plank whine about their fat little lives?

Vladimir opened his mouth. She was right, of course, but nonetheless he found himself oddly protective of the Crowd. At least a soft and rudderless fellow like Cohen was not capable of betrayal. Cohen was Cohen and nothing more. He had mastered the American art of being entirely himself. And speaking of betrayal, where did she learn such flawless Stolovan?

She allowed herself a tiny victorious smile and informed him that she had taken many classes in Stolovan at that polyglot Ohio university of hers. Was Vladimir surprised that she could master a foreign language? Did he have a monopoly on being foreign? Did he think her an idiot?

Vladimir shuddered. No, no. It was nothing like that. He was just asking . . .

But what Vladimir was doing was this: He was losing her. He was groveling for her reassurance in a scorned lover's voice. The familiar aphorism "in love there is always someone kissing and someone being kissed" came to mind.

Yes, he imagined it was all over. It was time to forget the holy trinity of Arousal, Affection, and Normalcy, to forget their little sojourn in the tent, the way she had brushed the thistles off his person, unzipped his janitor pants, hoisted him atop of her, pushed him forward. To forget the way she had handled his weaknesses, with kindness and complicity both.

Instead, he was left now to mull over a new word, a word that practically annulled the past three months with this woman. The word was "distance," and as he stirred his espresso and poked at his pear strudel, he was thinking of ways to use it in a sentence. I'm becoming increasingly aware of a distance . . . No, that wouldn't do.

There's a distance between us, Morgan.

Yes, there certainly was. But even that was an understatement.

And finally it came to him. The words he couldn't say.

Who are you, Morgan Jenson? Because I think I've made a mistake.

Yes. Right. Once again. On a different continent, but with the same blind, stupid vigor, with the same debilitating faith of the Jew-walking beta immigrant.

A mistake.

29. THE NIGHT.

OF MEN.

BEFORE THINGS GOT better, they had to get worse. The day after the debacle with the Foot, it was time for an evening of pain and uncertainty, the long-awaited Night of Men--Plank, Cohen, and Vladimir out on the town with their Y chromosomes, facial stubble, and early 90s white-male ennui in tow. Looking for beer.

In truth, Vladimir was not averse to this manly endeavor. After the previous night of kissing and not being kissed, he wanted, once more, to embrace whatever embraced him back, and at this point the Crowd was it; the last bastion of no surprises. That morning, however, there had been a sign of hope on the Morgan front. After flossing and gargling for work, she had come over to Vladimir (he was sitting glumly in the bathtub sprinkling his chest with soapy water) and kissed his tiny bald spot, whispering "Sorry about last night," and helping him rub his daily dose of minoxidil into the bare bull's-eye of his crown. Vladimir, shocked by her unexpected affection, squeezed her thigh a little, even pulled, in a desultory way, a clump of pubic hair peeking out of her robe, but said not a word in response. It wasn't time for that yet. Sorry, indeed.

AS FOR THE night of men, the chosen venue, a bar, was Jan's suggestion and a good one. As Stolovan as the New, Improved & Euro-Ready Prava could get in those days, with tables of thin, pimpled conscripts and off-duty police officers accounting for most of the patronage. All were still in uniform, swilling good beer poured from a row of spouting taps, which had been so well trained in the art of dispensation that even in the "off" position they continued to gush. There was no decor, only walls, a roof, and a minimal outdoor garden where folding chairs were scattered about, creaking under the weight of the military and security organs that occupied them. A plastic statue of a pink flamingo brought back by "the first modern Stolovan to visit Florida," according to the barmaid, stood watch on one leg over the clinking of mugs, and the cheerful trading of insults.

Cohen and Plank at first seemed uneasy about the local scene. Vladimir could see them clutching their American Express cards inside their trouser pockets as if they feared being eaten alive by the natives after failing to cover the tab. An understandable fear, as the soldiers looked hungry and the kitchen was closed. But as the tab built, the boys let their shoulders stoop and took their unused hand--the one not handling the mug--out of their pockets, setting it on the bar next to the beer where it tapped along to Michael Jackson's entire oeuvre as it unfolded from the sound system. He still sounded good after all those years, that strange bird.

On their own they didn't get past some perfunctory grunts, and "Boy, this beer is good," but then the conscripts next to them, a Jan and a Voichek, started passing around German pornography and practicing their English. Quickly the nude women got to Cohen and Plank; they sighed in unison each time a page was turned by the leering Jan or his giggling, younger companion. "She looks just like Alexandra," they said, and then tried to explain to the conscripts in a combination of English, Stolovan, and Masculinity, that they knew a woman just as gorgeous and desirable as the one on display. Jan and Voichek were greatly impressed.

"Like this?" they said, pointing at breasts and labias and then looking back awed at the Americans who, at least in the female company they kept, still seemed the citizens of a great world power.

What amazed Vladimir, who contributed little to the conversation beyond some simulated slobber, was that the German Valkyries in the magazine did not resemble Alexandra in the slightest. The models were blond and impossibly tall, with legs spread out like pincers to expose the uniformly hairless run of pink held open by several fingers. Alexandra, while not short or heavy, was hardly towering, or blond, or paper-thin. Her Portuguese fore-mothers had bequeathed her a healthy Mediterranean fullness of hips, lips, and breasts. The only criteria satisfied by both her and the women in the magazine was that they were all desirable.

For Plank and Cohen that was enough. Anything would have been enough to get them hot and upset. Soon the particulars of Plank's and Cohen's malaise dawned on the conscripts and they excused themselves claiming they had to go pick up their girlfriends "for the prophylactic work."

"Okay, gents," Vladimir said, when standard English had returned to their corner of the bar. "Another round, what do you say?"

Grunts of approval as enthusiastic as the lowing of cows.

"All right," Vladimir said. "Look, I have a thing for Alexandra too."

Happy amazement. Him too! A universal dilemma! "But what about Morgan?" Plank asked, scratching at his enormous shaved head.

Vladimir shrugged. What about Morgan? Could he unbosom himself to the boys? No, it was out of the question. They were too fragile and set in their ways. The news of Morgan's double life could easily give each a stroke.

"It is possible to love two women," Vladimir declared in answer to Plank's question. "Especially when you only sleep with one of them."

"Yes, I believe that's right," said the scholarly Cohen, as if these laws were codified and available for perusal at the Rimbaud Institute of Desire. "Although sooner or later things start to fall apart."

Vladimir ignored that, pressing on like a concerned den mother: "What you boys need is to chase after someone else. And I mean really chase and not just wait and mope." There was laughter. "I'm serious. Look at the position you find yourself in: You're on top of the world here. You're more respected than you'll ever be . . ."

He hadn't meant it quite so truthfully. "You're more respected in the context of being young and not yet aware of the full range of your artistic proclivities," he clarified, although it was not necessary. They knew they were great. "You can have just about anyone you want in this town!" he shouted.

"Just about," Cohen said, sadly chewing on his beer.

"I hear you, brother," Plank mumbled to Cohen.

The boys tried to smile and shrug good-naturedly, as senior citizens from the Old World are bound to do when informed that their daily meal of fondue and blood sausages can have repercussions.

Vladimir, for one, was prepared to spend the whole evening hammering in his message and draining the prodigious taps. Unbeknownst to him, however, there were rumors, broadcast to the whole neighborhood by patrons staggering home, of a group of strangely dressed American dandies loitering in the local watering hole, and these rumors soon yielded a visitor.

HE WAS A rather striking Stolovan--tall and built, it would seem, from the same millennial bricks that had gone into the Emanuel Bridge. The hair was cropped short and adorned with a cowlick, as was the emerging fashion in Western capitals; and the clothes, a gray turtleneck and a vest of black corduroy, were also close to the latest style. Not to mention that he was in his early forties and men of that age group could be given some leeway as far as their wardrobes were concerned; that is to say, points could be given for effort alone.

"Hello, dear guests," he said in an accent so slight it approximated Vladimir's. "Your glasses are almost empty. Permit me!" He shouted orders to the barmaid. The glasses were filled.

"My name is Frantisek," he said, "and I am a longtime citizen of this city and this neighborhood. Now allow me to guess where you're from. I have a natural gift for geography. Detroit?"

He was not completely wrong. Plank, as has been established before, was indeed from a suburb of the Motor City. "But what about me says Detroit?" the dog-breeder wanted to know with outright indignation.