Mangrove Squeeze(9)

"Coward," said Ivan Cherkassky, wiping a cracker crumb from the corner of his mouth. "Peeg and coward."

Lazslo nodded in bland agreement But he was picturing Suki, not the mayor. The blue eyes framed in black and wild hair, generous breasts squeezed and rocked by arms that gestured lavishly. She was a little older than he, and Lazslo found this very flattering, intriguing. She was funny, sharp, interested in what he did, how he thought; she made him feel smart, substantial. This excited him. And older women, people said—they knew their own minds better, rumor had it they were bold, might take the lead and grab you by the leg, might suggest nasty and nonstandard acts in risky and forbidden places. So why was Suki so hesitant, so coy?

"So finally," continued Markov, "I say, 'Excuse me one moment, Meester Mayor.' I go away. I come back with t'ousand dollars. I give it to him. I say, 'Does this take care of wiolation?' The money he puts in his pocket. Front pocket, like cowboy. He smiles. He say, 'Meester Markov, you sure must sell a lot of T-shirts.'"

"Idiot!" Cherkassky said.

"So you know what?" Markov rolled along, grabbing his nephew behind the neck, pulling their faces close, their foreheads almost touching. "You know what, Luzhka? I give you all credit. 'My nephew,' I say, 'my nephew is marketing genius.'"

At this Lazslo Kalynin could not help snorting as he backed away from his uncle's grasp. Too loud, he said, "Marketing genius as long as the idea is losing money."

The words seemed to break into small particles that persisted in the salty air. The two old Soviets dropped their chins and looked around themselves, but they saw no spies, no informers, only palms and shrubs whose colors were leaching out into the deepening twilight.

Ivan Cherkassky frowned, did not try to mask his disapproval. "Lazslo," he said, "you say these things, I wonder where else you say them. I feel them in the bottom of my stomach. Reckless. Careless."

The young man was feeling feisty, probably a side effect of stifled lust. He said, "Not careless, Ivan. Just not constantly afraid like you."

The family friend sipped vodka, slowly ran a hand over his fretful concave face, then said very softly but with unexpected vehemence, "I am afraid, yes. Always. I was afraid under Brezhnev, afraid under Gorbachev. I was afraid when all the changes came—afraid to stay and afraid to leave. And still, today, I am afraid every time a canister must cross a border, every time we send a shipment. But I am sixty-three, and I am here, and I have money, and I am not in prison. Why? Because fear has made me very careful. Think about this, Lazslo."

There was a silence and it soon turned rancid.

Scolded by Cherkassky, Lazslo felt suddenly that he'd been insulted, belittled, taken lightly, all day long. Suki, with her teasing, her deflections—she enticed him but she treated him like a boy. These old men—they gave him no respect, no real power of his own. Sullenly, he stared off at the horizon, where the seam between the sea and sky was closing for the night.

Gennady Petrovich Markov blinked off toward the dimness that had all at once turned grumpy, tried to figure the precise moment when things had gotten somber. With the geniality of the fat, he attempted to leaven the mood, to restore good cheer in time to salvage appetite for dinner.

"Gentlemen," he said. "Gentlemen, why so serious? Is just another visit from the mayor. Is only one small bribe."





There was only one good thing about the kind of work Fred did: It was the kind of work where every day was payday.

He did casual labor. On the mornings when he felt like working, he'd grab his shovel and his rusty old bike from where they leaned against the hot dog. He'd walk out of the mangroves, then ride past Houseboat Row and a mile north on U.S. 1 to the seven-thirty shape-up on Stock Island. He'd stand there yawning in the early light among the other hopefuls—black guys with big shoulders, stringy white guys with stringy hair—and a foreman would assign the jobs.

Mostly it was digging holes. Amazing when you thought about it, how many different kinds of holes there were, how many perforations even in a little town. Holes for fence posts, holes for pools. Holes for water pipes and holes that trees got planted in. Square holes for the studs that held up carports; round holes for the tubes of parking meters. Kidney-shaped holes for the sand-traps on the golf course; box-shaped holes for the graves of pets. Holes for flower beds, holes for hot tubs, holes that Fred spent hours digging without ever being told the use of.

At the end of the workday, the laborers were brought back to Stock Island, and their pay—minimum wage minus this and minus that—was figured to the penny and delivered as cash into their toughened hands. For Fred this was the prelude to an evening out.