Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [4]
She was studying to be something called an esthetician, but was hoping to find a big strong man she could love and kiss with enthusiasm. She was anxious to inquire if I was a big strong man. She was curious how many flat-screen TVs I had. She sent me a videotape of herself dressed in a red, white, and blue teddy and high heels, dancing around her living room with a sparkler sizzling in each hand.
I put the trip to Chelyabinsk on a credit card, and told Charlotte I was being sent there by the knob company, to set up a new factory.
“But why are they sending you?” Charlotte had wanted to know. “I think it’s great. Really exciting, and really good for you. You need to have the dust of the world on your feet. But you don’t speak Russian.”
“They’re impressed with my work ethic.”
“You do work hard,” said Charlotte. “When you have a job.”
I’m tired of staring at Charlotte laying or lying on the bathroom floor, playing passed out, milking the situation, doing her best to make me look like the bad guy.
I walk back down the long hallway to the kitchen. I sit in the dark at my kitchen table. Outside, the streetlights shine on the snow, filling my front rooms with that weird aquarium light. I look out the window at the Laurelhurst Theater marquee. They’re showing Alien and Meatballs. Charlotte would think that was funny. Agnessa spoke no English, but she’d laugh anyway.
Charlotte will come out of the bathroom eventually. For being so smart, she is so predictable. That’s how she works. If I stand over her and wonder whether she’s dead, she’ll act dead on purpose, just to piss me off. But if I turn my back on her, leave the room, she’ll come marching out and wonder what’s going on.
The back of my neck feels hot. None of this would have happened if she had let the Prague business go. It was just something I’d said to get her attention. Then I found myself saying I was moving in September, just after Labor Day, and would be there for at least six months.
“Six months?” she said, eyes big.
“Maybe a year.”
I thought she’d forget about it. She’d go home to the film critic and they’d open a bottle of merlot and discuss the early films of Martin Scorsese.
Charlotte started e-mailing me. Where would I be living in Prague? Did I know Prague was settled in the fourth century? Prague Castle was the largest castle in the world. There was also an entire wall of graffiti dedicated to John Lennon. I should definitely check out the museum of the Heydrich assassination. She sent me links to websites, and guidebooks she’d ordered on Amazon. She gave me books by Czechoslovakian writers. Who the fuck is Kafka? She signed the e-mails with xo.
Agnessa read romance novels. She loved stuffed animals. She was thirty-one and still lived with her mother, who needed new teeth and an operation. I’d sent her an international calling card and she rang me every evening. She confessed she had two other men who wanted to marry her, one who lived in Indiana and had four flat-screen TVs, and one who lived in Florida and had three flat-screen TVs. Did I know how dear I was to her, that she was still interested in me even though I only had one TV?
Charlotte and I started meeting on Wednesdays for coffee at a place that served stale pastries and had too many free newspapers. Every so often I’d take Ray Jr. out of school for the morning and bring him along, just to remind Charlotte what a good dad I could be. Being a good single dad is better than having a pit bull puppy when it comes to attracting women. I made Ray drink his orange juice and study his spelling words. Charlotte said she was really going to miss me.
One day I got her to go with me to Hawthorne to shop for presents to give to the family who would be putting me up in Prague, before I had my own apartment.
“Who exactly are we shopping for?” she asked. We nosed around a crowded shop that sold expensive journals, massage oil, and funny greeting cards. The rain had started. The shop smelled like wet dog and patchouli.
“There’s a thirty-one-year-old living at home, a girl who loves