Blood Count

CHAPTER 30

T he Russian with the light hair was by the door, and I saw him look at me. He looked at me then looked away, leaned down to talk to a short woman in a white dress. When he had finished, he glanced up again-and I saw his face, saw something on it I couldn’t read-or maybe it was just the distance between us, and the crowd and the booze. I lost sight of him. I was distracted by Tolya’s arrival.

It was some arrival. He wore the huge black fur coat I’d seen him in once before. On his head was a sable hat. As he moved through the club to the bar, he swept the coat off to reveal he was wearing a bright red silk jacket, a Nehru jacket, and in one hand was the wine case he always carried with him. As he got closer, I could see the large emerald in his ear.

The dimples in his face deepened when he saw Lily. He set his hat and the wine on the bar, tossed the coat over a stool, pushed the black hair from his forehead, leaned over and kissed her. Then he kissed me three times, Russian style.

“Merry Christmas, Artyom” he said. “You’re feeling better?” His face was pink, his eyes were glistening, he’d been drinking, and drinking plenty. Softly, in Russian, he added, “You noticed this guy with pale hair, black sweater?”

“Yes. Why?”

“He was going out when I arrived, he wished me good evening in Russian, I didn’t recognize him, but he seemed to know me, I don’t know. I’m not sure. Also, I saw him say something to Carver Lennox, and Carver, something suddenly makes him nervous.”

“The guy seemed OK,” I said. “We talked about music earlier. Lily said he was looking at me.”

“Maybe he’s gay,” Tolya said. “Maybe he liked your looks.”

“Fuck off,” I said, and we both laughed, and then Tolya extracted his cigar case from his pocket, the solid gold case with a cigar engraved on it, a large ruby for the glowing tip.

“You can’t smoke in here, darling,” said Lily.

He put the cigar case back.

“Let’s drink my wine, then.” He set a pair of bottles on the bar and asked Axel for glasses.

Everybody in the club was looking at Tolya as if Santa Claus himself had arrived.

“Chateau Lynch-Bages, 1982.” Axel whistled. “Fuck me, man.”

“Please, help yourself to glass,” said Tolya. “And serve this to my friends, please.”

“You’re nuts,” I said.

“You look so beautiful, Lily,” he said to her and then described the house he’d bought.

“You’re nuts,” I said again.

“That’s so nice,” said Lily.

“OK, so I give you house if you like, for Christmas present, or I buy you one same as mine.”

“Thank you, darling,” said Lily.

There had been a time when I’d thought they might get together. Tolya would take care of Lily; she would be loyal. It never happened.

“Please, Lily, you will introduce me to these nice people, now I am neighbor?” Tolya took her arm.

“Of course,” she said, and they made their way into the crowd. I saw Tolya talking to a tall black woman with short hair and a great face. She was almost as tall as he was, and they looked good together. Lily left them and came back to me.

“What are you thinking about, Artie, darling?” she said.

I was thinking about my father.

The music he had learned to love during his year in New York had saved him, had made him human even though he was a KGB agent, a man who was famous for interrogations.

I missed him. He was a wonderful father. Even after I understood what his job was, that he spent some of his time interrogating suspects in the Lubyanka-no, not interrogating, not just asking questions, something probably much worse; even now I couldn’t bear to imagine that about my dashing father.

I still loved him. With me, and with my mother, he had remained sweet and gentle and full of interesting stories. He gave me his jazz records. We listened together to anything we could, on records, on illegal radio stations. There had been some jazz musicians in Russia, and he took me to see them all.

In Israel, too. After we were kicked out of the USSR-my mother had become a refusenik by then, my father had lost his job-we listened in Israel, where you could get all the music you wanted.

How many hours did we sit in his tiny study in our apartment in Tel Aviv, listening to his Blue Note albums? He listened to other jazz, too, taught me to love the earlier stuff: Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven; Benny Goodman; Ben Webster; Lester Young. We listened to Ellington and Artie Shaw, Sinatra and Ella, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday. My dad had listened to Ella every single day of his life.

I can remember us sitting in that room, him in a big secondhand armchair covered in some nubby green fabric, and me on the floor, sprawled out, both of us drinking beer and smoking. It was the best time with my father, those years.

One morning he calls to my mother that he’s going out. I’m at home working for an exam; my mother is trying to cook something out of her French cookbook, and the smell is of wine and butter, which is all wrong on the hot semitropical day, but she’s happy.

And he goes. He buys his records in the best jazz store in town, on Dizengoff Street, and then seeing he’s late for dinner, catches the wrong bus, intending to walk the extra mile home when he gets off. Then a bomb goes off on the bus.

“And that was it,” I said to Lily

“You never told me that,” said Lily.

“Why can’t we be together?”

I was outside the club with Tolya who was smoking a cigar at one in the morning. The city looked slick, asphalt gleaming, ice on the sidewalks alight with the reflection from neon.

Just then, Marie Louise appeared, lugging a shopping bag.

“Can I get you a cab?” I said.

“I will find a bus,” she said. “Mr. Lennox gave me so many nice presents for my children, merry Christmas.”

“It is late, one o’clock. I will give you a ride,” said Tolya. He took the woman’s bags, handed them to his driver, who was waiting, and escorted Marie Louise to the big SUV.

“What’s wrong, Artyom?” Tolya said. “Something is up. I see your face when you come out of the club.”

“Nothing.” I didn’t want to ruin the evening.

“Time to go home,” he said.

“In a while.”

“I go home,” he said. “I go to new lovely new house.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Sure. I like this uptown, Artie. Maybe I’ll open restaurant or bar or little jazz club for you. You will quit this cop nonsense and make a life.”

“My God. You mean it.”

“Yes, this is me, I am God.” He kissed me on both cheeks three times.

“Tolya?”

“What is it?”

“You have one of your guys available?”

“Always.”

“That man with the very light hair? Now I keep thinking about him! See if one of your guys can find him, maybe hang out close by.”

Tolya held out his iPhone. “I already take little picture.”

“How come?”

“Why not? I don’t feel good about him, so nice to have a picture,” said Tolya, switching to Russian. “Goodnight, Artyom. I wait for you at my new house on 139th Street. Unless you are perhaps staying with Lily?”

“Send me the picture, to my phone.”

“I already did.”