68

Went to a club where they were playing all the Amerian pop songs you listened to in great numbers while preparing for a year in which you thought you would not hear them. Toya held both your arms in back of you while the Mongolian pharmacist swabbed cotton onto the end of a wooden stick, then swabbed a pungent brown liquid onto the cotton, and wiped it liberally all over your tonsils while you tried not to squirm or gag but did both violently. At the dance club there are three Christian Norwegians working here through a Christian social service organization. One of them is here for four years to train nurses. Hers is the birthday you’re here to celebrate. She wears a funky thin hat with a metal loop through it above her left eyebrow. Euren her name sounds like but you cant be sure because no the salsa music has started. A guy in a white shirt has decided to tell you part of his life story including when he got cancer and never told his family about it because they weren’t on good terms and besides he could handle it himself. There’s also a german girl who rocks out like a pro to nearly every song; she has been here four years working for a juice company. Euren has a stripe scarf too, and funky boots and a skirt and little silver cross earrings and a bracelet like the kind you have seen in dollar stores in California depicting the Virgin Mary on fake wood pieces strung together with elastic. You bought one in a dollar store in Brooklyn owned by a very tired Muslim mother who was going out of business. Your friend from Georgia who was plagued with eating disorders during high school and college had her family coming through that evening so you disembarked from the subway and found yourself on fifth avenue walking past millions of mannequins. Your friend thought the bracelet was wonderfully kitsch and by the end of the evening during which you gave each other different pills and washed them down with peach daiquiris amid the noisy upstanding dysfunctional family from Dunwoody Georgia you looped the bracelet round her wrist and called it done. Ann leaves with you from the club after the white shirt guy elbows you and tells you not to yawn one too many times. A homeless kid tries to get in the cab with you. The driver is drunk. You walk behind the kiosks toward your building entrance since all soviet apartment buildings have their entrances in back hoping the guy who followed you earlier before you met up with Ann will not be there. You tried everything to get him to stop walking by your side and weaving into you and he finally stopped only when you raised your voice to a shout in front of groups of people. You are grateful for the pool of darkness between you and the lit vehicle bearing logs for the construction that keeps you awake. You don’t know why they do it at night. Time does its accordion thing and delivers you to your apartment door in no time, ass opposed to random other times when the ascent to the fourth floor takes for fucking ever.