Elena, buying a Social Security card at the Russian Café:
She arrives a half-hour early and chooses a table by the window, facing out. The Russian Café on 1st Street is a few feet below street level and when Elena sits down she can only see legs passing above the bank of snow, flickering shadows of high boots and dark overcoats. It is late afternoon and the snow is unceasing.
The café is warm, but Elena is shivering. She takes off her coat but keeps her hat and scarf on, she orders a mug of tea and a muffin—four dollars, which is her entire budget for the day because she’s been saving all her money for the transaction that’s about to occur. The place is nearly empty. An older man in a tweed jacket sits alone at a table on the other side of the door, reading a newspaper and sipping a cappuccino. A couple sits some distance away, laughing at a private joke. They are young, college students perhaps, and the woman’s face is flushed in the warmth of the room. Elena holds the tea near her face and closes her eyes for a moment, waiting for the heavy footsteps, the door flung open and the Homeland Security badge flashed in her face and the shouting, the handcuffs, the guns; but when she opens her eyes the room is still tranquil, candlelight on red wallpaper and the shadows of pedestrians still flickering across the top of the window before her and the snow falling outside, the waitress behind the counter still chatting in Russian on her cell phone, the man in the tweed jacket still turning the pages of the newspaper. Of course. Why would her arrest be so dramatic? She isn’t armed or dangerous. She’s a twenty-two-year-old who goes without dinner too frequently and gets dizzy if she stands up too fast. No need for storm troopers, for the waving of guns. In a moment the man in tweed will take one last sip of his cappuccino, fold his newspaper unhurriedly and stand up from the table, buttoning his jacket as he stands. He will move toward her slowly, he will reach into an inside pocket and remove a police badge and hold it up with a wink as he removes the handcuffs from his belt, speaking confidentially in a friendly voice, You have the right to remain silent, and by morning she will be on a northbound plane with an X stamped on her passport. She sips the tea to calm herself and tries to eat the muffin. An hour earlier she had been desperately, light-headedly, agonizingly hungry, but now she can taste nothing and it’s difficult to swallow. The man in the tweed jacket turns a page of his newspaper. Elena clenches her hands around the mug of tea, trying to look everywhere at once and bracing herself for the sting; the men exploding through the door with guns drawn or the couple across the room standing up and pulling badges from their hipster jean pockets. Every catastrophe has a last moment just before it; as late as eight forty-four A.M. on the morning of September 11, 2001, it was still only a perfect bright day in New York. But the couple remains in conversation, the man in the tweed jacket sips his cappuccino and reads, the waitress stands by the glass door looking up the steps to the sidewalk and street.
“Still snowing,” the waitress says. She’s a young woman with straight blond hair and brown eyes, a small scar on her forehead, and she smiles when Elena looks up. “It will be deep tonight, I think.”
The door opens a moment later and the man is at her table almost instantly, sliding into the chair across from her and unbuttoning his overcoat, his face red with cold.
“Gabriel.” He extends a cold hand. “You must be Elena.”
She nods mutely.
“It’s freezing,” he says. “Jesus.” He waves at someone behind her, presumably the waitress, removes a tissue from his coat pocket and blows his nose. “Excuse me,” he says to Elena, and the waitress has appeared with a latte. She sets it down in front of him and Gabriel kisses her cheek. “Illy,” he says, “you’re a saint. Thank you.” The waitress smiles and steps back, watching them. Gabriel leans forward across the table and beckons for Elena to lean forward too. His breath is hot against her ear. “I apologize for this,” he murmurs, so softly that she has to strain to hear him, “but I need you to go to the back with Ilieva, and do what she says. It’s a security precaution that my cousin insists on. Please don’t take it personally.”
“Here,” Ilieva says, “come with me, please.” Elena stands and follows her past the brightly lit pastry case, down the red corridor past the bathroom, until Ilieva opens a door marked Employees Only and Elena follows her into the storeroom. It is a cramped space filled with boxes and milk crates. An enormous glass-fronted fridge hums in a corner, filled with white cake boxes and ice-cream tubs. Ilieva closes and locks the door behind them.
“Please take off your clothes,” she says.
“What?”
“For the wires,” Ilieva says. “It is to check for the wires.”
“The wires?”
“Wiretapping. The recordings. I’m sorry, my English . . .”
“Oh. I understand.” She begins to take off her clothes. It’s warm in the storeroom, but she can’t stop shivering.
“Your bra also,” Ilieva says. She picks up each article of clothing as Elena removes it, patting it down before she returns it to Elena, presumably feeling for recording devices. When Elena is fully dressed again Ilieva makes an unembarrassed search of Elena’s coat pockets. She removes and examines the wad of bills, replaces them and continues searching. “No handbag?”
“No handbag,” Elena says.
When Elena goes back out into the restaurant Gabriel is where she left him, drinking his latte. He smiles when he sees her but doesn’t speak. Ilieva appears a moment later and murmurs something in his ear. He nods.
“I apologize sincerely,” he says to Elena. “I know it’s intrusive, to say the least. My cousin’s a little paranoid about security.”
“I hate it,” Gabriel says. “The whole procedure. It just seems somewhat necessary these days. The current political climate, et cetera. But anyway, listen, may I buy you a sandwich?”
“Oh, there’s no need, I—”
“Seriously,” he says gently. “You’re looking a little pale.”
All at once she is desperately hungry again.
Later on it’s difficult to remember the conversation, except that it’s effortless and that hours pass before Ilieva brings the check and the snow outside the window sparkles blue and amber in the lights of the street.
“We close early,” Ilieva says apologetically. “For the snow.” The café is empty but for an older couple eating dessert nearby.
“Bear with me for one last absurd ritual,” Gabriel says softly, “and then you’re free to work in the United States of America. Will you do exactly as I say for a moment?”
“Yes,” Elena whispers.
Gabriel opens his wallet and slides a twenty into the check folder. “That’s for the food and drink,” he tells her quietly. “Now put in your share.” His tone leaves no doubt as to his meaning, and all at once it is the last moment before potential catastrophe again: the whole evening has unwound to this point, now, and it’s too late again. Elena reaches into her left coat pocket, where the precious stack of bills that she’s been accumulating for months resides, but the police don’t break down the door. Perhaps it won’t happen. Perhaps she’ll walk out with a forged passport and a Social Security number, exactly as promised. “Turn the folder so that it opens away from that couple,” Gabriel murmurs, “and slide the money in. Don’t count it—good—now put the folder on the table and look at me as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.”
Ilieva takes the check folder and Elena is alone with Gabriel for a moment, and the music playing in the café at that moment sounds like a Russian lullaby. Ilieva reappears with the folder and two glasses of red wine.
“Your change,” Ilieva says. “A pleasure, as always.”
Gabriel raises his glass. “Red wine means the count was correct,” he says softly. “If she’d brought water, I’d be out the door by now. Cheers.”
“What are we toasting?”
“My last job,” he says, “and your future gainful employment.”
“Really? I’m your very last?”
“Well, I have one more tomorrow, actually. But my second-to-last job doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?” He’s reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket, and he passes her the envelope so casually that Elena almost doesn’t see it until it’s on the table. It’s the kind of envelope that film developers use for photos. “Here are some vacation pictures,” he says. “You can look at them later.”
She takes the envelope and puts it in her bag and the moment of transaction is over so quickly that she’s almost unsure it happened. He’s still holding up his wineglass, and she smiles.
“Well,” Elena says, “congratulations. I assume this isn’t the easiest line of work.”
“That’s just it,” he says. “It is easy. I could do this forever. But I want something different. What will you do with your new-found legality?”
“I’ll stop washing dishes for a living. I’ll stop posing naked for photographers. I don’t know. Anything.”
Gabriel goes quiet for a moment, sipping his wine. “Listen, I shouldn’t ask probably,” he says suddenly. “This is probably silly of me, but do you have any office skills? Can you type?”
She nods.
“I started a new job last month,” he says. “It’s nothing that exciting, but I’ve been told to find a new secretary for my division . . .” She listens for some time to the details of the position, she sips her wine and then the glass of water that follows, and she is stricken by a sense that has come over her before in moments of unreality; it’s as if she’s stepped outside herself and is observing the scene from afar. At a small table in the Russian Café in a snowstorm she talks to the man she met a few hours earlier and laughs as if she’s always known him, just as if they’re two old friends out for dinner on a snowy night in New York. Just as if the envelope that Anton slid over the table hadn’t contained a Social Security card and an impeccably forged American passport.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel says in the snow outside the restaurant, walking toward the Williamsburg Bridge, “it’s difficult to explain. I just want, I’ve always wanted a different kind of life than this. This will sound strange, I mean, I know it’s crazy, but I always wanted to work in an office.”
“You have a corporate soul?”
She’s mostly joking, but Gabriel nods as if she isn’t and says, “Exactly. Yes.”
Late at night on the bridge the cold is deep and absolute. The lights of the Domino Sugar Factory shine over the river, and the snow is still falling. Gabriel tells her he’s spending the evening with his parents in Williamsburg. They walk together, talking, and a boat moves silently over the dark water far below.
On the far side of the bridge he calls a car service for her on his cell phone and they stand together waiting for it to arrive, stamping their feet to keep warm until the black car pulls up to the curb. “Let me give you my business card so you can call me about the job. There’s just one thing I have to tell you,” he says as he gives it to her. “About my name . . .”
The car takes her away from there to the apartment building in East Williamsburg. She leans her head against the window to look up at the snow and it seems at that moment that it’s going to get easier now, that the long nightmare of hunger and dishwashing and posing naked is almost over; there’s a chance at a job here in her beloved city, something different, health insurance, a new life. The driver, already paid by Gabriel/Anton, grunts something about the neighborhood when she says goodnight. Elena lets herself in through the first door, a steel gate that clangs shut behind her. Her boyfriend is lying on her bed when she opens the door to her bedroom; she can’t suppress a gasp. They’ve been talking about moving in together, and she forgets sometimes that she’s given him a key. He grins at her and puts down the book he was reading, The Botany of Desire, green-gold apples resplendent on the dust jacket.
“I let myself in,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I’m glad you’re here.” She opens the closet door and steps behind it, hidden from his view. She’s taking her clothes off; the thought of undressing for Ilieva in the storeroom returns to her, and she blinks and tries to erase Ilieva’s face from her mind. “What time is it?”
“Almost eleven,” he says. “Where’ve you been?”
“I went out with a girl from work. Jennifer.”
The American passport is cool to the touch. She takes it from her coat pocket and opens it quickly, hidden from Caleb’s view by the closet door. The light in the closet is bad but the document seems perfect. The photograph that she mailed to a post-office box two weeks earlier stares back at her.
“A waitress?”
“Yes,” Elena says. She’s running her fingers over the letters. Nationality: United States of America. “She works mornings, usually. You haven’t met her. How long have you been here?”
“Oh, a few hours,” Caleb says. “Missing you rather urgently, I might add. Are you naked yet?”
Later on in bed she opens her eyes to watch the movements of his shoulders above her, the side of his face, his neck. His eyes are clenched shut. She watches him intently. Trying to concentrate on Caleb only, trying not to pretend that Caleb is anyone else.