Shards: A Novel (27 page)

“Nice going, Ismet!” Bokal said and clapped me on the back.

“No wasted time, huh?”

“She has a boyfriend, ya know?” the Riddler kid told me, interpreting the clap.

“I have the girlfriend,” I told him.

“Right,” he said.

All day the rest of the day, her friends (the “morality police,”

Allison later called them,) kept reminding me that she had a boyfriend, although we hadn’t done anything but blush around each other and smile a lot. And hug that one time. And that peck on the cheek, which I didn’t reciprocate. Even Ramona and Asmir started bringing up Asja for no reason, trying to make me feel bad.

I kept forcing myself to do the right thing and think about Asja. I would start to remember her, love her, and for a while I would succeed and feel righteous, but halfway into a daydream my mind would insert Allison’s face into my memories of Asja. It would be Allison holding my hand in Banja Park, Allison kissing me on “our” bench. I felt scared, deranged, not in charge of my mind. So instead of going to Allison’s party like everybody else, I spent the night writing a love letter to Asja, wallowing in self-pity, coming up with pretty words for how shitty I felt.

The next day I woke up with a pounding headache—there was a bump on my head I couldn’t explain—and sore all over. Everybody regarded me with admonishment. Allison looked wary of me and I suffered through the rehearsal. She left right after, without a goodbye. I felt marbled with love and anger. So, come matinee time, I performed my ass off out of spite, taking over the performance, upstaging everyone, exorcising my frustrations. The show went well. My feet ached from stomping.

The troupe dispersed and left me in the cafeteria and I was glad. I stood in line and got a croissant sandwich and a paper bowl of fruit, sat down, opened the sandwich, picked out the pork, pressed the halves back together, and bit into it. It tasted like it was made by robots, but I got it down with the steady munch of somebody who knew hunger well enough. Grapes tasted like grapes. Melon like melon.

Then Allison showed up and sat at my table. She just sat there, looking at me for a while, and like that, I fell in love. Or realized that I had. She was wet from the rain and there were clusters of gossamer white foam on her hair where whatever product she was using came in contact with water. Rain slid from her scalp and down her cheeks. She wiped it off slowly, like a movie star. She was beautiful.

I started to cry a little and she took my hand. She said that she saw the show and that I was great and that she was bringing her mother to see it tomorrow and that she wanted me to meet her afterward. She said that I was her friend, that there would be a repeat of the party, and that she hoped there would be no more incidents.
What incidents?
I thought, but said nothing. Just wanted her to keep touching my hand, keep talking to me. She asked me if I wanted to go to a museum with her. I hated museums, but I said yes. Once there, she did cartwheels when the guards weren’t watching and we giggled and the stern people in the paintings stirred not.

A week later, a few hours before Allison’s second party, I came back to the house and found Ramona, Asmir, Bokal, and the musicians congregated around the fireplace. A green bottle of something was circulating from hand to hand.

“There he is,” Asmir said as I was taking off my shoes, “Bosnian Casanova.”

Bokal came over with a grin, grabbed my hand, and sniffed my fingers.

“Still ruled by conscience, I see. What kind of Bosnian are you? You’ll ruin all our reputations.”

The musicians laughed. I saw Ramona’s brow bunch up and tugged my hand away.

Bokal said, “You have two more days. It’s like the Olympics, man. You’re not scoring just for yourself but for your country, too.”

More laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, you guys are hilarious,” Ramona said and then backed me up into a corner away from the rest of them. She whispered something and I had to bend down to her to hear. There was booze on her breath. “Tell me you didn’t do anything.”

“I didn’t do anything.” It was the truth.

“Can the soap opera wait?” spat Asmir. “I didn’t send Branka’s boys on an errand for nothing. We gotta plan this right, and they’re probably on their way back already. So, this is what’s going on: We have two more days before we’re supposed to go back and matinee performances on both days.”

“And the play with the Scottish kids at five, Asmir,” added Ramona.

“Fuck the Scottish kids.”

“Well, Ismet is letting us down in that department,” Bokal said.

“Come on!” Asmir practically screamed. “Do you want to stay here or go back to war?”

The laughter died. Somebody handed someone a bottle. Liquid sloshed. Someone else took a nip.

“We’re in a foreign fucking country, and if we don’t do this right, if they find some of us before the bus crosses the border, that’s it. I know that Ismet and Ramona have arrangements with Branka, but the rest of us don’t. This is my
life,
man.”

“All right, what are we doing?”

“Tonight at the party, make sure to spread some rumors about where you’re going. I want each of those kids to have a different story about where each of us is headed. Tell them I have a cousin in Glasgow, or Ireland. Or a friend. I don’t care what you tell them, just make it sound hush-hush, like it’s special information just for them.”

The musicians nodded in approval, looking surprised that they hadn’t thought of this first. I glanced at Ramona and her face was flat.

“But wait a second,” she said. “Are we going to finish all our performances, or are you guys bailing on the shit we’re doing with the Scots?”

Asmir looked at her almost in confusion, and I saw his mind jump from thought to unknowable thought.

“Well?”

“Tomorrow, we’re doing both,” he said. “The last day, I’m gone right after our matinee. I don’t know about you.”

“Me, too,” Bokal chimed in. “We need a head start to get away from Branka.”

Right then, the front door opened and Omar and Boro walked in with plastic bags of beer. A gust of wind whooshed in with them and it felt like the room imploded a little. Everyone looked otherworldly and stiff. Nobody said anything. Ramona grabbed the green bottle out of the drummer’s hands, stomped across the living room to the bathroom, and slammed the door.

The party went into the night. Minors drank tall cans of lager, spilling all over the place. Asmir, Bokal, and the musicians cornered them individually and told them where in the UK their fictitious relatives lived. Allison played the piano in a blue T-shirt and her father kept maneuvering people off his expensive Chinese carpet. The young troupe members were sad because our Scottish excursion was coming to an end, and so were their Scottish counterparts. Everyone took pictures of everyone else, crying, exchanging addresses.

I wanted to spend some time with Allison alone, but suddenly it felt like she was embarrassed that I was there, scared almost. She
wasn’t the same Allison from earlier in the week, the one doing cartwheels among statues, goofing off, using every chance to be touching me. Maybe it was because her dad was there and she was trying to be someone he would approve of. Maybe she thought about it and realized she really loved her boyfriend and dreaded getting close to me. Maybe she was only toying with me behind his back, the bitch. After all, where was he tonight? In the end I figured I shouldn’t have been hoping for anything in the first place. Bad karma. In the end I blamed myself.

At some point Asmir took me out on the balcony and closed the door. The night was cold but without rain. The street below us was empty.

“Don’t break your heart over her,” he said. “You don’t know what she’s like.”

“I’m fine,” I said leaning over the rail. I wondered what it would feel like to be airborne above this street.

“Real seagulls fly alone.”

He spun me around and hugged me. His general aura was redolent of beer.

“Tomorrow, after our play, Bokal and I will evaporate.”

“You mean the day after tomorrow?”

He let go of me so I could see his shaking head.

“Tomorrow.”

There was genuine sorrow in his eyes.

“What about our last performance?” I managed.

“Ismet, it’s not the show that must go on, but life.” I could see he was very proud of that one.

We both leaned on the railing, looking out. My eyes stung. I looked at my white breath against the gray building across the street and thought about mankind, about how hot we had to be on the inside to survive in such cold environs.

“Where do you think you’ll go?”

He didn’t say anything. I looked at his profile against the city lights and the city darknesses. His shoulders were hunched. He looked smaller and toothless. He looked like a child, or a father who had lost one.

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

We found Bokal, and Asmir immediately turned from vulnerable to voluble. We had another round of tall ones and watched a frail fifteen-year-old Scottish girl puke amber into a potted plant. Allison’s father had had enough. There was a gong. He gonged it and we started to look for our coats.

As the last of us were leaving in a group, Allison put on a jacket and said she’d walk with us part of the way, to say proper good-byes.

“Don’t do it,” Asmir whispered in my ear. “You have no idea what these Western girls are like.”

“We like each other.”

“They like dick, that’s what they like. You’ll see. I’ll prove it to you.”

He and Bokal lagged behind as the rest of us took over the street like an invading army. The cold oxygen had awakened us. Scottish high school girls hung off the musicians’ arms, cackling. Allison became her flirty self again and tried to tickle me, ruffled my hair, tried to push me off the sidewalk with her hip.

And just as my heart grew big again to accommodate my regained feelings toward her, Asmir came out of the blue, swooped in like a fat seagull to prove his point, took a confused Allison by the arm, and they walked ahead of everybody, like lovers. My heart shriveled up on itself like a raisin. All the love in there escaped in a cloud of steam, exchanging electrons with the misty air, merging with it, and giving it importance. Some other Scottish
girl (too many hair clips) slipped her hand between my elbow and me, snuggled in closer, and kept saying words in English while I tried to breathe so I wouldn’t die.

I don’t know how long I walked, but out of nowhere I saw Allison standing on the sidewalk ahead, disoriented, her body rigid. I saw Asmir cross the street and vanish around the first corner. The hair-clip girl on my arm kept talking until we came alongside Allison, frozen to her spot, and I found myself slowing down as though she had some kind of gravitational pull only on me. I came to a stop and wiggled my arm up and out of the other girl’s grip, saying sorry, my face all gushy.

“Please hug me,” Allison whispered and we locked in an embrace. Our pupils overtook our irises, opening holes in our eyes so big the world just got sucked right through them and into us. We stood still, clutching each other.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

After what she said I could have killed Asmir.

Later we walked, hand in hand, up the hill from St. Stephen’s Church all the way to Princes Street, trying not to step on any lines or cracks in the sidewalk—a game. On the hill in front of us Edinburgh Castle stood well lit and unobtainable, like paradise. Black taxies passed us, somberly gliding up and down, like hearses. The creatures of the night gorged themselves on fish and chips out of oily paper wrappers. Tourists acted like they owned the place, yelling in exotic languages and laughing hysterically for no apparent reason. There were posters everywhere that read: “Amazing, tour de force performance . . .” and “You’re stupid if you don’t see this one . . .” Some just showed a picture of Salvador Dalí, his mustache like dollar signs.

A group of teenagers passed us on the other side of the street. There was some kind of commotion and someone yelled something with a thick Scottish accent. Allison dropped my hand like a slug and said:

“Shite!”

“What?”

“That’s William.”

I looked over. This tall, blond guy separated from his group of friends and ran across the street toward us. I saw myself getting bludgeoned, stabbed. I planted my feet and prayed.

But he smiled at me and said, “Sorry to bother bu’ I’d like a word with Allison?” or something like that. In Bosnia I would already have been picking my spleen up off the sidewalk.

“No problem,” I said all too eagerly.

“I’m sorry,” she said to me and followed him a little way down.

William’s posse stood around, eyeing me with hatred. I swallowed a lot and counted steps from a bus stop to the building, making it look like I wasn’t compulsive, like I was just pacing. My mind kept telling me to run away, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to leave without Allison; that gravitational pull again. She and William were standing in front of a jewelry store, two shadows arguing against bright light and burnished gold.

“Hey, fucker,” someone called from behind me, and I almost buckled like a piece of lawn furniture. Then I realized that it had been said in Bosnian. I turned and saw Bokal coming my way, holding a painting under his arm.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Shitting myself.” I moved my chin slightly, as though pointing toward the jewelry store. He looked over there, recognized Allison and laughed.

“Tonight’s the night, huh? All right, I’m gonna leave you to it.”

He tried to walk by me but I grabbed his jacket.

“Where are you
going
?” I said through my teeth. “That’s her boyfriend and those are his friends. He saw us holding hands.”

Bokal glanced at them and scratched his beard, evaluating their potency if it came to a brawl.

“They’re not gonna do shit,” he said.

“You stick around anyway.”

“Hey, check this out.” He held the painting up for me. “What do you think?”

It was a nude in blues and yellows, part of a window and a full moon outside it.

“I picked her up in a pub. Said I
needed
to paint her. She took me to a store, bought me a canvas and some paints, and then took me home. When I was done, I fucked her.”