Part 3

“You know a husband can have me committed.”

“Shut the hell up!” she raised her voice and gave a hard look.

“Can we speak Russian?”

“Why? So the people see angry Russians and not angry Americans?” she growled. “I have never even been to Russia. I’m an American because your grandmother had the pluck to run from Stalin when everyone was an enemy of their precious revolution, the bogus revolution. Kulak here, kulak there – everyone was a kulak, everyone was taking advantage of the poor labourers except the mass murderers. They sent you to a Gulag for having food. And you – you can’t even make the effort while drinking vodka tonic on the beach.”

“Show me the man, Mama.”

“What man?”

“The car mechanic.”

“Oh. Owner, not mechanic. Yes. See that’s better.” She sat up and pulled out her phone. “Here, I gave him some likes to get him to notice the account, and I will comment later after I change your profile picture with the beach one. He’s a little older than you.”

“I thought about that – what if the older ones drop dead or already have kids? Should we look for someone younger? Naïve even? Someone who would be scared to leave. One that will stay?” Tamara packaged a hope for love into her mother’s callous pragmatism.

“I like that. But he would need to have money, too.”

“Definitely.”

“You have a great body and good face in those pictures; just that fuzz hair of yours. In this humidity, it’s like an electric shag carpet,” mother’s glance examined Tamara’s head and shook hers. “I think we can make it work.”

***

After the medical check, Adrian went back to his room, showered, put on the good polo shirt, and sat in the vast hotel lobby facing the beach entrance. He smoothed the shirt and nervously drank beer while searching for her in the bright light outside. He sat there for hours and when he saw her, she was with an older woman. Already drunk, he was unprepared for a social interrogation. He jumped up and ran away across the lobby past the main bar toward the hot dog cart by the children’s pool. In panic, he ordered two hot dogs and a hamburger only to anxiously wait for the food while hoping the duo would not spot him. Then he stood at a bar table and, with a bird’s heartbeat in his chest, he swallowed the food without chewing, breathing heavily and looking over his shoulder like an anxious racoon. Then he ran to the elevators and chased hiccups with water while his belly gargled like a cooing pigeon. He returned to his room feeling stupid. He swallowed a Xanax and slept in his clothes.

In the evening, half asleep, he staggered back to the main lobby in his second-best polo shirt. An archipelago of armchairs and sofas around the continent of the bar hosted family cliques drinking and laughing. A fat singer with black curly hair and leather pants sang ’80s hits and dragged people onto the dance floor, and a NASCAR Truck Series race flashed on televisions. Cheated out of death and out of a date, his eyes still scoured the lobby for her. He didn’t even know her name. He landed on a barstool, and Emilio, a playboy bartender with a smooth pompadour and a bright smile nodded at him.

“Pacifico.”

“Beer. Sí, Señor,” Emilio put the slim can in front of Adrian, and the right hand casually touched his heart with a bow and a smile, implying ‘service from the heart.’

“Thank you,” Adrian dropped a five-dollar bill and Emilio collected it. Someone touched his shoulder.

“Mind if we join you?” asked the mother and without waiting for an answer she slipped onto the stool next to him. Her hair was red, wrinkles deep, and fingers bent and swollen with arthritis.

“Yes. Please,” he stammered while his eyes met Tamara’s. Tamara held her eyes on him, and blood pounded Adrian’s eardrums wave after wave, and his mouth filled with sand. His gaze buckled to the ground. He gulped some beer, and then he saw Emilio approaching.

“May I buy you a drink?” he spat out to outbid Emilio.

“We are all-inclusive,” the mother raised her brow.