sixty-nine

SHE WAS A WOMAN, a woman who was born in 1969. She was the Class of ’87. She was older than me. She was a Nixon baby. Maybe she was born a few hours after her parents watched Midnight Cowboy, starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Maybe she had been conceived after her parents had returned home from watching The Graduate.

She had lived and she had experienced life. All of this living and experiencing, she had found, had left her with profound insight and wisdom that was mostly completely useless. And all of the creams, treatments, and procedures available could not negate the fact that she was slowly disappearing into the oblivion of time like a blood orange sun sinking into the murky Pacific off of Santa Monica.

I found her very attractive. She had lovely brown hair, smart blue eyes. Even her most melancholy moments were as rich and as delicious as a pineapple cake. I didn’t think a thing of her being as old as the Moon Landing. But finding a place for our affair proved difficult. We had so many commitments; we found no place for our trysts.

People just did not approve. Wherever we went, we were always on the run. I sought sanctuary and at last, after scouring the neighborhood, I found an old house with a staircase leading down into a cellar. This underground lair was a workshop with tools on the shelves and sawdust everywhere.

She curled up in the corner and pressed her head against her knees. She closed her eyes, breathed. All of this running, just for peace and security. “You know,” she said. “I just don’t think any of this is worth it.” The stairs began to creak next. The old man who owned this house was coming down to saw some wood.

An old man with white hair and a mustache who looked like Wilford Brimley, because we both knew who that was. He would probably be less kind about finding out his workshop was being used as a love nest. But where could we go? There was no way out. We could hide there, behind some shelves. Maybe he wouldn’t see us?

We both knew there was no escaping Wilford Brimley. He would find us anywhere, wherever that was. It was just a matter of time. “This is all pointless,” she said. She looked tired. She was.

old carolina

THE HOUSE WAS NEXT to the old Baptist church. This was a white, wooden chapel of worship that had been erected at some point in the 19th century at the behest of prosperous local businessmen and farmers who were tired of traveling to town for Sunday services. The ground here in Carolina was so low and wet that one often felt as if one was half underwater. There was no easy getting around.

That was the church, but I should talk about the house. This too was old and wooden and had seen multiple additions. A screened in front porch. A kitchen in back. Such raised areas of swampland were called pocosins by the original inhabitants of the country, some of whom were among our predecessors. This house was erected upon one, but for reasons unknown to me, it was now inhabited by Uncle Osvald, who was my ex-wife’s mother’s brother and who had been, at least until recently, quite dead and sleeping off eternity in a cemetery in Estonia.

But times had changed and in his newly undead, Carolina form, Uncle Osvald had become a somewhat crusty but dedicated sawyer at the local mill. He was the kind of man who drank a beer every night while yelling at the TV set, slept with his dirty socks on, rarely trimmed a graying beard but had no reason to. But he was practical and kept his keys on him at all times. There was that big silver-colored hoop extending from his alligator skin belt and it jangled as he walked around. You could hear him going outside to the smokehouse, or just for a cigarette.

This is why when returning from Sunday service at the church one day, I discovered that the family house was locked and I had really nowhere to go. Stranger still was the appearance of another unknown Estonian relative, who called himself Jesper and claimed to be my ex-wife’s third, long lost brother. He was a lanky character, his attire showed signs of manual labor, stained pants, etc. He had a rough, unshaven face, his dark hair was going white, and he looked sort of like a Turk, even though he was an Estonian from North Carolina. None of this made any sense, especially since Jesper had never been mentioned once in the previous 25 years.

How could the family have kept the existence of Jesper hidden for so long? Not one photo of him. Not a mention. It was if he had been cut out of every photo following a Stalinist purge. “Where have you been?” I asked. “Where have you been all these years?” “Away,” Jesper told me. I had to take the newly discovered third brother at his word. He was my children’s uncle.

Jesper told me it would be a while until Osvald got back from the sawmill. I told him not to worry. I had a car and the swamps were calling. I’d drive across Perquimans, Pasquotank and Camden into Currituck, ride the road to Powells Point. The ancient village of the Poteskeet. That’s where I was heading.

skylights

THE CITY OF TALLINN was encased within a kind glass bubble or atrium and had been for the entirety of its existence. I had only learned about it on a cool, rainy day when I was walking through the Town Hall Square, and I looked up to see a man dangling from the top of a wobbly ladder, trying to close one of the many skylights that had let in the rain and soaked the houses.

I soon learned that while some of these skylights had been discovered, not all were accounted for. Ladders rose up all across the skyline like cranes, but no one could ever really keep the rainwater out. The 18th century blueprints of the sky of Tallinn were kept at the imperial archives in Saint Petersburg, but nobody had been allowed to see them since the war started.

Two women friends though were able to sneak their way into the Russian Federation by disguising themselves as patriotic Russians and got into the dusty archives, from which they retrieved the prints. These were beautifully sketched in black ink on parchment, and quite bulky. It was no easy task for Peter’s architects to have designed the sky above Tallinn, then called Reval. One wondered if these windows to the elements had already been partially crafted during Swedish rule, and if the Imperial Russians had just improved upon their plans.

The city did need water, it needed water for its parks, its trees and plants, flower gardens and so on. But Tallinn was also getting excessively saturated by the rain, and there needed to be a better way of controlling it. Otherwise we would all be wearing raincoats all year round, when it wasn’t snowing. The two women friends met me on the second or third floor of the Viru Keskus shopping center with the blueprints for the sky. They were really quite excited about the theft of these highly guarded documents. They unrolled them on the floor of Sportland.

After that, I went to work with an Estonian who looked like the actor Tambet Tuisk and maybe was him, closing up the skylights. Now that we had the plans, we knew where each one of the windows above Tallinn was located. The city had special ladders made for the job.

While they wobbled in the wind, and though I was terrified of heights, it was quite breathtaking to look down, hundreds of meters below us, and spot the Finnish Embassy on Toompea, or the little toy spire of Mikaelskyrkan or Saint Michael’s Church below that. When we reached one of the windows, we could see it was ajar and water was pouring through. I reached out, took it by the handle, and thrust upwards. The window sealed silently against the white clouds of the sky. One down. So many more to go.

high water

WE WERE SEQUESTERED in Ülejõe, near the Konsum parking lot, on account of some grave and rising health threat. Rory Lapp was the first to undergo screening and then he was released to return to his schedule. I think Rory was able to get over the bridge, I remember only glancing at him from behind, in his blue jeans and orange vest, but maybe he stayed behind, I don’t know. The sun was sinking into the river by then and the waters were rising.

When I went into the first tent for assessment, a young woman, dark hair and freckles, used a metal implement about the size of a match, a kind of awl, to pierce my skin and remove a small piece of flesh, just as the Lakota did during their Sun Dance ceremonies. Then she took this offering to the creator and instead of securing it in a tube for further analysis, she tasted it, ruminating and focusing on its flavor, as if that could tell her something about my overall state.

“Yes,” she said, nodding and tasting, “Yes, it’s just as I thought.” She never told me what it was.

From the main, brightly lit medical tent, I was led outside. The river waters were even higher, they were overrunning the high banks and running down into this part of the town, creating rapid whirlpools and swirling eddies. I watched as an old orange Volkswagen Beetle was swept away by the high waters, its owner just able to get out before the car was lost for good. High up on the riverbank, I could hear my Krishna devotee neighbors talking while this went on.

They were laughing and toasting the flood.

And then I was brought into a temporary tent, where it seemed like a dozen strangers were trapped in the sticky darkness. One of them, Alma, a blonde civil servant I knew from town, a few years older than me, seemed to jump me at once, crawling on top of me. She said, “Oh, good. I have always wanted to do this to you.” That’s how I wound up making passionate love in the darkness of a quarantine tent. There was a lot of sweating, blending, fusing. I pressed up against Alma’s hair, her ruddy, blushing face. It was rich and cathartic, but the situation gave everything a kind of menacing portent. What else do you do when the world reaches its end?

linnéa and peeter

HALFWAY THROUGH THE NIGHT the hallway closet dissolved. This was more like a built-in storage space, with hooks for hanging coats and some shelving above and below. There had been too many old jackets there and too many old boots, but these had been replaced by a glowing substance, part gauze, part spiderweb, part marshmallow. Cotton candy, if you will.

Through the cotton candy door, I could see Linnéa in her bedroom.

She was trying on different dresses, standing there before a mirror. A yellow polka dot dress, a purple dress. She smoothed out the fabric, turned from side to side, singing gently to herself as she went, lyrics to songs I had never heard of, or whispering comforting phrases. Yes, the blue dress! This was the one! Her hair was a brilliant yellow. Her lashes were plump and long.

Then she noticed me watching her and climbed through the doorway. “We have to talk,” she announced, taking me by the arm. “It’s time that I told you everything.” She hoisted herself up onto my white, queen-sized bed, and stretched out as if she was doing the backstroke. She was a sight. Her long bluestockinged legs stretched out before me like soothing Atlantic horizons. “It’s been too long, it’s been too long since I told you everything,” Linnéa said.

But soon her boyfriend Peeter would be back. Linnéa was now in a serious relationship and I was expected to blend like all other men into a dim gray background, to melt into the anonymous crowds. Such bedside confessionals were strictly verboten. Peeter then entered through the cotton candy door. He was youthful and had a princely moustache. Peeter was wearing a fur vest and had white war paint across his cheeks. He said, “Hello, I am Peeter.”

“I know,” I told him. “And who are you?” He asked. “I am who I am,” I told him. We stood there looking at each other for a while. I was waiting for him to put the hatchet into me. But Prince Peeter did no such thing. Instead his eyes softened a bit. “It’s good of you, it’s good of you to be a friend to Linnéa,” he said. Then he began to talk of more trivial things, like his job, and politics and trade policy, and other things in which I had no real interest. But there was no revenge and there was no heartbreak and Linnéa had selected the exactly right-colored dress.

the lavazza coffee vending machine

THE LAVAZZA COFFEE vending machine was temporarily out of order. A small dark-haired woman was busy with a screwdriver, installing some new buttons and features. Soon it would be possible to get pastries and croissants. The new installation panels showed an eye-watering array of colorful treats. As such, there would be no coffee for me. “Come back soon,” she said.

The common area of the hostel, in which the machine was located, was dark. Someone had turned out all of the lights. There was always this musty smell in there, the smell of hostels. A long bar in the corner. It was sort of like a rock club crossed with a hostel. The only light came from behind the bar, where wine glasses dangled and thick bottles of whiskey glowed gold.

Back in the room, my father was tapping into a laptop. He was wearing a green t-shirt. “Don’t you want to go see some museums while we’re here in Amsterdam?” I asked him. Surely, if we were in the Dutch capital, we could see a few Van Goghs in the process. But he just kept working and reminded me that I should be working too. I was supposed to cover the Olympics in Scotland in a week or so too. What lasting impact would the games have on Edinburgh?

I went back out into the common area to see if the machine was fixed, but it was even in a greater state of reconstruction. There were wires and panels everywhere, and the small dark-haired woman was at work with her screwdriver, putting everything in place. She had on a white sweater, glasses, her hair was braided. She was quiet. Focused. Diligently at work.

Back in the room, my father was gone, but a young woman with a backpack had arrived, asking if she too could spend the night. Who was I to protest? She had blonde hair, a silent, unassuming character. Wore a plaid shirt. Probably from some place like Idaho. She took a seat on one of the bunks and water began to flow into the room. Was it water from one of the canals? Soon all of the dirty old bedding was soaked and there were pillows floating by.

In the common area, the Lavazza coffee vending machine was at last in order, but the button for a straight black coffee was now missing. There were tropical cocktails to be had, rich, creamy pastries and doughnuts, but not one simple black coffee. This was bad. Was I really going to get a flat white? Or maybe I would have to do the impossible and leave the hostel? Surely a good cafe was located just down the way at the foot of some bridge. Just a few steps.

Back in the room, the water had subsided and the carpets had dried. The bedding had all been replaced. I was face to face with a woman dressed in gold, who looked like Madeleine Kahn when she played the Empress Nympho in History of the World, Part I. It’s hard to describe the lovemaking process. I don’t really remember that part, only that at some point it was sensual overload. Her golden dress, and that curly hair. It was everywhere, all over me, from every corner, I was absorbed into her delicious essence. “But you’re older than my mother,” I told Madeleine Kahn. “This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.” “Oh, it’s happening,” Madeleine Kahn said while sucking on my ear. She was also dead but it didn’t seem to matter.

supermarket

IN THE SUPERMARKET, it seemed as if I couldn’t find anything. Long aisles full of goods, but the ones I wanted or was in search of eluded me. That supermarket was so vast that even the section I was in could have accommodated a whole neighborhood of Beijing or Mexico City. And between these rows of canned goods and leftover Easter merchandise flitted Dulcinea.

I would catch a glimpse of her at the end of the aisle or turning a corner, some locks of her gold hair, her gray pants, but she never acknowledged me. Still, she must have seen me, because only a woman who was purposefully making sure to move in such a way, to avert her gaze in such a way, to turn her torso just so, must have seen the person she was working so hard to avoid. Was this how things would stay between us? Just like this? But I was right here.

Then I saw her, fully, from the back, the whole fish. She was inspecting different loaves of Estonian rye bread for consistency. I traced out her silhouette. Now was my chance to break down the emotional and physical walls between us. That hair, those curves, that smell. Her. Dulcinea. She was there. I was here. And I loved her so. This was the strong stuff. The bright lights of the supermarket beaming down. She read the ingredients and took her bread and was on her way, turned a corner, hurried off. But would she one day see me? One day would she?

gino’s kitchen

GINO REPURPOSED an old colonial farmhouse on the north shore of Long Island, somewhere east of Port Jefferson, in that winding country sprawl that stitches together Mount Sinai, Miller Place, and Sound Beach. These are long, sleepy country roads, canopied with lush dense greenery. It was here that he set up his own restaurant, fittingly dubbed “Gino’s Kitchen.”

How I wound up at the restaurant is a mystery. All I know is that I was there. It had retained some of its older architectural elements, but there was a kind of atrium with walls of lattice and ivy growing all over it. Small round tables were arrayed throughout this atrium area, with white tablecloths, covered with candles, hunks of ciabatta straight out of the brick oven, and wine glasses filled halfway with red and white. Servers swooped in and left like graceful birds.

As I walked through this part of the restaurant, I began to notice that only women were seated at the tables. Beautiful young Italian women. Or were they Italian-American women? They were looking at me as if I was attractive. There was that discernible moment of being overwhelmed, followed by a facial twitch that showed they were trying to regain their composure. Lovely chocolate-headed brunettes, sipping chianti, eyeballing me, inspecting me. But if I stayed … I told myself. But if I stayed … One of the Italian women had very pink, full lips.

In the kitchen inside the main house, there were enormous pots of water boiling. In went the fresh pasta, over here was the sauce, or gravy as some call it, bubbling up and spurting red, like the La Brea Tar Pits. It seemed like an army of chefs in white were shoveling in pizzas, beating eggs, drizzling vinaigrette. I peered down into the pot of sauce, could see hues of purple and orange on the surface. What was he putting in there? Chili pepper? Just then, Gino entered, a head like an eggplant, round, muscular, in a black t-shirt that read, “Gino’s Kitchen.”

“What the fuck are you doing in my kitchen?” he said to me. “Nothing,” I stammered. “I just was having a look at the sauce.” “Don’t you dare try to steal my fucking sauce recipe.” he said. “Get the fuck out now. Get the fuck out of my fucking kitchen!” There was a door at one end, and I sort of backed my way toward the door. Outside, the light was a strange kind of blue twilight gray.

With a push and a shove, and a twist of a metal doorknob, I was out the door, back under the trees of Miller Place or wherever this was. More black SUVs pulled into the gravel parking lot, and I got on my way. Maybe I could hitch out to Orient. Take a ferry up to New England. Leave the island for good. It was quiet and a light breeze was rolling in off the sound as I started walking. In the distance, I could see the white spire of an old congregational church.

the narva bakery

THE SUN WAS RISING as I was strolling along the river promenade when, on a whim, I decided to turn up one side street that arched back toward the gray center of town. It was morning in Narva, where it was perpetually late February or early March. Ice clung stubbornly to every façade and rooftop. One’s breathe, like smoke, was always visible and drifting, and the sounds of sturdy boots punched out a clean rhythm on the city’s frosty mottled sidewalks.

About halfway up this street, I noticed a wooden house packed in between two mighty Soviet-era structures. It had a multipaned window that bowed out into the street. Behind the glass, I could see fresh loaves of bread, scones, Cornish pasties. I looked up at the sign but couldn’t make out the hand-painted name. Was it Trelawney? Pendragon? One of those names.

How could it be? How could it be that there was a British bakery hidden in the back streets of Narva? Who was the rogue baker who dared to operate in this sea of Russia-facing Russianness? What clients did he have? Did they even know what a pasty was? What a secret!

It was terribly cold at that moment and I thought a hunk of good sourdough, a slab of butter, some good marmalade, and a strong coffee would be the ultimate fix. Through the window I could see the baker at work, though his back was to me, and he was dressed in old-fashioned clothing. This was not fully Dickensian attire, but he had on a gray coat and flat cap, and an old checkered scarf wrapped around his neck from a century ago. He was an older man, but not much older. It could have maybe been a handful of years between us, but his hair shone silver.

I knocked on the door and then tapped on the window. “Can I come in?” I said. Behind the man, I could see stacks of tea chests with words like Premium and East India stamped all over them. The man cocked his head as if he was confused by the situation. Then he mouthed to me the words, “We’re closed,” through the window and went back about his work. But why were they closed? I was maybe the only person who was lucky enough to find that Narva bakery. Why shut me out?

vance

AFTER VICE PRESIDENT JD Vance returned from his trip to Tallinn, it was said that a great change had come over him. No one was quite sure what had catalyzed this right-on-time midlife crisis onset, but it could have been the sum of experiences. Maybe it was viewing the Anton Corbijn retrospective at Fotografiska, or merely watching men and women the same age as him engaged in stirring table tennis matches in the many yards and alleyways of Telliskivi. Maybe it was his first taste of a delicious VLND Burger. Nobody knew what had caused it.

The changes were visible. The Ulysses S. Grant-inspired beard was the first to go, followed by that sharp suit he had worn when famously lecturing Zelenskyy. After the Tallinn trip, Vance had started wearing a pale blue, long-sleeve shirt that read TALLINN on it. The shirt was one-size too large, which gave Vance a billowy, college-freshman-getting-over-his-hangover look.

It was this changed Vance that I encountered at the Elliott School of International Studies in Washington, DC, a few weeks later when I went to retrieve a few books I had left behind in the student lounge during a six-week crash course in Baltic Studies. I went into the sparse, multi-level area, climbed a set of stairs and found the books in the corner where some older couples were sitting around and chatting. One of the women, with dyed blonde hair, wore a pink dress, the amount of cleavage visible was on the level of the grotesque. Who were these people?

It was then that I noticed a van pull up outside the school, and Vance and his entourage — a mix of press pool, Secret Service, and Hillybilly Elegy fans — follow him in. With his pink, cleanly shaven face and TALLINN long-sleeve t-shirt, it occurred to me that Vance was starting to look more ex-boyband star than vice president. He came into the lobby and was mobbed by students. Then he told his followers that he needed a rest and sat down on a couch across from me. I was nervous. What could I tell Vance? Was now the time to do some lobbying on behalf of the Baltics? What would Kasekamp say? How would he handle this? I decided to play it cool, to let him do the talking, to make him think that I was his friend. If I came at him with some slogans, he was more likely to tune me out. For whatever reason, the president had not yet turned on Vance, despite his new look. Perhaps after having alienated the British and Italian prime ministers and the Pope, he had decided that annoying the man who could make him redundant with one flip of the 25th Amendment was not the best idea.

“Well,” Vance said. “I came to hear your ideas.” Something about that Ohio drawl made “ideas” sound like “odors.” His put his hands on his thighs, leaned in. “You want to smell our odors?” I asked. Vance gave me a strange look. I gave him a strange look. It occurred to me that I might be tripping. Had I been dosed? How else to explain the weird 1950s couple in the student lounge, especially the woman with the pink dress and obscene cleavage. What was going on?

I noticed some other students in the back, leftwing university alumni, familiar to me from my undergraduate days. They began to circle each other. I was mortified. They were going to mess up my lobbying on behalf of the Baltics. We had Vance right here in the palms of our hands. He was becoming one of us, the seventh friend, so to speak, in addition to Ross, Phoebe, Joey, Monica, Chandler and Rachel. Or was JD Vance the replacement for Chandler? All we needed to do was give him some good coffee and his transition to the light would be complete. And those boneheads wanted to insult him? To my amazement, they began singing a familiar song. It was “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the Disney anthem. One of the protestors had even dressed up like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and was dancing on the hands of the protestors.

“Anything your heart desires will come to you!” Mickey shouted down at JD Vance. I clasped my hands over my eyes. I was certain that I had been drugged. None of this could be true. But when I looked back, I saw that JD Vance was crying. The impromptu singing of the Disney song had moved something in him. “I love that song,” he said. “I just love that song.” Vance turned to me and said, “I’m staying here with you guys.” Happy collegiate faces surrounded him, encouraging his big change. Someone shouted out, “Get this man a latte with coconut milk!”

“No, sir,” said James David Vance, shaking his head. “I ain’t ever going back to the White House.”