Portland Noir Read online

  I put the trip to Chelyabinsk on a credit card, and told Charlotte I was being sent there by the knob company, to set up a new factory.

  “But why are they sending you?” Charlotte had wanted to know. “I think it’s great. Really exciting, and really good for you. You need to have the dust of the world on your feet. But you don’t speak Russian.”

  “They’re impressed with my work ethic.”

  “You do work hard,” said Charlotte. “When you have a job.”

  I’m tired of staring at Charlotte laying or lying on the bathroom floor, playing passed out, milking the situation, doing her best to make me look like the bad guy.

  I walk back down the long hallway to the kitchen. I sit in the dark at my kitchen table. Outside, the streetlights shine on the snow, filling my front rooms with that weird aquarium light. I look out the window at the Laurelhurst Theater marquee. They’re showing Alien and Meatballs. Charlotte would think that was funny. Agnessa spoke no English, but she’d laugh anyway.

  Charlotte will come out of the bathroom eventually. For being so smart, she is so predictable. That’s how she works. If I stand over her and wonder whether she’s dead, she’ll act dead on purpose, just to piss me off. But if I turn my back on her, leave the room, she’ll come marching out and wonder what’s going on.

  The back of my neck feels hot. None of this would have happened if she had let the Prague business go. It was just something I’d said to get her attention. Then I found myself saying I was moving in September, just after Labor Day, and would be there for at least six months.

  “Six months?” she said, eyes big.

  “Maybe a year.”

  I thought she’d forget about it. She’d go home to the film critic and they’d open a bottle of merlot and discuss the early films of Martin Scorsese.

  Charlotte started e-mailing me. Where would I be living in Prague? Did I know Prague was settled in the fourth century? Prague Castle was the largest castle in the world. There was also an entire wall of graffiti dedicated to John Lennon. I should definitely check out the museum of the Heydrich assassination. She sent me links to websites, and guidebooks she’d ordered on Amazon. She gave me books by Czechoslovakian writers. Who the fuck is Kafka? She signed the e-mails with xo.

  Agnessa read romance novels. She loved stuffed animals. She was thirty-one and still lived with her mother, who needed new teeth and an operation. I’d sent her an international calling card and she rang me every evening. She confessed she had two other men who wanted to marry her, one who lived in Indiana and had four flat-screen TVs, and one who lived in Florida and had three flat-screen TVs. Did I know how dear I was to her, that she was still interested in me even though I only had one TV?

  Charlotte and I started meeting on Wednesdays for coffee at a place that served stale pastries and had too many free newspapers. Every so often I’d take Ray Jr. out of school for the morning and bring him along, just to remind Charlotte what a good dad I could be. Being a good single dad is better than having a pit bull puppy when it comes to attracting women. I made Ray drink his orange juice and study his spelling words. Charlotte said she was really going to miss me.

  One day I got her to go with me to Hawthorne to shop for presents to give to the family who would be putting me up in Prague, before I had my own apartment.

  “Who exactly are we shopping for?” she asked. We nosed around a crowded shop that sold expensive journals, massage oil, and funny greeting cards. The rain had started. The shop smelled like wet dog and patchouli.

  “There’s a thirty-one-year-old living at home, a girl who loves stuffed animals.”

  “Is she …” Charlotte looked at me, narrowed one eye a little like she does. I could feel my pulse in my forehead. She was going to ask me if there was something going on with this girl, if somehow I was going to Prague to see her. It was all over her face. Behind her a woman was trying to get at the wire card rack. I just looked at her. Go ahead, ask me. I waited. “… mentally disabled or something?”

  I thought of Agnessa and her living room sparkler dance.

  “It’s possible,” I said.

  Charlotte picked out a hand lotion that smelled like apple pie and a stuffed panda.

  I sent them to Agnessa, who loved the gifts. I loved Agnessa, for being so easy to please. I spent entire paychecks sending her shampoo, socks, Levi’s and one of those mesh bags girls stick their underwear in before it goes in the washing machine. I sent her some Happy too. Fuck Charlotte.

  I gave notice on the apartment I was living in off Northeast Sandy. I told the landlady I was moving to Prague. Elaine was a chick with cats who worked in a bookstore and had a stack of books on Wicca beside her bed. She believed in the power of crystals and Match.com. I struck up an association with Elaine. It was an association of convenience. She was lonely. She liked helping me define just how evil Charlotte was, how slutty and duplicitous. Elaine volunteered to put a spell on Charlotte. I told her to stop; I wasn’t looking for a commitment. When I told Elaine I was moving to Prague she smirked, “Prague, Minnesota?”

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “Where are you really going?”

  “I got a new place on Southeast Ankeny, across from that yuppie wine bar.”

  “Noble Rot, where wine is a meal.”

  When Charlotte kicked me out she said I could take anything I wanted, so I did. The heavy stainless steel pots and pans we got as a wedding present. All the DVDs we’d watched together, and what the hell, the DVD player. The books she told people were her favorites. The flannel duvet cover with the roses. A black sweater that smelled of Happy, and a few pairs of her underpants, fished out of the dirty clothes hamper. Our wedding album, and from the freezer, the top layer of our wedding cake. It looked like a hat wrapped in waxed paper.

  Elaine showed up on a Saturday afternoon to help me pack my stuff. She’d brought some empty boxes from the bookstore and started on the kitchen. The only things in the freezer were a few blue plastic ice cube trays, a pair of chilled beer glasses—a trick Charlotte taught me—and that damn frozen wedding cake. Elaine said I should toss it, didn’t know why I was holding onto it. I said, “I’m a good guy, I got a sentimental streak a mile wide, so sue me.”

  Charlotte took me out for American food the day before I left. Before meeting her I had a sighting of Extreme the Clown’s art car, parked near the Starbucks on Burnside. The art car looks like a Mayan temple on wheels with hundreds of heads sculpted into the sides and a pyramid-altar thing rising from the roof. It’s well known that an art car sighting means good luck. I’m luckier than most people, but as I passed by I touched one of the open-mouthed heads on the trunk. The leaves on the maples were red and gold. I found myself wondering what the weather would be like in Prague, even though I wasn’t going to Prague.

  Charlotte took me to Esparza’s. I’m sure she enjoyed the irony, bringing her ex to the same restaurant where she betrayed him with another, but I was having my own private last laugh—my new place was just across the parking lot. I could see into my new kitchen on the second floor. I could see my box of pots and pans sitting on the kitchen table.

  I could be in R&D too. I could have my own secret projects.

  After we ordered margaritas she pulled out a red suede pouch. Her hands shook as she unsnapped it. She pulled out her engagement ring, the one we’d bought together, the one she’d paid for, technically, since at the time I was between jobs. I’d said anything less than a single karat was hardly worth the effort and she’d agreed, and there it was and she was giving it to me, saying she wanted me to have it, to take it to Prague, to keep it in a safe place, and to think of her.

  “I’m just really proud of you, taking this big step. I’m sorry we didn’t work out. I really am. But this is better. You’re going to really see the world.”

  She cried. Her mascara ran. I made an old joke, about how she needed to get another brand of mascara, one that didn’t run every time she cried. Every T-shirt I owned had a smudgy
black stain on the shoulder. I could have definitely gotten some that night, but there was nowhere to take her. My flight was leaving in the morning, and I’d told her that I was sleeping on Elaine’s fold-out couch. I liked to drop Elaine’s name now and then, just to make sure she was paying attention.

  A week passed, then two. I went to work at the knob factory, where my job was quality control. I sat on a tall stool in a room with no windows, making sure our wall brackets had the right amount of screw holes. At night I drank Czechvar beer and played World of Warcraft and kept an eye on the parking lot of Esparza’s Tex-Mex to see if Charlotte and the film critic ever showed up.

  I didn’t tell Agnessa I’d moved to Prague, though I did give her my new address and phone number at Southeast Ankeny. Agnessa was getting impatient. Her other suitors were starting to tug at her heart ropes. She was running out of Happy.

  One cold night the server crashed and I couldn’t get back onto WoW, so I called up Agnessa and told her she should apply for a fiancée visa. What the hell. I’d spied Extremo the Clown’s art car again that day, parked in the lot at Wild Oats. Lucky me, and lucky Agnessa. I figured at least I could get her to Portland. Get her out of Chelyabinsk, where her family thought nothing of eating moldy bread spread with rancid butter. I liked this idea, saving Agnessa from her difficult life. A fiancée visa lasted for ninety days. I figured then I could decide whether to ship her back or not.

  “Oh, Ray!” she breathed. “Thank you, I love you, thank you.”

  “We’ll get the fiancée visa and then let’s give it a shot. Let’s send the engagement up the flagpole and see who salutes. Let’s take the idea of us out for a test drive.”

  “Ray? Ray—I—uh—I …” I could hear her moist gasps of confusion.

  “We’ll give it the ol’ college try,” I said.

  Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors. I admit I misled Agnessa, but she’d get over it. And I’m actually a good guy. To make things right I bought a black velvet box at Fred Meyer’s, and sent her Charlotte’s diamond, Federal Express. Agnessa called when she received the ring and wept. I should hope so. That ring cost Charlotte four grand. She sent me another sparkler video and some Russian chocolate. In the video, she showed off the ring and threw kisses into the camera.

  Prague is eight hours ahead of Portland, or maybe it’s nine. I e-mailed Charlotte at 1 a.m. so she would think I was writing to her first thing in the morning, when I arrived at the knob factory. The factory was in a suburb of Prague. I told her I had to take a bus to get there, along with the other workers. I even had a lunch pail, filled with sandwiches made with dark bread. In the evenings I strolled along the Charles Bridge. I saw the world famous astronomical clock (Wikipedia has a good picture) and discovered a great bar called the Clown and Bard, where the barmaid admired my tattoo and served me some dill soup, on the house.

  Charlotte started writing, Love, C, at the bottom of her e-mails.

  One rainy night after work I went to Holman’s, around the corner from my apartment. The storm drains were clogged with soggy Cornflake-looking leaves. My Vans got soaked. I ordered a patty melt and a Bud Light. A woman a few tables over was wearing Happy. I smelled it over the cheap disinfectant and grilled onions. Ah hell. I used my calling card to call Charlotte from the pay phone.

  She answered on the first ring. I told her I was calling from the Clown and Bard.

  “Ray, are you all right?”

  I loved that concern in her voice. I said I was fine, while making sure I didn’t sound fine at all. I wanted her to think that maybe I’d had some food poisoning. Maybe a worker on the bus beat me up for being an American. Maybe I was dying of loneliness. Anything could happen in Prague.

  “It’s 3:30 in the morning. I thought you didn’t have a phone in your flat.”

  “You were being missed,” I said. A roar went up from the bar. Monday Night Football on the TV. “I’m at the Clown and Bard. They’re watching football. You know, soccer.”

  She didn’t understand what I was doing at a bar at 3:30 a.m. I told her I couldn’t sleep.

  “So, what, you’ve just been out walking the streets?”

  “I was hungry.”

  There was a long pause, as if she’d never heard anything so ridiculous in her life. I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh. Then it all went bad. It was the beginning of how I find myself at this moment, with her laying unconscious on my bathroom floor.

  “Is it that woman?” she asked. “The one with the learning disability? Is that why you’re out so late? You’ve been out with her?”

  “What are you talking about?” What was she talking about?

  “The one you sent the hand lotion to?”

  I forgot I’d told her Agnessa lived in Prague.

  The more I denied seeing Agnessa while I was in Prague, the more Charlotte believed I was lying. I said, “I haven’t seen her. And anyway, we’re non-touching friends.” Charlotte went bat-shit crazy when I said that. It was true. I’m a good man. I don’t lie unless I have to. When I was in Chelyabinsk, Agnessa let me hold her elbow when we crossed the street. Donnie said that’s how these Russian women are. Until they receive a victory rock, there’s no hope of any action.

  “I haven’t seen Ag in months,” I said. “She’s a friend. She reminds me of you. She’s got that sense of humor, but not so cutting. And answer me this, why are Slavic women either as short as they are wide, or super models?”

  “She’s a super model?”

  “It’s usually the really old ones who are short and fat. The ladies who sweep the streets.”

  “Ray, just tell me. Is there anything going on with this woman or not?”

  “Did you know they serve patty melts at the Clown and Bard? Bizarre, huh?”

  Charlotte hung up on me. I paid for my half-eaten melt and walked home. If I left the lights off I could sit in the living room and drink a beer and watch my landlady paint her nails in her thong and T-shirt. Charlotte had given me an idea. As soon as Agnessa’s fiancée visa came through I’d tell Charlotte my work in Prague was finished. I’d tell her I was coming home with my friend Agnessa, who wanted to start a new life in the States. Of course, she would stay with me until she found a place of her own. Charlotte would lose her mind. Maybe Agnessa and I could double date with Charlotte and the film critic. It would be fun.

  My calls to Charlotte started going to voice mail, my emails went unanswered. My landlady got curtains. I took Ray Jr. to IMAX to see a movie about coral reefs. He vomited into my lap. I was counting on associating with Lorna a little, but she clapped her hand over her nose and told me to go home. There was a message on my voice mail from Agnessa, wondering whether I’d made her airplane reservations. Nothing from Charlotte after two full weeks.

  I decided it was time to come home.

  The forced-air heat comes on. Outside, big messy snowflakes blow out of the sky. From my window I can see across the snowy street into the Noble Rot, where wine is a meal. Once Charlotte stops playing possum and gets up off the bathroom floor I can take her right over there. Show there are no hard feelings. She thinks I am a vengeful type, controlling, but she has me all wrong.

  Playing possum. I have to laugh. It is how we met, how she fell for me. I was still at the pest control company out on Foster Road. One spring morning she’d called up fairly hysterical. There was a dead possum in her tulips. A few of us were in the break room, shaking the snack machine to see if we could free a half-released bag of Doritos. The supervisor came in and thought we might want to draw straws. Charlotte lived in Lake Oswego, where the ladies tend to have nothing better to do than go to yoga, get their nails done, and flirt with the hired hands. Sometimes you can even get lucky.

  Charlotte came to the door wearing baggy shorts and a University of Michigan T-shirt. Reading glasses on her head and a pen and sheaf of papers in one hand. Mint-green toenail polish. She held the backdoor open for me.

  “I would have just tossed him in the trash but the garbage isn’t until
next Wednesday. That didn’t seem very, I don’t know, hygienic.”

  But when we got to the side yard where the tulips grew there were only a few flattened stalks, a petal or two strewn about.

  “He was just here,” she said, then whirled on her heel and startled me by punching me in the arm. She had a great loud laugh. “He was playing possum. Oh my God.”

  She offered me a beer for my trouble, and I told her that possums don’t actually play dead, that they’re so frightened they fall into a real coma. Then, after a few hours, they rouse themselves and go on their way. Charlotte thought that was fascinating. She made me sit down at her kitchen table and tell her more.

  Not many women have ever looked at me that way.

  Tonight she came over to my apartment uninvited. I’d sent her an e-mail two days ago telling her I was home from Prague, in case she cared. I didn’t tell her where I live. I figured I’d let it slip next week, after Agnessa arrives from Chelyabinsk.

  “Hello!” she said, stomping the snow off her red cowboy boots before coming right on in. She walked around my front room. Touched the DVDs stacked on top of the TV, picked up the empty Czechvar bottle on the desk beside the computer. Flipped through a stack of mail on the end table beside the couch.

  “You settled right in here, didn’t you?”

  “It’s good to see you,” I said. It was good to see her. She wasn’t wearing any perfume.

  “I got your new address from Elaine,” she said. “How’s the jet lag?”

  “Who?” I knew who. Elaine was the only person who was aware I’d moved to Southeast Ankeny.

  “I had a dream about you last night.” I didn’t know where I was going with this, but chicks always liked to hear that you had a dream about them.

  “I came to get my ring back,” she said. She was in one of those moods. Fine.