Two Beepers are Better Than One

                        Ivan was short, wiry, bald. Fortyish. He had hairy arms and smelled of cigarettes. There was a predatory air about him. His little clothing store under the el had made him rich. He sold overpriced leisure wear to all the Russians in Brighton Beach. Being Russian himself, Ivan knew their weakness for expensive designer clothing. So he bought tons of no-name shit and pressed the logos on himself. Hilfiger, Fila, Polo, and their favorite: Moschino. Ivan made a fortune. Now he drove a Mercedes Benz and was on a first name basis with the kingpin of the Russian mob.

            She had seen him before outside the store, growling into his cell phone and popping sunflower seeds. She wondered what it would be like to sleep with “older man”. So when Irina saw the HELP WANTED sign in the window she smiled to herself. And then headed home to change into her favorite Donna Karan mini-skirt.

            It was good in the beginning. He took her to Little Odessa, Rasputin, Cafe Paris, all the best spots. He bought her tight slutty dresses and drove her around in the Benz. She had a hot young body and he loved to sport it. After their first date, as he pulled up in front of her building, Ivan gently kissed Irina on the forehead and pressed a $50 bill into her hand. “Nobody at work has to know about this,” he whispered. “OK,” she smiled. And they banged all night in the back seat of his Benz, right there in front of her building.

            Then one night they were in Rasputin and Ivan went over to speak to the kingpin -- whom he referred to only as Boris -- about a crooked business deal where he could move his fugazi leisure wear not only in Brighton Beach, but Bensonhurst, Sunset Park, maybe even as far as Staten Island. Ivan was very excited. He said that if the deal went through he would marry Irina, and make her very rich girl.

            As his friends watched, the young mobster strutted over to Irina. He was tall, chubby, dull-eyed, sporting a red Fila jumpsuit. Irina recognized it as one of the fugazis from Ivan’s store. She liked the young mobster’s style, especially the fact that he wore two beepers on his waistband. His name was Igor. He was a soldier for Boris and had knocked off two people since arriving in U.S. six months ago. They exchanged beeper numbers. Irina had a new friend.

            She soon broke it off with Ivan. He had lots of money but was lousy in bed. He couldn’t go for more than five minutes without breaking into a violent hacking cough. He objected angrily to the break-up at first and vowed to kill the other guy--whoever he was. But Ivan had a soft spot for Irina. He soon calmed down, and even let her continue working in his store.

            Meanwhile her and Igor began hitting the New York clubs. They dropped E and snorted K and danced the night away. Irina was lithe and feline on the dance floor. She soon had her belly button pierced. Igor got a tribal tattoo around his arm and started selling E. Everyone knew them. They were part of the scene.

            One night he and Irina met another hip Russian girl named Sveta and after dancing all night the three of them went back to his apartment. They were tripping and loving the world so they all three took a shower together and then made love. That was the best night of Igor’s life.

            Soon after, he botched a robbery attempt on a leisure wear store in Brighton Beach. That fateful night, poor Igor was killed.

            Poor Ivan used up all his money on lawyers. During the robbery, when he’d pulled his 9-mm, Igor had bolted for the door. That’s when he caught the slug in his spine. The merciless Ivan walked up to the crying boy and after muttering a single word -- motherfuck -- planted two bullets into the back of his skull. 

            The leisure wear store closed down, so poor Irina lost her job. But her and Sveta stayed on as lovers and it was all very exciting and new. Soon Irina landed a job promoting for clubs, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She and Sveta celebrated by piercing their tongues.

            Soon after that they moved in together. They rented a studio on Avenue A and adopted two kittens: Dancer and DJ. Sveta started painting and danced in Billy’s Topless on the side. Irina thought she might try her hand at acting. They ate tofu and exercised at Crunch together. They smoked pot and made love on the futon. It was all very romantic. It was the life Irina had dreamed of ever since arriving from Moscow back in ‘93. After all those empty nights, at last, she was happy.  

No Crease

          I was twenty-six when I bought my first suit for a friend’s wedding. A sleek black deal that ran over $300. When I came out of the dressing room at Banana Republic the Sales Associate said I looked like a mobster. That closed the deal.

At the wedding I sat before a mirrored wall admiring the smart cut, the smooth cotton, the way my shirt cuffs shot perfectly from the sleeve. I was The Don. Then a busboy spilled a drop of marinara sauce on my shoulder. I nearly fainted at the table. 

The next day I brought my suit in to get dry-cleaned. For about a year I’d been using a place in Brighton Beach that my grandfather had recommended, and whenever I brought in a pair of pants, I’d say, “No crease.”

They were a Russian couple, late 40’s/early 50’s. Anna was short, dumpy, with peroxide hair and a duck-like waddle. Alex was average height, but a bear of a man. Big, bushy eyebrows. Hands like cinder blocks. The type you’d imagine swilling a bottle of Absolut, then laughing robustly and pounding the table.

I was supposed to pick up the suit on a Friday. When I got there the couple greeted me with the usual forced smiles. I never got a warm feeling from them. Maybe it was because I’d said “no crease” so many times. Anyway, I handed Anna my ticket and she returned with my suit and hung it on the hook by the counter. There was just one problem. It wasn’t my suit. It was a woman’s purple jacket with white pinstripes and a dramatic, flaring collar. Nice, but a bit small. And purple definitely was not my color.

I informed them of the mix-up. The first step was to double-check the ticket and then go back to the great mechanical rack that wound like a railroad through the store. Anna did this, but apparently without any luck, because she proceeded to scream in Russian at her husband and wave the ticket in his face. Now he too rifled through the endless rack. It seemed they were searching randomly.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“No problem,” Alex said. Then he turned to yell at Anna.

It was approaching seven o’clock, closing time. The old tailor who occupied a corner of the store, and who’d kept his head down through the entire ordeal, was beginning to pack up his things. I could see the couple wanted to do the same.

“You come back Monday,” said Anna. “We have suit then.”

“But the ticket says today.”

“You come back Monday.”

The forced smiles were gone.

“I can’t come back Monday,” I said. “I need the suit today.”

Alex was wringing his cinderblocks. “Monday!” he growled.

Somehow I knew that if I left today, I would never see my suit again. “Is it here?” I asked. “I can come back there and help you look for it.”

They didn’t like that idea. They screamed at each other, and Alex kept glaring up at the apartment building across the street and pounding his fist. I wished for the first time in my life that I understood Russian. Meanwhile, the tailor crept on out of there. It was just us three. Intimate.

Out of desperation, Anna spun around and fumed, “Your suit is here. But not ready! Come back Monday!” She had a real spiteful way about her now, as if that ended the whole thing and she’d won.

“If it’s here then can you show it to me?” I replied.

That’s when I believed things were going to get ugly. Alex was as purple as that god-awful jacket they’d tried to pawn off on me. He smashed his fist down on the counter, made some angry declaration that I couldn’t understand, and then stormed out of the store and into the apartment building across Brighton Beach Avenue.

I was left in the company of sweet Anna, who proceeded to call someone on the telephone and stab me with her eyes while yelling in thick, gurgling Russian about what a horrible prick I was.

A few minutes later I watched through the window as Alex came barreling across the street holding a plastic-covered suit on a hanger. He slapped the suit down on the counter as if it were a sack of warm turds and then shot me a smug, victorious look.

Ok. It was a man’s suit, I’ll give them that. And it was probably somewhere within my size range. But this one was double breasted, and baby blue is a far cry from black. And here’s an odd coincidence – like the purple jacket, this also had white pinstripes. I was starting to think they’d pinned me for a pinstripe type of guy. That was scary.

I shook my head. “This isn’t it,” I said.

Well, by this point either she was going to attack him, or he was going to choke her or me or both of us. Maybe he was just going to keel over with a heart attack. I braced myself for the worst.

Their conversation now was clearly focused on the old building across the street. They pointed to it, cursed it vehemently. I wondered what went down in that building. Did they send their dry-cleaning jobs there? Was there some elaborate scheme in which clothing was somehow borrowed, exchanged – rented even – when someone had a special occasion to attend? Was I an unknowing participant in an underground suit swapping ring?

I had nothing to lose. “Is it in that building?” I asked. “Just give me the apartment number and I’ll go and get it myself.”

“No!” they both yelled back.

“I can’t leave here without it,” I repeated.

Once again he stormed out and left me in the company of his babushka. This time there were no phone calls, no screaming. We simply faced each other blankly, resigned, exhausted. And we waited.

Some minutes later, he returned. This time, finally, it was my suit. I think it had been cleaned. I calmly paid and turned to leave, but as I did Alex raised his heavy arm and pointed at me, growling in a deep, dire voice, “Your grandfather ok, but ever since first time, I knew I have problem with you!”