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Tyson wakes up in a room he’s never seen before. It feels like bed bugs are crawling around underneath his skin, and when he glances at his arm out of the corner of his eye he sees their lumpy, little bodies moving. His fingernails catch on the raised lumps of old track marks. Just another Tuesday.
He hears water running and lifts his head enough to see someone standing in a bathroom.
As his head drops back to the bed, Tyson sees the television screen. It’s on mute. The white, blond Fox News lady has a black and white photo of a man floating next to her on the screen.
Every nerve in Tyson’s body screams when he sits up.
“Fuck,” he says.
“Jimmy.”
“What?” the man in the bathroom asks. Tyson doesn’t know who the man in the bathroom is, but the man in black and white on Fox News is a guy named Jim who paid Tyson to rent a room just like this one, but not this one.
Only Jimmy didn’t touch him, just slept on the other twin bed and didn’t touch Tyson.
“How’d you end up in New York?” he had asked Tyson.
“Heard the heroin was cheaper than in Ohio,” Tyson had said. “You?”
“Born here,” Jimmy had said. “Brooklyn.”
“Shit man, what are you doing having Craigslist hookers buy you shitty motel rooms then?” Tyson had said. “Go home.”
“Can’t,” Jimmy had said. “It’s a shoe store now.”
“Man, fuck gentrification,” Tyson had said.
This all comes back to him then, his fingers scratching at the polyester bedspread. His memory’s not so good a lot of the time. He probably rented this room, but he doesn’t remember it. The man in the bathroom probably told Tyson his name, but he’s forgotten it already.
He doesn’t remember when he rented the room for Jimmy. But he remembers that they talked about home and never going back and family — Jimmy had some kid sisters just like Tyson. Jimmy had a shithole dad like Tyson. Jimmy never touched him. He always changed his clothes in the bathroom.
“You freaking out on me, kid?” the man from the bathroom says to Tyson.
“I know him,” Tyson says, staring at the television.
“You’re high,” the man says, though Tyson was crawling out of his skin, itching with sobriety.
“His name is Jimmy,” Tyson says, as the blond woman explained that the Winter Soldier, also known as James Buchanan Barnes, had attacked the U.N. signing of the Sokovia Accords. People were dead. Jimmy was a fucking terrorist.
The man from the bathroom puts his hand on the back of Tyson’s neck.
“Kid, you’re crazy,” he says. “I’m turning the TV off. You want to do me a favor before I head out? I’ll pay you extra.”
And Tyson does, because he needs a fix. There are bed bugs under his skin and Jimmy, who had never touched him, is a fucking terrorist. Which really just meant that there isn’t one goddamn kind person in all of New York City. And there never was.
Tyson scratches his cheek afterwards and thinks about Ohio, about never going home.
---
Yuliya held her phone out as far as she could above her head and took another photo of herself. Then she pulled the phone close and scrutinized the photo. This she repeated again, again, again.
Three years ago, Yuliya’s mother paid a man to take her to America.
Two years ago, a cargo ship pulled into Baltimore.
A year ago, Yuliya moved into a house in North Bethesda with Ana and her husband. Yuliya felt sick to her stomach whenever Ana’s husband looked at her.
She held her phone above her head until her arm ached.
There was always food in Ana’s house and Yuliya had the phone she’d been asking for, a Samsung. The camera was really, really good. Almost too good. She could see her pores in this photo.
Yuliya switched from the camera app to Twitter.
Everyone on her feed was talking about some explosion in Vienna. That was in Austria? Yuliya didn’t have to Google it.
Someone retweeted a picture of the suspect from @BreakingNews, but it wasn’t loading on her phone. Yuliya tapped it with her thumb.
Yuliya dropped her brand new Samsung phone on her face and began to wail, very softly.
Ana rushed into her room, as though she’d been just outside the door this whole time waiting for Yuliya to cry.
She spoke quietly, “Yulya, what’s wrong? What happened?”
She hesitated before touching Yuliya’s shoulder, the same way Dr. Thien did.
Yuliya talked to Dr. Thien on Mondays and Thursdays after school. Dr. Thien asked her about her mother and about the year before a cargo ship arrived in Baltimore.
A few hours ago, someone blew up a news van in front of a United Nations building in Vienna. The first tweet she saw about that said it was from 2 hours ago, but it was probably older than that. The tweet with the photo was from five minutes ago.
A year ago, or maybe a little longer than that, a cargo ship came to port in Baltimore. On the cargo ship, containers full of bicycles and car parts and batteries and furniture sat next to a container with Yuliya inside. Her nose had stopped working after three days, when the swaying of the ship knocked over the bucket some of the girls had vomited in.
A year ago, a man tore the door off the container with Yuliya inside. He held half of the metal door in one hand. She couldn’t look at his face without feeling sick, so she looked at his hand clutching metal like wadded up toilet paper.
If he could do that to a metal shipping container, what would he do to her?
Yuliya shook without crying, too dehydrated and hungry for tears.
“Natashenka?” the man asked. “Are you alright?”
“Oh god,” the man said, in English.
“I am Yulya,” Yuliya said, in English.
“My name’s not Natashenka,” she said.
There was barely any light, but Yuliya’s eyes had grown used to no light at all. Just the heat of the sun soaking through the metal container and cooking them all. She couldn’t smell anything anymore.
The man stepped toward her and Yuliya could not move away. The man who put her in the container said another man, a different man, would be waiting for them in America.
“And he’s not as nice as I am.”
But Yuliya couldn’t move away.
“How good is your English?” the man asked her.
He had light colored eyes. He was wearing a hat. Her empty stomach spat acid up her throat when she looked at him.
“I try,” Yuliya said.
“I’m going to call someone,” the man said. “Tell them you’re at Seagrit Marine Terminal.”
“Seegriyt Mahriyne Terminahl,” Yuliya repeated, hearing that her words didn't sound the way the man said them. She tried to look at the man, but her eyes slid away from his face. She tried again.
“Tell them you need help,” the man said. “Tell them there’s a body.”
He pressed a cheap, plastic phone into her hand. A woman spoke into Yuliya’s ear through the phone. She said, “What is your emergency.”
Yuliya repeated herself, but better the second time, “Seegriyt Mahrine Terminal. I need help. There is a body.”
“A body?” the woman asked.
Yuliya’s eyes slid off the man’s face, past his dimpled chin, and she saw, behind him, blood. A man with his head turned the wrong way. And blood. She did not cry.
“A dead man,” Yuliya said. “I was on a ship… And the man was going to take me. He is dead. I need help. Please. Help me.”
“Alright, miss,” the woman said. She told Yuliya to stay on the line.
“I must go,” the man said. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”
This, she knew, was an order. Just like “Stay on the line.” Just like “Tell them you need help.” Just like “Shut up.” Just like “Take off your underwear and stand there.” Just like “Don’t cry.”
Yuliya could follow orders. She had learned to be very good.
More men had come with lights and flashlights. Men had wiped her hands and the inside of her mouth. A woman, the only woman, had put her gloved fingers inside Yuliya. They had given her water in a plastic bottle and an orange slice, some chocolate candies that made her teeth and stomach hurt. The American police had asked her how the man died. Dr. Thien had asked her about her mother.
No one ever asked about the man. Yuliya obeyed.
In the room where she slept in Ana’s house, Yuliya wept against Ana’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” Ana asked. “Please tell me, Yulya.”
But she couldn’t. She could only cry.
It had been so long since Yuliya could cry.
Three years ago, Yuliya’s mother paid a man to take her to America. She had held tight to her mother and cried like a child. Her mother’s hand smoothed over her red hair.
“Don’t cry, Yuliya,” her mother had said.
“Don’t tell anyone you saw me,” the man had said.
So Yuliya didn’t.
---
When Nadiyyah left her apartment, people stared. If she covered her face, they all stared — sometimes people followed her. Once she had actually been fined. Not arrested, but she went home without the orange juice she had intended to buy at Carrefour. She cried until Aleq came home. It was no trouble, he promised. He would pay for it.
If she went out without covering her face, just the rest of her, then people only stared. Worse somehow, because they stared right at her face, as though she didn’t have eyes. She always wore makeup, checking it again and again in a hand mirror. The staring made her vain, she worried, but she didn’t feel proud of her looks when people stared. She felt sick to her stomach.
The mere thought of leaving the house, especially without Aleq, could make her eyelids prickle with tears on a bady day.
She didn’t used to be like this, she thought. She’d chafed at needing escorts. Leapt into Aleq’s arms when he told her they were moving — to Paris! Imagine it, Paris!
Paris, a city full of lights and art and the language she’d studied so hard in school. Paris, a city where Nadiyyah knew no one but Aleq. Paris, where everyone stared at her and no one smiled.
She was not stupid. She knew why. She stayed home and watched the news. She read it on her iPad. She cried all the time.
If she had a baby, at least she would have something to do — trapped in the apartment.
She used to read novels. She used to translate poems. She used to write her own poems. Now she only sat in the apartment and cried while Aleq went to work. She lost weight. She only read the news.
In her first week in Paris with Aleq, he took her to the Louvre. She wasn’t the only woman with her face covered, but it felt as though even those women stared at her. At home, no one had stared at her. Or if they did, they weren’t so blatant about it. She’d never noticed anyone staring at her.
Under her clothes, sweat gathered between her shoulderblades and in her armpits. Outside, the trees of Paris’ boulevards and parks had lost their leaves. But standing an inch from a stone wall that was cold to the touch, Nadiyyah sweated.
“It must be nice,” she remembered a man saying. It took her a beat to realize he was speaking to her.
“What?” she said, forgetting her French. “I don't know you.”
“You don’t speak French?” he asked. “Arabic, then? I know Arabic.”
He sounded surprised by his own knowledge, but he spoke fluently.
“It must be nice,” he repeated, “being able to hide your face all the time.”
The man wore a hat with a bill pulled down until it cast a shadow over his nose and cheeks. His brown hair hung like curtains over his ears and his eyes. Blue eyes, white skin — he looked German, or what Nadiyyah imagined a German man looked like. He didn’t look French to her. She had only been in Paris a few days.
She studied his shaved face. She stared. It felt good to stare at someone who didn’t stare back.
“Everyone stares at me here,” Nadiyyah confessed to the man. “They hate me.”
The man laughed. “They hate you? What did you do?”
“Hide my face,” Nadiyyah said. It was more than that, but she didn’t need to say that. Didn’t this man read the news?
A woman wearing a leather bag around her waist turned and looked at Nadiyyah, as if she understood the words in that moment. Nadiyyah bit the inside of her cheeks. Her face lit up with humiliation.
“I can’t talk to you,” she said. “I should find my husband.”
“Did you come here with your husband?” the man asked.
She didn’t answer, but she also didn’t stop staring at him. The man continued to speak to her.
“I came here because I promised a friend I would bring him here. Promised him a long time ago.”
Then the man stood there, a foot away. He didn’t look at Nadiyyah, but he allowed her to look at him. He looked very sad, she thought.
“Then go talk to your friend,” Nadiyyah said, when the man didn’t leave.
“He’s not here,” the man said.
Nadiyyah doesn’t know why she asked it, but she said, “Did he die?”
The man turned without looking at Nadiyyah and pushed his hat off his head with a gloved hand. For a moment she could see his whole face — his tall forehead, his square jaw, the dark circles under his eyes, the dimple in his wide chin.
“No,” the man said. “For a while, I thought he was dead. No, he just… He hates me.”
“Why?” Nadiyyah asked.
The man put his hat back on, looked at Nadiyyah for a moment and then leaned back against the stone wall to stare at nothing again.
“You love your husband?” he asked her.
The question sent a hot flash of anger through her. It was none of his business, she wanted to say. But he looked so sad, really, and she had asked him if his friend had died. Was she only angry out of embarrassment? She didn’t owe this stranger anything, and yet she felt like she did.
“Yes,” she told him, fiercely, defensively. “More than anyone.”
“What would you do if you woke up one day and he’d forgotten who you were,” the man said.
He looked even sadder, staring down at the floor or at his gloved hands.
“I would remind him,” she said.
“But what if you forgot him?” the man asked.
“I would never,” Nadiyyah insisted, her voice a small hiss. “I love him. How dare you ask me that? Who are you?”
“Meursault,” the man said. He attempted a little smile, but Nadiyyah wasn’t an idiot. She’d studied French literature. She'd read this book, and marked it full of notes about women and Arabs and France.
“Oh, are you going to shoot me?” she asked, angry with this stranger who didn’t stare at her.
“No,” the man said. “I don’t shoot people anymore.”
“Anymore?” Nadiyyah asked. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. She hoped he was joking.
Then he pushed off of the wall and disappeared into the sea of tourists in hats who stared at her as much as they looked at the artwork.
In her apartment, Nadiyyah reads about the Vienna bombing on her iPad. She watches the footage that was released of the suspect — an operative for HYDRA, the article said. It couldn’t be anyone else.
She thinks about the last thing he had said to her. How close she had stood to him. He could have killed her. He could have planted a bomb in the Louvre.
Tears gather along the edges of her eyelids until the face in black and white blurred.
The stranger, with his blue eyes and dimpled chin, was a terrorist. Nadiyyah with her olive skin and dark veils, was only a weepy housewife. It’s like something Camus would write, if Camus didn’t hate women.
She sets down her iPad and goes to find the book, still messy with notes from a thesis paper.
“Aujourd'hui, maman est morte,” she reads aloud.
---
Peter learns that somebody bombed the UN building in Vienna because there’s like six thousands posts on Instagram about it. Most of them are some guy’s face in black and white, just this still taken from a security camera or whatever.
“He looks like Alex,” Peter says to no one because it’s fucking dead inside Deep and he’s leaning over the counter scrolling through Instagram with his thumb.
“But like not as cute,” he says, because again there’s no one here.
It’s so dumb to think, because Alex is this big guy who likes dad hats way too much. Sometimes he wears his hair in a bun and he’s always got like half a centimeter of perfect stubble. Peter would totally suck his dick, but Alex is as straight as he is stacked.
Sometimes he dresses like he’s homeless and then other times he rolls into Deep on the off hours wearing all black leather and smelling like a whole pack of cigarettes.
Peter says shit that he would never say to anyone else, like, “Damn, you should be in Berghain not this dump.”
He would never call Deep a dump to anyone else. This record store is like his entire life. He’s not hot enough to be a model or skilled enough to be a DJ. He’s stuck in this retail hell where the things he’s best at are standing on his feet for twenty hours straight and pretending he knows how to pronounce SHXCXCHCXSH.
Anyway, Alex couldn’t have blown up the UN building in Vienna because he was in the shop yesterday. Said he drove up from Serbia, which is probably a lie. Peter knows that Alex is definitely not living in Budapest, duh. He probably doesn’t even live in Hungary. He has no idea why Alex keeps coming here to buy records like once a month.
Instagram says the guy who blew up the building in Vienna also blew up shit in the capitol of America and that he’s got a metal arm. Which, like, okay Alex always wears gloves when Peter sees him. But he’s obviously got a leather fetish, not a metal arm. Peter likes it.
Alex first walked into here asking in English if Peter had any Nina Simone and obviously he didn’t, but Peter’s only skill is retail. So he talked this dumb tourist into listening to a Nicolas Jaar edit of Nina Simone on his laptop and then he had Alex listen to a bunch of records and he bought like six.
Peter totally wanted to kiss him, like, right on the little dent on his chin. Then also the mouth. Then maybe on the dick.
Instead he was all, “I hope you’ll come back. We get new releases all the time. Every week.”
But Peter didn’t really expect him to come back ever. He was obviously just a tourist.
Except he totally came back. He had his little tourist backpack, but he wasn’t dressed like a homeless person or those awful American backpackers who swing around like they don’t have a tent and shit strapped to their back in public. He brought a perfect square canvas bag for vinyl. He had the leather on and his hair tied up. Peter swallowed his own tongue.
Only he’s a professional, so he spat his tongue back up and made Alex listen to some Daniel Avery.
The time that Peter told him that he should go to Berghain, because he’s got the look — Alex didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. But he came back two weeks later and said, “I don’t really like Berlin.”
“Well shit, there’s plenty of clubs in Budapest,” Peter said. “I could show you.”
Then he turned bright pink, like fully maroon. Because Peter is good at talking to customers about bpm and sound fidelity and sub bass, but he’s shit at romance.
“Sorry,” Alex had said. “Sorry.”
It was so many torturous weeks before Alex came back, but he did come back. He bought Gesaffelstein’s album even though it was old even then and not even good — like such a sellout. Alex said it was pretty and Peter could only nod and say, “Yeah, I liked his early stuff.”
On Instagram, people were posting these photo collages saying the terrorist was some old American dude who was friends with Captain America in 1945. What complete bullshit. But this old guy really did look a lot like Alex. Like he had the same pretty light eyes and amazing stubble. Old guy could totally get it, as far as Peter was concerned.
He held down the buttons on his phone to take a screenshot.
The next time Alex came in, he’d show him. They’d laugh about it. He’d play the new Blawan track. Maybe Alex would buy it.