Our Country Friends(3)
The lot in front of the station was filled with European cars awaiting passengers. Senderovsky waved to a professor of Calabrese studies at the local college and to the owner of a surprisingly thriving café and bookstore anchoring the fashionable neighborhood of the little city right across the river. Seeing these friendly faces cheered Senderovsky. He was a respected figure in these parts. “You have a lovely family and a lovely home,” his Los Angeles agent had told him during a visit several years ago, after another television project had collapsed.
The train was twenty minutes late, but finally its ancient gray form drew flush with the similarly gray line of the river. City folk clambered up the stairs from the platform to the station, breathless with age. Senderovsky spotted his first guest, relatively young and limber. Ed Kim toted a leather Gladstone bag, wore aviator sunglasses, and kept his hair dark. From the moment he had met him when they were both in their twenties, Ed reminded Senderovsky of a film he had seen about China’s last emperor, specifically the dissolute stage when the hero wore a tuxedo and was the puppet ruler of Manchuria.
Senderovsky jumped out of the car. He was still wearing his dressing gown, a gift Ed had bought him at a Hong Kong shop called The Armoury. The two men regarded each other by the curb, Senderovsky playing the dog to Ed’s cat. Usually, he would surround his friend in a skinny-armed embrace while Ed tapped his back with one hand as if burping him. “Ah, what are we supposed to do now?” Senderovsky cried.
“I’m over this elbow-bump business,” Ed said. “Let me get a look at you.” He lowered his sunglasses, the way some uncles do when they greet their young nieces. The creases around his eyes looked like they had been there since birth, while his expression was both distant and amused. Senderovsky’s friend Karen, who was slightly related to Ed through a dissipated ancestor back in Seoul, also sometimes wore that expression, but she had only been able to pull it off after her recent success.
Ed managed to light a cigarette with one hand while simultaneously popping open the trunk and depositing his vintage bag. “So Masha told me to tell everyone,” Senderovsky said, “no smoking in the car. In fact, no smoking on the property either. She says it can make the virus worse if you get it.
“But,” he added, “I left an ashtray in your bungalow under the sink.”
“Just let me get three drags in,” Ed said. Sasha watched as he drew three cartoonish inhales and expelled the smoke into the slate air. As a younger man, Sasha had dreamed of becoming Ed. He still fantasized about spending a year traveling around the world with him just as soon as his daughter graduated from the very expensive city school for sensitive and complicated children.
“Also,” Senderovsky continued, “she told me that no one should sit in the front seat. For distancing purposes.”
“Oh, the hell with that,” Ed said, opening the front passenger door. “People are really going overboard with this thing. I’ll crouch down when we get to the house.” The car filled with the aroma of fresh tobacco, which made Senderovsky wistful for a smoke. Ed placed a hand on the glove compartment, bracing himself for the landowner’s torque. “What happened there?” He pointed at the dangling side mirror.
“The garage bays are too narrow,” Senderovsky said. Seconds had passed, but the train station was already far behind them, and they were racing, swerving, past the skeleton of what, in three months’ time, would become a farm stand. “I ought to have them widened.”
“What’s that Russian saying about incompetent people trying to pass the blame?”
Senderovsky laughed. “?‘A bad dancer is bothered by his balls.’?”
“Mmmm.”
“Would you mind if we get some groceries? All I have is the meat and booze.”
“I’m in no hurry,” Ed said, and Senderovsky immediately thought of a fitting epitaph for his friend: HERE LIES EDWARD SUNGJOON KIM, HE WAS IN NO HURRY. He accelerated the car farther north along a tight state road that allowed for a view of the purple mountains across the river, each given a sophomoric American name. Peekamoose was his daughter’s favorite. Meanwhile, as Senderovsky pattered on about the weather, the political news, speculation about the virus, the merits of sweet sausage versus hot Italian, Ed espied a great frontal system of boredom on the horizon, of endless upper-middle-class chatter, badly made country Negronis, cigarettes snuck. What could he do? His friend had begged him to come up, and the now-muted city would be more depressing still.
“So who else is coming?” Ed asked. “Besides the Exalted One.” He was referring to the famous actor who was coming up for a few days to work on a screenplay with Senderovsky, the source of his friend’s anxiety. “Karen, you said.”
“Vinod, too.”
“Haven’t seen him in ages. Is he still in love with Karen?”
“He lost a lung to cancer a few years ago. Then he lost his job at City College.”
“That’s a lot of loss.”
“Masha wanted him to come up, because his immune system might be compromised.”
“I wish I was tragic enough for your wife to like me.”
“Keep working on it.”
“Who else?”
“An old student of mine. She published an essay collection last year. The Grand Book of Self-Compromise and Surrender. It made a splash.”