none of the buttons work

The moon is still there, lost in the morning sky. E shouts at it, as we make our way to school on the busy street. She is singing at the top of her lungs.

wicky wicky whirl,
wicky wicked worrrruld.

She stops, hiking up her new jeans. Her face falls to the side. She smiles at me. She asks me when Halloween is. She asks me why the moon is still out. She asks me when she can go to New York. I try to explain to her when Halloween will be.

Inside, I help her dress for gym class, fold her clothes carefully and place them on a shelf in her yellow cubby. She has not been in school for four days, between the weekend and her mother keeping her at home for some unknown reason. Two days sitting alone in darkness, with just the tv on until I took her friday night. She is being greeted with bad English hellos by the other children. She is standing in front of me so I can make her ponytail. Just one today. And she does not cry, she goes inside to wash her hands with that funny careful walk she has, like a cat in a new house.

And outside, I breathe in the sunny autumn air. Balancing attentiveness against my paranoid imagination I believe she will be OK today. Imagine she is eating a wide bowl of oatmeal in the front desk with the sun painting little squares across the walls.

I walk towards Kievskaya, people thronging the streets. Crossing an intersection, one of the lenses pops out of my sunglasses. Cars are bearing down on me, and I can only grab the plastic and run. All at once I see there is some pin or screw that broke off. I cross back across the street and cannot find it, cars bearing down once again like some kind of video game, not a real Moscow morning. They were a gift from N, not too long ago, and I know they were expensive. I feel lost, disappointed. A woman wearing a billboard stands in front of me, handing out leaflets no one will take. The crowd surges around her. She is small, one eye is stray and looks sideways as if she is a fish. Her lips are split apart, a giant scar drawing down her face. I cannot imagine why she has this job, why she is standing on this busy corner with leaflets about shoe repair.

I take one from her and she jumps back a little.

Crossing the bridge I realize I may have forgotten something. Rifling through my bag I see the portable drive on my desk at home, where I left it. Back across the bridge, up Taras Shevchenko, past the courthouse from last week. Tajiks are sweeping the courtyards, wiry men from Tajikstan with thick black hair and orange jumpsuits. The Russians call them blacks and pay them a few dollars a month to sweep, handle garbage, to slather layers of paint on fences and playgrounds. They travel in groups of three or more, rarely alone. I see the police stopping them everywhere, asking for documents, often pushing them into their cars and whisking them away.

At home, the moon-faced concierge leans from a door to see who has entered. She is also from Tajikstan, her mouth a collection of gold teeth. I shuttle upstairs in the elevator, leaving the keys in my door. I run in to take the drive and then back down in the elevator there is a sudden flicker of lights. Everything stops and the doors do not open. I press the button for the first floor, then all of them. I press the call button. The lights are on. My reflection is there in the small space looking fairly calm. I press the call button again. A voice crackles on and with adrenaline and fear surging in me, I still understand she has asked me what buttons I tried to press. I tell her none of them work in some crude Russian, "Syo knopki ni roboteyot." She says some short phrase I do not understand. I bang on the doors, hoping someone downstairs will hear me. The daughter of the concierge calls up, tells me to press the button for the first floor. I repeat, "Syo knopki ni roboteyot."

She laughs. She laughs and walks away.

I stand and wait, my phone doesn't work very well here. I send a text to N, she writes back confused. I  press each button methodically, in sequence. I write more, typing random letters half of my words some kind of mess. She writes back and understands, somehow. She believes someone is coming, I should wait fifteen minutes. I am relieved to be alone, better this happens now than with E an hour earlier. I stare at my hands, thinking of how I had to photograph them earlier in the week as part of an animation. I think about how I have never been stuck in an elevator before. At one point a man arrives, asks me if I pressed the down button. His voice a single long slurred word, I say "Syo knopki ni roboteyot.". He sounds completely drunk. Then he is gone.

Another twenty minutes pass. I can hear the girl laughing still.

The sound of cables being pulled slowly rumble under the floor. A few pulls and I am on the first floor and the doors open easily. I am furious. The girl eyes me and I walk out in silence, straight out the door and down the stairs and across the street and to work. I send N a text, tell her I am ok now. She is relieved.

I am churning down the sunny sidewalk, convinced this lost 45 minutes has destroyed my day. I will eat lunch at my desk, I will have to make it all happen so much faster, I think. My mind is reeling. I shove my hand in my pocket, fingering the broken sunglasses. I cannot tell N now, maybe later. She will be upset. The leaflet from the shoe repair place is there. I stop, trying to read the crude message on it. I think of the disfigured woman, wondering where she lives, if she ever got stuck in an elevator. I think of the Tajiks in the street, polishing the streetlamps, mud plastered across their tall boots.

In the office I leave the lights off and flop on the couch, suddenly exhausted. I close my eyes, imagining E is OK. I imagine N on the way to work, maybe listening to a CD I made for her - tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she makes her way through the morning traffic. I sleep for at least thirty minutes and dream I order a chicken sandwich at a restaurant for lunch, only they serve me a boiled human hand. It looks like mine. The skin is yellow, like an uncooked chicken. I can see how they sliced it in half, lengthwise.

small change

White light fills the rooms, somehow brighter than normal. I buy one candle, standing with it in my fingers, playing with the soft yellow wax. The smell of incense lingers, even with the doors open. A woman mops the floor, talking to herself. A man takes the silver cup and pours himself holy water to drink from the cistern in the corner.

Five minutes earlier I stood in an Italian place and ordered a pizza to go. Now, I am back in time. It could be two hundred years ago here. Every door is crooked, suspended by ancient hinges. There are wildflowers in small vases. Every inch of the walls is covered in paintings, icons, patterns. A woman kneels in front of an icon of Mary and the child. Great bronze candleholders stand in clusters, anointed in oil to keep the dripping wax from sticking to them. I wander the small room, looking up at the vaulted ceiling, the soft curves of the arches as they meet each other. An icon stares back at me, hands raised, palms forward as if to say "I mean you no harm,"or "I come in peace". I find an empty spot, lighting it from another, letting a few drips fall into the tiny cup then resting the tall thin candle inside, holding it until I feel it will stand on its own.

I stare into the flame, praying.

The woman leaves the tiny stool in front of the icon. I suddenly notice another woman, who sits in a chair, staring off into the distance. I approach the icon, and kiss the glass over Mary's face. I leave quickly, crossing myself at the entry, and again at the bottom of the stairs.

The wildflowers are blooming like mad, and I smell honeysuckle. The place is being rebuilt. Great piles of white stones sit, covered in pale dust that shifts around them in patterns of footprints and wheelbarrows. There are old structures, upside-down onion shapes slumping back to the earth. Men sit on the rectangular stones with beads in their hands, also staring off into the horizon.

I pass the opera house, the sounds of rehearsal filtering past the great doors and windows and into the street. My pizza is ready, and they do not have small change for me. The woman at the cashier is furious, waving her hands around. She has no change, she has no change. There is always some strange shortage of small bills here. I leave, marching down Ostoshinka with a pizza box balanced across my arms. It smells pretty good.

E is teaching me the names of trees. She is with me tonight, even though she should be at her mother's. I read her a book about a squirrel named Miss Suzy, only I replace Suzy with E's name which always makes her laugh. She is sleeping after the first three pages, but I read the entire story to her, my voice almost a whisper.

The next morning I wake before sunrise, showering, shaving, eating a real breakfast. I dress once, decide I look clownish, dig up a pair of black boots, a different shirt that looks almost ironed. E wakes up, her hair a bird's nest. I take her to school early in wet streets, pulling her hair into a ponytail when we get there, our goodbye meditation. She will see me tonight, and she trots into the classroom, her shirt tucked strangely into her school clothes.

At the courthouse, I sit and breathe quietly waiting for my interpreter and my lawyer to arrive. E's mother enters, eyeing me, saying nothing, sitting down the hall and frowning at the walls. A giant man is turning tables upside-down in the narrow corridor. There is a strange puddle of water on the linoleum. He sweats and wipes his face with his shirtsleeves, then disappears. A man in a uniform ushers us into a small courtroom. A holding cell fills the corner of the room. The black bars are freshly painted, the door stands a little bit open. My lawyer is stuck in traffic.

The hearing goes quickly, and my objections are noted, all through the ping-pong of translation and replies. The judge goes away for five minutes to make her decision. The interpreter forces a smile for me, trying to help me remain positive. The lawyer looks tired. It is Friday.

The judge returns, and my simple requests are granted. There is no great victory today, but there is also no defeat. It is a baby step towards something positive. We go outside, and talk in the damp air. I pay the lawyer, pay the translator and suddenly I am alone with a handful of signed documents. I walk off towards the bridge. Crossing the river I call N, recounting the details of the morning.

The sky is magnificent, etched in layers of clouds bunched in perfect groups, glimpses of blue sky around their edges. The old buildings and the modern ones are gleaming in the late morning sunlight, and the streets are not wet anymore. Leaves are drifting towards the earth. Prickly green seeds are gathering in the gutter. I breathe in, telling myself I can smell autumn, not car exhaust. I breathe out, telling myself everything is going to be fine.

Strindberg's rose

There is construction going on outside the windows. Random digging happens one day with men and shovels, the next with backhoes - deeper into the same hole. Three old women wander around, waving papers sheathed in plastic. They shout at each other, dropping them, almost falling in the hole. Great pipes roll loose across the parking lot. Workers with metal grinders spray sparks and that ozone smell for hours. And then they all leave as abruptly as they appeared. The great hole sits, unfenced. A man sleeps behind the steering wheel of the backhoe. An unsmoked cigarette dangles from his loose fingers.


The phone rings. It is E's mother, forcing her latest blackmail through. She has documents I need to walk safely in the city and wants $600 for them. I breathe the foul metallic air sifting in, thinking over and over "do not negotiate with terrorists". She takes (technically kidnaps) E early from school sometimes on the days I am supposed to take her and drives her around, saying she will only give her to me if I pay something. It's the simplest equation every terrorist uses. Find the weakness and use it against the target.

I stare at the hole outside the window as she screams at me, about how I am nothing, about how she will make me suffer, about how I should be very kind and nice and quiet with her or she will really show me what she can do. I imagine this filthy, crumbling mouth in the asphalt is hers. It helps me to ignore what she says,  rattling off her monologue about my failings, my inadequacies, and my pitiful existence according to her supreme judgment. I know if I interrupt her it will only go on longer. I know if I hang up, she will just call back, or write it all in various emails to me, my partner, my clients, for all I know the postman will get an earful. If I listen and get it over the price may go down a bit. Of course this used to really destroy me, until I understood that she has a real mental illness, and these are just the howls of confused nerve endings. This is just the chaos and random lashing out that happens in nature, like a bit of lightning destroying a tree, only I am the only tree in her bizarre universe. I am hit by this lightning every single time.

She finishes, pleased with herself, satisfied she has really put me in my place. I smile blandly at leaves that are falling. I try to quietly reason with her, gain some tactical footing, force a few glaring facts in front of her. It's a waste of time, but I need to keep up appearances. I need to act the same way, be consistent. When I act differently then she does too. I can predict when she will lash out, now. If I change my game, then hers will too. It will cost me $600 for documents she gets for free. No dodging that bullet today. I've been managing this situation for years now. Until I accepted the fact that she was sick I took it all personally. Now I know she's kind of a fleshy robot without conscience or adult emotions. It's hard for a robot to really hurt your feelings. But, they can still kidnap your kid. They can still make false police reports about you, spread vicious lies about you. Robots can do that just fine. Maybe better than people, actually.

I do live in constant chaos because of this, but have found a way to keep it from stopping me. This could be my excuse to do nothing, to crawl up in a ball and cry all day. I look at E, who lives in the same chaos, never knowing when or where she will be sleeping, when she will be bargained for and paid for. I find a way to hold myself together, because she needs me to. And like Strindberg's rose that grows from the mud, there are magnificent moments in my life as well.

On Saturday, I was cleaning the apartment, washing E's school clothes and trying to make the empty place smell fresh. A bouquet of orange roses sat in a vase for N to discover. I threw out the garbage, bought eggs, milk and sat on the couch staring at myself across the room. I looked thin in the mirror after getting sick last week. We had gone out for dinner a few days earlier and before we even got home, I asked N to pull over. She was laughing and pointing at fireworks splashing in the sky over Arbat. I threw up into the street as a policeman watched us. I threw up everything I could, and then we drove home. I drank water and lay very still, with N holding me, talking to me quietly and I threw up all night.

But now it was Saturday, and my stomach was fine. I had my documents now, the money and the sacrifice had been offered. Now we could make some pasta, maybe stay in. Now we could have long talks in the kitchen. Now I can watch N's hands moving as she talks, her bracelets and rings bouncing around. I can watch her lips purse, staying just a bit open as she searches for a word in English.

And in the morning, I can cook us a three egg omelette to share. And the coffee is laughing from the orange pot, waiting for sugar and N's hands.

I'm sticking with you (& after hours)

There is a kind of nostalgic symphony playing in my head by Monday. A strange melody improvises above the tourists and the hotdog carts. NYC is an old pair of Levis, a lucky twenty dollar bill I discover in a suit jacket pocket. This is a place where ordering lunch or a taxi or a martini are like breathing for me.

The symphony unfolds across meetings with old friends, some planned, some spontaneous. And every morning I call E and then N, recounting the adventures from the previous night. They say I sound different here, where I am not nervous, where I sip perfect macchiatos and cherry lime rickeys. They know I will be back in a few days with gifts in tiny bags, with toys and new shoes and magnificent candies. They know I will sleep under a Mexican blanket tonight, and the symphony will dissolve into the sounds of traffic skittering down the FDR at 3AM. I will dream of black water, of cotton candy, of Spring.

Tuesday comes, my last full day to tear down the sidewalk to secret stores where I can buy a full set of Futurama characters, or perfume for N, or a fabulous pair of boots for me. I am beyond solid food, living on ice cream and coffee to stay awake. I am meeting O today, who I have not seen in almost fifteen years. We were in a juggernaut band that somehow imploded just as we were being offered  management deals and showcases. The four of us added up to a surf punk Studebaker of a live show, somehow as badass as we were foolish and entertaining. Fantastically loud and sincerely dirty, well - filthy. We were told, "...you fuckers are as sexy as a Russ Meyer film." The first time we played CBGBs O was so nervous she went onstage in three t-shirts and a parka, in the middle of August. Our sound was garage fierce, with a whiplash beat. O's guitar was always howling some line, cascading between rhythm parts and leads, twanging on a vintage Mosrite her fingers bleeding across the strings. The bass was a sort of melodic glue, and locked on that fierce beat. And me, playing horn like my pants were on fire, bending notes so far they should have locked me up somewhere.

O is walking in front of me on First Avenue, and does not see me. She walks with the same casual lope, jeans hanging off of her hips. Freckles scattered across her arms. I wait a moment then speed up to stand next to her at the corner. I catch her gaze and she laughs, trying to shake my hand or hug me so we do both. There are a million reasons to feel awkward. The last time I saw her, she was angrily shoving a free beer across the bar at me as a kind of hello. That was our last exchange, after we failed to pull off a one night reunion to support Andre Williams during his punk blues comeback. We couldn't even find the way to get into a rehearsal room together. There were so many misgivings back then, when we were young and single. Back then, we were these idiot savants who captured lightning in a bottle. Then we got popular. People recognized us in the street. We were on TV. Things became real, and scary. It's so easy to slag around with potential. It's so hard to deliver and get along once you get some attention.

We go into the bar she owns now. Faces loom in the darkness, eyes raising in slow-motion to try to place me,  then back to their newspapers and comic books. It's 1PM on a Tuesday in the East Village. She asks me what I want to eat, always the diner lover she wants a hamburger or something but we agree on a Moroccan place which she decides is "really just French diner food" so it suits her fine.

"You know, for a bar - this place smells awesome." I said.

Before we take a table, she is shaking hands and nodding. Everyone knows her. We sit and her phone is constantly ringing, calls from lawyers for example. She's looking to expand to a second bar. We share small talk. She looks at pictures of my daughter and my girlfriend. We make minor jokes. She asks me what I do for a living now and I try to explain without taking forever, and so it doesn't sound so business-ey. It's like what my kid says, "Dad colors for a living." I add, shoveling couscous into my face. It is one of those lunches when we won't dig into the past, when we won't ask any tough questions. The answers are quite useless to us now, and there are no obvious apologies to be made.

She forks into her salad, and I stare at her broad shoulders, the freckles I forgot about. Her nails are coated in metallic blue polish. I look her directly in the eyes when we talk. I can't remember her being so peaceful, so pulled together. Back in the day, she was a live wire, a jumping bean. She couldn't sit in a chair for more than five minutes. Impulsive, fast-talking, leaping out with a thousand amazing references before you could process them. The fact that she was a man then means nothing now. Her eyes are rockstar beautiful, mascara and all. It doesn't matter what the hell we say today because we won't say anything more than the fact that I wanted to sit somewhere and eat something together. It was my idea. She has a partner, in love and life and I want her to know I'm very happy for her. I stare at her giant hands and wonder about nothing. She is fielding phone calls and walks away to shout at plumbers and air conditioning people. She comes back, and we ask for the check. I order an espresso as the waitress is trotting off.

I tell O I have a question that I know she'll have a great answer to. I tell her about a animated series I am developing that uses rock and roll as its lifeblood.
"What's rock and roll, you mean?" She asks, confused.
I tell her about the twenty-somethings with badly tuned guitars who stand on a street in Moscow - Arbat, and how they play a couple of messy songs and sing at the top of their lungs, how they have a girlfriend who walks around with a hat asking for loose change. I tell her how there is something hilarious and something wonderful about this all at the same time. I tell her that this guy's girlfriend thinks he's the shit.
O is laughing and laughing. "No, I get it." She said. "You want me to explain rock and roll."
"Yes." I say, raising my glass and smiling.
"There are three levels of great rock bands." She says. "The first level is a bunch of idiot savants that have no fucking idea what they are doing, but by some crazy luck or chemistry or whatever they are amazing. They only know like three chords - like the Ramones."
I sip my espresso and nod quietly. I know when to keep my mouth shut.
"Then you have the geniuses, the guys who can fucking play. You know, like Elvis Costello." She adds.
I smile.
"And then you have these super geniuses who know everything but play very little, they go all the way to being simple, almost make you think they can't play sometimes - like Neil Young or Lou Reed." She finished, standing up and pulling her purse across her shoulder.
I drained the cup and we walked out.
"Sorry but I really have to get back." She said. "It was crazy to take an hour off and have lunch."

I follow her back, use the bathroom, take a picture of a beer dispenser sculpture in the alley behind the bar. We say goodbye, simply, openly. We will not be strangers any more.

I wander off into the heat. There are more meetings, beers, running through the airport with massive bags. I barely make the gate the next day, wake up N to tell her I'm on the plane and then I cough and sneeze and try to sleep for ten hours. And she is there, waiting for me, laughing at the bags sliding off of each other and we drive through that same Moscow traffic. Her mother sent some khachapuri in foil that I devour, forgetting to share it.

At home we drink strong tea, make love, open gifts, laugh, close our eyes for a little while and then she must go.

The sky is looking operatic beyond the windows. The symphony is still playing in my ears, and I am waiting for E to be dropped off. I am waiting to take her to the playground and walk in the street with her holding my hand tight. And I am scared I am getting sick. And now E is here and we are jumping in the elevator and she is opening countless gifts from friends and family in the US, from me.

We cook chicken soup and the house smells of garlic and carrots and new shoes.

I'm Sticking with You (Lou Reed)


I'm sticking with you
'Cos I'm made out of glue
Anything that you might do
I'm gonna do too

You held up a stagecoach in the rain
And I'm doing the same
So you're hanging from a tree
And I made believe it was me

I'm sticking with you
'Cos I'm made out of glue
Anything that you might do
I'm gonna do too

There're people going into the stratosphere
Soldiers fighting with the Cong
But with you by my side I can do anything
When we swing, babe, we hang past right and wrong

I'll do anything for you
Anything you want me too
I'll do anything for you
Oohoh I'm sticking with you
Oohoh I'm sticking with you
Oohoh I'm sticking with you