The Trouble with Bliss
The twenty-seventh annual Ukrainian Festival to benefit St. Benedict’s opens with a flutter. It’s a week-long event of mediocre music, tepid food, and poorly planned festivities. At a quarter to seven, Morris wanders the sparse crowd, looking for Stefani. On an elevated stage that resembles gallows for public hangings, a priest offers a prayer, blesses the small gathering of people and the charity raffle, which anyone can enter for a dollar. Only a dollar a ticket, the priest repeats, and it’s for good cause.
All of Seventh Street is cordoned off between Second and Third Avenue, battered blue police barricades standing at each end, allowing no traffic through. Rickety framed booths with rain-proof tarps tossed over the tops are manned by elderly women with hands as rough as a salted street before a winter storm. It's all for the church, the school, the motherland, and the museum that will never get built. They sell anything and everything—small store-bought snacks, poorly crafted Ukrainian tchotchkes, individual sticks of gum, and cold, hard pierogies—all at exorbitant prices. The name of Christ allows them to gouge.
The festival’s never advertised, never publicized. Most people come across it accidentally, stumble onto it on their way for a beer at McSorley’s or Burp Castle or the all-you-can-eat early bird buffet at Terry’s Thai Land. Still, in the church’s newsletter, the event is always reported as a wild success.
Waiting in front of McSorley’s for Stefani, Morris watches as the Young Krainers, a traditional Ukrainian dance group comprised of eight- and nine-year-olds, take the stage. They’re costumed in the clothing of the people from the old country, peasant clothing. The costumes cost a mint.
The music’s cued. The needle drops on the worn, black record, and the first notes jump, cutting and loud; then the music rolls, uneven and pitching, a dinghy on roiling seas. The sound rips down the street, echoing off the old tenement buildings and hitting the heavy brown stones of Cooper Union hard and flat. The music bounces, shooting back to mangle its approaching self.
The volume is adjusted just as the young dancers start their steps.
The children, dressed as little men and women, move about the stage with little joy, little feeling for what they are doing. It’s obvious they don’t want to be here; it’s an activity their parents make them do. Culture. Heritage. All the things that are to be remembered and held close to oneself; all the things youth wants to bury and forget.
The boys pull colorful handkerchiefs from their pockets and hold them high above their heads. The girls grab the free end of the hankies and spin and spin, their white dresses with red and yellow embroidery flaring like dying tulips. It’s a traditional mating dance, or an ancient harvest dance, or a worshipful funeral dance. It’s a dance of celebration or mourning, Morris can’t tell. All he sees is the awkwardness of the young dancers, their clear desire to end the show as quickly as possible and get off stage, get back into regular street clothes.
Morris had knocked and knocked on Sofar’s door. No answer. Sofar was inside. Morris knew he was inside, had heard him pacing his apartment, but the man refused to come to the door. He’d called through the door, said, “Mr. Sofar, it’s Morris Bliss from downstairs. Stavroula’s son.” He wanted to see the man, talk with him. Vanquish the sour memory of Sofar turning freaky on him.
For three minutes, Morris knocked, then gave up. Sofar wasn’t going to answer his door.
After the Young Krainers complete their routine, an older group takes the stage. They’re dressed exactly the same, dance the exact same dances, only this group is taller, larger. It’s like the Young Krainers have been miraculously transported five years into their future.
A hand slides on Morris’s shoulder. Stefani, Morris thinks. He turns to find Jetski.
“Jet…Steven,” Morris says, nonplussed.
Jetski’s been drinking; his face is an odd shade of purple and his lips like that of a horse’s, large and rubbery. “Shit, Morrie, old buddy,” he says. He laughs, a laugh that kicks out spittle from his wet mouth. “I didn’t know you were into this stuff,” he says, waving a hand about.
“Oh, I’m just waiting,” Morris tells him. “For someone,” he adds, then, “Nice seeing you.” He tries to wander off.
“Where you going?” Jetski asks, taking his arm. “Bloody Eagles, baby. We’ve got to have a drink.”
“I would, but I—”
“Who you waiting on?”
“A girl,” Morris says, reluctantly.
“She Ukrainian?” He slightly lists, working to stay balanced.
“Down the line,” Morris says. “Yes.”
“Does she have big—”
“I should get going,” Morris says.
Jetski won’t free him, won’t let go of his arm. He leans in to Morris. “What’s she like?” he asks.
“How do you mean?” Morris asks, but he knows how he means. His kidneys ache; he has to urinate like he’s never had to before, like it’s never been an issue until now.
“I mean,” Jetski says, his breath hot, “how is she—”
“Who’s been naughty?” a voice interrupts.
Both Morris and Jetski turn.
There stands Andrea Angel, rigid yet beautiful. Like a stuffed pheasant. Her arms are akimbo, a smile on her face. “Morris, you never called like you promised,” she says.
Morris never promised.
Her hair’s different. She’s cut it, cropped and dyed it a deep, brick red. Combed high and back, it is styled like a lion’s mane that’s been blow-dried and over-moussed. She gives Morris a kiss on the corner of his mouth, a kiss that's nearly a kiss, but not quite.
“Andrea,” he says.
“You like the hair, right?” she says, pirouetting. “A new me.” She speaks to Morris like they are alone, just she and he. Like Jetski’s the autistic sibling: acknowledged but not included.
Jetski stares at Andrea like she’s veal and he’s starved. His breathing's loud, a near snore.
“You look nice,” Morris says.
“Right, nice,” Andrea replies, expecting more.
“You look fantastic,” Morris counters, meaning it. “Really fantastic. What’s the reason for the make-over?”
“After last night, after our drinks, right, what you said really sank in,” she tells him.
“What did I say?”
“Right,” Andrea says, and laughs. “Like you’ve forgotten. No, your words cut me to my soul.”
“No, really. What did I say?”
“You know, that whole thing about all those things, right? So this morning I said, ‘Andrea, something new.’ I went to Bumble and Bumble beauty salon and here I am, right.” She rounds her arms about Morris’s neck and braces herself to him. “Just like you said, and you were right, right?” she says, dragging him a step or two in time with the warped music. “I was so happy last night.”
“That’s great,” Morris says, a thread of heat yanking through him. Her body next to his. “Andrea, I’m—”
She gives him a kiss, her lips crushing his. She pulls free, lets him go. “Got to run, right. Drinks again sometime this week?”
Morris vaguely nods, etherized by her kiss.
“Oh, hey, right,” she says, before heading off. “Know who I saw when I getting my hair done? That guy who runs that horrible deli around from us.”
“Mr. Charlies?” Morris asks.
“Right, him. He was in the chair next to mine, getting his hair done. The whole package, dye-job and all. Never thought a man so ugly could spend so much and still look so ugly, right?”
“Mr. Charlies?” Morris asks again, incredulous. “He was getting his hair done?”
“Got George to deal with,” Andrea says, turning. She heads off. “Drinks again, right?”
Jetski sides up to Morris, panting. “Blood-ee Eagle, baby. Morrie, that was solid,” he says, watching Andrea work down the street.
“No, it wasn’t,” Morris says, riled, confused. He feels unstable, a combustible element listed high on the Periodic Table, one r
eady to explode from the slightest improper handling. Andrea’s kiss. Another Mr. Charlies sighting.
“It was solid, Morrie,” Jetski repeats. “First, the taking of precinct nine, now the women,” Jetski says, excited. “Just like old times, Morrie, like way back when.”
“No,” Morris tells Jetski, “it’s not.”