A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman Page B

rolled her eyes again. “No one made you write that. Take as good as you give.” She pulled back and looked at him. Her breath was soft, flavored with something human but pleasant. “I loved what you wrote. I knew it was yours when I read the first line.”
    “Is that why you stood up for me?” he said.
    “Of course not,” she said. “Most of the Jews in America—that’s where we come from. I grew up listening to my grandmother’s stories. And you form a certain image. And then you read something like what you wrote, and it’s nothing at all like what you thought.”
    “So that was why.”
    “No,” she groaned. “You’re exhausting. Yes, in part, but the number one reason is it was good, really good. You brought it alive. Just that it isn’t the kind of piece that runs in Century . It wasn’t right for Beau—but that means everything?”
    He nodded. All of a sudden, he felt very tired. He felt it in his shoulders, a long, draining weight. He imagined himself taking a seat on the pavement and staying there for a long time. “Why didn’t we go to the poetry reading?” he said.
    “Those things are boring. I go only to see if people are better. If they’re bad, I’m the most satisfied person in the room. Satisfied, satisfied, satisfied.” She tapped out the words on his chest.
    “You say out loud things other people think,” he said.
    “I am Human 2.0,” she said. They laughed, then fell silent.
    They watched each other without comment, too long for it to mean anything other than what it meant. He lowered his lips toward hers, his hand on her cheek. They kissed slowly, the human traffic of First Avenue taking them into its indifferent arms, the city’s special combination of curiosity and resentment. He tingled with a strange sensation; he was unconcerned with the walkers around him in return, but amiably so.
    When he pulled back, he said, “Come on. I want to hear it.”
    “Jesus!” she said. “Fine.” She took his arm and pushed him around the corner. The gleam and noise of the avenue receded. Slava felt the building’s wall at his back, the bricks still warm from the day. She was shorter only by an inch or two; if she wore heels, she would be taller. She was sideways to him, holding his arm with her palm. “It’s a poem about weather,” she said in exasperation.
    “The weather,” he repeated.
    “Weather, weather,” she said. “The thing people talk about when they have nothing to say.”
    “The satin skies, that sort of thing.”
    “Slava!” she said. “In the dictionary, next to asshole—you.” She slammed a fist into his chest.
    “Sorry,” he agreed.
    “You’ve got me wound up, now I’m hot to say the poem.”
    “Say it,” he said.
    Her eyes settled at his neck. He tried to lift her chin, but she swatted his arm away. She spoke in such a rushed, low monotone that he had to make her stop and start over. “Just let me finish,” she said.
    “No,” he said, making her look up at him. “Please. Slowly.” So she started over. She spoke clearly this time, and he listened intently, but he could hardly focus on the words.
    The bar they were heading to, Straight Shooters, arrived too soon. Here, too, Arianna knew the bartender. They really were straight shooters on the alcohol issue, or perhaps it was Arianna’s acquaintance that secured them such brimming glasses. The music was mellower, Southern if he had to guess, and there was a more committed row of solitary drinkers at the bar. She made him twirl her before they sat down. His head heavy with drink, he tried, in the noise, to distinguish why he was here—to be with her or merely without himself? Slava was not much of a drinker, but gazing at the solo patrons seated down the length of the bar, locked away from each other and the world by the crisp pints in their hands, he sensed clearly the appeal of their American pastime. His legs helixed with Arianna’s at two bar stools.
    “You haven’t told me a thing,”