Anna went up to the counter and handed over her thyroid prescription. Then, feeling in a celebratory mood, threw down a box of the shark cartilage tablets as well. That’s what she’d do, go to the movies. Maybe Brie would want to come. Or Brandon. She would skip the popcorn this time, hide some wheat thins in her purse instead. It felt like a plan.
7
It was a neighborhood of fix-a-flats and squat storefronts begging to install neon lights underneath your truck or wrap your large vehicle in four-color advertising. Everything else—the kebab shops, the mosques, the all-girls Muslim school—came off as mere footnotes in the larger story of down-market goods and depressed real estate. Anna barely noticed them. She had taken a southbound R train to Thirty-Sixth Street, emerged onto Fourth Avenue, then walked three blocks, breathing in the halitosis of open-air garages and the burning sugar tar of the candy-nut vendors. Halal Wireless Café was an unassuming cinder-block square painted queasy yellow. It sat between a shuttered Off-Track Betting place and a bakery whose window was a tableau vivant of artificial food coloring. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she would have walked right by.
Inside, the ceiling fan moved the air in slack circles and a television blared from a wall mount. Of the four people in the room, three sat together, crowded around a laptop. The man who was sitting at a table by himself near the window was brown-skinned. He was some indeterminate age between thirty and forty and wore dark slacks, a beige-collared shirt, and chunky black eyeglasses. There was a Moleskine open on the table next to a plate of half-eaten food, a basket of pita, and a coffee mug. With one hand, he waved Anna over. With the other, he pressed a cell phone to his ear.
“You graduated oh-eight?” Anna heard him say into the phone. He paused to write something down. “Tisch? Is there any chance you knew Chi-Wei? Production and Critical Studies? Ha! So Crick is still teaching that …?”
Isn’t it kind of rude, Anna thought, to conduct another interview, knowing I’d arrive any minute? She set her bag down on the chair opposite Taj and went over to the counter, where pretzel dogs were rotating sadly under a heat lamp. The menu was a bizarre mash-up of Middle Eastern and American food, casting doubt on the authenticity of either. Anna ordered a poached egg and coffee from a lady in a hairnet, then lingered by the toilet door, pretending to watch Wolf Blitzer on CNN until Taj was off the phone.
“Hey, Anna,” Taj said, reading her name from a list in his Moleskine. “Did you find this place OK?” His face, Anna noticed, was lopsided, but in kind of a sexy way. His eyes were a dark liquid brown that reminded her of West Elm furniture. “I know it’s kind of out of the way.”
Anna nodded and took a sip of her coffee, which tasted like someone had done their laundry in it. She actually looked down into the cup to see if there might be a cigarette butt floating there, if some sort of mistake had been made.
“All right. So where were we?” Taj flipped open the Moleskine on the table. “I have in my notes that you’re a big Lars von Trier fan.”
Having never heard this name, Anna could only assume he’d confused her with somebody else.
“Actually, lately I’ve been getting really into Romanian New Wave,” Anna chirped. “Lately” being since last night, when she had gone up to Lincoln Center to see a Cristian Mungiu double feature with Brandon.
“Oh, come on …,” Taj said, a half-bemused smile playing on his lips.
“What?”
“What what? Is that what you think I want to hear?”
“No!”
“You didn’t think the first half hour of 12:08 East of Bucharest could have been about half an hour shorter?”
“It maybe could’ve used some editing—” Anna began.
“And The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, how long was that movie? Maybe five hours? Weren’t you like, ‘Please die already, Lazarescu, I could use a fucking bathroom break’?”
Anna wasn’t sure where to go with this whole line of inquiry, but felt like now she had to follow through. Go on the defensive.
“It won Cannes,” she said with less certainty.
“Yeah, where they have a special jury prize for slowest film.” He stirred his coffee boldly with one finger. “Seriously, don’t you feel a little like the whole Romanian thing, it’s almost like rewarding low expectations?”
“You’re being reductive,” Anna said and immediately regretted it. This happened sometimes; a bit of logorrhea left over from grad school would shoot out of her mouth before she could stop it. But Taj only smiled.
“Those movies, it’s like they’re almost designed to win Cannes,” he said. “I think they have a secret Cannes-winning lab in Romania.”
Anna giggled despite herself. “That lab should be in Transylvania.”
“Doesn’t it feel almost opportunistic?” He said this in a conspiratorial whisper, leaning in toward her.
“Like an infection?” She giggled again.
“Like an infection.”
Taj held up a finger and wrote something down in his Moleskine. While he wrote, Anna studied his face: a very good nose, and his skin was more olive than brown up close. One eye, she noticed, was a little higher up than the other. Maybe that’s where the sexiness came from? It made sense. She’d always had a weird thing for guys with amblyopia.
Realizing that Taj actually enjoyed sparring with her, Anna let herself relax a little. She stabbed her egg, letting the yolk spill across the plate. Taj generously pushed his pita basket toward her. She couldn’t believe how well things were going.
“I was afraid you’d be like the other guy who was just here,” Taj said. “He brought me his semiotics thesis. Check this out.” Taj picked up the first page from the stack of paper on the table. “‘Process Identification and The Shawshank Redemption—A Microanalysis,’” he read. “Who even knows what that means? I’m like, don’t give me the words man, give me the feelings, you know?”
“I know what you mean.” Anna smiled. “I’m all about the feelings.” In fact, maybe now was as good a time as any to come clean. “Actually, that’s sort of the reason I answered your ad. Have you heard of Paul Gilman?”
“Gilman?” Taj repeated.
“He did Rurik, Rurik, Traffic Cop and 87 Love Street with—”
“Is this some lame attempt at irony?” Taj interrupted.
“N-no—”
“I know Paul,” Taj said.
“Oh! So you know—”
“What I don’t know, exactly, is how the fuck you people keep finding me.” His voice was soft now, almost feral. “I never name-check Paul or even Simone, but Jesus, every time it’s the same thing with you people. It’s incredible, you know?” He leaned in closer. “Just explain to me how it works, OK? Do you really, really have nothing better to do than hang out all day on the Internet? It’s like this piece of fucking shit I can’t get off my shoe.”
Anna