Shards: A Novel Read Free

wrapped around my ankle in case somebody tried to steal my wrinkled clothes and smoked beef and the slivovitz I was smuggling as a present to my uncle—stuff he couldn’t get his hands on in California. After telling me to wait, Enes had led the rest of the Bosnians away to catch their flights to cities like Nashville, Fargo, St. Louis. I sat there thinking I was cold. My jaw was jumpy. But the more I pressed myarms against my body the more I became aware that it wasn’t the cold making my teeth chatter. I looked around. People: shapes, races, demeanors I’d never seen before. They were walking in groups or pairs, or were at ease with their aloneness, purposeful, while I sat there trying not to puke.
    Other men with signs displaying the names of other sad countries rolled by with gaggles of confused immigrants, yelling in exotic languages, leaving behind one or two other petrified saps who, like me, tried to occupy as little space as possible. There was a gangly black man in a black suit sitting with four veiled women (resembling babushkas) in a range of sizes, pretending he knew what was up, but clearly scared. Only a young African woman in dark jeans and a white blouse, with closely cropped hair and shiny eyes, behaved with any sort of confidence. She took her seat, took a book and snack out of her carry-on, something noisy and, by the look of it, covered in salt, and proceeded to read and munch like she was on a park bench. I wanted to lay my head in her lap, to be touched and told that everything was fine.
    Eventually, an airport shuttle—a smelly, back-loaded van of some kind—drove us through New York to where we were to spend the night. I caught only glimpses of the passing buildings, cityscapes, and cars; the African woman was next to me and our thighs were warmly touching. Feverishly, I imagined her taking my hand in hers, looking deep into my eyes and loving me wordlessly. I could see us hugging, touching, holding each other, walking along the beach, cuddling on a love seat, checking on our sleeping brown babies with their Slavic foreheads and African lips.
    “Here we are,” the driver said.
    The van pulled into the parking lot of a dingy motel and shat us out the back. The driver said to prepare our documents and follow him inside. I could tell he did this all the time, his body familiarwith the asphalt beneath his feet. He knew to pull the front door instead of push it, though there was no sign. You could see that he hated but tolerated the manager, a shaggy man of Arab descent, who asked me: “How many in the room?”
    “One, one,” I said showing him my index finger. He looked at my passport and had me sign next to my name on a faxed list. Then he shoved a key into my hand. The orange plastic rectangle to which it was attached read 7. He pointed, then turned to the African woman.
    “How many in the room?”
    I lingered, acting like I was having trouble picking up my bag, hoping to catch the number of her room, but the driver waved me over.
    “Indian or Italian?”
    “Bosnian,” I told him.
    He rolled his eyes.
    “To eat! Do you want Indian food or Italian food for dinner?”
    I wanted to stomp on my own balls.
    “Indian,” I said, figuring there was less of a chance of ending up with a plateful of pork.
    “We’re leaving at six sharp. I will come and knock on your door. You should be up and ready,” he warned, jotting down my choice.
    Rooms 1 through 14 were in the basement, and I followed the arrows through halls lit here and there with chipped sconces that shot murky light at the ceiling in repetitive, throbbing patterns. My room was in the corner, down the length of the corridor from a dazzling behemoth of a Pepsi machine. I unlocked the door and went in.
    Room 7 was surprisingly big: a king-size bed with magenta sheets, a TV presiding, two nightstands with lamps, and a table with two chairs and a phone. It smelled of orangey bleach and dust, of cover-ups and FBI sting operations, sex for