Read Online Skin Trade by Reggie Nadelson - Free Book Online

a lot, Artie?”
    â€œSome. You?”
    â€œBusiness stuff. New media. I got in early. I got out in time.”
    â€œSmart.”
    â€œLuck, mostly. I got in on the ground floor, bought, sold. Silly money. Put the cash away. Somewhere, Artie, I got lucky.”
    â€œYou were always smart.”
    â€œI could fix stuff. But you were the rebel. You were the kid who knew about rock and roll and jazz. You knew everything about the West. You could speak English before anyone. You had a godfather who could travel and bought you records, didn’t you? You told me about Willis Connover’s jazz hour on ‘The Voice of America’. My father beat me so bad when he found me under the covers listening to it, I couldn’t sit down. I didn’t care. Remember outside GUM where there were older boys in big gaberdine raincoats with the collars turned up, like young old guys? And the terrible pubescent mustaches on their upper lips? And you could get some kind of disks off them, Chubby Checker singing ‘Let’s Twist Again’. Two rubles.” He paused for breath. “I’m sorry. I know. I talk too much. Sometimes I think my head is so jammed with junk, it will explode.”
    He grinned. He had a stupendous recall for detail and one thing led to another, so as soon as he thought aboutChubby Checker he was talking about dance crazes. I could hardly keep up.
    â€œYou always had shoes that matched,” he went on.
    â€œJesus, Joe, how can you remember all that shit?”
    â€œYou even made me Joe. You said Art was your Western name, and everyone thought this was the grooviest thing we ever heard. Anything that was West was, like, good. It was,” he sighed deeply, “good! Then you said we should all have a Western name. Remember? The Borises even fought over who would be Bobby. Anatoly, you remember this guy, you made him Nat, like Nat King Cole. I think there was a Yevgeny who became Gino. So I’m Joe Fallon. Are you OK? You seem distracted.”
    I was thinking about Lily. “Yeah, sure, I’m sorry.”
    He crushed out the cigarette he was smoking and pulled another one out of the pack. “I tried to quit.”
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œYou want to eat something? Have some breakfast or brunch or something? I’m starving. I’ve been up since six this morning.” He hesitated. “It’s OK. You probably have stuff to do.”
    â€œLet’s eat something.”
    â€œHere?”
    â€œFine.”
    While we ate bacon and eggs and croissants, people looked at Fallon. He was a handsome man; the dark hair fell over his forehead. Behind a pair of stylish glasses with tortoiseshell frames, his eyes were friendly.
    After we ate, he tossed the cigarettes on the table and we settled in with more coffee and smoked a half packbetween us. We reminisced like guys do, half emotional, half joking, catching up. I was glad it was daylight. I was glad I wasn’t alone. When I was alone and thought about Lily I was jumpy, febrile, nuts.
    In 1978, Joe got out of Moscow. He spent a few months in Brighton Beach, earned some bucks, went to LA and got himself into college. He became an American citizen and went into the Air Force, where he had the run of the new computers just coming onto the market. By the time the PC thing was happening, he was on his way.
    â€œKids?”
    He grinned. “Three.”
    â€œWife?”
    â€œTwo. First a Russian girl because I was lonely, she was lonely, we were students. Our boy is twenty-two, if you can believe. Billy.”
    â€œThen?”
    He flinched. “Her name was Dede. We had two kids. She was so great.”
    â€œWas?”
    â€œShe died three years ago.”
    â€œChrist. I’m sorry.”
    â€œCancer. They got it late. I wanted to kill the son-of-a-bitch doctor who told us she had cancer, but she said to me, ‘Darling, it’s not his fault.’”
    â€œI’m