Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart Read Free Book Online

jumbo,” she said. “You like these?” She lifted up her breasts with her thumbs, after which they somehow managed to rise on their own, like shy animals peeking out from behind a hedge. “These make you sweat, mister?”
    “Very much,” I said. “But I’ve got pretty nice ones myself, miss.” I cupped my beauties and rubbed my nipples hard. The other barmaids laughed, as usual. “Get Misha behind the bar!” one of them shouted.
    “Dang, mister, you funny!” the new barmaid said. She reached behind me and pulled down on my hair. “But when I’m behind the bar, boy-o, you keep your eyes on
my
titties. I don’t need no competition.”
    “Ouch,” I said. She was hurting me. “I was only joking.”
    She stopped pulling my hair but continued to hold on to it, her palm stroking the preliminary fold of my neck. Her breath was awful—sour milk, rubbing alcohol, cigarettes, post-industrial rot. But she was beautiful in an impoverished kind of way. She reminded me of a lovely olive-colored mannequin I had seen in a store vitrine. The way that mannequin was casually bent over a billiard table, cue in hand, suggested she knew a lot more about the sex act than any woman in Leningrad, even the trollops at the Red October Hotel. My new friend, likewise, looked like she was privy to all kinds of information. She had a large, pretty face set off by small brown mestizo eyes, her pallor a bit gray from sun and vitamin deficiency, and a globe of a belly that looked half pregnant (with processed foods, not with child) in an arousing way. Her breasts were ponderous. “You Jewish?” she asked me.
    Max woke up immediately upon hearing “Jewish.” “What? What?” he said. “Whad’you say?”
    “Yes, I am a secular Jew,” I said proudly.
    “Knew it,” the girl said. “Totally a Jewish face.”
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute…” Max mumbled.
    “Look at your pretty face,” the girl continued. “I love your little blue eyes, mister, and your big fat smile—oh,
dip!
If you lost some weight, you could be one of those fat movie stars.” She brought her hand around to touch my chin, and I bent down to kiss it, in contravention of the bar’s unspoken laws.
    “My name is Misha,” I said.
    “Desiree’s my bar name,” she said, “but I’ll tell you my real name.” She bent forward, her fast-food breath jolting me out of my antiseptic Accidental College existence and into the world of the living. “It’s Rouenna.”
    “Hi, Rouenna,” I said.
    She slapped me across the face. “At the bar you call me Desiree,” she hissed.
    “I’m sorry, Desiree,” I said. I did not notice the pain, so taken was I by the prospect of knowing her real name. At that point a customer called her away to lick up salt and lime juice from her cleavage. I have not kept the image of how he squished his acne-covered nose in between her breasts, nor the slurping sounds he made, but I do remember how dignified she looked when she straightened up and wiped the resulting mess with a moist towelette.
    “You Jewish boys need a little Manischewitz in between these?” she shouted to me and Max.
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Max said.
    “Oh, relax, pal,” Rouenna told Max. “I’ve been to, like, fifteen bar mitzvahs.”
    “You’re Jewish?” Max said.
    “Nah,” Rouenna said. “But I’ve got friends.”
    “What are you, then?” Max demanded.
    “Half Puerto Rican. And half German. And half Mexican and Irish. But I was raised mostly Dominican.”
    “Catholic, then,” said Max, satisfied she wasn’t Jewish.
    “We
was
Catholic, but then these Methodists came around and gave us food. So we were like—okay, we’re Methodists now.”
    That theological discussion almost made me cry. In fact, I was crying quite readily and happily at that point, my tears dropping with fat thuds on my crotch, where the crushed purple insect was registering its presence. Half Puerto Rican. And half German. And half Mexican and Irish and