My New American Life by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online

have to use the same toilet as Mister Stanley, nor to have to wait while Zeke did whatever he did, locked in for an hour every morning. Lula liked being able to keep her bathroom clean and modestly stocked with the beauty products she’d bought in the East Village with Dunia, and which she grudgingly replenished after hoarding every precious squirt of shampoo.
    She thought of that scene in The Godfather : the gun taped inside the toilet tank. No need for such contortions to hide something at Mister Stanley’s. Her impulse was to put it in the same drawer with her money. But not even sensible Lula was that unsuperstitious. “Don’t keep your gun with your money” was probably, or should be, an Albanian saying.
    Finally she slipped the gun in her underwear drawer. In a normal house with normal men, that would have been the last place. But neither Mister Stanley nor Zeke would look there. It was very American, following the rules of privacy and respect designed to help men and women have happy, healthy relationships. At home, there were different rules: You pretended to be fascinated by everything your boyfriend said until you got the ring, and he pretended to listen to you until you agreed to have sex. After marriage, you could go back to ignoring or putting up with each other and leading separate lives. For now, it was exciting to keep Alvo’s gun in her underwear drawer. Almost as if it were Alvo.
    Given the state of her underwear, she was glad the gun wasn’t Alvo. Mostly she wore cheap synthetics from outdoor bins on Fourteenth Street, except for one fancy bra and silk panties, lavender laced with dark pink ribbon. The bra alone had cost her a week of tips at La Changita. She’d read in a magazine that one of the top ten secrets of successful women was wearing expensive underwear under their business suits. I wear it for myself, explained one female CEO. It’s my secret message from myself to myself. Lula bought the costly underwear, but had never worn it or gotten the secret message, which might have been: Who do you think you’re kidding? She hadn’t bought the underwear for corporate success, but for the future boyfriend. Buy it, and the boyfriend will appear. But the boyfriend had never appeared. Maybe it would work magic if she wrapped the Cute One’s gun in her good lingerie. It was nice to have a reason to wish she believed in magic.
    Downstairs, Lula dragged the dining room chairs back to their usual places. But furniture wasn’t the problem. How could three little cigarettes have left so much of themselves behind? Hoodie and Leather Jacket smoked black cigarettes that reminded her of her grandpa, who’d grown his own tobacco. Alvo smoked Camels. The basement furnace wheezed and complained as Lula pumped the front door until the chilly house smelled like the Tirana train station in the dead of winter.
    At four, when Zeke got home from school, Lula was in the kitchen.
    â€œYou’re cooking?” he said. “What’s with that?”
    Lula watched the bubbles of steam leave ragged craters in the thick red paste. Every fall, her granny used to simmer bushels of red peppers down to a sort of ketchup from which she made delicious sandwiches with cream cheese. It was destiny that, on Lula’s walk home from the library yesterday, she’d spotted a box of red peppers outside the corner grocery that ordinarily never sold anything fresh, except a few shriveled lemons and cucumbers halfway to being pickles. Maybe Granny, wherever she was, had sent Lula the peppers with their witchy power to trump tobacco.
    Zeke said, “How come it smells like cigarettes in here?”
    Lula said, “Gas, not smoke. Matches. I had to light the burners. The pilot light went out.”
    â€œDid you start smoking? I wouldn’t blame you for needing something to cut the boredom.”
    The boredom? If Zeke only knew! She’d spent her day with guys whom Zeke