Part 17 (1/2)
Ganady put out a hand to stop her. ”I'm going to find you,” he said, and meant: I will always find you.
She was looking at him again, her eyes bright and soft at once. ”You already have.”
”I mean really find you. In the real world. While I'm awake,” he added.
She blessed him with a brilliant smile and skipped away toward the plate. She reached it, crossed it, and vanished.
”Lana! Don't go!” he called, and dashed after her.
The stadium lights went out. Ganady stopped, staggered, and fell back into his bed.
The bedroom was dark, and for a moment, he couldn't think why. Then, out of the darkness to his right, a m.u.f.fled voice said,”When'd you start talking in your sleep?”
”Huh?”
”You were talking in your sleep. I hope you're not going to do that every night.”
”I was reading a Superman comic and fell asleep.” Ganady hoped that would sufficiently explain the phenomenon.
”You were dreaming about Superman?”
”Yeah.”
”Well, don't make a habit of it, okay? A guy's gotta sleep.”
”Uh-uh.”
Ganady felt about for the comic. He found it, slid it back into the top drawer of his nightstand, and s.h.i.+mmied down under his sheet.
”So, who's 'Lana'?”
”Huh?”
”You were calling to someone named 'Lana.' That's what woke me up. You said, 'Lana, don't go.' What's that all about?”
”She was...just someone in the story. A girl.”
”A girl, huh? I thought the girl in the comic book was Lois.”
”Well, there was a Lana too. She's a-a friend of Lois Lane's.”
”Oh,” Nikolai said, then fell silent.
Ganady was on the verge of sleep when he heard a m.u.f.fled, singsong voice from the other bed.
”Ganny's got a girlfriend. Ganny's got a girlfriend.”
Thirteen: The Sausage King of Philly.
Sat.u.r.day, at loose ends, Ganady wandered down to Pa.s.syunk Square and carefully-not to say reluctantly-approached the butcher shop on the corner of Thirteenth and Reed.
He needn't have bothered with care; the shop was closed for sabes. But he did notice that the window had been repaired. Arcing across it in gold letters were the words Sausage King: Gusalev and Sons, and in very small white letters beneath, Kosher.
He meant to try again on Sunday, but could not-or did not. Instead, he let himself be distracted by the fact that with Nadia and her parents out of town for the day to visit relatives in Trenton, Yevgeny sought him out to go to a ballgame.
Over Yevgeny's half-hearted protests, Ganny insisted they invite Mr. O along, but the old man was under the weather. The boys went alone.
It was a peculiar afternoon, for Ganny found himself suddenly tongue-tied with Yevgeny as if he had not been his best friend for almost as many years as either boy had been alive. Yevgeny wanted to speak of nothing but Nadia-and did. Ganady wanted to speak of nothing but Svetlana-and didn't.
What could he say? That he dreamed most nights of a girl who might be a ghost? Who popped out of comic books and spirited him away to empty baseball diamonds? And who had been so disobedient her father had disowned her?
So, he let Yevgeny prattle on about Nadia, until he couldn't stand any more.
”Hey,” he said, when Yevgeny had paused to stuff popcorn into his mouth, ”you want to go see that new Humphrey Bogart movie?”
”Oh, we've already seen it. It was great. Kind of mushy, but great. We went with Nikolai and Antonia.”
Ganady was stunned. His best friend and big brother, double-dating, while he...dreamed.
”Oh,” Ganady said. ”Well, I guess Lana and I will go see it alone then.”
Yevgeny stopped chewing his popcorn. ”Lana?”
Ganny shrugged. ”A girl I met...in church.”
That was all Ganady said, but he felt as if he had let the world's biggest true lie fall from his lips. When he failed to dream that night of Svetlana, he was sure it was the lie that had kept her away.
She did not enter his dreams once during the entire week.
The following Sunday morning he went to Saint Stan's with the rest of the family and had used up every bit of patience he possessed before Subdeacon Savitzky had even begun to intone the Epistle. By the time he had gotten home, changed out of this Sabbath clothes and walked back to Pa.s.syunk Square, he had made the journey in his head no less than a dozen times.
The butcher shop was open and several patrons waited at the long gla.s.s counter while the butchers filled their orders. There were only two men behind the counter. One of them was older-perhaps in his fifties-the other not much older than Nick. The older fellow's white ap.r.o.n bore a red nametag that proclaimed him to be 'Joe.' The younger man was 'Mik.'
Ganady loitered in the background, appearing to study a selection of kielbasa, until the shop was empty of customers. Then the older of the two men spoke to him.
”Hey, boy-you need something?”
Ganady blinked, looked up at the butcher and said,”Are you Mr. Gusalev?”
”That would be me.”
”Well sir, I...” Do you have a daughter? That was the question he was supposed to ask, but instead he said,”I'm the one who broke your window a while back. With my baseball.”
”That was you, eh?” Joseph Gusalev regarded him through wintry eyes above which s.h.a.ggy brows of brown and gray went through a series of exclamatory expressions. ”I suppose you want that old baseball back, is that it? Well, I tossed it out-”
”Yes sir. I know. I found it out back in the alley. With a big old c.o.c.kroach sitting on it.”