Gorgeous East by null Page A

It was also true that Jessica and Vatran seemed the perfect complement: her big, blond Midwestern good looks; the Turk’s Levantine complexity, olive skin, and sleek dark pelt of hair, his sideburns, architecturally perfect. These two will make exotic, beautiful offspring—a rueful thought that occurred to Smith like a stab in the heart.
    Food arrived somehow, a dozen oblong plates, the usual meze—peppers stuffed with rice and meat; small, deep-fried sardines sprinkled with coarse salt; a selection of strong cheeses; spicy vegetable dips and pide bread; unknown pickled items in small white bowls; a variety of olives—more of the same kind of stuff Smith had eaten back at the house.
    Vatran ate heartily, crunching the sardines whole between his teeth, bones and all, bent over his plate like a truck driver, elbows on the table. Jessica also ate well, but, as if she had taken Vatran’s admonishment to heart, barely sipped her wine. Smith ate almost nothing, nibbling on a little bit of this or that, but ordered two more rakis for himself.
    “Be careful, son.” Jessica winked at him across the table. “You don’t eat, you’re going to get yourself drunk.”
    Vatran grunted at this. He didn’t talk much; when he spoke, speaking in Turkish and only to Jessica, he pointedly avoided meeting Smith’s eyes. Smith didn’t try to make conversation. He knew now why Vatran had insisted on meeting for dinner—the man wanted to humiliate him in front of Jessica, to let her know that this old boyfriend was nothing, a nuisance, to make clear that Smith’s presence didn’t matter one way or another.
    At last the coffee arrived, along with a plate of Turkish sweets drenched in honey. Smith felt himself to be drunk suddenly; his ears burned, he saw little drunken squiggles out of the corners of his eyes. He drank his coffee and ate a sweet in a vague stab at sobriety.
    Jessica stood up. “Got to go to the little girls’ room,” she said, and she wagged a finger at Vatran. “I don’t want to come back and find you boys at each other’s throats.” She walked around the table and into the bright, humming interior.
    An old woman in a voluminous skirt came up from the sidewalk a moment later peddling silver earrings off a piece of cardboard covered in black velvet.
    “ Cok guzel kupe ,” she said in a singsong voice, pushing the board at Vatran.
    “ Kakmak, fahisehise! ” Vatran snarled and knocked the woman’s board to the ground; other diners looked over, startled, then looked away. The earring peddler gasped and let out a stream of invective, but Vatran ignored her and she gathered her spilled earrings and went away, cursing. Now, he leveled a hostile scrutiny at Smith; it was the first extended eye contact all evening. Smith, just drunk enough for a confrontation, stared back.
    “Hey, Kasim”—he gave a little wave—“what’s up?”
    Vatran nodded to himself, muscles in his jaws tightening angrily. “So tell me, buddy,” he said. “Why the fuck are you here?”
    Smith flinched, taken aback by the naked hostility in the man’s voice.
    “Vacation,” he said.
    Vatran nodded. Then he lunged forward and jabbed a finger in Smith’s face. This time, Smith didn’t flinch, though the finger came a bare half inch from the end of his nose.
    “We both know why you’re here,” Vatran hissed. “You’re here to fuck Jessica! You think maybe you fuck her, she’s going to come crawling back to New York with you. Is that it?”
    “Not exactly,” Smith said, and he scraped his chair back, away from the accusing finger, trying to keep calm. “I was in Paris, in the neighborhood, so to speak. Thought I’d drop down to Istanbul, see how you two were getting along.”
    “That right?” Vatran grinned mirthlessly. “Paris is two thousand kilometers from here—”
    “Actually, it’s a pretty easy deal,” Smith interrupted. “You get on the Orient Express at the gare de l’Est, it’s a nice ride, the food’s