Waiting for the Electricity by Christina Nichol Page A

softly. A group of Adjarian workers were amusing themselves by drinking and singing Ilya Chavchavadze songs in honor of the Georgian warriors whose deeds once awed the world.
    “Three Georgians united make a world,” I chanted to myselfdown the corridor. At the end of the hall Fax greeted me with a little bow. “Slims—Anthony, the foreigner, will be our guest today. I will need you to help watch over him.”
    At one o’clock, when Anthony arrived, Fax had changed into his pink shirt. He heaved a box of apples onto the center of the conference table and began his charade of acting like a very important man. He sat down in the only chair in the room while Anthony remained standing before him. Vakhtang stared at Fax behind his plume of cigarette smoke, bemused, until, spotting me, he harked at me to get the guest a chair.
    When I returned with the chair, Anthony was explaining to Fax, “I’m a geologist, not a shipping agent.”
    “You are a pipeline specialist,” Fax said. Ha ha. Wink. Wink. Hands rubbing together like a nervous girl flirting. “A highly coveted position in Georgia. If you look on the list of jobs we are willing to give immigrant residency status to, pipeline specialist is one of them. Now, tell me, do you know Hillary?”
    “Who’s Hillary?” Anthony asked.
    “Hillary Clinton.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t.”
    “Too bad. I’ve been waiting for a fax from her.” Mr. Fax said. “Would you like a cigarette?”
    “Thank you.”
    “You have children?” Fax asked.
    “No,” Anthony said. He looked a little worn out and I started worrying Fax was going to take advantage of him. I tried borrowing Malkhazi’s crystal gazer power to silently root Anthony on. I imagined in his heart a mini cheerleader waving her pompoms, which were the colors of his national flag.
    “No children?” Vakhtang asked, eyeing Anthony skeptically. He pointed his two index fingers at each other and touched them. “Plus. Minus. If you have two pluses, it doesn’t work out. What did you study at the university?”
    “Geology,” he said.
    “Yay, geology,” I tried to imagine the little cheerleader crying out.
     
    “Ah, so biology is not your strong subject,” Vakhtang continued. “You have a girlfriend?”
    “Um, ha ha,” laughed Anthony. “I don’t need a lifetime supply of roses.”
    “Yes, you do,” I thought. “For the little cheerleader in your heart.”
    “Ah, yes,” Fax said. “Our friend is a business man. He is not interested in roses.”
    “Perhaps he prefers apples,” Vakhtang said and dug into the box of apples. He gave one to Fax. Fax studied it.
    “It’s firm. It’s pink. It’s a beautiful apple,” Fax said to Vakhtang. “And we have an entire shipping container full of them.”
    “Don’t eat it. It was grown near the Armenian nuclear power plant,” I told Anthony. “Fax bought the cargo of apples from Armenia because they looked good on the video. But now he can’t transport them anywhere. Transportation is our national problem.”
    Fax scrutinized me. Even though Mr. Fax was trying to be a capitalist, he had the unfortunate fate of looking like a communist—yellow skin from smoking filter-less cigarettes down to his fingers, the ash long like the criminals’ cigarettes in the illustrations of one of my Sherlock Holmes books, his spectacles like magnifying glasses that so exaggerated his watery eyes—heaven help anyone whom he chooses to fix them upon. “You are like a little kindergartener,” he said. “So cute with your little jokes.”
    I heard a man selling watermelon outside. “Would you like some watermelon?” I asked Anthony. “Our watermelon has no radiation.” I ran outside to get one.
    “Ripe as a fine woman,” the watermelon seller said.
    “I don’t want a wife. I want a watermelon,” I said and hefted it inside.
    “Is it a good one?” Fax asked.
    I cut it open. “Well, it’s red,” I said and handed Anthony a huge slice.
    Anthony took a bite