Moonlight in Odessa Read Online Free Page A

eye, I got up and walked to the opposite side of the boardroom. We circled the table slowly, both of us pretending this was perfectly normal, as many as five times before he gave up. Seeing that he would never win a race of endurance, Mr. Harmon changed his tactic and wooed me with hummus and baba ganoush as well as a battery-operated flashlight/radio for the nightly blackouts. He asked me to call him David, but I avoided doing so. When he stood too close to me, I looked at him with wide eyes and said, ‘You’re like a father to me.’ His hands tightened into fists, and he stalked back into his office. I exhaled and hoped I could last another month.
    In time, he put up photos of us together. On one of our ships. In front of the opera house with clients. His arms slithered around my shoulder, his hand poised near my breast. Everyone in the office looked at the pictures and assumed I was his mistress. He was pleased – the men respected him more and me less, the women were either jealous or admired my good sense. For a time, he seemed satisfied and stopped pursuing me, as if the rumor of our involvement were good enough. I resented the fact that colleagues thought of me as his private reserve or that I was hired, not to translate the most important, strictly confidential papers, but to sleep with the boss, yet I appreciated this period of détente. We no longer circled each other warily, trying to gain the advantage. A holding pattern emerged; when we sat in the darkened boardroom waiting for the electricity to switch back on, we really talked.
    ‘It’s my daughter’s birthday next week.’
    I looked at him in surprise. ‘You have a daughter?’
    ‘A daughter. And ex-wife. An ex-house. An ex-dog.’
    ‘How old is she?’
    ‘Eighteen. I don’t know what to get her.’ He sighed. ‘She hates me.’
    I smiled. ‘Is there anyone harsher or more intimidating than an angry eighteen-year-old girl?’
    ‘You went through that phase?’
    ‘Didn’t we all? What’s she like? What does she like?’
    He looked at me, and his hands fluttered helplessly, as if what he was trying to convey was too much for him. Finally, he settled on, ‘She’s nothing like you.’
    ‘Could you be more precise?’
    ‘Well, you’re so together, and she . . . she’s not. She struggles at school, struggles with her weight. She dyes her hair black and listens to punk bands that make me suicidal.’
    ‘My Boba would say that music is a cry for help. Write, even if she doesn’t write back. Phone, even if she doesn’t say much. Let her know that you love her. Call her best friend. She’ll know exactly what your daughter would want for her birthday.’
    ‘You’re right,’ he said.
    ‘Those words sound so good coming from you.’
    He laughed.
    I looked at my watch. Time will show, my Boba always said. Time will show.
    ‘I never wanted this,’ he said, pointing to the black boardroom table, to the white board.
    Board, bored.
    ‘I know, I know. You hate Odessa.’
    ‘No, I don’t, and that’s not what I meant. I wanted to be a writer, to study poetry. I didn’t care about business.’
    Know, no.
    ‘Then why are you here?’
    Here, hear.
    ‘Family.’
    That one word said so much.
    ‘I wanted to study English, too. But Boba said, “Who’ll pay you to stand on the street corner and recite Shakespeare? No one, that’s who. English isn’t a career, it’s a hobby. You’ll study engineering or accounting – something with a future.”’
    ‘Did that make you angry?’ he asked.
    ‘Why would it?’ I shrugged. ‘She had my best interests at heart.’
    ‘You’re a much bigger person than I am. After years of therapy I’m still not where you are. I hated that my father tried to control me. Made me get a business degree. Made me . . .’
    ‘Made you what?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    Bite-bit-bitten . The strange edge of anger in his voice made me nervous and my fingers flew to my mouth out of habit.
    ‘You don’t have to