THE GRANDILOQUENT LEETZA, Part I

I’m staying at the Arsenyev, where they don’t speak a word of English, and I pass this wiry Armenian guy in the lobby. Here in Vladivostok, the end of the world, it’s rare for anyone to talk to you, but he goes, “Psst, American?” and he says it like the ‘c’ is a ‘k.’

I stop and look around. He’s talking to me? There’s a group of Koreans in the corner smoking cigarettes and drinking Zhegulis and laughing about Stalin, some Russian dock-worker types eating fish and watching the Koreans, and a couple of girls sitting at the bar staring into their drinks. Yeah, he’s talking to me. I say to him, “Yeah.”

“You want fuck?” he says. His accent almost makes me laugh. It’s universal for Armenians: the Russians laugh at their accents, too.

“Never mind,” I say. “No.”

“But girl is much grandiloquent,” he says.

I say, “Grandiloquent?”

“Yes.” He strokes his beard and then makes an hourglass gesture with his hands. He’s grinning. “Grandiloquent.”

I copy his gesture. “Grandiloquent?” I say.

“Yes, yes. Much, much grandiloquent girl. Three thousand ruble.” He makes the hourglass again and winks.

I don’t even know what the hell grandiloquent means. “Well,” I say, “that could work.”

He looks confused. “Could work? You want or no?”

“I mean yes,” I say.

“Good, good,” he says, scratching his beard. I get out the cash and hand it to him. He says, “Follow.”

He takes me to the elevator and holds his finger up to the operator, signaling that he needs a minute, I guess. He’s on his phone talking Armenian—to the girl, probably. And you’ve got to hear an Armenian talk some time. It sounds vaguely Russian, with a tinge of Arabic, and a lot of breaths and ‘th’s’ and ‘z’s’ and ‘b’s’ and ‘ch’s.’ Fuckers’ve even got their own alphabet that they made up based on a Christian prayer, which might explain why everybody here hates them so much. He starts yelling into the phone, and the operator looks at me and kind of nods his head toward the Armenian and says, “Praklatye zhopa,” out of the side of his mouth, which drives the Armenian nuts. He starts screaming at the operator and I’m thinking I should get the hell out of here, but then the Armenian calms down and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Is okay, compatriot. I tell you, she grandiloquent, no?”

“Yeah, grandiloquent.”

The Armenian’s looking right at me, and he looks sort of unnatural, like his green eyes don’t belong with his dark skin, or something. The operator’s looking past the Armenian at me, and he says, “Kakoi etazh?”

The Armenian turns around, gives him a nasty look, and tells him, “Chetiree.” Then he pushes past the operator and goes into the elevator. I follow him.

The operator spits and says, “Da.”

On the elevator, the Armenian and the operator just stare at each other. We get to the fourth floor and the operator says to me, “Haroshevya nya,” while tipping his hat. The Armenian curses something under his breath and then spits. The operator twists his face up, like he just smelled something terrible.

The Armenian pushes past him again to get out of the elevator and starts walking down the hall. I follow him. Once the elevator doors close, he turns and says to me, “Would you like to be knowing her name?”

I tell him, “Sure.”

“Sure?” he asks.

“It means yes.”

“Sorry,” he says, “my English. Is not good.”

“No worries,” I say. But he’s just looking at me with his mouth open and his eyes narrowed. “I mean, tell me her name,” I say.

His face breaks out into some weird half smile and he says, “Leetza.”

“Leetza?” I ask. “Like Lisa?”

“Leetza!”

“Okay, brother,” I say, “take me to your Leetza.”

He smiles again and says, “Okay.” He starts walking faster and stops at room 408. I expect him to knock, but he opens his cell phone and dials some number.

I ask him, “Why don’t you knock?”

“No stook,” he says. “You know stook?” he asks, making a knocking motion with his hand.

“Yeah,” I say, “I know stook. But why not?”

“Rooskie,” he says. “Vat. Is bad. You know?”

“Yeah,” I say, “Russians are bad.” He smiles at that, and then somebody answers the phone.

“Leetza, bats,” he says. He hangs up, looks at me, and says, “Vrossiye, in the Russia, not trust a Russian, yes?” I just smile. A second later the door opens.

She—Leetza—is a Slavic goddess, something you only saw in a Moscow club in the Nineties, where swarms of five foot ten fourteen-year-old tyolka fed on you like you were Axl Rose just because you were Amerikanyetz and had a bit of cash to throw around. Today Moscow is more like Medina: a place you go, but it isn’t sacrilegious to skip it. By 2002 there wasn’t so much money, and it wasn’t so valuable to be an Americna. One Bush war and I became Canadian; two Bush wars and I became a South African. Then Putin started in with his ‘reasserting the national identity’ bullshit, and all of a sudden I was nobody and all the pretty little girls ran back to the villages.

In other words, Leetza isn’t your standard Armenian whore, or at least not the kind of thing you find in Vladivostok. She’s all golden hair and juicy body and dinner-plate eyes. And clean. She smiles at me, then at the Armenian. “Merci, Andre,” she says.

That smile transforms the Armenian. You know how Armenians look: scary, hostile, foreign. But right after she smiles at him he looks friendly—neighborly even—and there’s some light in his eyes. For a second the green looks like it might belong there. He starts talking. I don’t understand much of it, but I do pick out Amerikatsi. She’s looking at him but she keeps glancing at me, especially when he says Amerikatsi, and it looks like maybe she’s cringing, or he’s saying the wrong things, until finally she takes him by the shoulder and starts walking him in the other direction down the hall. I hear her say, “Okay, Andre. Goodbye,” and her English is surprisingly good. I look into her room—their room, maybe—and I laugh. She leaves the Armenian at the elevator. He looks miserable.

When she gets back to me I say, “Your room is exactly like mine.”

“How?” she asks.

“It’s just messy. You know, clothes on the floor.” She smiles and says that she apologizes. I can’t quite place her accent. Like a Russian educated in London, maybe. I ask her, “You’re not Armenian, are you?”

“Oh, no,” she says, like that’s an embarrassing question. “But come in.” She puts her arm around my shoulder and leads me into the room. She’s walking sexy but she doesn’t even have to—she’s wearing panties and a tanktop—and it’s all ass and hips and tits. There’s no need to bounce on top of that, but I can’t complain. I realize something, too: whores don’t answer the door in sexy clothes. Tight jeans and a sweater, sure, but not this.

She sits me down on the bed, and I’m thinking there’s no way she’s a whore. She’s too pretty, anyway. I ask her, “You’re not really a whore, are you?” And come to think of it, that guy wasn’t much of a pimp either. But all she does is kneel down, smiling. She starts rubbing me, trying to figure out which side of my pants I’m on.

“Oh!” she squeaks, pulling it out. She puts her mouth on it like she’s thirsty, and then starts stroking my balls.

I keep thinking “not so fast,” or “slow down,” but it feels too good to do anything but groan. The damn whores here charge for one nut or thirty minutes, whichever comes first, and I’m usually good about getting my money’s worth. But not this time. She puts her hands around it and starts bobbing up and down with her mouth. There’s spit all over and I come. Couldn’t have taken longer than a minute. It’s embarrassing.

She swallows it all and smiles at me, then climbs up and sits next to me. “Do you want to lie down?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I say. She doesn’t answer. She just falls back on the bed.

By John Christy