The Leveling

Daria downshifted as she entered a traffic circle. The transmission whined. “I know Holtz wouldn’t let him drink at the President, so we can cross that off the list. He took me out to the Grand Turkmen once. We could start there.”


Daria remembered an awkward night. Polite dinner conversation, mostly about how crazy Turkmenistan was—Beards outlawed! Compulsory hockey! Bubonic plague! Decker had been nervous during dinner. They’d both had too much wine. Afterward, he’d pulled her onto a nearly empty dance floor. A cringe-inducing gyration to “Tainted Love” with a disco ball right out of Saturday Night Fever spinning above them had followed. They’d played blackjack for an hour at the casino. He’d won—she remembered him high-fiving her and that it hurt—and she’d lost, badly.

“They have a bar at the Grand Turkmen?” asked Mark.

“It’s part of the restaurant.”

Then there was that good-night kiss that she’d been a little too boozy to deflect and that had made her feel as if she were being mauled by a bear.

Objectively, she knew that Deck was a seriously handsome guy, with a body that really was a marvel to behold. She loved looking at him. And she liked him on a personal level—a lot. She’d never seen him in a bad mood, and that counted for something. But she was barely five feet tall and he was six foot four. And he was still in his twenties, with the cares and concerns of a guy in his twenties. What he needed was a young buxom Russian weightlifter who liked to pound shots and trade punches. And that just wasn’t her.




They tried the Grand Turkmen Hotel, then the Nissa Hotel, and then a few of the seedier joints like the Vavilov and the Mopra Club—tired places with stained carpets, stale air, and watered-down drinks. Mark always started by ordering something at the bar and grossly overtipping. Then Daria would show the bartender a photo she’d taken of Decker on their night out together.

No one recognized him, or would admit to it. As soon as they were sure a place was a bust, they’d leave in a hurry, without finishing their drinks.

They tried seedier places still, until Daria had the sense that she’d fallen into a toilet and was slowly circling the bowl. But that’s when they started to get some real hits.

At the Flamingo Disco, an expat-German waitress with pierced eyebrows and a cattle-style nose ring remembered Deck, though she said he’d only been in a couple of times and had hung out more at the bar than on the dance floor.

At the City Pub—where the guy watching the door informed Daria that if she was there as a whore, she’d need to give the house a percentage of her take—they seemed to know Decker well. He evidently was a big tipper who’d been known to buy rounds for everyone at the bar, on multiple occasions. But no one had heard anything about his taking off with one of the bartenders. An offer of one hundred, then two hundred dollars for more information didn’t jog anyone’s memory.

“Try the British Pub,” the bartender told them on the way out. “I know he used to hang out there too.”





44


Ashgabat, Turkmenistan



NO SIGN HUNG outside the basement-level British Pub, just a coat of arms on a nondescript door. Inside, faded pictures of a young John Lennon and Paul McCartney lined the entrance foyer. Dark curtains hung over fake windows. When Mark’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he saw a sitting area near the entrance where two women—prostitutes, he guessed—were chatting on one of several couches. A bar with mirrored shelves displayed a meager selection of foreign booze under purple lights. Brick-patterned wallpaper had been pasted on the floor-to-ceiling columns near the bar. A dartboard hung on a nearby pine-paneled wall that was riddled with dart holes. Farther in was a band area, then a billiard table, its stained baize more shit brown than green.

It was one thirty in the afternoon. Aside from the prostitutes and the staff, the pub was empty.

Mark ordered a beer, overtipping as usual.

Daria stuck with bottled water and showed the bartender—a big Russian with a facial tick—her photo of Decker.

“He drinks Tuborg?”

Mark glanced at the beer menu to the side of the bar. Tuborg was the cheapest. And it came in half-liter bottles. It also happened to be what he was drinking. “Yeah.”

“The Decker!” The bartender’s face twitched as he smiled.

“That’s him,” said Mark.

“He is here all the time, he loves the karaoke.”

“I wasn’t aware.”

“Very good singer. Very good, just like the Meat Loaf.”

Mark raised his eyebrows and exchanged a look with Daria. “Have you seen him recently?”

“Not since many days, I think.”