"Leslie What - Love Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

love me
by Leslie What


My wife, who is from Russia, and I are about to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Maybe celebrate is too
strong a word for what we are doing. Observe might be a better choice, given the circumstances. I sit
alone in her apartment, a bottle of California champagne on ice. Yelena will be home late; I hear she goes
out dancing on Friday nights. I can wait, after all, I waited until I was forty to get married. I am good at
waiting. Plus, she has cable. It's weird how I can change the channels from my head using my brain
implant. The implant doesn't work how it's supposed to, but it does change the channels. I think it's
defective. That would explain a lot.

Yesterday, I get a letter from a lawyer, explaining that the former Yelena Chekhov wants a divorce. I
would sure like to hear that coming from Yelena, then I would believe it. The problem, the same one that
we have had all along, is our language barrier. Yelena never learned English and I never learned Russian.
We communicated by Charades until the implants that were supposed to change everything.

I'm not saying I've been the perfect husband, but Yelena is not an easy woman to please. In that way
she's like a lot of American women, not that I would ever have considered marrying one of them. They
expect so much a man can never measure up. Yelena, on the other hand, expected nothing. That sure
changed. She was so innocent when she arrived. She walks outside, showing off her new gold chains.
Gets herself mugged her first full day in our country. Yelena goes ballistic, refuses to leave the house
again until I buy her a little gun. I send her to a self-defense class taught by lesbians. I help her mom,
sisters, aunts and uncles come over so she will have her family. Takes a while, but her confidence slowly
returns.

Then we learn she's barren. She's heartbroken. We can't adopt — I'm too old for any agency. We can't
afford private. I let her take a job as a social worker for Russian immigrants, and that keeps her happy
and busy for a time. You never saw so many impoverished babushkas. They're at the house continuously,
eating my food, drinking up the Stoli. When they leave I find a clock radio missing, or my new bowling
shoes gone and in their place a pair of mismatched slippers.

"Yelena," says I. "These people eat me out of house and home." She doesn't understand a word. My
savings account drops to zero. We take in a boarder named Mike to help pay the mortgage. He
recommends a Russian marriage counselor, Dr. Nystroya, a quack who couldn't help Mike sort out
problems with his Russian wife. I should have known.

Nystroya's office is above a Russian deli where Yelena likes the borscht. Our first appointment, we walk
upstairs to ring the bell. A dark, disheveled man with a eighties shag-rug hair unlocks the door, says
something Russian, makes us wait in the hall until he changes into a yellowed lab coat and hustles us
inside.

I cannot understand a single word Nystroya says and I doubt he understands me. He has us sign papers
for the transplant, which I assume is routine. Yelena smiles. For one moment, I hope things will work out.

Next thing I know, Nystroya is shooting me full of drugs; a nurse with facial hair is shaving my head.
Everything goes dark. I wake up. I'm given an instruction manual, written in Russian. "But I don't speak
Russian," I say, and the nurse tries to tell me something in Charades. I figure out the pamphlet is the FAQ
for the universal translator Nystroya has implanted in my brain. The device is supposed to translate my
thoughts into Russian, translate Yelena's Russian thoughts into English ones. We should be able to