CHAPTER ONE
“Hello, it is I, your grandson, insert name here,” said Dinu.
“Correct,” said Professor Bogdan, language teacher at Liceu Teoretic. He leaned back in his chair and lit up a Chesterfield. “But too correct, you know?”
Too correct? Dinu did not know. In addition, he was asthmatic and the mere presence of a cigarette aroused a twitchy feeling in his lungs. No smoking in school, of course, but these private lessons, paid for by Uncle Dragomir, weren’t about school.
Professor Bogdan blew out a thin, dense stream of smoke, one little streamlet branching off and heading in Dinu’s direction. “There is English, Dinu, and then there is English as she is spoken.” He smiled an encouraging smile. His teeth were yellow, shading into brown at the gumline.
“English is she?” Dinu said.
For God’s sake, it’s a joke,” said Professor Bogdan. “Is there gender in English?”
“I don’t think such.”
“So. You don’t think so. Come, Dinu. You’ve studied three years of English. Loosen up.”
“Loosen up?”
“That’s how the young in America talk. Loosen up, chill out, later.” He tapped a cylinder of ash into a paper cup on his desk. “Which is in fact what you need to know if I’m not mistaken, the argot of youth.” He glanced at Dinu. Their eyes met. Professor Bogdan looked away. “My point,” he went on, “is that no American says ‘it is I.’ They say ‘it’s me.’ The grammar is wrong but that’s how they say it. You must learn the right wrong grammar. That’s the secret of sounding American.”
“How will I learn?”
“There are ways. For one you could go to YouTube and type in ‘Country Music.’ Now begin again.”
“Hello, it’s me, your grandson, insert name here,” Dinu said.
“Much better,” said Professor Bogdan. “You might even say, ‘Yo, it’s me.’”
“Yo?”
“On my last trip I heard a lot of yo. Even my brother says it.”
“Your brother in New Hampshire?”
“No P sound. And ‘sher,’ not ‘shire.’ But yes, my brother.”
“The brother who is owning a business?”
“Who owns a business. Bogdan Plumbing and Heating.” Professor Bogdan opened a drawer, took out a T-shirt, and tossed it to Dinu.
Dinu shook it out, held it up, took a look. On the front was a cartoon-type picture of a skier with tiny icicles in his bushy black mustache, brandishing a toilet plunger over his head. On the back it said: Bogdan Plumbing and Heating, Number 1 in the Granite State.
Dinu made a motion to hand it back.
“Keep it,” said Professor Bogdan.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. New Hampshire is the Granite State. All the states have nicknames.”
“What is nicknames?”
“Like pet names. For example, what does your mother call you?”
“Dinu.”
Professor Bogdan blinked a couple of times. Like the skier, he had a bushy mustache, except his was mostly white. “Texas is the Lone Star State, Florida is the Sunshine State, Georgia is the Peach State.”
“Georgia?”
“They have a Georgia of their own. They have everything, Dinu, although . . .” He leaned across the desk and pointed at Dinu with his nicotine-stained finger. “Although most of them don’t realize it and complain all the time just like us.”
“Does your brother complain?” Dinu said.
Professor Bogdan’s eyebrows, not quite as bushy as his mustache, rose in surprise. “No, Dinu. He does not complain. My brother grew up here. But his children—do you know what they drive? Teslas! Teslas almost fully paid off! But they complain.”
Those state nicknames sounded great to Dinu, even magical in the case of the lone star. He knew one thing for sure: if he ever got to America, Tesla or no Tesla, he would never complain. Just to get out of the flat where he lived with his mother, much better than the one-room walk-up they’d occupied before Uncle Dragomir started helping out, but still a flat too cold in winter, too hot in summer, with strange smells coming up from the sink drain and—
The door opened and Uncle Dragomir, not the knocking type, walked in. Professor Bogdan’s office got smaller right away. Bogdan half rose from his chair.
“How’s he doing?” Uncle Dragomir said in their native tongue, indicating Dinu with a little chin motion. He had a large, square chin, a nose that matched, large square hands, and a large square body, everything about him large and square, other than his eyes. His eyes were small, round, glinting.
“Oh, fine,” said Professor Bogdan. “Coming along nicely. Good. Very well.”
“In time,” said Uncle Dragomir.
“In time?”
“How much longer. Days? Weeks? Months?”
Professor Bogdan turned to Dinu and switched to English. “Weeks we can do, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Dinu said.
Professor Bogdan turned to Uncle Dragomir, switched back to their language, and smiling as brightly as he could with teeth like his, said, “Weeks, Dragomir.”
Uncle Dragomir fastened his glinting gaze on Professor Bogdan. “In my career I’ve dealt with types who like to stretch out the job. I know you’re not like them.”
Professor Bogdan put his hand to his chest. “The furthest thing from it. Not many weeks, Dragomir, not many at all.”
“Hmmf,” said Uncle Dragomir. He took out his money roll, separated some bills without counting, leaned across the desk, and stuffed them in the chest pocket of Professor Bogdan’s shirt. Then he turned, possibly on his way out, but that was when he noticed the T-shirt, lying in Dinu’s lap. “What’s that?”
Professor Bogdan explained—his brother, the Granite State, plumbing and heating.
“Let’s see it on,” said Uncle Dragomir.
“It’s my size,” Dinu said.
“Let’s see.”
Dinu considered putting on the T-shirt over his satin-lined leather jacket. Not real satin or leather although very close. But the T-shirt would probably not fit over the jacket. It was a stupid idea. The problem was that he wore nothing under the jacket, all his shirts dirty, the washer broken and his mother once again dealing with the swollen hands issue. He took off the jacket.
Professor Bogdan’s gaze went right to the big bruise over his ribs on the right side, not a fresh bruise—purple and yellow now, kind of like summer sunsets if the wind was coming out of the mountains and blowing the pollution away—but impossible to miss. Uncle Dragomir didn’t give it the slightest glance. Instead he helped himself to a Chesterfield from Professor Bogdan’s pack, lying on the desk.
Dinu put on the T-shirt.
“The plunger is funny,” said Uncle Dragomir, lighting up.
Desfundator was their word for plunger. Plunger was better. The smoke from Uncle Dragomir’s cigarette reached him. He began to cough. That made his chest hurt, under the bruise.
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