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Sherbet Green

Sara Basrai

    Sherbet Green cries more than she did an hour ago. She sits by the window of her living room and ignores the sun that heats the glass. Mid June and temperatures are already in the mid eighties. Beads of sweat irritate her scalp and drip down the nape of her neck. She cries more than she has in seven years, since her mother died.
    Three hours ago, Steve tapped her on the shoulder and said, “I’m so sorry, Sherbet.” All happened as she’d imagined it would, only worse: the walk to David’s office – the Global Head of Equity Derivatives - and the words spoken that she couldn’t bear to hear. All she understood was, ‘you’ve lost your career’. Afterwards, Steve led her away. “How could you?” she asked and he shook his head.
    He walked her to her desk so she could pack her things in the cardboard box provided, including her favourite photo of her mother, and then escorted her across the trading floor, while others stared with a look that said, “Will it be me next?” Yes, it probably would. She stood beside Steve in the elevator. “How can you do this?” she asked again, pressing her hands against his chest before withdrawing them as if burnt by fire. He shook his head. Security asked for her pass. She handed the laminated card to a guard thinking, ‘why should you morons hold onto my photo?’ and then walked through the doors of the investment bank for the last time, after six years of service.
    Tears stream. The phone rings. Probably her father in England. News spreads fast. He most likely wants to find out whether she is okay and whether she has kept her job. He has plagued her consistently over the past months to pressure the bank to speed up the green card application, so, “In the unlikely event of the bank firing you in the current financial climate, you could remain in the USA, love.” Dad invested a lot in her career. He put her through top British private schools and through Oxford. “A bright lass like you ought to go far, but don’t abuse your privileges,” he’d say. She had. She ate out every night of the week, though often with clients, shopped at Barneys at the weekend and took regular breaks in the Hamptons. Spending money was as easy as it was hard for her parents to pay the bills.
    Just last weekend, Steve and Sherbet stayed in the beach house in East Hampton and discussed plans to go on safari in Kenya. Steve owns three places - his penthouse apartment in Manhattan, the ski place in Vermont and the beach house. She part owns the ski place.
    The doorbell buzzes. Odd. Usually, the concierge calls her on the intercom. She lets the phone ring and gets up from the leather couch, dries her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve and walks over well-varnished floors to the front door. She chose to wear a blouse rather than a summer dress today out of habit rather than thought. There is the oily self-portrait of an up-and-coming artist she found in SoHo and the anthology of American Short Stories she never finds time to read. She can’t discipline herself to focus on a story, but recently joined a book group because she thought she should. Twelve women belong to the group, and only one other is a banker. She trips over the New York Times. The cleaner should have placed it decoratively in the paper rack.
    She opens the door onto the back of a man who stands well over six foot with a flock of dark hair and is dressed in the grey uniform of the apartment building’s handymen and electricians. It takes an army to keep the forty storeys in good working order.
    The phone stops ringing.
    “Yes?” Sherbet asks. He turns with the grace of Fred Astaire and smiles, revealing dark brown eyes and a missing front tooth. If he wasn’t a handyman and without a missing tooth, she might consider him attractive. But as he is, he reminds her of the garbage men in My Fair Lady.
    “Mrs Green, I’m here to change the filters in the air-conditioners—”
    “Ms Green.”
    “Miss Green. I’m so sorry,” he says in a foreign accent. There is something cheeky about him, perhaps the way he holds her gaze. “I am him to fix your filters.” As she doesn’t say anything, he says, “It will be a hot summer the TV is saying.”
    “The TV doesn’t need to say.”
    He nods. She wonders if he understands her.
    She beckons him to follow and indicates the air-conditioner in the living room before sitting at her desk and picking up and then replacing the receiver. She ought to phone Dad, or Steve. No, Steve can wait but Dad deserves to know she’s lost her job.
    “Are you okay, Miss Green?” the air-conditioner man asks. She smells his cheap aftershave, which reminds her of Darren, a boy she once dated in England and whom she hasn’t given a moment’s thought since they were both about fifteen.
    “I’m Ms Green. I’m not married, nor am I a miss. I’m a Ms.” He looks confused and she decides it’s fairly unlikely a foreigner could understand such subtleties, especially a foreigner from a male dominated third world country. He’s probably Mexican, though he’s tall and not indigenous looking.
    “Just call me Sherbet,” she says.
    Amusement replaces confusion. So he is familiar with the word sherbet. Well, if he understands the silliness of her name, he is probably fluent in English.
    “My father liked sherbet. He wanted an energetic daughter. When you put sherbet powder on your tongue, it fizzes. I think sherbet is something different in the USA,” Sherbet says and turns her back on him and lifts the receiver.
    “I have a funny name too. Well, Americans find it funny.”
    Sherbet sits at her desk, switches on the PC and hopes the tall Mexican will quiet.
    “I’m called Fatmir. Luck is I am not fat. I am buck.”
    Sherbet turns towards him again. He stands against the window with his hands pressing against his shirt-covered abdomen. “See I’m buck.”
    “You’re what?”
    “Buck. You don’t speak American? Where are you from?”
    “I speak English and I’m from England.”
    “I see,” Fatmir says and grins. He is enjoying himself. He switches on the air-con and listens as if tuning a piano. He raises a hand towards Sherbet to stop her speaking, so she asks, “Where are you from?”
    “Hush please, Sherbet, I have to listen to the machine. They are very delicate and make quite different sounds. This one tells me, ‘Fatmir, I am sick and need some replacement.’ Come over here and listen.”
    She ignores him and dials her father’s number. Maybe he’s out. That would be a stroke of luck, but he picks up. Damn.
    “Dad? It’s Sherbet. Did you call?”
    “Yes,” Dad replies with the smoker’s voice still intact. “I was worried, love. I heard there were major layoffs at your bank today. I told myself my clever lass wouldn’t be laid off.”
    The clever lass with all the education Dad never had.
    Sherbet remembers Dad saving every penny, telling Mum not to expect a holiday or new dress until Sherbet had gone through the best the United Kingdom had to offer. Mum asked what was wrong with the local schools and Dad said, “They’re the schools for defeated miners’ kids and I want one of my family to escape.” He’d wave his hand in this air and circulate it round and round as he said escape.
    In his youth Dad worked down the pit with the best of the men, and voted Labour and was a union man, but Margaret Thatcher and her pit closures put an end to that and then it was time for reversed psychology. The only way to beat the bastards was to join the bastards. His bright little girl, a whizz kid at math, short with a fragile frame, wasn’t going to suffer northern English humiliation. No, she was going south to join the privileged. So he worked her and himself hard and got her tested to Cheltenham Ladies’ College, the best girls’ school in England. The school accepted her on a scholarship. Sherbet joined the ranks of the well-to-do. If anyone should be cast in My Fair Lady, it is she. She is a right regular Eliza Doolittle.
    While Fatmir considers the air-conditioning unit, Sherbet says, “All’s well Dad, they wouldn’t lay me off.”
    “Good,” Dad says, “so relieved to hear.” There’s still an edge of doubt in his voice.
    Sherbet rests her head in her hands. “Bye Dad.”
    “You must come here,” Fatmir commands and she jumps. “Sorry to scare you Miss Sherbet, but you must learn to hear the air-con. It is important.”
    When Sherbet shakes her head, he pleads again telling her that sound is at the heart of all healthy machines and convinces her that a lonely woman ought to recognise the telling signs of a problem. What does he mean by calling her a lonely woman? “You live just with you, no?” he asks and grins again.
    “Yes, just me.”
    Sherbet crouches besides Fatmir on the floor and feels ridiculous when he tells her to place her ear against the unit. Once she is accustomed to the sound of its motor, or what she thinks is its motor, he asks her to follow him into the kitchen and repeat the procedure.
    “See this is how a healthy air-con should sound. There is a music, yes?”
    She turns to face him in a crouched position and he says, “I come from Albania. It’s near Italy.”
    “I know where Albania is,” she says, immediately changing her view of him. Now he is European and culturally closer to her. “I often holiday in Tuscany with Steve, my boyfriend...my ex-boyfriend, who has a villa.”
    He encourages her to listen further to the air-con, which she does, until she realises she is face to face with him. He must realise too because his eyes take on an intensity. This is crazy. She looks down. He stands and reaches a hand to help her stand. She takes his hand and he pulls her up.
    “My country is very beautiful. I have a house by the sea. Well, my father does anyway. I miss my country very much. Do you miss England?”
    “Not really.”
    He continues to speak of his family and of the Mediterranean beaches he loves and the fishing boats his father owns. He tells her there is a good time to fish and a bad time to fish. He stands before her, looks down on her from well over six foot and she feels shorter than she has in a long while - and she often feels short - and tells her the fable of the fish that grants wishes, though she thinks he reinvents the story to meet his own needs. His story-telling voice is deep and soothing. “The fish says to the tall Albanian man, go to America if you wish, find a pot of gold but remember America is a far away land without European princes.” She laughs when he says princes. Even though she is miserable, she laughs at the absurdity of listening to an Albanian man’s fairy stories in her luxury apartment in New York. Then he says, “I find America very hard, but I like it.”
    “Where do you live?” It occurs to her that she never asks repairmen and doormen where they live. They just live.
    “I live in Harlem opposite a playground called Crack is Wack.”
    “The playground is called Crack is Wack?”
    “Yes, Sherbet.” He looks at her in a way that says ‘I know something you don’t.’ She finds that aggravating and vaguely ridiculous.
    Sherbet leaves Fatmir to complete his work in her bedroom. She sits at the computer and drafts an email to her father explaining her situation and her mistake. Tells him she will need to return to England as soon as possible as she no longer has any legal right to remain in the country and yes, she shouldn’t have bought the apartment in Manhattan or part of the ski place before securing the green card. She will make sure to rent out the apartment and sell her share of the other to Steve. The apartment will fetch a high rent. Tears threaten to flow again. She saves the draft.
    “Have you ever been to the botanical gardens in the Bronx? I saw it advertised on a bus.” Fatmir asks, returning to the living room.
    “No,” she wipes a hand across her face. Fatmir holds a filthy filter in his hands.
    “This is very rude of me, but would you like to go with me there? I understand if you say no. It is not every day I ask...but like your accent and you seem sad. The fish in my story-”
    “What are you talking about?” she asks.
    “I am sorry I have overstepped the starting point.”
    She laughs at his charming use of English. She wants with sudden urgency to go to the botanical gardens. Not that she’s interested in plants, but wants to escape her apartment, the internet and hours tossing in bed going over the last moments at work and Steve walking her to the door. She wants to escape the shame and anger that makes her hot from her stomach to her neck. “Can we go now?” She stands up and he takes a step towards the front door.
    “Now? I think the gardens will be shut. It is late, Miss Sherbet...and I have to work.”
    Fatmir retreats further towards the door, clutching his air-con tool bag. She thinks him alarmed.
    “Yes, I would like to go. I’m so sorry if I’m coming on a bit strong. I lost my job today. I’m a bit off my trolley.” He looks blank. “I’m tired, Fatmir, but would love to go to the New York Botanical Gardens with you.” A sudden smile stretches across his face and he says, “Then I will come and pick you tomorrow morning at...10 o’clock?”
    “Yes, I would like that very much.”
    In the cool of the air-conditioned apartment, Sherbet sends an email to Steve telling him she wants no more contact and that she will sell her share of the ski place to him. When the concierge calls up to tell her Steve is downstairs, she tells the concierge to ask him to leave.
    ***
     At nine o’clock the following morning, her father phones again to check if she is okay. She tells him she is and reads the draft of her email, but cannot send and cannot tell the truth. She walks to the fridge and pulls out an orange Fizzy Lizzy. There’s nothing to eat, just a jar of pickles and a pack of butter.
    At nine thirty, a bouquet of flowers and a box of Godiva arrive from Steve with a note: So sorry darling. I had no choice. I suffered a hellish conflict of interests. I love you.
    Had no choice? Had no choice to warn her she was about to be fired? Steve is her boss’ right-hand man. He talked about going on safari in Kenya when he knew she was about to lose her job. The cuts and who to cut must have been on the agenda for weeks. She throws the flowers in the garbage and eats the chocolates until she wants to throw up.
    At ten, Fatmir rings the doorbell and she opens. He is dressed differently today. He wears jeans - cheap jeans - and a t-shirt with Brazil written across his chest. The scent of cheap aftershave is stronger than ever. He has made an effort. She grabs her Armani bag and leaves with him.
    On Third Avenue, she jumps into the road to flag down a cab. A car pulls up, but it’s not a taxi and a body in a bag is raced out of her apartment building on a gurney and shoved in the back. She shudders despite the intense heat. “The old man in 24G died. Too hot. He didn’t like to cool the modern way,” Fatmir says. He lowers her arm and says, “Don’t flag down a taxi.” When she frowns, he says, “Let this be my treat today. And because this is my treat, let’s take the subway.”
    “Some treat!”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Poor man dying like that. Who are those people?”
    Fatmir shrugs. “Come on the subway with me. I want to show it to you.”
    She agrees to take a subway, agrees to stand crushed against him as the train sways towards the Bronx and faces get browner and blacker and she feels conspicuous in her whiteness. But Fatmir doesn’t care and talks about the Albanian government and the past dictatorship of someone called Hoxha. While she takes in the faces of a family with two small black children, he explains his father, a former university professor, got into trouble under Hoxha’s regime. “My father was followed and arrested by the secret police. He was hurt. How you say?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Taltored?”
    “Tortured?”
    “Yes and had to spend time in hard prison camps. Sometimes, I think air-conditioners hard work, but it is nothing really. He was chained to chair and given electricity. I was a child, but I remember the stories and when we -”
    “I am so sorry. That is so much worse than the story about the fish,” Sherbet says. She no longer notices the people around her, only the eyes of the man in front of her, whose arms trap her against the wall of the train and for the first time in ages she feels young. Young because the words he speaks shake her. No one has said words like that to her before. She’s read about political prisoners but has never met one. Young because she has not travelled in such close proximity to other people in a long time. And because she wants to kiss him in a way she hasn’t wanted to kiss anyone in a while. Not in the way she kisses Steve, after dinner and lots of wine and a sexy movie. No, she wants to kiss him like she did her first boyfriend, Darren, years ago on a trip home from Cheltenham Ladies’ College to the mining town. They bought beer and got drunk in the front garden of the pub. Everyone did the same thing. They must have been fifteen. They kissed between slurps of beer and at one point, they couldn’t stop.
    “Yes, far worse than the fish,” he says and looks puzzled.
    “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. I lost my job,” she says.
    “I understood that last night, which is why I want to treat you.”
    “I will have to return home to England.”
    “Why?
    “Because I’m illegal now. Well almost. I have three months to leave the country.”
    “I’m illegal too, Sherbet.”
    “You are?”
    “Yes, I come as a student and stay ten times as long as my course. Most of us in the building are —.”
    “How?...But I’m different...” She closes her mouth before she says something she regrets. She senses he understands, but chooses to ignore her.
    “If you like it here, stay.”
    “That’s easy to say. But do what?”
    “Now you are an idiot,” he says. “Life has lots of roads. Do you understand?”
    “And you’re a philosopher.”
    Outside, flat roofed buildings and rail tracks pass by. Communities of people walk with a swagger not on view on the Upper East Side. They look brassy and cheap. They remind her of her mother who used to go to the pharmacy and buy lousy hair dye. Mum always went for the obvious - platinum blonde. All these people have an air of the obvious about them and they don’t even know it. Could she live here? Fatmir must read her thoughts because he says, “You could take a little time out and travel across America and find out what you want to do. There is a huge land out there to see. There are tall rocky mountains and hot deserts. There are beautiful beaches where you can swim.”
    “Have you ever done that?” He shakes his head.
    “Then why do you ask me, Fatmir? I’m not lazy.”
    “Why do you care about lazy?”
    “Who doesn’t?”
    At the botanical gardens, Fatmir treats Sherbet to his knowledge of plants and trees, which isn’t extensive. They wander along forest tracks that once covered the island of Manhattan and enjoy the shade, which Fatmir says is nature’s only air-conditioning. They walk over a wobbly bridge, which a kid with learning disabilities shakes furiously and shouts, “I hate this bridge.” His father pulls him away by the arm and apologises. Fatmir finds it easier to talk of Mediterranean vistas and fishing boats than plants. And Sherbet finds herself talking about the mining village for the first time in years. She talks about leaving the village to go to boarding school. Everyone hated her accent and teased her. Fatmir laughs when she says this. “Kids are fucking mean,” he says. At one point, he talks about Hoxha again.
    Then over a sandwich lunch, out of the midday sun, Fatmir discusses the sound of the restaurant’s air-conditioning and the more he speaks the more Sherbert knows she cannot be with him. When he lays his enormous paw-like hands on the table, she knows she needs to go home, pack up her apartment, and return to England. When he suggests with sudden enthusiasm, electric lights shining in his eyes, that they could travel across America together in a truck and work, and pay their way - everyone needs air-conditioners - and stay in motels, she knows she left his world long ago. When he takes her to his apartment in East Harlem with one of those air-con units in the window, and cooks spaghetti in a pan, she knows she can’t kiss him. She can only kiss men like Steve with yachts and skis.
    Still, she watches him slice onion and garlic and chop fresh herbs. And she laughs when his roommate, Edon, adds a touch too much chili and the two men choke and speak what she supposes is Albanian and play fight. Outside, kids play basketball at the Crack is Wack playground.
    She tells Fatmir she still can’t believe the name of the playground and he shrugs and says, “Kids need to understand Crack is wack. You know wack means bad?” And something in the simplicity of his words arrests her attention. He winks at her and she sits back on the green, once plush velvet couch and listens to the hum of the air-conditioner. He tells her the history of the playground and tells her how an artist painted a mural on the wall to teach children not to take drugs. That was before he died of AIDS.
    The meal is delicious. The mural on the playground wall is inspirational. The poster of Che Guevara over the kitchen table is cute. The kiss when Fatmir takes her home, which he insists on doing, is long and lingering – pleasant. The gap in the tooth adds character. The kiss ends the evening with a touch of long forgotten innocence.
    A month later she has packed her boxes, sent them to the UK, officially ended her relationship with Steve, sold her share in the ski place and packed her passport in her bag. She still hasn’t sent the email to her father and still hasn’t secured a new job in the UK. Banks aren’t taking anyone on and she has no transferable skills. All she has ever done is bank. At four o’clock in the afternoon, Fatmir arrives at her door, knocks, and says, “I got a car. We are going to travel across America together.” Sherbet Green wonders whether she should change her mind.

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