Passengers

They came to the intersection of two long hallways where they stopped before a vast food court. “I’m not hungry. You choose,” Ivan told Nina and fol­lowed her to a table inside a place called Mrkt Ktchn where they were greeted by a troublingly attractive young man. Before Nina had time to order, Ivan asked, “How much are the vowels?”

“Which vowels, sir?”

“Ignore him. I’ll have the Super Greens salad,” Nina said.

When the waiter retreated, she set her eyes on Ivan.

“Do you have to?”

“Come on. You would have laughed if he didn’t look so much like Marlon Brando.”

This made her smile.

“You’re having a salad for breakfast?”

“I am what I am.”

“All right, Popeye,” Ivan said. And then, after a moment, “You know, I was thinking about when you were a little girl.”

Nina groaned. This is the trade you make. Wait six months, and he can say what he pleases. He stores everything and waits with it. She knew there was a whole cache of these observations, memories, dreams, which he’d draw like knives and then pretend were spontaneous thoughts. What were they for? Power? Revision? Some dream of new closeness?

“Listen,” he said, “before you get all annoyed with me.”

“I’m not annoyed.”

“Bored?”

“I’m not bored.”

“What then?”

“I am waiting.”

“For what?”

“You to tell me what you were thinking about me as a little girl.”

Nina watched him clock a couple entering the restaurant. The man, about Ivan’s age, carefully helped the woman into her chair. They both made a small production of locating their reading glasses, arranging them on their faces, and then hefting the massive menus.

“Dad?”

He looked back at Nina.

“Are you going to tell me what you were thinking?”

Ivan shrugged. “I forget.”

It had sounded good when he first called to tell her his plans. A week in Paris. Father and daughter. Ivan’s long-held dream. She had agreed to come in a fit of benevolence. But also, let’s be honest, because she couldn’t stand Charlie and she couldn’t find the courage to get rid of the guy. Because work had worn her down, made her feel like a fraud. All that requisite lightness and deference when there was nothing light or deferential about her.

Now she saw this trip was probably a mistake. Too much time together. Too much unknown. Too many variables. But there was no escape.

“Fine,” she said. “Then tell me this, are you okay for money?”

Ivan closed his eyes. “I thought I had a grace period.”

“Which ended hours ago.”

“Hours?”

“Hours.”

“I’m fine for money.”

Nina nodded and looked across the restaurant to watch two tall women, flight attendants, striding resolutely through the concourse, their legs in perfect rhythm.

“Would you tell me?” she asked, though she knew he wouldn’t. She knew it was tight. She knew he would rather cut his own throat than ask Nina for a nickel. Why then did she ask? Because he pissed her off. Because she was Nora’s daughter.

“I could have made a fortune, you know,” Ivan said.

“But you never cared about filthy lucre?”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“Because you have the soul of a poet?”

“I do have the soul of a poet, you little shit.”

“I thought you had the soul of a painter. The earth was your canvas.”

“I should have invited someone else.”

Nina laughed. “Go on. Tell me of your lost fortunes. Your pure heart.”

Ivan shook his head.

She said, “Come on. Better tell me before Marlon returns, while you still have my attention.”

“You’ve heard it all before.”

“Then tell me something I haven’t.”

“Do you know that nearly everyone I worked with has a little empire now?”

“Yes.”

“All of them. The guys who hustled doors, or glass, or insulation. Did you know that?”

“I do know that.”

“See? You don’t care.”

“I do care, but you’ve told me a thousand times.”

“Only the broadest strokes.”

“They all did what they should have. They invested and grew and worked their asses off and had children in their thirties. Unlike you, disgusting old man, who waited until he was nearly fifty.” Nina was enjoying herself, beginning to mimic his intonation. “And they’re all fat with plenty of money, and plenty of time. But not you, Papa. You waffled and wondered and waited for love and let a thousand chances pass you by while Jerry became the king of doorknobs, or whatever.”

He was laughing and so she stopped there. She didn’t say that, as a result of his supposedly pure and romantic heart, Ivan was just scraping by alone in the same rented house he’d been in since Nina was a girl. She didn’t say that if he’d thought just a bit about the future, neither of them would be quite so worried about money.

“I should have invited her,” he said, nodding in the direction of the white-haired woman who was just then collapsing her reading glasses.

Nina glanced over. “More appropriate for a man your age.”

“More appropriate than what?”

“Than my mother was.”

“You’re in quite a mood today.”

There was something in his expression Nina didn’t like. Listen to me. Listen to me. They all coveted attention. Charlie, the half-formed person she’d been living with for the last seven months, was desperate for it. The men whose bodies she worked on, and Charlie’s buddies, and her friend’s husbands, there was a need, a despair in every one of them that she could no longer abide, a frantic desire to be looked at, propped up, tended to, constantly reassured.

What made her even angrier, even sadder, was that this was not how she remembered Ivan when he was younger, when he woke early and was dressed in jeans and t-shirt and work boots by the time she emerged from her bedroom, groggy and grumpy. The last time she’d stopped by his house, she’d found him in sweatpants and sweatshirt stained with toothpaste and God knows what else, but when she was a girl, he was always awake earlier than anyone. He made toast and poured orange juice and scooped her up and kissed her forehead. He smelled of Old Spice and Right Guard and Folgers and was a solid object against which she loved to throw herself. She never wanted less of him. Not even when she entered middle school, not even after her period started coming. All that time, Ivan seemed the same. She knew just how to provoke him and exactly how he would respond. She came to depend on his impatience as she did upon his tenderness and no matter how cruel she was to him, no matter how nasty, after all that, Ivan had only frightened her once.

Meanwhile her mother was ever-changing. Like a teenager herself. Hairstyles, clothes, ambitions. Nora who was late, who was traveling, who never looked or smelled or spoke quite the way she had the week before. While Ivan was always in jeans and checked flannel and boots. Freshly shaven and the same brush cut since the beginning of time. Even as he had grown older, the physical changes rendered him more permanent, not less. The deepening lines across his forehead, the sunspots, made him seem stronger to her. But after he’d sold the business, she began to see this new expression in his eyes, a creeping sadness took him over, and more than anything, what Nina could not take, was the need, that constant need.

“Anyway,” Ivan said, “the money is fine, Nina. Would I have bought us tickets to Paris if I were on the brink of poverty? Would I have reserved us a week in the finest apartment the city has to offer?”

“Yes,” Nina said, smiling at him. “Yes. You absolutely would.”

“Why are we talking about money? I wanted to tell you about when you were a little girl.”

She glanced beyond him, searching for her salad.

“Then tell me already and stop sulking.”

Ivan shook his head and after he’d taken a steady breath, said, “I always woke up earlier than your mom in those days.”

“In any of the days.”

“Yes,” he said, not sure if this was recrimination, compliment or correction. “But in those early days, I would open our bedroom door and there you’d be, standing at the end of the hall waiting like one of those girls in The Shining.”

When she smiled, he leaned forward and went on. “As soon as you saw me. No. As soon as you saw me see you, you would laugh like you just did. We still hadn’t cut your hair, something we put off and put off and put off and you were wild-looking, such a mess, hair all in your face. I thought you were so beautiful. I remember seeing you those mornings in the hall and thinking to myself, my God. And then at some point, I don’t know what happened, what changed.”

“I stopped being beautiful?”

“You never once stopped being beautiful and you didn’t stop laughing and you kept on running toward me but one morning you made that quick right turn, a little juke, and shot off into our bedroom straight to mom who was always struggling to wake up. And then for months you said to me, ‘No, no, no, I won’t say good morning, I won’t hug you.’”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember, of course.”

“How old was I?”

“You were about three, I think.”

Here was the waiter striding toward them carrying Nina’s salad and a basket of bread. Ivan watched him come—loose-limbed, sinewy. An athlete. When he placed the plate on the table and smiled, Ivan felt the little shock of pain that often came now when he was confronted by this kind of male beauty.

“You two need anything else?”

Ivan shook his head and watched Nina’s face transform under the kid’s gaze.

“Nothing for me,” she said and then, as she watched him cross the restaurant, “My God.”

“Will you be okay?”

“I don’t know,” she said, laughing, “I truly do not know.”

He watched Nina begin to eat, marveling at the deftness of her gestures, their elegance, while at the same time trying to hide his wonder.

“We fought constantly, you know,” he said.

“When?”

“When you were little. Every day was war.”

“Over what?”

“To see you eat like this—”

“To eat like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Well.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was one of the things we fought about.”

“The way I ate?”

“You refused to put a napkin on your lap. You refused to chew with your mouth closed. You refused to wipe your face.”

“I was three.”

“You were three. Your mother and I were very sure of ourselves then. We wanted you to be—”

“What?”

“I don’t know exactly. Prepared for everything.”

“At three?”

“Yes. We’d planned to send you to war at four.”

“Where it would be important for me to eat with my mouth closed?”

The waiter reappeared holding a pitcher of water. He said, “Did you feel those earthquakes this morning?”

“I didn’t,” Nina said, solicitous. “Big ones?”

“Enough to shake a bunch of my books down from a shelf. Kooky days.”

“Something in the air,” she said, and then when he was gone, to Ivan, “You see? And he’s a reader, too.”

“The ideal man.”

“Go on then, tell me, what was the point?”

“Of what?”

“Of all the discipline, the iron fist, the napkin in the lap.”

“We had an idea of fluency,” he said.

“Fluency?” She tossed a chunk of bread into her mouth, exaggerating her chewing, mocking him, letting him see it turn to paste on her tongue.

“Exactly,” he said, “that is exactly what you did when you were three. Same expression, same smirk. In those days I thought, she is saying to me, ‘Fuck you buddy, what are you going to do about it?’ You reminded me of a guy I worked with, always getting in fights. Sean something.”

He could see that Nina didn’t care what the guy’s name was.

“A belligerent asshole always causing trouble. You were just like him.”

“Maybe you could introduce us.”

“If it doesn’t work out with this dude,” Ivan muttered as the waiter arrived at their table with the check.

He handed the kid his credit card and when he took it away, Nina said, “Would you mind if I stayed here with him instead of going to Paris?”

“You should do that. You’ll be very happy together.”

“No. I think I’ll come with you.”

“But why?”

“He’s not interested. He can have anyone he wants. I’ll bet you fifty bucks there’s some weedy actress with the legs of a giraffe waiting for him at home.”

Ivan laughed. “Well he’s an idiot then. Here he has the most beautiful and brilliant woman on earth, and he chooses some bimbo? She probably doesn’t even know how to eat a salad properly.”

“Sometimes you’re hard to hate, Dad.”

“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“You were telling me about fluency.”

“Yes. Well, the idea was that we would teach you as many languages as possible. By language, we meant everything. Social codes, manners, food, customs, dress, all of it. We wanted you to be at ease everywhere, in every circumstance. We wanted you to feel comfortable at a fancy restaurant and in a greasy diner. And we wanted you to have the confidence not to be arrogant anywhere, to never feel above any of it.”

“It’s good.”

“What is?”

“Your philosophy. Your strategy.”

“Are you being an asshole?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not. I mean it. It’s good. Did you succeed?”

“You tell me.”

“I know how to eat a salad in an airport.”

“Barely.”

She took another piece of bread and stuck it up her nose so that a long bit dangled over her lip.

He smiled, but it annoyed him, and he saw her register his expression. She removed the bread, looking embarrassed, and brushed the crumbs from her mouth with a napkin.

“You always hated a mess.”

He nodded. “Curse of the trade.”

“And you always said that.”

“I know.”

“Is it the work that curses you or the other way around?”

“You mean did I end up in the trade because I was already an anal-retentive maniac obsessed with control?”

“At least you know yourself, Dad.”

“At least or at last?”

“Both.”

Brando was back with Ivan’s credit card in a check holder. When he was gone, Nina said, “You’d better tip right, old man.”

“I always do.”

“You always don’t.”

“I give what they’re worth. You want me to give this kid a bonus for having shitty taste in women?”

He left fifteen percent of the pre-tax total, which is what he’d been taught to do by his own father, which he’d taught Nina to do, which she had done until her sophomore year in high school, when she started bussing tables on the weekends at a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from their house. And then all she could talk about was labor and capitalism and the male gaze.

“Let me see,” she said.

Ivan closed the check holder and held it down with his fist. “Don’t try,” he said.

She faked a move toward his wrist so convincingly that he flinched.

The waiter had liked them until he saw the tip. Not even fifteen percent. How do people think we live? He’d expected twenty percent at least. Still, they were sweet and the guy, he reminded him of someone. It wasn’t his face exactly. More to do with the expression. All business except for when he had his eyes on the girl, who he figured was his granddaughter. Who was it? Not someone recent. From another life. Maybe high school. A coach maybe. No, a math teacher. What was his name? One of those guys who never smiles. Jackson. Jordan. Something like that, he thought as he walked the check back to the register to add the tip. No. Mr. Jameson, he thought. Mr. Jameson. Tenth grade. Exactly. He was probably a shitty tipper, too. Math guys. They love numbers so much they hate giving them away. Somebody told him that once. It still made him laugh, even if it didn’t make much sense. Jesus. Mr. Jameson. The guy had saved him once when he was getting his ass kicked after school. Just happened to be walking by. Pulled those kids off of him like he was The Hulk. Didn’t look like much, but he was strong. Mr. Jameson. You never knew with people. He should write to him, he thought, as he walked toward the old couple with the glasses who were still studying their menus. When he got home that night he’d do it. Sit down and write that guy an email. Just to say thanks.

__________________________________

From Passengers by Alexander Maksik. Used with permission of the publisher, Europa Editions. Copyright © 2026.