Uncle Hank had been married once before. It was a long time ago, to his high school sweetheart, and they almost had a baby, but his wife was killed by a drunk driver. She was six months pregnant. Uncle Hank grieved for years. His bowling buddies would try to set him up on dates, but he’d always refuse, saying he was in love once but it wasn’t going to happen again, and that was that. They thought he was just being modest, but when caught off guard by introductions to single women at barbeques he’d politely let it be known that he wasn’t interested in dating. “But Hank,” his friends would say, “don’t you ever get lonely?” Uncle Hank would shrug and say, “How can anybody with a library card and cable TV ever be lonely?” His friends would chuckle and then Uncle Hank would change the subject to football, and his smile would fade as he’d focus on his beer.
That’s why it came as a surprise when Uncle Hank announced at Thanksgiving that he’d be getting married again. There was a shocked silence, followed by Grandma Penny screaming, “Woo hoo! I love weddings!” and everybody laughing.
“Are you serious, Hank?” Mom asked him, a concerned look on her face, wondering if her brother was pulling some kind of practical joke on us all.
“Dead serious,” he said, nodding his head with a beaming smile.
“So who’s the lucky girl?” Dad asked.
“Her name’s Adriana. We met online. She’s beautiful, but really down to earth. Funny, too.”
“Have you met her yet, in person?”
“I’m flying to Bucharest in January to meet her and her family, and if everything goes well, she’ll be coming home with me.”
“Bucharest!” Mom said. “Where the hell’s that?”
Uncle Hank smiled patiently. “It’s in Romania.”
“Romania!”
Uncle Hank laughed, and we all joined in.
I saw Adriana’s ad once, when I was over his house. Uncle Hank ran his own business repairing and selling old arcade games. Pinball machines, Ms. Pac-Man, that kind of thing. He worked out of his garage and would pay me to help him after school or on weekends. He said I had a knack for it, because his dad, my grandpa, was a mechanic too, and his dad before him. Fixing things is in our blood.
We were listening to some classic rock on the radio while we replaced a couple pop bumpers, and Uncle Hank told me to go grab a couple of Cokes from the fridge. I went into the kitchen and saw Adriana’s profile on the table. There were a few other ads printed out, with pictures of scantily clad Eastern European women posted alongside short biographies written in minimal English with the hope of attracting a man. Adriana’s stood out. First of all, her picture was unique. There was something serious about her, something sensible and mature. While the other girls wore bikinis or miniskirts and tube tops, Adriana wore a formal black dress that accentuated her pale skin and dark eyes, and she chose to pout into the camera instead of smile.
First name: Adriana
Age: 26
City: Bucharest
Country: Romania
Star sign: Scorpio
Height: 171 cm (5ft7)
Weight: 58 kg (128 lbs)
Hair color: black
Eye color: black
Education: high school
Status: never married
Children: no
Smoke: yes
Languages: English, Hungarian, Romanian
Hobbies: cooking, reading, watching movies and TV
Message: Feminine, sensual, intelligent, seductive girl seeking for a great man.
Also unlike the other girls, who listed their hobbies as “dancing” and “traveling” and “having fun,” Adriana’s hobbies must have appealed to Uncle Hank’s domestic fantasies, which consisted of eating, reading, and watching movies and TV. She was a woman after Uncle Hank’s heart, indeed.
Uncle Hank left a little after New Years to Romania. Mom was real nervous—she’s always had a big phobia about anybody flying anywhere—but Uncle Hank just laughed and assured her he’d be fine. If all went well, he told us, he’d be coming home with a beautiful woman.
We met her two weeks later. Adriana had a mole on her cheek and pretty pink lips and her eyes were big and dark and a little too close together. Dad said she was exotic. Mom said she was strange. She certainly wasn’t like most people in town. First of all, she smoked cigarettes, which nobody really does anymore, because it’s bad for your health. She also used black eyeliner, and painted her fingernails dark red. She dressed different, too. She’d wear big black shades and little black dresses, fishnet pantyhose and knee-high boots with sharp heels. Stilettos, they’re called. Like knives.
Uncle Hank had a winter cookout at his house to welcome her to our family. Mom brought potato salad, and Dad brought champagne and a twelve pack of beers. Grandma Penny got drunk on champagne and fell asleep on the couch. Uncle Hank wore his hunting cap out on the patio and grilled up hot dogs, vegetables kebobs, and beef patties stuffed with diced jalapeños and onions and smothered in cheddar cheese. He always made the best burgers in the world.
We ate in the dining room, where Mom grilled Adriana about her family and her upbringing and her hometown, and Adriana nibbled on her food and in her polite, broken English answered as best she could. She described her family as poor and proud and hardworking, her childhood as happy and uneventful, and her hometown as small and boring. She sipped her Sprite and looked at Grandma Penny’s smiling, ketchup-smeared face and said in a quavering voice, “Since I was little girl, I want to marry kind, handsome man and move to America, and now Hank make both my dreams coming true.” Uncle Hank pulled Adriana close and kissed her on the cheek as Grandma Penny cried and Mom rolled her eyes and Dad laughed and chugged his beer. Adriana tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled at me, revealing the slight gap between her front teeth. I blushed and focused on my half-eaten wiener.
“How many years are you?” she asked me one night. Uncle Hank had gone to the bathroom, but I was still in the garage, working on a pinball machine with my shirt off. She was wearing nothing but a big white T shirt. I could see the outline of her nipples. A cigarette dangled from her lips.
“You mean, how old am I?”
“Yes, this is what I mean.”
“I’m sixteen.”
She nodded, looking me up and down.
“How old are you?” I asked her.
“I’m twenty sex,” she said. I blushed. “When I was your age, you were only sex,” she said, then laughed. I blushed some more. She blew a thick stream of smoke in my face and walked back into the kitchen. I’d never seen a woman walk like that before. The way her hips moved. It was incredible.
That night, I had a dream about Adriana. We were in the garage again, and she was playing pinball, and I was standing behind her, my arms around her, helping her play. The tilt lights were lighting up and she was laughing and shaking and I was laughing and shaking too, and the ball was bouncing all over the place, and the lights were lighting up and the machine was singing and screaming with points, and she smelled so good and felt so good, rubbing her butt up against me, and my pants dropped down to my ankles and she lifted up her T shirt and turned around to face me, and she said with a big smile: “Aren’t you glad your uncle died?”
I woke up sweating.
Small pets began to go missing from the neighborhood that spring. Signs went up on telephone poles and at the grocery store showing photos of dogs and cats, asking: Have You Seen Fluffy? Have You Seen Rufus? Some were stuffed through Uncle Hank’s mail slot. Adriana would laugh and throw them in the trash.
I’d walk by Uncle Hank’s every morning on my way to the bus stop, and one cold April morning Mrs. Trelkovsky was on Uncle Hank’s front porch, demanding to speak to Adriana. Uncle Hank, in his bathrobe and slippers, said that she was sleeping, and asked what the problem was. Mrs. Trelkovsky told him that Princess, her Persian cat, was missing, and that she knew Adriana had something to do with it, because Princess would hiss every time Adriana passed by the house. Uncle Hank flashed me a quick smile and told Mrs. Trelkovsky he was sorry to hear about her cat, and that he would keep an eye out for it, but that he was sure she’d turn up soon.
That night Uncle Hank and I took a break from fixing a Monster Bash pinball machine to join Adriana in the living room. She was drinking red wine and smoking cigarettes while watching a movie about bloodsucking nuns on the Chiller Channel. Soon enough Adriana and Uncle Hank got into a heated argument about vampires. Uncle Hank said vampires are a superstition, and historically, people who were supposedly vampires just had rabies or tuberculosis or something like that. Adriana got really quiet and whispered something in Romanian, and when Uncle Hank asked her what she said she just said, “Nothing.”
“Well, you said something.”
“I said nothing you would understand.” Then she stood up and walked away.
Uncle Hank looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
I pretended to stifle a laugh. I felt shivers running up my spine though. I wanted to run after Adriana and tell her I wasn’t ignorant like my uncle. I wanted to take her hands in mine and tell her I wanted to learn whatever she wanted to teach me.
Weeks later, Mrs. Trelkovsky stopped by the house again. I answered the door, since Uncle Hank was sick in bed with the flu. Adriana was on the couch, watching a zombie movie. Mrs. Trelkovsky demanded to speak to Adriana. I looked to Adriana, who rolled her eyes, and turned back to Mrs. Trelkovsky to ask if there was anything I could help her with. Mrs. Trelkovsky told me she hadn’t seen her Labradoodle Albert in days, and that if Adriana didn’t come to the door she’d go to the police. “Go to the police,” Adriana yelled in her flat smoky voice from the couch. “Nobody cares about you or your dumb dog.” Mrs. Trelkovsky’s eyes grew wide with shock, then thin with rage. “You’re not fooling anybody!” Mrs. Trelkovsky screamed over my shoulder. “I know what you are! You witch! You succubus! You shameless gold digger!” Adriana stood up from the couch and sauntered over to the door, sucking on her cigarette as she came closer to me and Mrs. Trelkovsky. “And I know what you are,” she said. “You’re an ugly old cow.” And with that, she slammed the door.
That night, Adriana cooked an enormous feast. Ghiveci din carne de vaca with a cucumber salad and an apple pudding for dessert. Usually I’d continue working in the garage while she’d prepare dinner, but that night she asked me to help her in the kitchen. She wanted to make something special for Uncle Hank, since he wasn’t feeling well. I washed my hands and got to work cutting up carrots and peppers and onions while Adriana chopped the meat into chunks and fried them in lard.
“Good job,” she said to me. “Good boy. Keep cutting.” I got distracted by Adriana’s praise and sliced the tip of my index finger. I winced in pain. Adriana tsked at me and took my hand in her own. She looked at the cut closely, squeezing my fingertip to make the blood bead up. Then she took my finger to her lips like it was the most natural thing in the world. My heart thumped madly in my chest. My cheeks and ears burned. “Is nothing,” she said, gazing into my eyes. “Is small, little cut. No concern.” I nodded dumbly and went back to cutting up the vegetables. My head was dizzy from swooning.
Adriana salted the meat and poured water into the pot, then covered it and turned down the heat. “We need more vegetables,” she said. I opened the fridge and rifled through the crisper. “Green beans?” I asked. “Yes!” Adriana said. “Cauliflower?” “Yes!” “Celery?” “Yes!” “Garlic?” “No!” I cringed at Adriana’s rejection and looked up at her, stunned. Her face was filled with dread. “Are you stupid?” she asked me. “You can’t mix garlic with onions! Put those away!” I did as she commanded, relieved to see her good mood return as soon as the offensive bulbs were back in the fridge. “Good boy. Now we finish cutting vegetables, and you drink wine with me and listen to me tell you story.” Adriana poured me a glass of merlot which I accepted even though Mom would kill me if she knew I was drinking. Adriana seemed to love wine more than anything. She slept most of the day and woke up in the afternoon to start drinking and cooking and watching monster movies.
As Adriana poured herself another glass she told me about how when her grandmother died, her family worried she was coming back to haunt them, so they did what any family would do in such a situation: they dug up her corpse, tore out her heart, burned it at the crossroads, and mixed the ashes with water to drink them. It was a crazy story, but Adriana laughed when she finished telling it. I laughed too. I figured it was a weird joke I couldn’t understand because the punch line was lost in translation.
We cut up the rest of the vegetables and arranged them on top of the meat with parsley and dill and more salt, then placed the pot in the oven. Adriana refilled my glass and smiled at me. I smiled back at her bashfully.
“I probably shouldn’t drink any more,” I said. “I have an algebra test tomorrow.”
Adriana laughed. Then she looked at me very seriously. “You drink more,” she said. “You drink more and you tell me story.”
“I don’t know any stories,” I said.
Adriana shrugged. “I cook you dinner, you tell me story.” She blinked at me.
“About what?” I said.
“I don’t know about what. Is your story!”
She was getting impatient. I told her about a prank my friends and I pulled on our English teacher. He was out one day, and since he didn’t have a class last period and his substitute had already left, we cut chemistry to rearrange his furniture. We made the class a mirror image of itself, with everything in its exact opposite place. We even moved the posters on the walls. I started blushing as I was telling the story, because Adriana was watching me with a curious expression. At the end she didn’t laugh, but she did grin.
“Maybe you’re not good boy, like I thought,” she said. “Maybe you’re bad boy.”
At that, Uncle Hank came stumbling into the kitchen. He looked pale and disheveled. He’d been sleeping all day but there were still dark bags under his eyes. He was losing weight. The way he shambled into the room reminded me of the zombies from the scary movies Adriana was always watching. He looked at me and he looked at Adriana and he scratched his head and said, “Smells good in here. What’s cookin’?”
* * *
In the summer, when Uncle Hank got sicker, I’d bring him to his doctors appointments, since Adriana couldn’t drive. In the evenings I’d take care of the work in the garage and then spend time with him, talking about what had to be done until he got better again. Uncle Hank would hold Adriana’s hand while we discussed which clients still hadn’t paid and what machines still needed fixing. Adriana would always stand to excuse herself and give us some time alone, but Uncle Hank would tell her not to be silly, and to sit back down beside him. Adriana would happily sit back down, but these moments would make me uncomfortable. Uncle Hank had always been so self-sufficient, but in a short time he’d become completely dependent on Adriana. He’d even turn pale when she so much as got up to go to the bathroom.
After Uncle Hank would fall asleep I’d sometimes stick around to watch TV with Adriana. Soon it became our regular routine. She loved bloody movies, and I did too. We’d microwave a bag of popcorn and stuff our faces on the couch while sipping wine and watching psychos and demons dismember and torture and kill.
I don’t remember how it happened, but late one night we started kissing. My hand cupped her breast and Adriana bit my lip. “Naughty boy,” she said, and unzipped my pants to go down on me. I came quickly. Without a word, Adriana turned off the TV, kissed me on the cheek, and went to bed.
I ran the five blocks home, my heart racing. I thought I’d be able to sneak up to my room but Mom was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of chamomile tea and looking at me funny. I asked her if she was having trouble sleeping, and without answering she asked why my lip was bleeding. I said I bit it accidentally and hurried upstairs. My blood tasted salty. I sucked on my lip all night long.
At first the doctors just thought Uncle Hank was anemic. They said his fatigue and pale skin were due to a lack of red blood cells. But when the symptoms got worse and his spleen swelled up and he started getting all kinds of infections, he was referred to a specialist for more extensive tests. They even took a bone marrow sample. Uncle Hank said it hurt like hell. They numbed his hip with a little needle, then stuck a big needle through his skin and muscle, all the way to the bone. They twisted the needle to get through his hip, and once they broke through they used a syringe to suck out the liquid marrow swimming around inside. It was the worst fifteen minutes of his life.
Hairy cell leukemia sounded like a made-up disease. Mom tried to explain to the doctor that leukemia was something children got, but the doctor assured her that wasn’t true. He said that hairy cell leukemia was very rare, and most often found in middle-aged men. For some reason Uncle Hank’s body was producing too many immature white blood cells, and those abnormal cells had hairs on them, which could be seen when they were put under a microscope. It sounded crazy to us. On the way home from the hospital Mom said the doctor was a complete asshole, and Dad and I agreed.
Uncle Hank started his week of chemotherapy on my 17th birthday. My parents didn’t protest when I said I didn’t want to have a party. I just wanted Uncle Hank to get better. Everyday for a week we’d pile into the car to bring Uncle Hank to the hospital. He thought it was silly for all of us to go but we insisted. While he was on the drip we’d sit around trying to make small talk, even when it proved impossible. Mom talked about the weather. Dad talked about baseball. Adriana sat in silence. Meanwhile, Uncle Hank was the least concerned of us all. He’d tell us jokes and keep us laughing.
The chemo seemed to take, and other than a high fever, Uncle Hank suffered no side effects. The cancer went into remission, the doctors patted themselves on their backs, and everybody was happy. But then something went wrong. There were complications. The doctors blinked their eyes and ran their mouths and tried their best to explain to us what they obviously couldn’t understand themselves.
At Uncle Hank’s funeral, some dirty rumors went around about Adriana having something to do with his death. There was some talk about poison, and Mom even made up a story about Adriana putting shards of glass in his food. It was all bullshit. Of course I was sad that Uncle Hank died, but I wanted to defend Adriana too. His cancer wasn’t her fault. It was nobody’s fault. Death comes for all of us eventually, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I stood beside Adriana as the coffin was lowered into the ground. She took my hand in her own, and even though I could feel everyone watching us, I didn’t care. I gave her hand a squeeze and didn’t let go.
Uncle Hank’s Last Will and Testament was read by an attorney a couple weeks later. Not surprisingly, Adriana inherited his house, and I inherited his business. My parents insisted I sell off what was left, but I told them there were plenty of orders still coming in and I wanted to honor Uncle Hank by keeping his company going. They told me I was too young to run a business all by myself, and I reminded them I only had a year of school left. Mom said I should be focusing on going to college, but I reminded her that Uncle Hank never went to college, and he turned out all right. She shut up after that.
That night, I had a dream I was following Adriana into a field of wheat. She didn’t know I was following her. I hid among the stalks whenever she looked back so she wouldn’t see me. I followed her into a clearing, where she stood in the center of a circle of bloody arms and legs and torsos. I watched her drop down to her knees among the body parts. At first I thought she was crying, and I walked towards her, to comfort her, only to realize she wasn’t crying at all. She was eating the flesh, tearing it off the bones in huge chunks with her teeth. Blood covered her cheeks and chin. When she saw me I realized she knew I’d been following her the entire time. She smiled, offered me a leg. I woke up with a massive hard-on.
* * *
In August, Adriana hired some guys to paint her house purple. Each day they climbed their ladders and coated the wood siding in layers of thick dripping paint. When it dried it looked like raw liver.
The first week of my senior year was unbearable. My teachers were annoying and my friends kept asking if I was feeling better, like Uncle Hank’s death was a cold I could get rid of if I drank enough orange juice. Home was worse. Mom bought books about grieving and would ask me if I was still in shock or if I’d moved on to denial. Once I yelled at her to stop asking me and she got teary-eyed and said she was happy to see I’d moved on to anger. I avoided going home and spent as much time as I could with Adriana.
At first I didn’t know how to act around her. She’d spend hours on the internet, chatting with strangers, searching for new friends. I could tell she was lonely. I didn’t want to bother her so I’d stay in the garage, tinkering with the old pinball machines that nobody would ever buy. Sometimes she’d come in and watch me work, which would get me excited and self-conscious. She’d smoke a cigarette and ask what I was doing and not pay attention to my answers. Then she’d go back inside, and finally I’d go home for the night. I wanted to make her happy, to give her something to take all her sadness away.
At the end of my first week of school I walked up to Adriana’s purple house to find Mr. Trelkovsky ringing the doorbell, looking lonely and confused. I said hello and asked how he was doing. His eyes were red and watery. He gave me a feeble smile, and asked if I’d seen his wife recently. I said I hadn’t seen her in a while. He hadn’t either. He said Mrs. Trelkovsky had been missing for days, and he worried she wasn’t coming back. He slowly shuffled off the front porch without saying goodbye. I opened the door and entered the house. I thought I heard Adriana laughing in the living room, but when I turned to look she was coughing instead. When she finished coughing she sucked on her cigarette and asked if I was ready for dinner—she’d made some traditional Hungarian goulash, just like her grandmother used to make.
We ate in front of the TV, watching a show about the plague, and when we finished eating I took our plates into the kitchen. She followed after me. I thought she was going to refill her wineglass but instead she just stood behind me and asked, “Why aren’t you out with your friends?”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“What about girlfriend. Don’t you have girlfriend?”
“Nope.”
“Why not? You’re handsome boy.”
“I don’t like any of the girls at my school.”
“Maybe you’re shy. Maybe you’re scared to get what you want.”
We stared at each other for a moment, the air between us thick with energy, and then I took a step towards her and leaned in and kissed her, relieved to feel her lips kissing back.
We had sex three times that night, once on the living room couch and twice in the bedroom. I thought losing my virginity would be a big deal, but it wasn’t. It didn’t make me feel older or wiser, it just made me feel good. Being inside Adriana felt right. She asked if I’d get in trouble for not going home and I told her I never wanted to leave. We fell asleep together, naked and slick with sweat.
That night, I had a dream about Uncle Hank. We were in his van, driving to a casino to drop off some slot machines we’d fixed. We had the windows down and the radio blasting and we were driving fast, laughing, having a good time. But then we were in the casino, which was quiet and empty, and the lights were flickering on and off and the machines were rusted skeletons, broken beyond repair. And Adriana was there with her arms wrapped around me, and Uncle Hank was on his knees, beating his fist against the carpet and sobbing uncontrollably.
I blinked at the ceiling, feeling sick. Adriana slept beside me with a smug smile on her face. I hurried into my clothes and left without saying goodbye.
My parents had already gone to work so I took a shower and went to bed. I dreamt I couldn’t sleep and woke up hours later, exhausted. My face stared back at me in the bathroom mirror, papery and yellow. I was so weak I couldn’t stand to pee, I had to sit on the toilet like a girl.
When Mom got home she took my temperature and gave me a glass of water and a Tylenol. She made me chicken noodle soup, but I couldn’t eat. I fell back asleep and had delirious fever dreams. I slept off and on for two days. At one point I could swear Uncle Hank was sitting on my bed, staring at me.
I woke up to a mosquito buzzing in my ear. After shooing it away I called out for Mom. Dad came instead and told me to put some clothes on, we were going to the hospital. The thought of doctors poking me with needles terrified me, but Mom was freaked out and insisting I go, so I laid down in the backseat. At the hospital we sat in the dirty green waiting room, surrounded by crying children and quietly bleeding adults. I napped a little. Mom rubbed my back. I imagined hairy cancer cells doing backstrokes in my bone marrow.
The doctor said I probably just had the flu. Nonetheless, he took a blood sample and said he’d call with the results when they came back from the lab. Until then, I should drink plenty of fluids and get lots of rest.
That night I waited until my parents went to bed, then I snuck out the front door and stumbled over to Adriana’s. Weakness washed over me in waves, but with ever step I felt a little stronger. A breeze blew at my back, encouraging me.
I let myself in with my key. The house felt empty. My heart sank. But the smell of food lured me into the kitchen. Adriana stood at the stove with her back to me, talking to someone on the phone in her strange foreign tongue. I didn’t make a sound, just stood there, watching her. I thought I would scare her, but when she turned and saw me she smiled and said goodbye and hung up the phone. Déjà vu rippled through me, a strong sense of having done this all before. Adriana curled her finger, beckoning me. I felt myself blush and lurched towards her.
I took Adriana in my arms. She said in a small voice that she’d missed me. I told her I’d never leave again. She kissed my neck and nibbled on my ear and whispered that I was a good boy.
Crickets screamed outside. No dogs barked.
Goulash boiled in the pot, salty and hot and red.
For the first time in days, I felt hungry. It was a good sign.
END