great, and you catch up on your sleep. Wake up a couple of days later in Istanbul.”
“You took the Orient Express,” Vatran said like he didn’t believe it.
“You bet,” Smith said. “Man, what a great ride!”
Of course it was a lie. He’d flown into Paris because flights to Istanbul were prohibitively expensive just now and he got a deal to Paris; those rattletrap local trains through the Balkans were the cheapest way after that. He had exhausted his savings. He didn’t have much money left; barely enough scratch to make it back home.
“The Orient Express costs something like five thousand U.S.” Vatran waved a hand. “Jessica told me you were a bum, some broken-down hack actor without two fucking cents in his pocket. That you still live in the same piece of shit apartment in Brooklyn, that you don’t—”
“Jessica says a lot of things that aren’t exactly true,” Smith interrupted again. “First of all, I’m a great singer. All the critics say so. And I’m a pretty damn good actor. I sing, I dance, I emote. Classic triple threat.”
“—don’t know when it’s time to quit the acting bullshit and get a real job. Is that right, buddy?”
“Utter crap,” Smith said, though it was all true. “I just did Les Miz off-Broadway.” Then: “And I guess she didn’t mention my trust fund.”
“What?” Vatran seemed startled by this.
“Oh, yeah,” Smith said, improvising freely. “At the moment it’s just interest off a couple of million. That is, until 2010. Then I get the whole bundle, which amounts to a lot more.”
Vatran sat back and crossed his arms. “Lies,” he said. “Hack actor lies.”
“I’m from Iowa,” Smith said. “Know what they’ve got in Iowa? Timber. My great-grandfather, Carstairs Wellington Smith, cornered the timber market back in the 1880s. You should see my parents’ place. They call it Smith Castle, a huge Victorian smack in the middle of town, right across from the courthouse. Got our own lake out back, stocked with carp . . .” He grinned. “And you gotta admit, carp’s a pretty tasty fish.”
This was getting good. Iowa was rolling prairie, practically treeless, except for the occasional windbreak and along the rivers, which were mostly full of trout, not carp, but how would a Turk know that? Smith’s real great-grandfather, also named John, had been a dirt-poor farmer, mostly barley and rye, an original Iowa sodbuster; his grandfather, the same, though a little more successful, diversifying into soybeans, alfalfa, and corn. His father had broken the mold, finished high school, done two years at Iowa State in Ames and ended up as postmaster in Montezuma—which as everyone knows is the administrative hub of Poweshiek County—and there Smith and his sister were born and raised.
Smith’s mother, after a quick night-school course in shorthand, worked for years part time and underpaid as secretary to the dean of the English department at Cornell College, an hour away up in Mt. Vernon, just so her kids would be able to get a college education, tuition-free. Life wasn’t bad for a long time, through middle school. But immediately following Jane’s death, Smith’s father fell into a deep depression he couldn’t come out of, was institutionalized for six months, and retired from the postal service on a meager disability pension. When he died, that pension got cut in half. There had been winters, brutal, 75 below, with the wind off the plains, when his mother could barely afford the price of heating oil, living in one room, the rest of the tiny, white three-bedroom clapboard house on Blue Bird Lane closed off with plastic sheeting.
“So, tell me, Kasim,” Smith continued, “what other absolute crap has Jessica laid on you?”
But the Turk, still digesting Smith’s jazzed-up Iowa pedigree, didn’t seem to be listening. Gypsies, their filthy clothes sewn with coins, came through the crowd on the street, playing the santour, a kind of elaborate
“You took the Orient Express,” Vatran said like he didn’t believe it.
“You bet,” Smith said. “Man, what a great ride!”
Of course it was a lie. He’d flown into Paris because flights to Istanbul were prohibitively expensive just now and he got a deal to Paris; those rattletrap local trains through the Balkans were the cheapest way after that. He had exhausted his savings. He didn’t have much money left; barely enough scratch to make it back home.
“The Orient Express costs something like five thousand U.S.” Vatran waved a hand. “Jessica told me you were a bum, some broken-down hack actor without two fucking cents in his pocket. That you still live in the same piece of shit apartment in Brooklyn, that you don’t—”
“Jessica says a lot of things that aren’t exactly true,” Smith interrupted again. “First of all, I’m a great singer. All the critics say so. And I’m a pretty damn good actor. I sing, I dance, I emote. Classic triple threat.”
“—don’t know when it’s time to quit the acting bullshit and get a real job. Is that right, buddy?”
“Utter crap,” Smith said, though it was all true. “I just did Les Miz off-Broadway.” Then: “And I guess she didn’t mention my trust fund.”
“What?” Vatran seemed startled by this.
“Oh, yeah,” Smith said, improvising freely. “At the moment it’s just interest off a couple of million. That is, until 2010. Then I get the whole bundle, which amounts to a lot more.”
Vatran sat back and crossed his arms. “Lies,” he said. “Hack actor lies.”
“I’m from Iowa,” Smith said. “Know what they’ve got in Iowa? Timber. My great-grandfather, Carstairs Wellington Smith, cornered the timber market back in the 1880s. You should see my parents’ place. They call it Smith Castle, a huge Victorian smack in the middle of town, right across from the courthouse. Got our own lake out back, stocked with carp . . .” He grinned. “And you gotta admit, carp’s a pretty tasty fish.”
This was getting good. Iowa was rolling prairie, practically treeless, except for the occasional windbreak and along the rivers, which were mostly full of trout, not carp, but how would a Turk know that? Smith’s real great-grandfather, also named John, had been a dirt-poor farmer, mostly barley and rye, an original Iowa sodbuster; his grandfather, the same, though a little more successful, diversifying into soybeans, alfalfa, and corn. His father had broken the mold, finished high school, done two years at Iowa State in Ames and ended up as postmaster in Montezuma—which as everyone knows is the administrative hub of Poweshiek County—and there Smith and his sister were born and raised.
Smith’s mother, after a quick night-school course in shorthand, worked for years part time and underpaid as secretary to the dean of the English department at Cornell College, an hour away up in Mt. Vernon, just so her kids would be able to get a college education, tuition-free. Life wasn’t bad for a long time, through middle school. But immediately following Jane’s death, Smith’s father fell into a deep depression he couldn’t come out of, was institutionalized for six months, and retired from the postal service on a meager disability pension. When he died, that pension got cut in half. There had been winters, brutal, 75 below, with the wind off the plains, when his mother could barely afford the price of heating oil, living in one room, the rest of the tiny, white three-bedroom clapboard house on Blue Bird Lane closed off with plastic sheeting.
“So, tell me, Kasim,” Smith continued, “what other absolute crap has Jessica laid on you?”
But the Turk, still digesting Smith’s jazzed-up Iowa pedigree, didn’t seem to be listening. Gypsies, their filthy clothes sewn with coins, came through the crowd on the street, playing the santour, a kind of elaborate
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