Claudine Corbanese

“I’ll get another job just like that,” Igor used to say with a snap of his fingers. Back then he wrote a program on his laptop to try and figure out how long he could live on his savings. He dubbed it TLEAF: The Lowest Economic American Forecast. If all things remained equal he could make it for a while without having to worry. But of course things would change. The market would fluctuate; the maintenance fee on his apartment would increase; prices would go up.

He had discussed TLEAF with his former co-worker Kevin and together they had improved it. Before their jobs were outsourced, Igor and Kevin worked on the same team. They wrote top-of-the-line programs, anticipating every outcome and coding for the least expected errors. It was challenging, fun, and very well paid.

Now 20-something college graduates were doing their work in Mumbai. One even traveled to New York for the transition. He oozed British civility and spouted carefully chosen words. Igor and Kevin had hoped that their high level programming would trump the Indians, that it would take a dozen of them to decipher it, and that all the profits the company had counted on would vanish in the transition.

 

Igor drummed his fingers on the Junior’s pastry case and shuffled his feet. The line was too long and too slow. When his turn finally came, he didn’t look at the saleswoman. Instead, he pointed at a 6” plain cheesecake then stomped to the checkout line.

“$14.50,” the cashier said.

“$14.50? The price went up?”

“Not recently, sir.”

Igor studied the cahier for a moment, taking in her youth, and wondered why she worked there on a Sunday morning. He hoped this was only a weekend job. Where are you going to school, he wanted to ask and hoped that the answer would be a trade school to learn a job that couldn’t be outsourced to India. Like his had been.

“Will it be cash or charge, sir?”

“Charge,” he replied with a frown.

Igor wouldn’t have noticed the price before he lost his job. He would have flipped his credit card out of his wallet without a second thought. But unemployment benefits had just dried up and he had no job prospects. He couldn’t afford to buy cheesecakes any longer, he decided. Too bad if he always brought one to his sister’s whenever he was invited over.

Igor picked up the orange-lined plastic bag with its boast of “Most Fabulous Cheesecake.” This place must be a 100 years old, he thought, looking at the retro interior of the restaurant filled with Sunday brunch customers. Waitresses wearing black and white tuxedo uniforms bustled around. Busboys in Junior’s orange T-shirts cleaned the tables with swift precise movements. Igor overheard two of them exchange a few words and, from the sound and look of them, they were immigrants. Probably Haitian.

He thought of the irony of people coming to the US for better jobs while better jobs were being sent overseas. In a flash, he saw a myriad of lines crisscrossing the world. Workers, jobs, factories displaced from one country to another in an absurd agitation, a testament to globalization folly.

Since it had snowed the day before, Flatbush Avenue was a grey slush, dirty piles lining its sidewalks. Someone was sweeping mud away from Junior’s front door. That’s one job they can’t outsource, Igor thought. Just then, the sweeper looked up from under the hood of his parka and Igor saw that he was Hispanic. This job can’t be outsourced, but it can be forked over to a just-off-the-boat, probably illegal immigrant. Easily. Anyway, that type of work would be too unpredictable. It didn’t snow often enough in New York City.

Igor stepped around the mounds of snow, trying not to soil his leather boots, and plopped in the driver seat of his double-parked Toyota Avalon. The car would need repairs, he thought with a pang of anxiety. And he could get sick.

The winter sky was so low; the sun barely penetrated the heavy dome. The posts of the streetlights seemed sketched in weak graphite pencils and their heads faded into the grey mist. And traffic, punctuated by the dull sound of impatient horns, was a nightmare.

 

“Ah, Igor, you brought a cheesecake,” Lena said when she opened the door. “Thank you so much.”

She chuckled and, as he hugged his sister, Igor knew he’d have to keep bringing this dessert. He would feel like shit if he didn’t. From then on, he decided, he’d find new ways to save. He’d drink less beer. He’d iron his own shirts.

Lena returned Igor’s hug and kissed him on both cheeks. A Dorsky family tradition, these two kisses, handed down from their grandmother, faithfully carried on by their mother and now by his older sister. Everywhere else he went; people kissed the air or, at best, dropped a small peck on one cheek.

Igor took off his coat and boots and joined his brother-in-law in the living room.

“How’s it going?” John asked as they shook hands. “Anything on the horizon?”

“I had a phone interview last week, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”

“Pastis?”

Igor nodded. Lena and John had visited the south of France in the summer and had developed a taste for the licorice-flavored liqueur.

“Like I told you before, you should become a teacher,” John said as he took glasses from a cabinet. “The country needs intelligent, educated men to lead the way.”

“No way. The kids would drive me crazy.”

“It’s not that hard. You just have to find the angle that wakes up their interest,” John replied. “For example last week I was teaching about plateaus. If I had told the class it’s a flat highland, they would never have remembered anything about it. Instead, I drew a rough drawing on the blackboard.” John outlined the shape on the coffee table with one finger. “Then I asked them how they would ride a piece of land like this with their skateboards. They talked about stunts, glides, lifts. They had fun with it. From there, I could address accumulation of sediments and geologic history. The word plateau and what it represents was recorded in their mind and they were interested.”

“No, not for me,” Igor said holding his glass up to the dim light of the window facing the couch. John had mixed the alcohol with five parts of water, the way the French did, and the mixture looked cloudy. “I’d rather be a CEO, fail at my job and get kicked out with a multi-million retirement package.”

“Or you could move to India and get a job there.”

“Yeah and I’d earn a dollar a day.”

“All you’d need is 20 cents a day. You’d be a rich man.”

“And I could work on a call line and help Americans troubleshoot their computer problems and they would understand me.”

They both laughed, but John soon became serious. “It’s not the Indian workers’ fault, you know,” he said.

“I know, but it doesn’t make me feel any better,” Igor replied. “And I wish our government would protect us, stop all these foreigners from coming in and the businesses from exporting the jobs overseas.”

“If they stopped foreign workers from coming over, the economy of this country would flounder.”

“Remember,” Lena interrupted from the dining room. “Our grandmother emigrated from Russia. Don’t reject your ancestors.”

The dining room was an extension of the living room and, from where he sat, Igor could see his sister. She was setting the table and, with her round face, her stout figure, and her apron stretched over her stomach, she reminded him of their grandmother.

“Things were different then,” he said.

“Of course, things were different then,” John said. “Now everything is at planet level.” He rounded his arms to draw a sphere in the air. “The movement of money. The flux of jobs. The migration of people. Everything. In earth-wide proportions. But always for the same reasons: freedom, survival, greed.”

“In that case, I’ll run for office,” Igor said. “I want to make a difference.”

“You want to be a city councilman?”

“No. I want to be a senator. In Washington. I want to be one of the 100. I want to change the way this country is run.”

“Well, you’ll have to contend with the House of Representatives, the lobbyists, the special interests.”

“OK,” Igor interrupted. “I’ll be the president. I’ll veto the bills I don’t agree with. I’ll sign executive orders.”

“Then you’ll have to worry about congress, international conglomerates, the European Union, NAFTA, oil interests, the Chinese financial power.”

Lena sat next to Igor and grabbed a lock of his hair, pulling it to its full length.

“If you run for president, you’ll have to cut your hair,” she said. “You’ll want to look more mature, more distinguished.”

Igor groaned and nudged Lena’s hand away

“Are you done with your classes?” she asked.

He drew a sigh. “A few more weeks and I’ll have a certificate in network administration from NYU. Add that to my degree in Computer Sciences, my years of experience in the industry. No job and no prospect. The American Dream is at work again, stronger than ever.”

“Don’t be so down,” she replied. “It’s the beginning of the year, things will pick up soon. Anyway, I have a low-paying job to occupy your time and stop you from brooding all day long.”

“What job?”

“Opening the door at the T&C Bank.”

Igor sat up and knocked his glass on the table. “Doorman? Are you serious?”

“I’m serious. It’s only for a few weeks. Our doorman broke his foot and working there will remind you of what’s important."

“Why do they need a doorman at a bank?”

“Something to do with temperature, wind currents, alignment of the planets in the universe. I don’t know, but every winter, the weak and small-framed customers struggle to open the front door.”

“They can’t install a revolving door?”

Lena shrugged. “Maybe they will one day, but in the meantime it’s 8 to 5. $10 an hour. For three or four weeks.”

That’s another job that cannot be sent overseas, Igor thought. And a respectable bank wouldn’t hire an illegal, at least not to handle the front door of one of their branches. Ah, job security, the irony of it. Maybe he should be a tour guide in the summer, an apple picker in the fall, a Santa Claus during the holidays.

 

As soon as he got home that evening, Igor checked his land line. No messages. He turned the TV on—not the news; too much drama; sports—and sat at his computer. He had checked his email from his cell phone on the way back, but you never know, some people worked late even on weekends. He certainly did when a project was intense, time-driven and exciting. Nothing. He clicked on the Skype icon. His former co-worker would probably be on. Skype was better than the phone, they could see each other and it was free.

Kevin’s voice came over the computer speakers. “Hey man, how is it going?”

“Fine. How’s Janet, the kids?”

“OK, she’s giving them a bath.”

With a wife and two children, Kevin’s life was a lot more complicated than Igor’s. They had plugged his profile in TLEAF; the additional variables and permutations were scary: extra-curriculum classes, college funds for the kids, beauty parlor for Janet. And then there was a whole other level of complications that couldn’t be factored into a computer program: erratic moods, heavy glances, loaded questions. What did you do today? Where did you go?

Igor was glad he wasn’t married. One sobbing Mary-Anne had been enough for him. She didn’t understand him. No, he didn’t have to be married to be happy. No, he didn’t need children to feel complete. Weren’t they fine just the way they were? After they broke up, he had no other serious relationship. He didn’t want to be cruel and always let it be known early on that he wasn’t the settle-down type.

“Anything new over the wires?” Igor asked, “I was at my sister’s all day.”

“Nothing,” Kevin replied. “It’ll probably pick up tomorrow. How is Lena doing?”

“She got me a job. Doorman at the bank she works for.”

“Doorman? Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. She says it will take me out of my depression.”

“You’re going to take it?”

“I’m tempted. It’s only for a month. Except for the two nights when I go to class, I do nothing all day, but obsess about emails and phone calls.”

“Well then, in that case, I must wish you the best on your new endeavor. It was a pleasure working with you,” Kevin said in a mock tone of congratulations. “How much are they paying, minimum wage?”

“Ten bucks an hour.”

Kevin whistled. “Ah, the good life is just ahead of you. Your TLEAF ratio will go up by a fraction of a percent.”

“I knew I could count on you to see the positive in this,” Igor replied, laughing.

 

“Good morning, welcome to T&C,” Igor said as he opened the front door of the bank for an elderly woman. He couldn’t have chosen a worse day to start. It was 31 degrees and the wind was ferocious. The door protected his body, but the gusts slammed into his hand and the woman’s coat flapped against her legs. He held her arm to steady her.

“Are you OK, madam?” he asked.

“I am, young man,” she replied. “Thank you very much for your help.”

The T&andp;C Bank, the Human Resources person had explained to Igor, catered to small businesses and promoted diversity. “The busy times are 8 am to 9 am, before people go to work and between 11:30 and 1:30 when they are on lunch break.”

Whenever he could, Igor leaned against an edge by the bay window to rest his feet and check his messages. Nothing.

A young woman rushed in late in the morning, glanced at him on her way in and stopped by the door after completing her transaction. “You’re the new doorman?” she asked Igor. “Can I hang out with you for a couple of minutes? It’s freezing out there.”

She removed the hood of her coat and Igor saw that she was even younger than he thought, nineteen, twenty at most.

“The heater hardly helps when it’s that cold and windy,” she said.

“The heater?”

“In the coffee cart.” She pointed at the street corner.

Igor looked at the cart. There were hundreds of them in Manhattan, but he rarely bought anything from them. He had preferred the comfort of the high-priced Starbucks or the employees’ cafeteria.

“You work there? That’s a tough job.”

“Very tough,” she replied warming her hands over the radiator. “You have to be up at 3 in the morning, pick up fresh supplies, beat the traffic and be ready to serve before 8.”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“I’m in school. It’s winter break. I’m helping my mom.”

“What’s your major?”

“Journalism.”

Igor furrowed his brow. Not a very good choice. It might work if she was good or found a niche, or maybe if she went international.

“You know a second language?” he asked.

“Polish.”

“Polish?”

“My parents emigrated from Poland 26 years ago.”

Igor tried to remember what happened in Poland then, wondering what personal or political upheaval would make people leave their country to sell coffee on a New York City street corner. He stared again at the cart through the window. Maybe her parents were illegal immigrants. Maybe they won an INS lottery.

“Hmm,” he said. “Spanish or Arabic would be more useful if you want to go international.”

“I know,” she replied, “I’m working on it.” She zipped her coat and tied the string of its hood around her neck. “I have to go back now. Nice meeting you.”

As Igor pulled the door open to let her out, she said, “Hey, I’m Sylvia.”

“Igor,” he replied.

“Russian?”

“One of my grandmothers was Russian.”

 

The next morning, Igor stopped at the coffee cart to buy breakfast. The cart couldn’t be more than eight ft. by four ft., probably stainless steel. It had its own generator, a canopy cover and plenty of counter and storage space and shelves for supplies. The working room was small and the sliding door was shut from the inside with a lock. He would feel claustrophobic in there.

Sylvia’s mother was serving her customers through a narrow opening and blasts of wind were seeping in. Like her daughter, she wore a heavy coat with a hood knotted tight around her face. Her gloves left the tips of her fingers bare. The cold must be biting he thought.

Igor was surprised at how cheerful she was, calling everyone sweetheart, dear or honey. She was quick and efficient, dispensing her pleasant mood and her goods with speed and warmth. She obviously didn’t need help, so Sylvia was there mainly to keep her company. How sweet of her.

“Mom, that’s Igor, my friend from the bank,” Sylvia said when she saw him.

“Hello dear. How is Mike? You want coffee?”

“Yes, please, with milk and sugar. And a plain bagel.”

“Here you go, honey. $1.50. I’m Helena. Nice to meet you, Igor. Have a good day. Stay warm.”

$1.50! How can she charge so little, Igor wondered as he hurried towards the bank. The license for the coffee cart alone must cost a few thousand dollars a year. Her gas bill had to be high. He mentally computed her TLEAF profile, wondering if Sylvia had siblings, if her father was around, if he was working. He remembered what happened in Poland a quarter century ago. Labor turmoil with the Solidarity Union and the repression that followed.

Igor opened the door for the first customer. “Good morning, welcome to T&C,” he said. A man walked in and went straight to the ATM machines. By then, Igor was used to these reactions. Men often gave him a puzzled—sometimes annoyed—look. Did they feel that a doorman at a bank was an insult to their manhood? Most people, lost in their thoughts or taking his presence for granted, didn’t notice him. Older women were more likely to acknowledge him with a nod or a comment. “I am so glad they got someone to open the door,” some would say. “It’s so heavy.”

But this morning, Igor wasn’t paying much attention to the customers. He was thinking about Helena. She was showing the same traits valued in employees everywhere: hard work, dedication, efficiency. It was probably how the Indian workers performed their duties in Mumbai and how the Hispanic sweeper and the Haitian busboys handled their tasks at Junior’s.

So that’s what people do, Igor thought. They find a spot somewhere in the world and do the best they can. Until now, he hadn’t worried about a thing. He had gotten a diploma, found a job and enjoyed life. Everything had been smooth and uneventful for him. No war. No drama. No need to search for a better life somewhere else or ask himself difficult questions.

Suddenly, he wished he was more rooted. Maybe it would be nice after all to have a wife and a son who, like his nephew, attended Stuyvesant High School. You didn’t get up and leave your country when one of your children was a junior at the best High School of New York City, right? But maybe you did, if things were really bad.

 

Sylvia stopped at the bank around 11:30 every morning. Igor reasoned that she was depositing her mother’s earnings and wondered how much one made operating a coffee cart. Lena could find out, but of course he wouldn’t ask her. Igor and Sylvia chatted whenever she came over, but they were often interrupted by T&C customers and the frequent text messages Kevin sent to Igor’s cell phone. He had gone for an interview. It went well. They made him an offer. They had more openings.

“How come you’re a doorman?” Sylvia asked Igor after a few days. “You sound too educated for this.”

“I’m an out of work computer programmer trying to earn a buck.”

“How can a programmer be out of work? Computers are everywhere.”

“That’s exactly the problem. Computers are everywhere. My job is being done by someone in India for a fraction of the cost.”

“That’s so unfair.”

Sylvia was pensive for a moment as she ran her hands, palms up, along the length of the radiator. Then she said, “I remember our science teacher in Junior High telling us that a long time ago, we were hunters and gatherers. And then, we got into planting crops.”

“And?”

“I bet the hunters and the gatherers weren’t upset at the farmers,” Sylvia continued. “It lightened their load. They didn’t have to confront beasts or rummage for food every day. It made life better for everybody.”

She looked at Igor, and there was in her thoughtful blue eyes that quest for answers, that trust that she would find them, that he must have had, too, in his youth.

“Why is it that now, when one job is gained in India, one is lost in America?”

“Actually,” Igor replied, “it’s not one job here for one job there. It’s more like, someone is earning less here while someone in India is earning more.” And he didn’t know how to deal with that. He had done everything he was supposed to do: study, work hard, pay taxes. And look where he was now.

“That’s why you better find something unique,” he said to Sylvia, “something that can’t easily be exported and handed out to someone else somewhere else. Like becoming an American journalist who speaks Arabic.”

She smiled and he smiled back, but he wasn’t sure that it was the right solution. Lots of people in the world were smart, spoke several languages and wanted to be journalists.

 

Lena took the cheesecake from Igor’s hands and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Thanks a lot, but don’t bring these anymore,” she said. “I’m going on a diet. Too many calories in these things.”

“Good idea,” Igor replied. Inwardly, he breathed a small sigh of relief at the thought of saving fifteen bucks.

They both joined John in the living room where Igor sat in one of the reclining chairs and pulled its lever to raise the footrest.

“Legs hurt?” John asked.

“Standing up all day is a killer,” Igor replied. “It’s a good thing I’m done with this doorman job. I don’t know how people do this for years.”

“They loved you at the bank,” Lena said. “You want to be a teller? One of the girls is going on maternity leave soon.”

Igor shook his head. “No, thank you. One humbling experience is enough for me. Plus I have a job interview tomorrow.”

“Good prospect?” John asked.

Igor nodded. “One of my friends was hired and they need more people. The only problem is that it’s not permanent. But it would be better than nothing.”

A pungent smoky smell mixed with garlic and bay leaves drifted from the kitchen.

“It smells good, what are you cooking?” he asked Lena.

“Kielbasa. With potatoes and carrots.”

“Russian sausages? Are you sure you are on a diet? Where did you get them?”

“I’m easing into the diet,” she smiled. “And I got the sausages at a Russian store in Brighton Beach.”

“I remember eating them at Baba’s” Igor said. “She would stand behind me, fix my shirt collar, put both her hands on my shoulders and say ‘Eat, son, eat.’”

When he was a child, a picture of his grandparents sat on the mantel. They stood side by side, staring sternly at the camera, the way people did back then. They had looked grey and boring to Igor. Now, he wished he had paid more attention to his mother’s stories about them. He knew that his grandmother had left Russia during the Stalin regime, but not much more. She had come to visit relatives and never went back. Did she overstay her tourist visa? And then what?

“So what did Baba do when she got here?” he asked Lena.

“What poor immigrant women did back then. Work in a sweatshop.”

Her TLEAF algorithm would have been just a few variables, Igor thought. Housing, transportation, food supplies. What did she do for health care?

“She was feisty,” Lena added, “a proud member of the women’s garment union.”

“The ILGWU?”

“Yes. I think there’s even a picture of her somewhere at a demonstration, holding a union banner.”

“We got better wages and better working conditions thanks to them,” John said handing an aperitif glass to each of them. “It’s all about what we do while we are on this earth.”

“At least they had the chance to make things better,” Igor said.

“You could make things better too.”

I don’t want to teach, Igor almost replied. But he remembered Sylvia. Someone should explain the way things really were to the future workers of America. Someone should let them know that the world wasn’t the way their parents and their teachers told them. It was a lot more complicated and much more difficult to navigate.

If he were to talk to the children, Igor thought, he would use the TLEAF program. He would start with kids younger than Sylvia, younger than the Junior’s cashier. Could we do now what the farmers did eons ago and make life easier for the hunters, the gatherers and the whole of humanity? Igor stretched his arms over the couch’s armrest to relax his shoulders.

“I don’t want to be a teacher,” he said, “but I could show the kids some computer stuff.”

“That would be great,” John replied, grinning.

Igor sipped the pastis and thought he would go to the interview in the morning. And if things were as Kevin told him, he’d get an offer and he’d take it even though it was a short-term contract and he’d earn half of what he made at his previous job.

And then he’d update the TLEAF program. He would make it more than just a fancy forecast calculator. He would add to it difficult questions and complex variables. Could we add productivity somewhere in the world and make it beneficial to everyone? Could we link profit and people, integrate wealth with fairness? It might be hard to get the students’ attention on such topics, but he’d find a novel approach to grab their interest and wake up their intellect. Something like the plateaus and the skateboards.