“Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?”
Kevan Khachartourian breathed in through his mouth and out through his nose and stepped into the New Spitfire Grill. A sign inside, written in Russian, proclaimed “Welcome to Primorskii Banquet Hall!”
Kevan himself was Armenian, born in Iran, and his parents had scooped him up and fled the country in 1979. Since then, they had run this restaurant in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He sighed. Time to hurry up and get ready before the Russians arrived.
There were bags of walnuts to shall and crush and puree. There were bottles of wine to chill. Georgian wine. Kevan was not Georgian. But all the Russians really cared about was that one walnut and pomegranate and chicken dish, which they believed was Georgian, not Persian.
Both Russia and Iran had colonized Georgia. Persia had grabbed bits of Georgia from 1555. Sadly for them, since Muslims are not supposed to touch that famous wine. The Russians took over in 1801, ostensibly to protect the Georgian Christians from the Shiite Islamic empire, but also to get drunk on the wine.
There was a knock on the door, and the sound of someone talking twice as loud as they needed to. Kevan opened, bowing and smiling, wearing a ridiculous fez with a tassel.
“Dobryy Vecher!” he proclaimed to the customers, also talking twice as loud as anyone needed to.
The Russians always filled the restaurant on Saturday nights. They had no concept of current events or geography. Kevan’s father had put a world map on the wall in the 1980s and had not bothered to change it. Maybe the Russians thought there was still a Soviet Union, like on the map. If he informed him of the fall of the old U.S.S.R., they might become quite irate. Or, to the contrary, if he told them about Putin’s plans to reconquer everything….
At least there was one good thing about the Russians. Now that they felt they had really made it in America, they tipped well. This was a skill that was completely unnecessary back where they were from. All Kevan had to do was pretend to be one nationality pretending to be another nationality, and they would reward him for it.
Kevan supposed it could be worse. If another person died from a nut allergy, it would be bad for business. The whole thing had been hushed up by the community. Something along the lines of, he could not eat nuts, he was not really Russian. Kevan dreamed of getting out of this place. Running away to Portland, Oregon, or even to Portland, Maine. It didn’t matter.