Dollar and Whiskey

Dollar and Whiskey

JFK International Airport, September 1987

Marek Zielinski clutched the strap of his worn leather satchel as he stepped off the plane. The smell hit him first-sterile, with a strange sweetness in the recycled air. Then came the noise. A man shouting into a payphone. The rapid clicks of heels on tile. Children’s laughter. An announcement in English that zipped past him like a gust of wind: something about baggage claim and Terminal B.

He understood none of it.

His English was minimal—textbook phrases and phonetic guessing. Dollar and whiskey, John Wayne and western movies. Still, America had spoken to him in other ways for years: through Radio Free Europe broadcasts, smuggled cassette tapes of Bruce Springsteen, video casstette with Rambo, watched many times over and glossy postcards from cousins in Chicago. “Land of freedom,” his uncle once whispered, “but also land of forgetting. You’ll leave something behind, boy. Maybe a lot.”

He tightened his grip on his satchel. Inside was a rolled-up certificate of his engineering degree, his passport with a single-entry visa, and a letter from his cousin in Queens promising a place to sleep. Nothing else tethered him to the old country. Not anymore.

Gdańsk, Poland – Two Weeks Earlier

The port was quiet. Not silent—there was always the creak of cranes or the distant bark of dogs—but quiet in that thick, suspicious way that hung over every city in the Eastern Bloc.

Marek’s last shift at the shipyard ended like all the others: clock-out, nod to the foreman, eyes down. Only this time, he didn’t go to the tram. He walked straight to the consulate office, letter in hand, heart hammering against his ribs like a prisoner demanding escape.

Inside, a pale woman with dry lips read his documents. She asked no questions. Perhaps she already knew. Or maybe she didn’t care.

When she stamped his papers, it sounded like a gunshot.

Queens, New York

His cousin Piotr lived in a basement apartment in Ridgewood. Mold crept up the corners of the ceiling like old scars, but there was hot water, a radio, and a mattress on the floor. Marek bowed his head in thanks.

Piotr, who had been in America since 1979, was different now. He had grown heavier and wore shirts with company logos. He worked at a car wash by LaGuardia and spent evenings watching game shows and drinking Budweiser. He didn’t speak Polish unless drunk, and even then it was jumbled, half-English, half-nostalgia.

“You’ll get used to it,” Piotr said one night over microwaved pierogi. “Just don’t expect America to care about your stories.”

Marek nodded. But stories were all he had. He kept his notebook close, jotting down English words he overheard: sale, appointment, subway, freedom. He didn’t yet know which ones mattered most.

Job Hunt

His degree meant nothing here. Marek learned that quickly.

He walked the streets in worn shoes, eyes scanning “Help Wanted” signs taped to windows. A small Polish deli on Greenpoint Avenue gave him a trial shift—sweeping, unloading boxes of pickles, refilling shelves. The pay was in cash, under the table. It was something.

The deli owner, Mr. Wozniak, was an old man who still referred to Reagan as “that cowboy.” He gave Marek work, but no smiles. “You think you’re better? You went to university. That matters nothing here.”

Marek didn’t argue. He carried boxes. He nodded. He kept showing up.

One afternoon, an old woman came in and asked for plum jam in Polish. Marek found it immediately, smiling as he placed it in her basket. Her hand trembled.

“You’re new,” she said. “I can tell. Don’t lose your tongue here. Too many of us already have.”

He wrote that down later: Don’t lose your tongue.

Discovering America

On Sundays, Marek wandered the city. He’d take the 7 train to Manhattan just to sit in Central Park or walk past buildings that seemed to scrape the sky. He watched street performers, bought roasted peanuts from carts, and listened to a thousand languages crash together like ocean waves.

One Sunday he saw a protest outside the Soviet consulate. American students with signs. “Let Poland Be Poland!” one read. He stopped, stunned.

A young woman in jeans and a Columbia sweatshirt handed him a flyer. “You Polish?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“You should join us,” she said. “Solidarity, right?”

Marek stared at her. She couldn’t be more than twenty. She spoke of Lech Wałęsa like a myth. She knew names of cities he had lived in. She talked fast, full of fury and hope.

He smiled awkwardly, then tucked the flyer in his coat.

That night, he hung it above his mattress.

A Letter from Home

Three months in, Marek received a letter from his older brother, Andrew.

Dear Marek,

Mother cried after you left. Every day she listens to the radio hoping for news of you. They came to the house, asked questions, but Papa told them nothing. He has grown quiet. Times are still bad here. Rationing. Blackouts. But your leaving—people talk about it like you disappeared into a dream. I miss you. I hope the dream is kind.

Marek read it five times. Then he sat for an hour staring at the subway map Piotr had pinned to the wall, its colored lines weaving through a city that wasn’t yet his.

He wanted to write back. But what would he say? That the deli paid $4 an hour? That he still thought in Polish but dreamed in static?

New Year’s Eve 1987

It snowed that night. Marek stood on a rooftop in Queens, shivering under a borrowed coat. Fireworks bloomed above the skyline. Somewhere, someone sang a Polish drinking song. Nearby, Piotr was arguing with his girlfriend over the phone.

Marek lit a cigarette, watched the smoke mingle with the cold.

A neighbor stepped out, a man with a thick accent—Ukrainian maybe—and offered Marek a plastic cup of vodka.

“To the next year,” the man said.

Marek clinked cups. “To the next year,” he repeated, unsure if it was a wish or a warning.

Spring 1988

By April, Marek had picked up part-time work fixing heating units in Brooklyn. An older Dominican man named Luis taught him the ropes. “You listen good, even if you don’t say much,” Luis said. “That’s rare.”

They worked out of the back of a rusted van. Marek learned the English for valve, wrench, pilot light. He learned to eat egg sandwiches from bodegas and drink bad coffee from paper cups. He learned that people everywhere wanted the same things: heat, a roof, a little quiet.

He began to feel something shift. He started to belong, if only in corners.

One Day

In late June, Marek received a second letter. Not from home, but from the Columbia student—her name was Emily. She had enclosed a photo from the protest and a handwritten note.

You looked lost that day. I hope you’re a little less lost now. If you ever want to talk, really talk, here’s my number.

He looked at the phone for hours before dialing. It rang once. Twice.

Then—

“Hello?”

He opened his mouth.

No words came.

But he didn’t hang up.

Now

Marek walks the streets of Greenpoint with a toolbox in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. The Polish shops now sit between sushi bars and thrift stores. He hears more Spanish than Polish. But when an old man nods to him and says dzień dobry, Marek nods back.

He still sends letters home. Short ones. Careful ones. He hasn’t returned. Not yet.

Sometimes he thinks about that airport terminal, the noise, the fear. Sometimes he dreams of Gdańsk—the sea wind, the iron smell of shipyards, his mother’s voice at the window.

And sometimes, when he walks into a boiler room with rusted pipes and flickering lights, he imagines a different life entirely. One where he stayed.

But only sometimes.

End?

Or maybe just the beginning.