I got a couple hours of sleep before I roused at seven, restless and hypervigilant. With nothing else to do, I started cleaning the kitchen with compulsive fervor. Bagging, trashing garbage, sweeping, and spraying. I scrubbed obsessively at spots of dirt on the countertop, and it took several minutes of them refusing to budge for me to realize they were a part of the granite patterning.
An hour later, I called Mariya’s house. My gut was tight and fluttering empty. How the hell was I going to tell her what had happened to her brother?
“Alexi, thank God,” she said. Her voice was thick with relief. “Did you find him?”
“Yes, but Maritka, it’s… I do not have good news,” I said tensely. “He was shot last night.”
There was a long pause. “Oh god. Alexi—”
“He’s alive, just injured. It hit him in the thigh,” I cut her off, before she could wind herself up. “All things considered, he was lucky. I’ve done everything I can for it, but he won’t go to the hospital.”
“How’s he going to get to the parole center?” Her voice was high and frightened. “They’ll know he was shot.”
“I know. I know.” I paused, debating briefly on what else to say. I decided, as I usually did, on the blunt and total truth. “This… it isn’t all that’s wrong with him. I found him passed out in Vanya’s bathtub yesterday. He’s been doing a lot of cocaine, and he’s got a problem.”
“Drugs? Vassily? No,” his elder sister replied with disbelief.
My frustration grew horns and teeth, butting against the inside of my ribs. Not her too. I didn’t need denial. We needed her help. “Yes, Mari. Drugs.”
“Please, no. Cocaine’s not the same as crack, is it?”
“Not exactly.” I grimaced, trying to work out how to explain without downplaying. “But they are basically the same substance, and—”
“Well… was it a once-off?” She sounded nervous.
“No. He’s an addict, Mariya. He’s completely hooked. He… also drank nearly two bottles of liquor and almost killed himself the night before last.” I paused for a moment, lips parted, unsure how to convey the cocktail of feelings the admission caused.
“It’s all because of prison.” The bitterness in her voice made my stomach tense. “I remember how Antoni was. It was just the same. Prison destroyed him, my poor brother. Just destroyed him.”
“It’s not just prison. The other men are all in on it. One person starts, and then they drag their friends into this idiot addiction—you know how it is.” I rubbed my forehead. Even through the gloves, it felt clammy and cold. “I hate to admit this, but I’m really not up to taking him home and caring for him. I haven’t slept more than ten hours in the last three days.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll pick him up and take him. I want him to stay with me for the time being. He’ll listen to me if I lay it on him, and I know him well enough. He’d never do anything like this around me.”
It was the truth, and a good idea, but her words stimulated no hope: only a deep sense of failure. “I… look, yes. I would be very grateful. He’s out of sorts. Highly erratic. You have to keep him away from Vanya and M—”
Oh, right. Mikhail was dead.
“Who?”
“Just Vanya and Nicolai,” I said. “But yes. He’s not very well right now, in more than one way. I’m sorry.”
“No, Alexi. You don’t get to apologize for this.” Mariya’s old scolding tone came back readily, and I almost expected her raised hand to come out of the phone. She’d never hit us as kids, but she’d been good at making us think she would. “I’ll be around in twenty minutes or so. You just take care of yourself.”
She hung up first, and I sat back with a sigh.
Self-care meant a cold bath, three aspirin, and a pitcher of bitter black coffee to reset my nerves and dull the synesthesia. I couldn’t muster anything like enthusiasm when my adoptive sister showed up at the door. Even with the headache held at bay, Mariya’s voice and smell nearly blinded me.
“You did a great job.” Mariya kissed me on both cheeks and embraced me. Her arms felt strong and wiry, her chest very thin. “Thank you, Alexi.”
“It’s fine,” I replied hollowly.
“It’s not.” She smiled, strain visible in the creases beside her eyes and the muscles of her jaw. “But it will be.”
We had to get Vassily up and out, but his immune system was in full swing and he was so feverish he could barely walk. He was delirious as we loaded him into the back of her truck. I watched them leave, and Vassily, heavy-eyed, wiggled his fingers at me through the window with a blank opium grin.
It will be, my mind echoed. It sure as hell would be something.
Back upstairs, I found Crina awake and bleary. She had a cup of coffee and was sitting at the kitchen counter, her forehead resting on her linked hands. When I entered, she looked up me sourly. Without makeup, the bones of her face stood out in sharp relief.
“You get any sleep?” she said. “I saw that Vassily’s gone.”
“He’s going to his sister’s. It’s the best place for him.” I put on another carafe of java and sat at the other side of the breakfast counter. “What about you? Are you… all right?”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” She offered the ghost of a smile, brief and superficial. It didn’t reach her eyes.
“You mentioned something about Zagreb.”
She shrugged. “It’s violent there. My family left when I was a little girl. We went to East Germany…but I didn’t want to stay there, either. Too depressing, what with the wall running right through the middle of it.”
I’d heard stories, and had to wonder how she’d left. You had to bribe or murder to part the Iron Curtain. My own parents had taken the subway route: my Jewish mother had family in West Germany. Her religious ticket out of the Soviet Union was the only reason Grigori Sokolsky, the psychopath, had married her.
“Naturally.” My mouth drew to one side, and I leaned back. “I’m surprised you made it out.”
“People had it worse than me.” Crina’s smile faded with some kind of half-hidden pain, and she leaned towards me. “But I wake up to the sound of mines and rifles going off, sometimes. The dogs. Some guy was always trying to make the run over the Wall and getting blown to bits. You know?”
“Well, New York isn’t the place for peace and quiet. Not unless you have a lot of money and stay clean.”
“It’s good enough for you.” Her expression turned sly.
I frowned slightly. “Yes. But I was born here.”
“So that’s why your English was so good.” She cocked her head, like a curious bird. “Your parents must have gotten out… God. How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
Crina’s eyebrows rose. “Is that all?”
I inclined my head. “I turn thirty in November.”
“Wow, I thought you were older.” She pressed her lips together, and leaned in towards me. “Here’s a secret… I’m two years older than you.”
My mouth quirked, and I ducked my face. It brought a laugh from her, filling my ears with a crisp, bright yellowness. Crina was good people. I decided I liked her, which put her in a category of person which only Vassily and Mariya really occupied.
“I have a question for you, Crina. Probably inappropriate.” I frowned with thought as she watched. “But social interaction has never been a strong point of mine. Why have you been so interested to talk to me?”
“Oh. Well, lots of reasons. For one, you’re really smart.” Her moment of apprehension passed. “For another, you’re not some meathead muzhik. Most guys play around. They smell like old school lockers. They drink.”