“Sonia, are you in there?” His voice was odd-sounding—sharpness mingling with uncertainty, frustration with hesitation.
“What a guy!” Sonia said, laughing, and then she yelled. “Yeah, I’m here. Whaddya want?”
Senia was at a loss.
“Open up,” he said dryly.
“All right,” Sonia said to Danylo, “climb out the window, you two. Then I’ll open the door. Are you listening?”
Danylo didn’t say anything, and Oleh didn’t respond, either. Everyone was listening on the other side of the door.
“Danylo, did you hear me?”
Oleh walked over to Danylo.
“What are we gonna do?” he asked quietly.
“Whatever you say,” Danylo answered, just as quietly.
“I can’t just leave her. He’ll kill her.”
He looked ahead, biding his time. Danylo hesitated for a second.
“Danylo,” Sonia said, growing a bit anxious. “Are you listening to me? Come on, get outta here!”
“Don’t think so!” Danylo said suddenly. “Like I’m gonna run away from those chumps.”
“Yeah, for real, man.”
Danylo patted him on the back, switched on the light, and opened the door like it was the gate of a besieged city.
They looked like a real soccer team, coming out of the stadium’s dark tunnels and into the floodlights, geared up for battle and expecting another victory. As soon as the door was flung open, the whole squad burst forward, backing Oleh and Danylo up against the metal tables, forming a half-circle around them. Senia’s nephew was poking his head between them, relishing the fact that he’d been the one to bring them all here, to the scene of the crime. Senia’s relatives immediately rushed over toward Sonia, who had adjusted her dress inconspicuously, found Oleh’s cigarettes somehow, lit one up, and was now coldly blowing smoke in the faces of some women as they yelled at her, doing nothing to hide their consternation and despair. The soccer players stood there, glaring at the two brothers, not knowing what to do; Senia’s gaze kept moving from Oleh to Danylo and then back to Oleh, until he realized it was making his eyes look all shifty, so he turned toward Oleh.
“Hey, you,” he said glumly, “let’s have a little chat. And you,” he said, nodding at Danylo, “stay put. We’ll chat with you in a bit.”
“Hey, you,” Danylo mimicked his tone. “Go fuck yourself.”
Senia wanted to respond, but the anger welling up inside choked him, and he charged at Danylo, who stepped out of the way, grabbed Senia’s neck, and threw him against the table. Senia’s chest slammed into its shiny metal surface, and he slumped to the ground, gasping for air. The soccer players charged at the brothers. Oleh clocked one of them, and Danylo took down another two. After that, the gang knocked them off their feet and went in for the kill. Danylo covered his head, trying to keep his breathing relaxed. Oleh was squirming, trying to fend them off, not saying anything and not thinking about anything, although he sure had a lot to think about.
Like his own misplaced self-confidence, how sure he was that everything would play out just the way he imagined it. He had taken a liking to her right away. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of anything, especially being alone, and that she made a big show of carrying condoms in her wallet, right next to her business cards. He liked it that she sent the hearts of her potential business associates racing.
Back then, at the Georgian joint, after those two guys shat their pants and signed on the dotted line, he drove her home and then kept her in the car for a while, talking constantly so she wouldn’t go anywhere; he could tell that she was tensing up and that she didn’t like this whole situation, but he was so sure of himself that he continued holding her hand and cracking jokes, making her laugh and tense up even more. But when he casually leaned in, not even bothering to turn off the engine, she covered his lips with her cold palm and said, “Cool your jets, pal.”
Then she got out, slammed the passenger door and headed over to her apartment building, swaying from side to side so angrily that he simply couldn’t help but stare at her. “How on earth can someone walk like that without tipping over?” he thought. She opened the door to her apartment building and dove inside. He just sat there, unable to take his eyes off the black night enveloping him. A split second later, her silhouette popped back into the headlights, swaying back and forth, like before, approaching the car and opening the passenger side door again.
“Hey Rambo, are ya comin’ or what?”
He caught up to her in the stairwell and tried to carefully lay her down on the landing, but she neatly slipped out of his clutches, mounting him and pressing him up against the cold stone floor. He felt a wandering draft, songs reverberating in other people’s apartments, beasts and birds gathering around the building, reacting to the light and warm air, reacting to the loud cries she wasn’t even trying to hold back.
“Keep it down,” he said to her. “Your neighbors… you’re the one who lives here.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied, not stopping. “I know.”
She kept screaming after every jerky movement, stopping only once, when a door downstairs squeaked open—it sounded like somebody had come in from outside and quickly scurried up the steps; he tried getting up, but Sonia covered his mouth with her hand, which wasn’t as cold anymore and now smelled like her warmth, and the pattering steps cut out a floor below them. A door opened, somebody said hello, everything quieted down, and then he couldn’t hear a thing but her moaning. After that she ran up to her apartment, and he was left sitting on the steps until the early morning, lacking the resolve to get up and leave.
At first, the squad was dragging them down the hallway, throwing punches and ripping their clothes, and eventually shoving them toward the swimming pools. At that point, Danylo broke free and nailed one of the guys so hard he fell back into the water. Then the whole gang pounced on him and dragged him along, hungry for vengeance. When the whole crowd piled into the bar, John stopped them. A few locals were standing behind him. They had either heard about the fight or just knew that this was the only way this night could end.
“Whatcha got there?” John asked.
“Well, we caught these two troublemakers,” they all shouted triumphantly.
“Just two? So it was all you guys against the two of them?”
“Well, uh, yeah,” the soccer players answered, suddenly sounding less confident. “We caught ’em.”
“And your fuckin’ point is?” John said. “All right, you caught ’em, now let ’em go. Yeah, some troublemakers you got there.”
“No fuckin’ way!” one of the younger guys yelled.
“Come on over here.” As soon as he did, John grabbed him by the collar, spun around abruptly, and slammed him against a half-open door. It swung the rest of the way, sending the guy flying, and the men standing behind John stepped forward. The squad started duking it out with John’s guys, but they didn’t realize what they were getting into, and it didn’t go well; they all took a beating. John, punching randomly at bobbing buzzcuts, shouted to his buddies,
“Don’t touch the groom. This is his big day.”
Nobody touched the groom; he just stayed in the kitchen, crying, his face buried in Sonia’s cold lap.
He could have thought about the fatigue that enveloped him every time he walked downstairs in the morning, sensing that the tenants in her apartment building were listening to his footsteps. Sonia never let him leave in the middle of the night.
“Don’t go. I can’t stand sleeping alone. If you go, I’ll have someone else come over.”
He was putty in her hands; he’d get mad and stay. Her screaming would lull him to sleep, but his body would keep moving, so she wouldn’t even notice. He’d quickly snap out of it, unable to believe that he’d actually fallen asleep right next to her, and even though he couldn’t see her face in the dark, he definitely knew when she was laughing, when she was worrying, when she was coming, and when everything was about to start all over again. You could tell by how she was breathing and what she was saying. She was always talking, always giving him warnings, explanations, and exhortations. He got used to her voice over time, but he could only stop and relax once she’d quieted down. Then he’d lie there, touching her skin.