“Where are we going?”
“You always try to ruin surprises for yourself. Trust.”
Maybe this wasn’t him proposing.
Please, God, don’t let this be him proposing.
Past the kitchens were the bare brick hallways which smelledlike cleaning chemicals and cigarettes. We passed a utility room and then a janitorial closet. The third door was unlabeled. He stopped there.
“Now,” he warned, “I know I gave you the earrings. But money can’t buy everything.”
Boris grunted behind us.
The door opened from the inside, and Misha’s sour mug, complete with a cigarette, motioned me in.
Oh.
I wasn’t certain what I was looking at. It sure looked like a penis, but that didn’t make sense, nor did the thick, hairy legs stretched between it and the ceiling pipes. My gaze traveled down to the round (also hairy) belly hanging over an ample (even hairier) chest, and all the way down to Clipboard’s soaked face.
“Here, let’s get you away from the door, there’s a draft,” Vitali said, and led me to the left, only momentarily pausing to help me step over the puddle forming under the upside-down man’s head. “Watch out for the piss.”
My eyes traveled from it to the glistening trail up the man’s face, and all the way up his chest and over his belly. His penis looked at me, and I at it. It still made no sense.
Vitali took off his suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders, so much like the night we met. This sure was romantic.
He unbuttoned his shirt cuffs.
“His name is Ruslan Aliev,” he said, carefully rolling up the right sleeve. “Born August 1952. Graduated on time, but wasn’t accepted into university because of his poor test scores.” The left sleeve. “Take him down.”
Misha pulled up a chair, then climbed it with a knife clasped between his teeth. He fiddled with the ropes, then cut what hecouldn’t untie. The man came crashing to the ground with a squall into the thick cloth stuffed in his mouth. He only then opened his wild eyes, and there was no recognition in them when he looked at me.
“See, Aliev here,” Vitali continued, “fell in with a bad crowd. Didn’t study hard enough.”
He circled the human heap, stopping where Clipboard could stare at his leather shoes. The man shrieked, but it was muffled.
“His mama passed in December of 1977. Papa in January 1978.” Vitali seized the wrist bound behind the man’s back and hauled him to the other side of the room as the pudgy legs kicked for traction. Misha followed close by, but did not interfere. Boris moved a chair away from an old, low-set radiator.
Vitali handed him off, allowing the man to twist into a sitting position. It was no longer clear if the wetness on his red face was pee or tears.
I clutched the suit jacket closer as Vitali came over. He caressed the line of my jaw with a knuckle, then gently pushed aside a lock of hair to expose my cut. “Would you say that’s about five centimeters, Kotik?”
“I don’t know…” I whispered, unconsciously touching my face.
“We’ll say five centimeters,” he decided, then turned back to Clipboard. “Ruslan has one living brother, who converted to Christianity in February of 1978 and fled to Sergiev Posad, where a senior bishop took him into the grounds of the Moscow Theological Academy to study and eventually become a priest. They speak on the phone every other week for an average of forty-five minutes.”
At his nod, Misha pulled the cloth out of the man’s mouthand he immediately cried out.
“Please! God—help me!Please!”
“There, he continues to teach English and Arabic to this day. What’s interesting is,” Vitali crouched and held out two fingers, set at approximately five centimeters apart, to the man’s cheek, “the Russian Orthodox Church gives sanctuary for those who convert from Islam. They are provided with new identities. It is very difficult to trace such people.”
Without warning, Vitali slammed his hand against the side of Clipboard’s head, pressing the man’s right cheek into the radiator.
The man shrieked.
I clasped both hands over my mouth.
Gray vapor rose around Vitali’s hand.
