“It’s a lot of people’s real life. What’s not real about it?”
I needed to stop, and I knew it, but there was a damned skip between my brain and my mouth. “Real people don’t ride in cars and shoot at each other. They don’t hang around prostitutes and drop off bundles of heroin to their neighborhood chewing gum kiosks.”
“Interesting,” Vitali said, slowly rubbing his chin. “What do real people do?”
“They—” I wasn’t prepared to have this part questioned.
What did real people do? They suffered. They suffered just like everyone around me for as long as I knew. Real people rejoiced, they wept, they shared what they had with their neighbors, and they lived a life never knowing someone like Sergei sat in a dark room and neatly arranged the pieces of everything that was wrong with the world.
“They find ‘fake’ people and make them lovers,” he helped helpfully.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
“If you’re going to argue—argue. Don’t pretend you didn’t have an opinion to begin with. When you say‘real people’you mean Mama. I understand.”
“I don’t mean Mama. I wouldn’t want to be my mama.”
“That’s not what I said. I said you see her as‘real’becauseshe has instilled this expectation within you from birth. This thing she wanted for you so badly, she made sure you grew up believing it. The way she sees the world for you is ‘real,’and anything you’re doing outside of that is make-believe.”
“It’s not just how she sees it, it’s how it is.”
He chuckled, his casual composure infuriating, probably because he was getting to me.
“You think Mama doesn’t know where the money comes from?” he asked.
“I mean, she suspects…”
“Kotik, don’t disrespect your mama. You only have the one. She knows who the‘real people’ are. I guarantee you she has lived to see humanity commit worse crimes than either you or I. She also knows what it used to be like when she was growing up with her parents’ ideals. Everyone wants the ‘forever’for their kids.” Pause, then a quiet, “Almost everyone…”
I folded my hands in my lap, and to my surprise, his hand was still there.
“So?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Do you think you can live in this‘fake’world?”
“I don’t know.” It was the truth, but I didn’t feel good about it because his momentary silence held its breath. “It’s hard for me. I’ve seen more in the past… God, two months, than I have in my entire life. I had never seen a person die and then, well, you know. I was right in the middle of it all. I could have died, and the last thing I’d hear was some club song about taking a stranger home.”
“Mmm.”
“I can’t give you an answer,” I said. “And I don’t think it matters, because I don’t have a choice. It doesn’t matter if Ithink I can, because I have to.”
“There is always a trade-off. A sacrifice to create something beautiful.”
I smiled, because I knew he was smiling without having to look up. “Can’t dance without bruised feet, now can I?”
“You can. But it won’t be as good.”
I nodded. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t trying to convince me. And he didn’t try to reassure me that Ididhave a choice. Maybe it was more honest that way.
“So what, then?” I asked.
“So you say‘thank you, Vitali, for buying me things I want to wear and being so handsome.’”
I laughed. “Thank you, Vitali.”
“And‘thank you, Vitali, for showing me how to use a gun so I can fend off drug-prostitutes.’”
