He sighed. “Send Maxim to a friend’s house by six. Go shopping—go to dinner. Give me until eight.”
“Not until you tell me what you’re keeping here!”
That’s when his tone changed. “I don’t have to tell you shit,Katya. You’re not in a place to be making demands. Do what I tell you. Don’t touch anything else. I don’t care where you go—be out of there by six and don’t come back until after eight.”
“Maybe I won’t come back at all…”
“Well, that’s up to you totry, isn’t it, Kotik? I have to go. Don’t call Misha about this. Just be gone by six.”
I was.
The fight lasted days.
He called twice, but by that point, the idea of Maxim finding something and hurting himself had boiled my blood for long enough that nothing he said defused me. I hung up on him both times. Then, there were no calls.
Misha came to get us, and we picked up Mama from the hospital. There were a lot of gifts and flowers, and she took all the attention with the humility of a martyred saint. They’d kept her there longer than needed, and she was eager to be up on her feet and do everything she could all at once. She loved the new apartment, although every praise was followed by a mournful comment about the one on the Left Bank.
Happiness did not exist without grief, but there were enough people shoving happiness at her to make up for it.
Misha hovered around for an extra hour after everyone left. He was putting his shoes on when I caught up to him and out of Mama’s hearing.
“Mish,” I called.
“What?”
“Is Vitali back?”
“Don’t you think he’d be here if he was?” He pulled the black beanie over his melon-like head, and opened the first door, letting it drop when I hurried after him.
“Listen—we had a fight.” I hugged myself, suddenly too awareI’d gone out without a coat.
“And?”
“And I want to talk to him, but…”
“But you’re still mad because you found my stuff in the walls.”
My mouth fell open. “Your stuff?”
“I’m in charge of inventory. Didn’t exactly give me a lot of time to go through it. How thehrenwas I supposed to know you were going digging? I was going to bring some guys by and get it all, but you got ahead of us, apparently.”
“… did Vitali know?”
“He knew this was a decoy place, not that it wasn’t empty. Couldn’t be choosy on account of you freezing to death in your little foxhole,” he said, shrugging. “It’s meant to be temporary anyway.”
“What do you mean‘temporary?’”
“Listen, Katya,” he let out a heavy breath, his foot tapping, “I’m tired of being in the middle of your relationship. You want me in the middle so bad, start sucking my dick too. Ask him what I mean, or better yet, just wait for him to tell you so he doesn’t beat my face in for ruining surprises.”
A pause.
“Sorry about the dick part,” he muttered.
“It’s alright…”
“You mad at me about the… stuff?”
I considered it. I was, but what’s the point? I took it out on Vitali already, and he hadn’t put it there in the first place.
