“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“It’s flattering you’d say so. It mattered so much once. That day, in the mall, I took Julie’s picture, and I took my own later. I cut my hair, and I dyed it black. Very black, and I bought makeup, used it the way Julie showed me. And I’d studied the other girls in college, so I knew how to apply it.”
“Hold on a minute, I’m trying to picture you with short,black hair.” He studied her, narrowed his eyes. “A little Goth, a little funky.”
“I’m not sure, but I looked very different from the way my mother wanted me to look. I suppose that was the point.”
“Sure it was, and the other point is you were entitled to it. Every kid is.”
“Maybe that’s true. I should’ve stopped there. It should’ve been enough. The clothes, the hair and makeup. And the program she’d assigned me to started that Monday, and I’d made up my mind not to go. She would have been furious, and that should’ve been enough. But I didn’t stop there.”
“You were on a roll,” he commented. “You created the fake IDs and got into a club.”
“Yes. Julie picked the club. I didn’t know anything about them, but I looked up the one she wanted, so I knew it was owned by a family rumored—known, really—to be Russian Mafia. The Volkovs.”
“Rings a dim bell. We didn’t deal with the Russians as a rule in Little Rock. Some Irish, some Italian mob types.”
“Sergei Volkov was—is—thepakhan,the boss of the Volkovbratva.He and his brother owned the club. I learned later it was run primarily by Sergei’s son, Ilya. His cousin Alexi worked there—ostensibly. Primarily, again, I learned later, Alexi drank there, did drugs and women there. I didn’t know or understand any of that when we met him.
“We drank Cosmopolitans, Julie and I. They were popular because of the television showSex and the City.We drank and danced, and it was the most exciting night of my life. And Alexi Gurevich came to our table.”
She told him everything, how the club had looked to her, sounded. How Ilya had come, how he’d looked at her, talked to her. How she’d been kissed for the first time in her life, and by a Russian gangster.
“We were so young, and so foolish,” she continued. “I didn’t want to go to Alexi’s house, but I didn’t know hownotto go. I felt ill, and when Ilya had to stay back, promising to meet us later, it was worse. Alexi’s house wasn’t far from my mother’s, really. I imagined just going home, lying down.I’d never been drunk before. It had stopped being pleasant.”
“It’ll do that.”
“Did you ever…when you were a teenager?”
“Russ and I got drunk and sick together a few times before we hit the legal age, and a few times after.”
“It was my first and last time, and I’ve never had another Cosmopolitan. Even looking at them makes me vaguely ill.” And a little afraid, she admitted to herself. “He had a beautiful home with a river view. Furnished with too much deliberation, I thought. Too consciously trendy. He made more drinks, put on music, but I felt ill, and I used the bathroom off the kitchen to be sick. Sicker than I’d ever been in my life. All I wanted to do—”
“Was curl up on the floor and die?”
“Yes. Yes.” She laughed a little. “I suppose it’s something a lot of people experience at least once. I still didn’t feel well when I came out, and I saw…Julie and Alexi were having sex on the sofa. I was fascinated and horrified at the same time, and so embarrassed. I went out through the kitchen to the terrace. It felt better in the air. I sat on a chair and fell asleep. And the voices woke me.”
“You’re cold.” Because she’d started to shiver, Brooks put an arm around her shoulders.
“I was cold that night, with the breeze off the water, or the sickness, or—with what happened next. This feels the same. I’d like to walk back. It may be easier to tell you when we’re walking.”
“Okay.”
“I planned to put a bench here, something organic. Something that looks like it just grew here. I like the view, and it’s so quiet, with just the stream gurgling and the birds. See how Bert likes to play in the water? It feels like it’s all mine. Silly.”
“It’s not.”
Silly, she repeated in her head.
“That night, I looked through the glass of the sliding doors, and I saw two men with Alexi. I didn’t see Julie. They were speaking Russian at first, but I’d studied Russian. I likelanguages, and I have an aptitude for them. I understood. The man, his name was Korotkii. Yakov Korotkii accused Alexi of taking money from the family. They argued, and at first Alexi was very arrogant. But that didn’t last. They said he’d informed to the police because he’d been arrested for drugs. The other man, he was big, forced Alexi to his knees, and Alexi became afraid. He tried to bargain, to threaten, then to beg. Would you hold my hand?”
He took it, squeezed gently. “Stop when you need to stop.”
“It needs to be finished. Korotkii shot him once, then twice at the temple. He shot him the way you might start your car or put on your shirt. An ordinary thing. Then Julie came out. She wasn’t dressed, she’d been sick. She barely spoke, barely saw, and Korotkii shot her, like a reflex, like you swat at a gnat. God. God.”
“Here, now, lean on me.” He released her hand but only to wrap an arm around her, tuck her in as they walked.
“He was angry, though, Korotkii, because he hadn’t known she was there, because his information hadn’t included her. Or me. They didn’t know about me, huddled outside the sliding door, frozen. Just frozen.”
