“Speaking.”
“This is Tatiana. Tatiana Watkins.” The flirty babe Trev and I did a move for last week.
“Oh, Mrs. Watkins.” I groan because I move suddenly. Trev’s eyes perk up at me, a glint of arousal in them. “How may I help you?”
She pauses for a second, breathes heavily. “I just...wanted to offer...my condolences.”
“Condolences?”
“Yes, for your father.”
“Oh. Right.” This feels very weird. “Uhm, how— How did you—?”
“The paper. It was in there. And your name was mentioned. And, well, my husband called in a favor at the station and confirmed that it was indeed your father.”
“Your husband, the lawyer.”
“Yes. So, Mr. Cocks, I just wanted to let you know that...if you need any help getting through this. Any help whatsoever, my door is always open.”
OK, before it felt weird, now it just feels outright disgusting. She’s using my dead father to get into my pants? To get her married hands into my pants? “Uhm, OK, sure, right. Well, thanks for the condolences. Bye—”
“Wait. Wait. Mr. Cocks—”
“Just Cox, ma’am. It’s a short sound. Not a long one.”
She giggles—
-8-
Time-Out.
If you’re male, you can just skip this part, because you already know this. But if you’re not, well, you gotta understand something about the male anatomy:
It reacts.
That’s it. Nothing more. It reacts. And because it does, doesn’t mean shit. It doesn’t mean you like the babe or that you don’t like your girlfriend or fiancé or wife or whatever—it just means it reacted.
Unfortunately, with that reaction, so come several other hormonal reactions as well.
Arousal is one of them.
-9-
—and my cock goes hard. My skin starts to sweat, and I swallow.
Fuck, this could get me into major shit.
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, Mr. Cockssss. Is your friend with you? The larger one.”
“Trevor is with me, yes.”
Trev’s face is glowing. I look out the window because I don’t need him aiding and abetting this broad’s illicit solicitations.
“Good. Good. So, Mr. Cocks—”
“Declan, ma’am.”
“Tatiana, remember?”
“Tatiana, right. I forgot. And you can call me Declan.”
“No, that’s fine”—husky husky husky sexy—“I’ll stick with Cocks. Anyway”—deep and affected sighhhhhhh—“I need a few more things moved around. I don’t know if you do that—move things around?”
“Around?”
“Yes, uhm, like around the house.”
“I’m a little confused—”
“Well, Mr. Cocks, it’s quite simple, I would pay you a thousand dollars an hour—times two, if you are with your friend—to help me rearrange my furniture. I know it’s unusual, and that you usually move things away, but I can’t imagine that you would turn a job like this down. Besides, I’ve been telling my friends about your services. A few of them are moving into this condo in the next few months—oh, four or five of them. I convinced them to skip the moving company they’d chosen, and to go with you. Because”—giggle giggle—“well, Mr. Cocks, let me be very blunt, because you two guys are just plain...fucking...hot. And there’s nothing wrong with getting a few cheap looks at some boys moving furniture around, is there?”
“I see.”
“Oh, and I told them your rates.”
“You did.”
“Yes, three thousand an hour.”
“THREE THOUSAND— Uhm, I mean, I— Well, that’s quite generous of you, Mizz Watkins.”
“If you insist on calling me by my last name, then it’s Missus Watkins, Mr. Cocks. I am married, you know.”
Oh, god, and you are indeed trouble. “Yes, it was just— Never mind. Well, Missus Watkins—”
“Tatiana.”
Christ! “Tatiana. That’s a fairly generous rate you recommended.”
“Well, we are all yuppies after all, isn’t that what you said?” After my long silence, she says. “Don’t worry, I don’t hold it against you. But, let’s be honest, they’re not only paying for a mover, but also for the view.”
“I see. About your moving-things-around stuff, when would you need us?”
“Tomorrow?”
I could really use this break. Really. Especially if I’ve committed to helping Blaze replace her gear if anything happens to it because of me. Because, who am I kidding, I got so little put away that that would destroy me.
And then there was that idea I had for the business. The one where we’d be doing precisely this: Offering moving services with good looking dudes for, well, frustrated housewives... No harm. As she says, some cheap looks. It’s almost as if the woman had been listening to me and Trev talk about it (which would be insanely creepy indeed if she had been.)
And yet...something about this does not sit right with my conscience. The business idea is cool. My business idea. But not with her. There’s something else going on here. I’d bet my left big toe on it.
“Declan?” Finally, she’s done calling me Cocks.
I consider the best approach. I need to go gently, feel the water. “Yes, uhm, Tatiana, you see, I’d like to accept, but I actually got injured today—”
Very affectedly: “Oh my goodness! Are you OK!?”
Uh-huh. Whatever. “Yes, I’m fine. Look, would you mind if my friend comes through, and another friend of mine that I highly recommend, instead of me?”
“Hmmmm, that’s not entirely what I had in mind...”
I can only imagine what you had in mind...
She starts backpedalling. And that’s not good. Because business is business: “On second thought—”
“No, no. It’s fine. We’ll do it. Tomorrow?”
Smugly, “Yes, tomorrow. Ten OK?”
“Ten’s fine. And, uhm, thank you...for the referrals.”
“Oh, I think you’ll be getting a lot more business from me. But, of course, that all depends on how you...er...perform tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it, Declan Cocks.”
I’m not. “Sure, OK. See you tomorrow.”
After I click off the phone, Trev says, “What the fuck was that?”
“Trouble. That’s what it was. But it’s also business. Good business. I think it’s time to get a name for the Sexy Movers I planned on creating. Because I think we just got our first client.”
“You just said it.”
“Said what?”
“Sexy Movers. Not brilliant, but it’s hard to misconstrue what it means.”
“Trev, anything with the word Sexy in it is always misconstrued. I can just imagine all the Midlife Crisis men phoning us, thinking we’re belly dancers or something.”
“Well, if it pays the bills...”
“Fucking Christ. Just drive!”
-10-
We stop at the stately black gates of St. Dymphna’s—an establishment dealing exclusively with people who experience nervous breakdowns or other psychotic breaks later in their lives. In other words, the six-pack was full once upon a time.
Then it emptied.
Now, if you’re anything like me, when you hear of a “Home of Rest and Care for the Mentally Disturbed” you probably conjure up an institution that looks a little like where Jack Nicholson strangles Nurse Ratched and a boy cuts his own throat with broken glass. Am I right?
Well, if not, then you’re a blessed soul. ’Cause that’s what my first impression of it was when I first heard of it. Only, it’s nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.
St. Dymphna’s is really just an old house with a gazillion rooms, which sits on a property several acres large. No electroshocks and spikes up the nose or Prozac up the ass—just a place to chill out and where, hopefully, the Nervous Breakdown patient can “unbreak.” The head doctor is one of those new-agey types who do
esn’t believe in using drugs except when someone’s leg is broken. Gehrig, I think his name is. Swiss or something.
They have about a twenty-three percent success rate of people who find their marbles again.
Gina’s sadly not one of them.
-11-
Trev and Skate leave me at the gate.
Walking the long dirt road toward the imposing house, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking down a dark path into my own past. Flashes of psychedelic lights in smoke-filled clubs hit me. Gina’s smiling face, brow gleaming with sweat. Pupils the size of saucers. Fingers in front of her eyes like she was doing a dance out of Pulp Fiction. She probably even really believed she was Uma Thurman when she was doing that.
She used to wear highly revealing clothes, especially in the later months. I confess that I liked it. What virile guy wouldn’t? She was a little rounder than most girls, and that only made her more alluring. Because she used to push her cleavage up wildly with push-ups. But that’s not what I’m thinking of as I get to the massive teak doors of St. Dymphna’s.
I’m thinking of her running her small fingers through my hair as we fucked on the night when she flipped, earlier that night, before she’d dropped the A. And I’m thinking of her last words to me before they sedated her: You’re a devil, aren’t you, Deck?
The large wooden door of the house creaks eerily as I push it open. And I can’t help trying to answer that question in my head. But the answer I get is never one that makes me happy.
It’s always the same answer.
FOUR-AND-TWENTY
THE LUXURIOUS VIKTORIYA GOLOVKINA
-1-
Blaze Ryleigh
Vikki owns a black hatchback BMW. She throws Vlad her keys on the way out of Supercore, and they exchange a few words in Russian. To me, as an aside, she says, “I am too drunk to drive!”
Outside, Vlad goes to another BMW. Not a hatchback—much too large for that—but also black, including the windows. One of them rolls down, and another dude in shades, and looking equally mean, chats to Monster-Sized Vlad. (I recognize the light-haired dude in the car, he was also part of Vikki’s entourage at Slambam on Wednesday.) Vlad says something else to Vikki, then he leads the way to her vehicle.
“Who are you—a freaking czarina or something?”
“Something.”
Her Beamer smells new when we get in, but Vikki tells me it’s a 2005 model. “My father wanted to give me newer car, but I tell him I want to make it on my own. He finally accept it. We are pretty well off. I was big disappointment when I tell them I not want to go to college. When he was finally convinced I wasn’t going to do it, he tried to suggest I take over the family business.” Beezniss. “But, when I rebelled against that as well, they had no choice.”
“So, he bought you the car?”
She smiles. “Yes, papah love his daughter.” She lights up a Parliament and rolls down the window. She sticks her head out of it, sucks down several drags, then throws it out. “I don’t like tobacco smell in car. But I was desperate!”
We get to Vikki’s apartment building. On the outside, it looks pretty nondescript. We get to the top floor and the two bodyguards scope out the entrance to her apartment before Vikki goes in, and I’m seriously needing to ask her about that. When they tell her it’s cool, Vlad gives her her car keys back and we go inside.
Inside, it’s like a luxury condo—Williamsburg-style. It even smells new—more specifically, it’s the smell of a set of red leather couches. White rug in the center. Plush. Expensive-looking glass table with a copy of Time Out New York on it. Some art on the walls. A sprawling view of Brooklyn from a small balcony.
“You like?” She raises her palms like the apartment is a car at a show.
“I love! How— I mean, what does it cost to live here?”
She sighs. “Oh, Blaze, papah is one who take care of that.”
“I’m starting to like your papah more and more.”
She heads over to a cupboard and pulls down the bar door. Out comes the Imperial. She holds the bottle up to me, as if asking if I’m ready for more.
I shrug. “Hell, sister, I haven’t gotten drunk with a girlfriend in...well, a long time.”
She pulls out two crystal glasses, places them on the glass table and pours. I’m still sniffing my drink when hers is down her throat. She slams it back down on the glass again, and fills it for the second time.
She downs that one as well.
I down mine—hot!—and chill back on the couch, feeling ultra relaxed.
Feeling a little more forward, I ask, “Vikki...(hiccup)...is your father, like, secretly the president of Russia or something?”
She falls next to me, Imperial bottle dangerously close to pouring over her red couch. “No, but I wonder sometimes if he is not president of Brighton Beach.”
I hold out my glass to her. She pours. “Is that where they live?”
“Darling, that’s where all Russians live! But, yes, he lives there. He wanted me to go to college but I told him I wanted to be a musician. We fought for long time about it. Then I ran away from home. And papah was so worried about me, that he decided is better to give me money to follow dream, than to push me away. So, he paid for the apartment here—it’s a two bedroom by the way—and told me I must never run away from him again. Because he loves me.”
“No shit. Wow. Nice father. And what’s up with the bodyguards?”
She tells me her family’s actually quite rich, and that her dad runs a few nightclubs up in Brighton Beach—luxury stuff, table service and shit. But he tolerates no drugs at his clubs. “That’s the way clubs get shut down. And the owners always get roped into the cops’ shitlist when there’s dealers at their clubs. So papah doesn’t let them within a mile of his places. So, anyway, we started getting a few threats a few years back. So papah decided to have me watched by some guys he hired. And that’s how Vlad and Sasha became my constant companions.”
“Damn, that sounds like Russian mafia shit.”
Instead of acting surprised or shocked, she says, “Blaze, if it is, I would not be surprised!”
“And...what about boys?”
The Imperial bottle pauses in mid-air. “Well, Vlad says to me they don’t report to papah on that. But, well... Anyway, it doesn’t stop me bringing them over!”
I laugh. She offers me more vodka but my drinking hatches are overflowing. She goes to the fridge in the kitchen-section of her open-plan lounge. She pulls out some OJ, brings it over to me. “Will help line stomach,” she says.
I down two glasses.
I tell her about my own apartment troubles, and that my landlord finally gave in to the big realtors, so my lease will expire in six months and probably not get renewed. I also tell her that I can’t even imagine getting another place because Mr. Bernstein’s an old friend of Mamah’s and, well, some months he didn’t even take rent from me.
“Blaze, this is a two-bedroom. You can stay here!”
“Thanks...but I’m gonna try make it on my own.”
“Blaze! Please. It’s no problem. And I only ever bring boys home on the weekends. And we’re always in the bedroom.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
She frowns a little, puts her glass down. Sits up. “You know, Blaze, I can tell you are one of those people that is afraid of accepting help from people. In Russian community, we always help each other. Is why we are growing so strong in Brooklyn. Because we help all Russians who come here. You should not be afraid of accepting help from people.”
I stare at my empty glass a little. “Yeah, uhm, I guess I do have a little hesitation when it comes to that.”
“A little! Ha ha!” She reiterates her offer, and I give in.
“Fine. It’s a deal, if I have nowhere to go, I’ll come here.”
She sits back, stretches her long legs onto the table. “Maybe you could come here even if you do have a place to go. Anyway, one step at a time.”
“So, tell me about Tol
ek. How is it that a rich czarina hooks up with—” I stop, realizing this comment can only go in one direction.
“With such a motherfucker?” Muddahfuckah.
“Uhm, yes. Exactly.”
“Well, Blaze, I could ask the same thing of you. You might not be rich in money, but you are much richer than he is in many ways.”
“Well, he was pretty charming back then.”
“Very charming.”
“I guess I just answered my own question.”
She tells me how Tolek schmoozed up to her and made her feel important as a singer. “It was when I was still insecure about my art,” she says. “You have to be secure in your own art first, Blaze. Otherwise, the vampires will smell your blood like sharks in warm water.” They dated for a few months, had sex a few times (“Nothing special, I must tell you. All for him, little for me. That’s his style.”) Then she dumped him. Two months later, she started getting regular gigs. Some of them resulted in some internet buzz. And like Lucipher himself, the punk appeared again at one of her shows.
She didn’t have Vlad with her then yet. Tolek roughed her up a bit. He didn’t actually hit her, but held her forcefully and shook her. Enough to give her some bruises on the arms.
She says she’s “not one to take the shit of a man.” So, she fought him off. But, as tough as a girl can be, a guy is a guy. And Tolek is strong. “So, if Andrei had not appeared—he is our drummer. If he had not appeared suddenly, because he was looking for me, well, maybe something worse could have happened.”
The statement sends cold chills down my throat.
“Anyway, meanwhile, papah organized the security for me. For other reasons—”
“The threats.”
“Yes. I never heard of them. Papah just said the family was getting a few calls. So, Vlad and Sasha were hired—Sasha is the guy who was driving the other BM, by the way—and, well, Tolek just kind of disappeared.”
“Wow. Good timing. You think your papah knew about Tolek? That the supposed threats were just a story because he knew of your ex boyfriend?”
Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) Page 11