The Domino Game

by Greg Wilson

  “Coffee perhaps?” Zoe called.

  Kelly stopped. Turned and nodded her head up and down. Turned back again and opened the door.

  Zoe watched her. “ Well,” she murmured to herself, rolling the word. Hesitated a moment then pushed back her chair, her long limbs unwinding gracefully as she rose to her feet.

  The Cassell Foundation operated from a huge restored blue-stone townhouse in the East Fifties, designed and constructed originally as a city showpiece for one of the late nineteenth century minor railroad tycoons. Kelly’s office was at the back on the second floor, overlooking the tiled roof of the colonnade that enclosed the worn marble-floored courtyard below. At its center there was a lavish sculpted Roman fountain that froze over in winter if the caretaker forgot to shut it down before the first chill. Kelly stepped across the threshold, shrugged out of her jacket and hangered it, crossed to her desk, dropped the mail and fell into her Herman Miller chair.

  She was hung over. Not with alcohol. The last drink she’d had was a glass of wine at ten last night, twelve hours ago, and she hadn’t even finished that. She was hung over with sensory overload, her whole body still tingling at everything it had experienced since.

  She blew out a long breath and picked up an envelope from the pile, inspected it a moment then used it to fan her face, looking up as Zoe eased herself around the door, clutching a steaming mug of coffee in either hand, her glasses suspended from a silver chain around her neck. She slid one of the mugs in front of Kelly and set the other down on her side of the desk, lowering herself into one of the visitors’ chairs without invitation and peering expectantly at her boss.

  “Well?”

  Kelly dropped the letter to the desk, exchanging it for the coffee. “You want the long version or the short?”

  Zoe considered a moment. “I’d prefer the long but you have a meeting with the project task force at ten fifteen so we’d better settle on the short.”

  Kelly shrugged. Took a sip of coffee and followed it with a breath.

  “I met him Monday night at the pizza place below my apartment. I was picking up a marinara; he was waiting for a four seasons.”

  Zoe leaned forward, entranced. “Go on.”

  Kelly sighed. “What can I say? Our cartons touched and the cheese melted.”

  Zoe giggled. Shuffled in her seat. “And?”

  “We shared some wine while we were waiting and he asked for my number so I thought, what the hell. I wrote it on his pizza box and then he called me the next day and we had dinner together that night down at the Seaport and…”

  “Yes… and?”

  Kelly wrinkled her nose. “And when we were finished he put me in a cab and sent me home and I assumed he wasn’t interested.”

  “Oh!” Zoe sat back, visibly disappointed.

  “But I was wrong,” Kelly concluded with a satisfied smile.

  Zoe sat forward again, eager. “Yes… And… Go on.”

  “And, he called again yesterday and asked me out again last night and the rest, as they say,” she sighed wistfully, “is now history.”

  Zoe flicked a glance at her watch. “Don’t think you’re getting out of it that easily.” Her eyes narrowed. “I want details. Is he gorgeous?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “Age?”

  She tipped her head. Considered and supposed. “Early forties, maybe.”

  “So what’s he do?”

  “Import. Export. That kind of thing. Family business.”

  Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “Married?”

  “Divorced. No kids.”

  Zoe relaxed. “Money?”

  Kelly drew back. “Christ, Zoe! What are you… my mother? I don’t know. He dresses well. He tips well. He’s got a Platinum Amex Card. Tell you what, next time I see him I’ll ask him for some credit references, okay?”

  Her assistant folded her hands in her lap and sat defiantly upright. “You have to be aware of these things, Kelly. They’re important.” She returned unfazed to her interrogation.

  “Hair.”

  “Blond.”

  “Short, medium or tall?”

  “Tall.”

  An evil smile slid across Zoe’s lips. “Big or small?”

  Kelly stared at her a moment and blinked. “Put it this way, anyone who says size doesn’t matter has no idea what they’re talking about.”

  Zoe squealed with delight. She stole another look at her watch and frowned with annoyance, rose from her chair and straightened her skirt, her demeanor all at once businesslike. “Come on. It’s showtime. You can tell me the rest later.”

  Kelly sighed and set down her unfinished coffee. “If he calls take a message, will you?”

  Zoe was already at the door.

  “Of course.” She turned. “What’s his name?”

  Kelly was sifting through a pile of folders on her desk, selecting some, discarding others. “Alex,” she replied. “Alex Bukovsky.” Zoe propped, her brow pulled tight in a frown.

  “Christ, Kel, that’s Russian.” She blew out a breath. “Your dad’s just going to love that!”

  The apartment was small and untidy, not at all what Larisa was used to. Four cramped rooms at the end of the corridor on the sixth floor of an ugly brown brick building two blocks back from the boardwalk. From the window of the bedroom she shared with her father she could see three narrow slivers of cobalt blue ocean squeezed between the jumble of other structures and the cranes that glided around the huge steel skeleton rising from the esplanade at the end of the street. The apartment was closer to the elevated rail line than it was to the beach. So close that every time a train came or went the walls shook with its rumble and the floor trembled beneath her feet, but she had discovered this morning – their second in this unpleasant and unfamiliar place – that when she struggled open the bedroom window she could smell the ocean and taste the thick, salt-laden air and hear the sound of the surf above the noise of the traffic and the street, and that novelty had helped her forget the discomfort of their accommodation and the unease she felt in Sergei Surikov s presence.

  She liked Katrina. It had only been two days and already Larisa was starting to think of Sergei s wife as a big sister. She was a pretty, thin girl with short black hair and green eyes. Not the same pallid green as her husband but a vibrant color that danced with life, although when Sergei spoke to her harshly or grabbed and twisted her wrist, or pushed her around as he so often did, a veil would fall across them suddenly and they would dim in defense and withdrawal until he stomped from the apartment and slammed the door. Then, as the sound of his angry footfalls receded along the hall, the other Katrina would suddenly re-emerge, smiling with her dimpled cheeks, instructing Larisa on how to work the TV, or pointing out things from the living room window, or proudly displaying the collection of photographs she maintained in scrappy albums, of her family in Odessa and of the holiday Sergei had taken her on to an astonishing place called Miami, six months before.

  It was their second day here now.

  It had been nearly three in the morning when they had first arrived – Larisa had no idea what time that was in Russia – and she and her father had both been too exhausted to do anything other than fall gratefully asleep on the side by side mattresses that had been laid out for them in the small spare bedroom. She had slept until after midday then woken to find herself alone in the stifling room, the bright streaming sunlight that fell across her dappled by the faded yellow and blue patterned curtains strung across the window on a length of sagging nylon cord. Her mouth was dry and she was hungry and she wanted to use the toilet and when she stumbled to her feet the bare wooden floor seemed to tilt beneath them and her head swam for a moment with dizzy confusion. Then the room seemed to settle back on its axis and when it did she made her way across to the door and opened it cautiously and edged outside into the hall.

  From somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of her father’s voice. For some reason that alone seemed to put everything right and her anxiety fad
ed behind her as she set out along the corridor in search of the bathroom she remembered someone had pointed out to her the night before.

  There was a key in the lock on the inside of the door. She turned it quietly, sealing herself inside. Then when she had finished she scooped water from the tap to her mouth and splashed some more over her face and her arms, drying them off on the thin towel she found hanging behind the door. That made her feel better. Then she eased the key back and crept outside and made her way further along the hall, and as she came nearer to the living room she could hear the thick, guttural voice of the man who had picked them up at the airport.

  “I’m telling you, it’s easy as palming rubles from the offering plate. A piece of piss. Someone lifts a car from somewhere. I get a call telling me where to find it and where we have to be and when. We take the car. We go to where we’ve been told to go. We smash our car into the other car. We get paid and then we disappear. Nothing to it.”

  A moment passed before her father spoke.

  “Why would someone want us to smash up their car?”

  “It’s not about the car.” Sergei’s voice rose with exasperation. “It’s about people pretending they get hurt, okay? Look…” he spoke to her father as if he were stupid. “Here in America we have insurance companies. Insurance companies are thieves; everyone hates them. So the people who are our customers use us to steal some money back from them… that’s all. They pretend they get hurt in a smash with a stolen car. They get a doctor to give them a certificate that says they are hurt, they get a lawyer to make a big fuss, and so long as no one is too greedy the insurance company pays our customer to go away so they don’t have to go to court. Then the lawyer and the doctor get their share, my boss gets his, we get ours and everyone’s happy… okay? We do a couple of these a week at a thousand a time and that pays for the rent and the groceries and then everything else is cream. So, you got it now? My partner who does this with me is away for a while, so you help out and that pays for your lodging. Once you have your new papers you can move on. Get your own place. Then it’s over to you whether you want to keep going or not. There’s plenty of work if you want it.”

  Larisa waited through the long pause.

  “What kind of work?” There was no judgment in her father’s question.

  “Aach/” Sergei groaned with impatience. “Come on, my friend. You spend nine years in jail and you pretend you don’t know the score?”

  Larisa drew tense as the words registered. Nine years in jail. Her brow bunched in confusion as Sergei continued.

  “You know. Zapodlo. Underground commerce. Tax collection. Enforcement. Protection. Contract hits if you’re up to it. They pay the best but that’s not my game.”

  “And what about the police?”

  It wasn’t her father’s question that terrified Larisa, or even the matter-of-fact way in which he had asked it. It was his lack of denial of Sergei’s impossible claim. Nine years in jail. Why wouldn’t he have denied it if it wasn’t true? Sergei’s sudden explosion of laughter severed her thoughts.

  “The police?” His tone was incredulous. “You think the police are interested in shit like this? They get called to the accident after we’ve gone, they write up their report and that’s it. They have too many other things to worry about to waste their time on this sort of crap. The only thing you need to worry about with the cops is if they pick us up in a stolen car on the way to wherever we’re supposed to be going. And even then you don’t have to worry because the lawyer who works for my boss looks after that. I tell you, my friend, this is a very civilized place. We don’t have to pay off the cops like we do back home. Someone else looks after all of that for us. So, you got it? You understand?”

  Larisa silently shook her head, her features assembling into a disbelieving frown. From the room beyond the hall Sergei’s voice started again.

  “So you tell me now, are you right with this? Because if you’re not then you and the kid can get out of here right now.”

  There was a long moment of silence before her father replied.

  “I’m right with it,” she heard him say. His voice was steeled with an unfamiliar measured coldness. “Right with everything.”

  The words settled over her. Larisa pressed herself back against the wall, a slow shiver of alarm creeping through her as she started to realize how little about her father she really knew.

  When Nikolai returned to the bedroom a while later Larisa appeared to still be asleep but her eyes, he noticed, were too tightly shut, her lips strained too hard together in a bloodless line. He watched her for a moment then dropped down to his haunches beside her and gently squeezed her shoulder. For a second her lids pressed tighter as if she were trying to escape, then slowly they opened, settling on him with an uncertain stare. He searched them for a second and then smiled.

  “Your first day in America.” His brows rose. “Shall we go for a walk?”

  The edge of her mouth twisted briefly in an unenthusiastic smile. “If you like.” She turned aside making no effort to move and Nikolai frowned with concern as he measured her reaction. He paused a moment.

  “Why don’t you have a shower and get changed then we’ll find somewhere to have some breakfast, okay?”

  Larisa nodded, still looking away.

  “Okay,” he repeated. All the strain and confusion of the last thirty-six hours had caught up with her, he supposed. Although she wasn’t watching he smiled again. “You don’t have to worry about Sergei and Katrina, they’ve both gone out. I’ll be outside. You just come out when you’re ready.”

  She nodded reluctantly again and he studied her for a moment before he turned away.

  When she joined him in the living room ten minutes later she was wearing sneakers and white socks and bright red shorts that almost touched her knees and a light short-sleeve blouse incongruously patterned for some reason with tennis racquets and slices of cake. Her gleaming dark hair was drawn back in a pony-tail, her skin still glowing from the heat of the shower. She stood in the doorway regarding him uneasily.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” Nikolai replied.

  He folded the newspaper he had been reading and set it aside, bounced to his feet and walked across to her, taking her shoulders in his hands, looking down at her and shaking his head. “You’re so beautiful, Larisa,” his voice was hardly more than a whisper. “So much like your mother.”

  Her lips eased in a fragile smile.

  He pulled himself up and drew a breath. “Let’s explore, shall we?”

  “Okay,” she nodded without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.

  Whatever had caused her gloom lifted the moment they stepped through the lobby door onto the pavement. They stood there together stunned, outside the mobile phone store beside the entry, looking around in bewilderment at the crazy blur of activity that swelled around them, unsure of which way to turn. Finally Nikolai scooped up Larisa’s hand and steered her towards the closest intersection, weaving through the midday crowd as she tagged along behind, her head straining left and right, her gaze sweeping the gaudy shopfronts and the unfamiliar people moving between them, struggling to take it all in.

  There was a banner sign above the intersection: Brighton Beach Avenue.

  Nikolai turned, locking in his bearings. The street they had come from was Brighton 6th. He set out again with Larisa in tow clutching his hand, her lips parted in awe as they made their way along the street. Past delicatessens and grocery stores and overflowing fruit stands that spilled across the pavement, and bakeries and butchers shops and florists and a bright clinical looking shopfront emblazoned with the sign “APTEKA” and the pharmacy’s familiar green cross.

  Larisa caught up to her father and peered at him in dismay. Nikolai grinned and led her on, feeling the pleasant warm dizziness of being suddenly swept up in a strange new environment.

  The signs. The voices. The look of the people. In a way it was just like strolling along on Tverskaya on a Satu
rday morning. The babushkas in their scarves and thick stockings and heavy glasses, lugging their huge plastic handbags. The old men in worn suits strolling unhurriedly along, hands clasped behind their backs, Soviet medals proudly pinned to their lapels, stopping now and then to peer into store windows where heavy-chested gray-haired women in white caps and floral aprons moved back and forth behind the counters. The over made-up girls in too-high heels with too-orange hair and lipstick to match, and men in black shirts with gold chains at their necks, lounging, arms folded, beside shadowed doorways, watching the world roll by. Like Saturday on Tverskaya, but different.

  The music of balalaikas clashing with rap and the smell of hot dogs and suntan oil and the scent of the ocean and the voices not just speaking Russian, but English and Yiddish and half a dozen other languages as well, dialects outlawed by the Soviets that had found refuge here on the other side of the world.

  Russia but not Russia.

  A strange amalgam of storybook and Soviet Empire washed up on the shores of America to create this strange foreign outpost. And all the while, the elevated trains rumbling back and forth above the street, their rattle of metal on metal and the tremor of their coming and going vibrating upwards through the concrete pavement.

  They carried on for two blocks before turning left down Brighton 4th towards the ocean, crossing the last block towards the massive boardwalk. As they got closer to the sea the noise of the main avenue began to fall away, fading beneath the rising sound of the ocean and the screech of the wheeling gulls. When they reached the boardwalk Larisa stopped, holding her father back, her mouth open, her eyes gleaming as they swept across the blue expanse of the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. In the distance a huge black oil tanker was sliding slowly across the horizon.

  Larisa shook her head, talking to herself as much as to her father.

  “I’ve never seen the ocean before. It’s wonderful.”

  Nikolai looked out to sea, following her gaze. He had, if you could call Odessa the ocean. He and Natalia had gone there together for a week, nine months before Larisa had been born. He squeezed Larisa’s fingers and she threw her head back, greedily dragging the scent of the sea deep into her lungs and holding onto it as if she never wanted to let it go. Her face began to turn red and finally she gave in, threw her head forward and expelled her breath with a gasp, laughing with delight.