Katja from the Punk Band

by Simon Logan

  “I . . . no . . .”

  “Good. Then you’ve got no reason to stay here?”

  “I guess not,” he says slowly and finally looks at her.

  “Next left,” Katja says. “My boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, shit he wasn’t even really a boyfriend, just someone I hung out with and fucked every once in a while, but that’s not important. Anyway, he works for this guy, this guy named Dracyev and he’s a dealer, right, he’s a chemical dealer and he asked Januscz, that’s my boyfriend, he asked Januscz to make this exchange tonight, on the boat, to give this guy, this other guy, not Dracyev, to give him this vial.”

  “The vial,” Nikolai says.

  “Yeah, the vial. I don’t know what the fuck is in it, who the hell knows with those guys. I never liked Januscz being involved in that shit, but then again he never liked me screaming my head off every other night and coming home with blood crusting my trach tube, but that’s not important right now, okay?”

  Nikolai chews his nail, works on it. He stops at a set of lights and waits patiently.

  “Anyway, Januscz is meant to meet this guy tonight but the problem is, see, the problem is he can’t really do that anymore because we kind of got into an argument because the fucker, the fucker he was going to take this shit and split to the mainland and he never said a fucking word to me, he never said one goddamn word to me, he was just going to do this deal and get his ass over to the mainland and he was meant to take me you know, he was meant to. Dracyev had arranged it so we could both go, but Januscz was going to go without me.”

  “Was?”

  “Yeah, was, ’cause I found out what he was planning and I kind of lost it a little, I guess, and I sort of shot him.”

  “Shot him?”

  “Just in the neck or the shoulder or somewhere around there, I’m not sure because I didn’t stick around long enough to make sure, you know — plus, what the hell difference does it make anyway?”

  “Is this the place?” Nikolai asks, pulling onto a quiet street lined with old buildings scarred with graffiti and broken windows. There are several vehicles parked ahead of them but only one that looks drivable.

  “Just at the end here,” Katja tells him. “I need to get some stuff first, you know? At the end there. Anyway, so I sort of shot Januscz and then I just took off because I thought if someone finds out what I’ve done, well, you know, some serious shit is going to happen so I figure well, fuck, he was going to screw me over and leave without me anyway so I’ll do the same to him. Here. Just here.”

  And Nikolai pulls the car over to the curb next to a building in a worse state than most. The steps leading up to the main doorway are partially blocked by two dumpsters stacked end-on-end, and there is the faint sound of bass-heavy music coming from inside.

  “But this guy who’s going to make the exchange, well, he’s expecting Januscz and me to turn up, right, the both of us together, so he’s going to figure something’s up if it’s only me and I’m not the mule, right, I’m not Dracyev’s man, so I need you, I need you to act like you’re Januscz, pretend to be Januscz, that is.”

  “But won’t he know I’m not . . . ?”

  “Januscz isn’t a player, not the player he thinks he is. He’s never done anything like this before, a deal I mean. I don’t know why the fuck Dracyev has suddenly decided he can trust a loser like Januscz to do this sort of thing but he has, he did, so this guy that’s waiting for him, for me, for us, on the boat, he’s wearing a red suit. This guy has never seen or met Januscz before. He’s just been told to wait for a guy and a girl with this vial coming tonight, and in exchange to help them get to the mainland. A red suit.”

  “Right.”

  “So I need you to be Januscz. Pretend to be, I mean. Will you do that?”

  “Just say I’m Januscz?” Nikolai asks.

  “Just say you’re Januscz. Then we’ll be taken to the mainland and we can leave the vial with this guy or take it to someone on the other side or whatever the fuck was meant to happen and then we’re out of there and you can do whatever you want once you’re there. I just need your help to make this exchange.”

  “And I can get off the island? With you?”

  “Yes. I just need to get my stuff first.”

  Nikolai nods and for the first time seems lucid, fully comprehending. “From here?”

  “From here. Just wait for five minutes. Keep the engine running.”

  “Okay.”

  And she smiles, or grimaces at least, and gets out of the car. She is aware of a small handful of people lingering in doorways and the alleys that run between the buildings, but she knows the area well and knows that there are always people lingering in the darkness and shadows. Regardless, she keeps them in her field of vision as she presses herself through the gap between the two dumpsters and climbs the steps.

  The front entrance has long been nailed shut so she walks around to a stack of packing crates leaning up against one of the walls. In the rain she slides the crates to one side and reveals a gap in the brickwork that probably started as a small hole but has since been worked into an opening big enough for her to crawl through.

  The others in the squat have their own entrances, through corroded iron plates bolted over the lower floor’s windows to ramps that lead up to damaged roofing, each inhabitant like a separate species of insect, creating their own personal nests.

  She drops down into the basement chamber that passes for her own nest and instantly feels a strange mix of security and vulnerability. Of claustrophobia.

  Home.

  Punk posters litter the walls, curling where the tape that holds them up has weakened and come away. Packets and wrappers lie like shed skins and there are audio cassettes scattered across the floor. Several guitars sit propped up against a large, stained amp in one corner.

  She grabs one of the guitars, a battered black one with stickers scarring it like surgical wounds. The logos of other local bands and some from the mainland. The torn fragments of dead idols. The renowned and honourable mission statement of the Zapatistas — everything for everyone . . . and nothing for ourselves.

  She slips the guitar over her neck backward so it hangs at an angle down her spine, then tightens the strap to hold it more firmly to her body. She turns to decide what else she needs to take, just the important stuff, just whatever she can’t live without, when she hears the voice.

  “Katja.”

  The man is standing in the doorway to her room, wearing a jet black suit with a rounded collar like that of a priest, and has a thick gold earring in one ear. He carries a clipboard loaded with paper in one hand and a dictation machine in the other.

  The man is Anatoli Aleksakhina and he is her parole officer.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she asks him. She has the vial in her hand, not wanting to risk leaving it in the car with the junkie, and now regrets it. “How did you get in?”

  “You were meant to come to the station today to check in.”

  “I forgot,” she says. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Katja, you should know by now that isn’t acceptable.”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I . . . there was a car accident and I . . .”

  “You’re going to need to come to the station with me.”

  Katja’s heart trip hammers. Her guitar is now strapped too tightly to her to allow her to swing it around like she often did at her gigs, to allow her to turn it into a weapon — again, as she often did at her gigs. Instead she considers the big heavy bass guitar that lies against the wall between herself and Aleksakhina.

  “I can’t,” she tells him. “I’m late for my shift at the diner. I was just stopping off for a change of clothes. I got soaked when I went to help at the car accident.”

  “The car accident,” Aleksakhina repeats. “And where was this?”

  “Across town,” she answers immediately.

  “Has it been reported? Because I could call now and . . .”

  “No. I mean . . . ye
s. I mean, I saw someone else calling. Someone else called. Anyway, there’s no working phones here. Not anymore. But someone’s called already. I think I heard sirens.”

  “You’re still going to need to come with me.”

  And Katja is moving, slightly, just slightly, toward the bass guitar. It feels like she’s been in the room for hours and hopes the junkie will still be waiting for her outside.

  “I can’t,” she insists. “My shift.”

  “You’re taking your guitar to the diner?”

  “I have a gig later. But I need to get to work.”

  “I’ll call your manager. Explain.”

  “I could come later, after I’m finished. I was going to do that anyway.”

  “And what time do you finish?”

  “A little after two am, usually.”

  “Well that’s no good, is it? The conditions of your parole were that you should check in with me once a week. The last time I spoke to you was last Thursday. If you call me after your shift then that will be eight days, not seven.”

  Katja’s jaw flexes. She clamps down on her anger. “Come on. Give me a break.”

  “I’ve already given you several breaks, Katja. That’s why you’re on parole and not on month two of an eight-month stretch.”

  “It’s two hours,” she says, moving closer again to the bass. “What the fuck difference does it make? Please, I’ve got to get to my shift. It’s rehabilitation, right?”

  Aleksakhina shakes his head. “Sorry, Katja. You’re going to have to come with me.”

  “No.”

  And her hand squeezes the vial reflexively.

  “What have you got there?” Aleksakhina asks.

  Katja snatches her hand behind her back then brings it out again slowly when she realizes it’s too late. “Nothing,” she says weakly. Then, “Medicine. For my throat.”

  Aleksakhina doesn’t buy it. “What are you involved in now, Katja?” he asks, and his voice is like that of a father who has discovered his daughter’s dope stash.

  “I’m not involved in anything. I just want to get to my work.”

  “Not tonight. Tonight you’re coming with me.”

  Her face flexes involuntarily, an open display of distaste, and Aleksakhina reads it well because he takes another few steps and is now closer to the bass guitar than Katja. He extends his open hand to her.

  “I can’t,” she tells him.

  “Give it to me, Katja. We can discuss this back at the station.”

  “I can’t go to the station. Not tonight. I promise, I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”

  “You said a minute ago you’d come after your shift was done.” He is now holding a pair of handcuffs.

  “Fine, whatever.”

  “Give me the vial.”

  Her nostrils flare and she slowly, reluctantly, hands it to him. She tongues her lip ring nervously as he looks it over but either he doesn’t recognize the significance of the watermark on the glass or he doesn’t care because he just puts it in his pocket.

  “Come on,” he says, almost touching her arm. He pops one of the cuffs open. “With me.”

  Again Katja’s nostrils flare and again she finds herself considering the bass guitar but now he has the vial, so she can’t risk attacking him and breaking it. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “Okay,” she says finally and lets her head flop dramatically to her shoulders as her third liberty spike already has. “I’ll come. But are those things really necessary?”

  “With you? Yes,” he says as he snaps the cuffs on her.

  They go back out through the room’s main door, not the hatch Katja crawled through. If there is anyone else in the squat at the time, then they are certainly making themselves scarce. If they in any way helped Aleksakhina find her then they were certainly better off doing so. Cuffs or not, Katja is ready to do some damage.

  But the place is silent as she is led up the untrustworthy staircase toward the front door. The parole officer knows not to bother trying to open the door itself, instead pushes aside a flap of corrugated iron that conceals another opening. He gestures for Katja to go through first.

  And she thinks of the junkie as she bends down, having to angle herself to stop the butt of her guitar catching on the rim of the opening, using it as an excuse to go slowly. As she eases herself through, she notices Nikolai’s car still parked farther up the street, partially obscured by the dumpsters, and the engine is still running as she instructed.

  Aleksakhina is right behind her, pushing his way out into the rain.

  She could run, she thinks, sprint over to the junkie’s car and maybe throw herself in the back seat before Aleksakhina knows what is going on and then the two could be speeding off again. But to where? Aleksakhina has the vial, and there was no way she could grab it back from him while still cuffed — not without the risk of breaking it.

  So what?

  What now?

  Nikolai will get a clear view of them once they start toward street level but she can’t risk him doing anything that might mean the vial getting broken.

  “Come on.”

  And Aleksakhina has a hand on the small of her back, and they go down the steps to the pavement, slip between the dumpsters. Katja glances back at Nikolai and he is still sitting there behind the wheel. The engine is running. The lights are off. Aleksakhina’s car is on the other side of the road and he leads her toward it, opens the rear door and puts her inside. She has to lean forward slightly because of the guitar. As the man settles into the driver’s seat, Katja looks over her shoulder and Nikolai is still in the car.

  She doesn’t know if she wants him to come across or not. Perhaps it will be easier to come up with another plan, to dump the junkie while she can and get someone more reliable to help her. One of her band mates.

  Of course.

  Her band mates.

  “Are you arresting me?” she asks through the metal grating that separates her from the front of the vehicle. “Do I get a phone call?”

  “We’ll see,” Aleksakhina tells her, and drives off. He turns the car around and they pass Nikolai.

  And he’s still sitting in the driver’s seat.

  Fucking useless junkie.

  PART TWO

  FUCKING USELESS JUNKIE

  CHAPTER THREE

  He’s smiling, Nikolai.

  He’s smiling because he has the money in his hands now and it feels real, it feels as good as a thick, heavy baggie of really pure stuff or a nice big sparkling rock straight out of the labs of one of the chemists. He has it wrapped up safely inside a plastic bag stuffed inside his coat and his arms are folded across his chest to protect it.

  He worries that someone might come and snatch it from him because he’s done it himself in the past and here, in the area he’s at now with the streets acne’d with porn shops and liquor stores, he is at even greater risk than elsewhere. So he keeps himself to himself as he shuffles toward Kohl’s games arcade and ignores the enticements of the street girls who stumble after him and the dealers whose wares he doesn’t trust. He lets his hair fall before his eyes and focuses on the reflection of the arcade’s glittering lights, letting them draw him in.

  The horrible, clawing feeling that has been lurking in his veins for the past few days has faded as this moment has grown closer. The release will not be far off. The voodoo splatter of sound effects blasts over him as he steps over the entrance to the arcade and a smile splits his face. Games cabinets stretch out on either side of him and the place is alive with all kinds of energy, drunk with it. He recognizes a few other players and they nod to him as he passes but he pays them no attention — there will be time for that later.

  He heads straight for the booth that sits cage-like in the middle of the place. It is hexagonal, plated variously with reinforced glass, thick plastic, and scratched pieces of metal. Trapped inside it, its prisoner, is a morbidly obese woman who looks as if she is in there for life, held fast by the thick wedges of adipose
tissue that seem to be inflated around her. Her hair is grey-blonde and wiry. Her arms are full of blue veins and he can see them pumping blood around. He becomes mesmerized by their beat and she has to snap him out of it by slamming her fist against the glass before him.

  “The fuck you back here for?” she asks. She wears a headset that bites into the soft flesh of her cheek. Her voice comes through a speaker mounted on the side of the hexagon, static-sharp.

  Nikolai tears his eyes from those pulsing veins of hers, then has difficulty deciding whether to speak to her face or to the dislocated voice coming from the speaker. He ends up going back and forth between the two like a puppy that can’t decide which treat to take.

  “I need to see Kohl,” he tells her.

  She blows a bubble from the bright pink gum she is chewing on, pops it. “Uh huh.”

  Blows another bubble. Pops it. Her tongue is fat and veiny.

  Nikolai grins uncontrollably, screws his feet against the ground. Taps the speaker.

  “Hello?” he says into it. “I need to speak to . . .”

  “I heard you. He’s busy.”

  There is the mechanical stutter of gunfire coming from one of the game machines. The whine of a bomb dropping in another. This is a warzone, a private little warzone.

  Nikolai bites down on a finger nail, tastes the bitterness of a piece of polish flaking off in his mouth. “Can I . . . ? Do you . . . ? I need to speak to him.”

  “You as dumb as you look?” the woman blurts. She raises her head and Nikolai is pushed aside by another joystick junkie who shoves notes at her through a gap in the window. The woman pumps a lever and coins spill out across the counter. The man collects them all in a plastic bag then hurries off.

  Nikolai is clenching and unclenching his fists. His mouth moves but he cannot summon the words.

  Then, “Please. Tell him it’s Nikolai. Tell him I need to see him.”

  “Oh, Nikolai,” the fat woman says. “Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?”