Weaponized

by Nicholas Mennuti

  The kitchen is brand-new, practically untouched. Copper pots hang over a center island, and the metal shines under gentle chandelier light.

  Protosevitch hugs the chef. “Your food is the only thing that gives me my home back.” Then he pulls the Magnum from his pants, puts it in the microwave. “So the children don’t get it.”

  A four-year-old wearing a tiara sprints through the kitchen and says, “Hi, Daddy! Bye, Daddy!” while the babysitter chases after her.

  One more gold door and they enter Protosevitch’s private office. Armed guards sit on the bloodred-leather couches, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. There’s an aquarium built into the opposite wall in which iridescent fish float. Protosevitch turns off the television, and the gray face of the screen reflects the tank; glowing fish flicker across like shadow puppets.

  “We’re going to need some alone time,” Protosevitch says to his guards.

  “We’ll be right outside watching everything on camera.”

  Protosevitch waves them off; he’s had enough. “I love them, I need them, but I don’t want them. Know what I mean, Julian?” He crushes his cigarette in a standing swan-shaped ashtray. “I started off poor and I was in danger all the time. I’m not poor anymore”—he motions around the room—“but I’m still in danger all the time. Tell me how that’s fair.”

  There’s a gap in the conversation. Lara realizes she needs to fill it. Kyle’s trying to acclimate, not quite ready to assume his role.

  “You look amazing, Andrei,” she says. “So tan.”

  “We moved to the French Riviera. I love it there. It’d be the most perfect place in the world if it weren’t for the fucking French. I tell you, Lara, I tell you, the French don’t deserve France. Most beautiful country in the world, and its citizens treat it like shit. These ungrateful bastards act like Hitler won, like there’s not a damn thing to be proud of in being French. Go to a café and listen…unbelievable. Where is their pride?”

  “So you left England, then?”

  “I still have my flat in Chelsea and the Fyning Hill estate. My wife is obsessed with England. She grew up under Yeltsin reading Victorian novels and Tolstoy. Russia hasn’t had a proper aristocracy since the revolution, and since that crew is gone, it’s okay for girls to want to be princesses again. To dream of horses and gowns and balls. The English countryside is the only place left that offers that sense of royal tradition. Fucking Bolsheviks destroyed it. Russians who grew up under Yeltsin, see, they have no tradition anymore. You know this. It’s why my wife needs to live in a Jane Austen book.” He scowls. “It’s why Russia is dying, why Europe is dying. There’s no tradition anymore. Who wants to bring children into a world where nothing means anything, where two and two make three? No tradition, no fucking. It’s why in Russia they have to offer people cars and microwaves to fuck. I love Russia. I’m still proud. It’s why I can’t stop fucking. I just fuck and fuck, even more since I got invited”—he spits the word out—“to leave my home. All my kids speak English and want to work in public relations and television. Fuck it all.” He looks to Kyle. “Hey, handsome. Where’s my hug?” He opens his arms. “Where is it?”

  Kyle walks over with trepidation—the same death march you’d take to meet a girlfriend’s father who is twice your size—and holds Protosevitch. His torso is a pack of muscles; motherfucker is a bear, wingspan like his jet’s, the perfect melding of machine and owner. He puts his hands on Kyle’s shoulders. “You look good. Lost weight like I told you to.”

  Kyle pats his belly. “You thought I was fat?” He’s almost offended on behalf of Robinson.

  “No. What did I say to you? Remember?”

  Kyle mimics thinking, gives up.

  “What I said was, you’re too young to gain weight like that.”

  Protosevitch motions for them to sit. He walks over to his desk, pulls a paper bag out of the top drawer, and points to Kyle. “Little surprise for you.” He sits down on the couch opposite them, legs spread wide apart. The way the man walks and sits—pure, unfettered cock. He holds the paper bag up. “Remember last time we saw each other?”

  Kyle winces. He’s been waiting for a question he can’t answer; he just didn’t expect it so soon. “God…I can’t.” He leans his head back. Don’t bleed. Don’t bleed. “It must have been…God…”

  “I don’t either. It’s been that fucking long. Must be at least ten years.” Protosevitch tosses the bag over to him. “A gift from Marseilles,” he says. “Last time we met, you couldn’t get enough of it. I remember it was your favorite in the world. And you would know.”

  Kyle opens the bag, looks inside; everything’s bubble-wrapped. “Should I open it?”

  “Yes, you should.”

  He tears through the packaging. A dozen fat vials of uncut cocaine.

  Protosevitch smiles. “You’re shocked, right?”

  Kyle nods, says, “Mmmm…” Having trouble finding a complete word to sum it all up.

  “Didn’t think I remembered?” Protosevitch nods. “I always pay attention to what my friends love.”

  Kyle smiles, tries to keep his reaction under wraps, and passes the bag to Lara. “Thank you, Andrei. You’re too good to me.”

  “You’re among people who love you,” Protosevitch says.

  Lara opens the bag and her eyes go huge, a puppy whacked with a paper.

  Protosevitch cracks up, leans over, and slaps Kyle’s knee. “And since you’re here in the flesh, we can do it up together. Like old times. You first. You’re the guest of honor.”

  “No, really…you go first.”

  “Nonsense.” Protosevitch laughs.

  Lara puts her hand on Kyle’s leg. “Andrei wants you to go first.”

  “But I want him to go first…and then you.”

  “But he doesn’t want that,” Lara says.

  Protosevitch laughs, looks to Kyle. “You take a sharing class? Last time I was with you, you’d break the arm of anyone who touched your stuff. You were all nose on that trip.”

  “Was he?” Lara laughs.

  “All nose. Nothing the fuck but it.”

  Lara laughs, grabs Kyle’s knee, too hard for it to be meant as affection. “I’ll bet he was. Show me.”

  Kyle sucks on his lower lip. You fucking bitch. “So…I’m up.” He opens a vial slowly, ’cause he’s never done coke before. He’s never done anything harder than pot, commonly considered a gateway drug, but not if your sole pot experience consisted of smoking up, watching The Fifth Element, nearly shitting your pants from paranoia, and hiding under your best friend Neil’s bed.

  So Kyle’s abstained from drugs for seventeen years, and he’s getting reintroduced with uncut French cocaine, kind of like a thirty-five-year-old virgin who decides to get it all over with in a gangbang.

  Kyle sprinkles a trail of coke on the table and pulls out a credit card from Robinson’s wallet.

  “The fuck are you doing?” Protosevitch asks.

  “I was going to cut it,” he says, thinking back to every time he’s seen a movie character do coke.

  “Its uncut, baby. You just need a straw and away you go.” Protosevitch looks down at the table. “Give yourself a real line.” Kyle keeps sprinkling more and more. Protosevitch smiles. “Now, that’s a real Robinson line. Whenever I’m among friends, I pour out a nice line like that and I call it my Robinson line. And everyone who knows you laughs.”

  Lara hands him a dollar bill rolled into a straw. Kyle grabs it, pissed off, and says like a petulant teenager, “Thanks.” He plunges his head down and snorts the line.

  It hits him in the heart, one hard shot, then branches out in clusters of pounding nodes. Pure electricity pulses through his veins. The center of his body radiates heat, throws off sparks.

  And that’s the first thirty seconds.

  Instinctively, he grabs the table for support, afraid he’s going to die.

  Then he stabilizes, throws his head back, rubs his eyes, and feels the coke drip down the back of his th
roat like granulated snot, like sleeping on your back with a cold. He coughs. “Holy shit,” he says.

  “One hundred percent pure,” Protosevitch says. “You’re not gonna neglect the other nostril, are you? It’s gonna get jealous.”

  Kyle lays out another line, looks at Lara and Protosevitch, and inhales it.

  And before Kyle’s even aware, he’s out of his seat like it’s on fire, walking around, shaking out his hands, doing a kind of coke-fueled chicken dance. “Andrei…Andrei, that is the real shit, friend.” He raises his voice. “That is just the real shit, right fucking there.”

  Protosevitch and Lara crack up, although Lara’s laugh has an undertone of nerves. “Getting loud.”

  Protosevitch swats that away. “No worries. The room is soundproof.”

  That snaps Kyle back to his senses. A soundproof room. That sounds like a reason to worry.

  Lara sprinkles a line for herself, ponders it.

  Protosevitch walks to a small fridge in the corner of his office, takes out a jug, sets down three glasses, and pours a shot in each one. “Robinson, I made this myself.”

  Kyle notes the glass jug. “What is it…is it moonshine?” He’s talking fast and he can’t feel his teeth, but he’s in an incredible mood. “Is it moonshine? That’s moonshine, isn’t it?”

  “No, baby.” Protosevitch hands a glass to Kyle and then to Lara. “Red-pepper-infused vodka.”

  “Oh God,” Kyle says.

  Lara’s rubbing her face. “Holy shit,” she says. “I can’t feel it…my face is gone.”

  Protosevitch drops a line for himself, an enormous trail, like directions on a treasure map. “A Robinson line,” he says, and his head plunges. He finishes up, resurfaces, and pours another line, even bigger. “That one’s not a Robinson line. Know what it is? Take a guess.”

  Kyle shakes his head and can’t stop, like a fish flopping on land.

  Lara says, “No idea.”

  “It’s an Andrei line,” he says, then cracks up and snorts the line. He picks up the glass of vodka and raises it. “To us. Back in business.” He tosses the shot down fast, like it’s water.

  Kyle raises it to his lips. Lara leans over and says under her breath, “Do it fast. All at once.”

  He does, and as it blazes a trail down his throat, he springs to his feet again, screams, and then, to stop screaming, he switches to yelling, “Andrei.” He pumps his fist in the air. “You know how to party, my motherfucker.” And he keeps on yelling. “Oh my God…”

  Protosevitch is doubled over on the couch. “That’s the man I love. There he is. Just like Marseilles. This is just like Marseilles.”

  Lara pulls Kyle down to the couch.

  Protosevitch leans back, lights a cigarette, then tosses his pack to Kyle. “You forget yours?”

  Kyle takes out one of the cigarettes. Why not? He’s already tried uncut coke. He’s never smoked before, so he thinks back to Neil, whom he affectionately calls the human ashtray, and tries to summon his essence. Kyle pops the cigarette in his mouth, lights it up, takes a long drag, and stifles the urge to simultaneously cough and vomit.

  Protosevitch leans forward, cigarette in his mouth. “I was flattered when you wanted my help on this one. I hadn’t heard from you in a while. I thought you wrote me off too.”

  Kyle drags on the cigarette, head swirling, drunk, stoned, semistupefied, but—and he hesitates to admit it—kind of enjoying the hell out of it. “Why?”

  “Well. I’m damaged goods. Too hot for most.”

  Kyle nods. “We all are.”

  Protosevitch laughs, and Kyle makes out at least three gold teeth. “But you didn’t get kicked out of your country, mon ami.”

  Kyle can’t help but smile. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  “They’ll never get rid of you. Baby, you are America. Only America could give the world Marilyn Monroe.” He sprinkles another line. “Because she was America. She bedded down with everyone but was furious when anyone called her a slut. That’s you. That’s all Americans.” He sucks up the line. “That’s why Islam hates you more than anyone else. It’s not just the foreign policy…it’s the promiscuity… the fact you dangle your sexy little pussy in the holy land, sell it to the highest bidder.” Protosevitch leans back, trying to make himself coke comfortable. “You’re just like Russia before we went down.”

  “No,” Lara says. “I remember when it happened to us. The States are a democracy. It won’t end the same.”

  Kyle interjects, speaking from a coke-fueled site of knowledge and passion, “You really think democracy will protect you from the state?”

  Protosevitch raises his glass. “And this is from a man who knows. A man who has been undermining democracy for the better part of his life.”

  Kyle sinks into himself. He’s high, he’s muddled, but Protosevitch struck a nerve. Undermining democracy. Christ, how much of Robinson does Kyle really have lurking inside? Was there a reason, outside of his looks, that Robinson chose him? Maybe he sensed some karmic kinship, something Kyle’s been hiding from himself all these years—a certain leniency concerning the foundations of freedom.

  Protosevitch leans in closer and puts his huge hand on Kyle’s knee. Touching a normal human body is like palming a basketball to this fucking guy. “It does mean something to me that you came out of the cold to visit me. Even people without your…profile don’t take the risk these days.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No.” Protosevitch is adamant. “It means something. It means we are friends. And it pleases me that you are here in person to collect the fruits of having me as a friend.” He gets up, walks over to his desk, and selects a key from an overflowing ring. “I really outdid myself on this one, Julian. I was so sad at the thought of handing this over to one of your minions and not seeing the look on your face when you opened it.”

  Kyle says under his breath, “The hell is he doing?” while Protosevitch opens the triple-locked bottom cabinet of his slate desk.

  Lara’s response is a shoulder shrug. Kyle mimics her shrug, exasperated, and mutters: “That’s all you got?”

  She shushes him, whispers, “Let’s see where it goes.”

  Protosevitch drops back down on the couch, whistling, and places two medium-size flat-panel cases on the table. “These can take a beating. I know you’re gonna be working in tight quarters.” He raps atop the cases with a boulder-size knuckle. “Ethafoam interiors. Static control. Retractable handle. Even had them sprayed and powdered with chemical-agent-resistant coating.”

  “Thank you,” Kyle says, hoping that’s the right tone.

  Protosevitch can barely contain himself. “Open them up.”

  Kyle’s positive there’s a fucking bomb in there, swears he hears it ticking. He knows it’s irrational, knows he’s still jacked up on coke and paranoid. He knows all these things, but he’s still convinced it’s a fucking bomb.

  He closes his eyes, pops the release latch, and hears the top opens with a whisper-click.

  The smell is the first thing that strikes him. The case is brand-new, freshly oiled.

  His eyes flutter open. He breathes in through his nose. It’s not a bomb. Not at all.

  Although what’s inside isn’t what he’d call a major situational improvement.

  It’s individual silver sections of the biggest fucking rifle Kyle has ever seen.

  “I picked it out myself,” Andrei says. “I knew you’d be working tight, so I had an engineer break it down into two small cases instead of one big one. That way you won’t get weighed down. Isn’t it beautiful? I mean, it is, right? Right?”

  Lara pushes Kyle out of the way. She doesn’t to want to minimize his importance in the conversation, but she is lusting after this piece of hardware. She runs her hand over the collapsed stock and the suppressor. “This is British.”

  “Right you are, my love,” Protosevitch says.

  She puts the pieces inside their slots. “What’s the range?”


  “Up to fifteen hundred meters.” Protosevitch turns to Robinson. “That’ll get the job done, right?”

  Kyle has no clue. However, he’s hard-pressed to imagine a job that a gun like this couldn’t get done. “I’m certain.”

  Lara runs her hand over the pieces, listing off the attributes in a mesmerized state. “Bolt-action…iron sights…twenty-five-by-fifty-six scope…adjustable bipod…it’s all here.”

  Protosevitch leans back into the couch, his bulk swallowed by throw pillows. “Did I make you happy?”

  Kyle has no words, can only nod, but he does so enthusiastically. He feels like that’s how one should respond to such a gift. Very enthusiastically.

  Lara holds and balances the pieces in her hands. “It’s lighter than it looks.”

  “Has to be,” Protosevitch says. “Guys have gotta be able to lug that around the desert all day.”

  As Lara lusts and Protosevitch beams over his successful acquisition, Kyle’s stress decamps from his nose and sets up separate condominiums of pain all across his face. His jaw throbs; his eyes blink and tear. He can hear the blood beating in his ears.

  Holy shit, his whole face screams. This is happening. A displaced Russian oligarch just gifted you a goddamn hand cannon.

  Protosevitch leans into the two of them. He’s unable to stay in one position or, for that matter, one mood for more than thirty seconds. He seems to exist to destabilize. “For the thing tomorrow,” he says, “you need something else?” He nods toward the case. “You’re gonna want to be carrying something smaller than that.”

  Kyle knows he needs to calm down, to get deep into character, because this is the opening he’s been waiting for. He has to make Protosevitch feel comfortable, feel like he’s having the kind of conversation he and Robinson have presumably had before. He tries to get the words out, but they stick on his tongue and roll out in a lexical blur.

  Luckily, Lara intercedes. “Smaller than that, yes. But still heavy, right?”

  Protosevitch smiles, nods toward Kyle. “Like you always say: A body is something to be wounded. They think that way. So must we. You go heavy.”

  Kyle dives in, finds his voice. “What’s the head count tomorrow? How many you figure?”