by R. J. Lewis
“I don’t say lines to women,” I tell her, seriously.
Her smile wavers. “Right.”
“You’re not used to flattery, are you, Alina?”
She looks anywhere but at me. “Why the hell would I be used to flattery, Nikolai? We’re in the Estate. Any compliment around here consists of telling me to undress, or asking me how much I charge by the hour.”
I don’t understand it, but my chest tightens to a painful point. “You wouldn’t, though.”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Charge by the hour.”
Her eyes widen and then darken all at once. I see her hand twitch, like she wants to hit me, but she fists it instead. “Would I come to you if I was that kind of girl?” she seethes.
I frown, thinking about what I offered her this morning. It’s like the elephant in the room neither of us want to acknowledge. “What happened last night?” I ask, edgily. “Have you thought about it? The way it felt.”
All toughness fades from her. Now she’s burning with humiliation. “Stop it, Nikolai.”
I move in a little closer, my voice dropping lower as I add, “I can’t stop thinking about it, Alina. You tasted delicious, and then you stand there in your tiny little shorts this morning, cheeks red, staring at me and my lips, thinking about the same thing I was. Did you think about doing it again? What would it feel like if we pushed the boundaries a little? Because the electricity was already surging. Imagine the circuits we’d blow if we kept going.”
She stares back at me, but she’s not really looking. She’s back there. To last night. Remembering it. Fuck, all I do is remember it. Everything about this girl is tantalizing. A temptation that just sits before me, screaming to be taken.
She swallows audibly and wavers back. “You’ve got your money, and I’m going to leave now.”
Goddammit. She’s twisty, this one. “Not going to confront the conversation?”
She grimaces. “Nikolai –”
“There’s no rush to go.”
“I have to go home. I’ve had a long day. The rest of us don’t collect money and punch faces whenever it suits us.”
“If you want employment for such a position, I can make a vacancy just for you, though I envisioned those delicate fingers wrapped around other things than a neck.”
Her face breaks and she laughs in disbelief. “You’re a smug jackass.”
“I just want your company. You’re off work. We can grab something to eat –”
“No, thank you,” she interrupts curtly.
“Then stay.” I feel like a desperate fool begging her, but I can’t resist. The girl deserves to be chased. Every girl deserves to be chased once in a while.
She shakes her head. “Watching naked girls dance isn’t my thing” – her voice hardens as she adds – “and I’m sure I’m keeping you from your show.”
She’s referring to Valeria, and I want to laugh and tell her how unexciting Valeria was. She moves to leave, but I grab her arm to stop her. “I would rather be talking to you.”
This time she looks me dead in the eye and tells me evenly, “Unless there’s a loan on the table, there’s nothing to discuss, Nikolai.”
I sigh slowly. So twisty. There’s no talking to this girl without leading back to this. “Back to the loan again, Alina?”
“I need it.” She sounds remarkably vulnerable, and it takes a lot for me to ignore it.
“You know my answer.”
Her face falls. “You give people far worse off than me money. All I want is a bit of breathing room for bills –”
“I don’t want to know your situation,” I interrupt, repeating what I’ve said to her before.
“Then unless this is about business, I don’t want to be here a second longer,” she retorts, defiantly.
How did we go from pleasant to this? This girl isn’t easy to crack. In fact, it’s a bit infuriating. Or maybe I’m spoiled because I’ve never had to work so bleeding hard to be in a woman’s presence.
“You want to make this about business?” I snap, frowning as my patience runs its course. “We can do that.” I place the envelope back in her hand. “You can tell Ivan and his idiot nephew that we’re long past the point of paying me back. And that if he wants things to settle, we can do it man-to-man, like the way you just witnessed.”
She looks panicked. “I can’t return with this envelope.”
“Or what?” I growl out.
Sullen, she presses her lips together and doesn’t respond.
My anger instantly tapers off with that look. I sigh again, more raggedly. “He can’t do anything to you,” I tell her, softer now. “I won’t let him.”
Her gaze flickers to mine. “I’m not your business. He can do what he wants.”
“When Ivan sent you to give me money, he made you my business. I won’t let the old fool touch your position. You understand?”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Oh, rybka.” I shake my head slowly. “What happens when you keep underestimating me? I prove you wrong. Ivan is in my pocket like most of the people in this shithole. He’ll do as I say. That’s not a promise, it’s a guarantee.”
Her eyes go distant, and slowly she nods, surprised by my words. “I’ll tell Ivan what you said.”
“Good.”
She begins to leave when I put my hand out to the wall, blocking her. She looks at me, this silent plea to let her go written in her eyes. I ignore it and come closer, dropping my head to her level, my face inches from her. “Is there anything else you’d like to discuss, Alina?”
This morning. I want to discuss this morning. Take my offer, kitten.
She senses there’s meaning behind my words, because she gives me a long look. She’s battling it. “No,” she finally whispers.
I tense my jaw and reluctantly drop my arm. “Until we meet next then, rybka.”
She nods and I watch her walk away. She looks once over her shoulder at me, and when my eyes connect with hers, she quickens her pace and looks forward. When she opens the door and disappears from view, I remove my cigarette from my pocket and twirl it around my fingers, lost in thought.
She is difficult. I sense I barely know just how difficult she is. But at the same time, she’s magnetizing. I’m drawn to her orbit, to the x-factor that is her. Though I struggle to pinpoint the exact reason behind it.
I don’t give her a loan because I don’t want to look at her as a number, but I’m conflicted. There’s so much vulnerability bleeding out of her. Life’s punched her in the gut, I know that. At the same time, I try to tell myself business is just business, and I ought to put aside the attraction and give her what she wants, even if she’s not good for the debt.
Then I remember all the brotherhood used to tell me. “You’re too sympathetic, and you’re weak because of it. Stop feeling. The Sokolov aren’t pussies. We never kneel; not for our enemy, and certainly not for any woman.”
They’ve imprinted themselves onto me, those fuckers, because I still behave the way they want me to, even from this distance.
But I still won’t make her a number. I’m not prepared to push her away just yet. Alina intrigues me, and she cuts me too with her pained eyes.
Shortly after, Andrei finds me and hands me an envelope with the name GRESHAM on the front.
I don’t feel victory when I take it.
Instead, I crave a different battle.
Chapter Ten.
For a few days, we eat a lot of toast and butter. I make pasta with premade pesto and that jar is my holy saviour. Scarlett is a fiend with her food. She eats it all without even waiting for it to cool.
I spend a lot of my time counting down to payday, and when it finally comes, my joy turns to madness as the bills start flooding in not even a day later.
The electricity bill one day, and then the gas bill the next. I think the worst mail I received is Jared’s rent increase for next month. An extra forty dollars on top of rent I am barely making as it is. T
hat is an extra four hundred and eighty dollars a year. That number makes me sick.
I wonder if this is even legal, but I’m not educated enough about the tenancy laws to know what to do, or if it’ll cost me just to fight it. Once again, I feel like an inferior idiot fighting the system that just wants to keep knocking me down a peg.
None of this would have injured me so much had I had my savings, which included putting money aside every single week for bills at the end of the month. I’d started it long ago when Mother was working a nine to five job too, and as a result I was always on top of it. I knew there would be rainy days. She could never seem to stick to a job longer than a couple months before she went on her alcohol bends. I did everything possible not to touch my savings. If shit got tough, I started to sell some things around the apartment to make ends meet. But now there’s nothing, and even if there was a trinket or two to sell, it wouldn’t be enough anyway.
I’m stuck.
Again.
I’m currently sitting cross-legged on my ragged couch, staring down at the remainder of money I have all lined up in neat little rows in front of me. Then I look at the electricity bill and I remove a chunk of the money to one side. I repeat the process for the gas, removing another chunk, and then there’s rent and I’m utterly short. None of this even includes food, or necessities like new shoes for Scarlett. I’ve seen the sores on her feet and I can’t in good conscience make her hack another week in them.
I can possibly push back the bills another month. It’ll just mean having late fees. Again. But it doesn’t solve the inevitable: that I’ll struggle again next month. Pushing it back isn’t my style. I have to tackle it on now or else I’ll be neck deep in bills.
I pace the apartment and answer my growling belly by downing a glass of cold water. I’m halfway into the glass when I hear a shriek coming from my neighbours. I pause mid-gulp as a man hollers in return and the sounds of banging on the walls and crashing of glass follows. I stand still and quiet for a long time. He verbally abuses her, calls her a useless bitch over and over again, and I know there’s nothing I can do to help her.
I could call the cops and make a noise complaint, but they won’t show. And even if they did, they would take a couple hours to come, and by then whatever has happened will be over and done with. Plus, there is the risk of that man knowing I called them. I’ve bumped into him a few times, and he frightens me with his death glares and tight fisted hands. I can’t afford being a target when I have a little girl under the same roof. Just thinking about Scarlett has me moving to the bedroom, anxiety a coiled ball within.
She’s fast asleep, and watching her like that at her most vulnerable point makes me feel this strong urge to protect her. I don’t know if it’s purely instinct, like the way a mother protects her young, or if it’s just how deeply I love her. It’s probably both.
I crawl into bed next to her and bring her into my chest. I hold her tightly and squeeze my eyes shut as the sounds of screams continues, a bunch of curses and more shattering of something else. I cringe and my skin breaks out in sweat. I tremble everywhere, knowing there is a thin wall between us and danger.
And I…I can’t protect her.
I try but…I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
It’s all so daunting and at times I can’t take a good breath in. The walls are closing in on me. Money, Mother, work – everything just feels like it’s too much.
I’m scared. God, I’m scared of life. I’m scared of this void growing bigger inside me.
“SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE!!!!!”
I jolt in bed as a fist pounds into the wall above my head.
My trembles get worse. I wrap my arms tighter around Scarlett and hum soothingly in her ear in case she wakes up in fright. My melody is shaky, and I think I’m doing this more for myself at the moment.
The sound of footsteps follow and my entire unit shakes as the front door next to mine opens and slams shut violently. The man stomps out and down the hall, muttering more curses.
Then there is sobbing.
Utter devastation from the woman on the other side of the wall.
We’re both crying. I think it’s for the same reason.
Life is hard.
We want to give up, but we can’t.
We’re stuck.
It’s only when the tears dry and my eyes look out the window and into the night sky that I start to calm down. Scarlett hasn’t stirred once through the noise; my baby sister is just so hungry for sleep. She takes her breaths next to me, and I breathe along with her, gripping tight my necklace.
One breath at a time, Alina. I tell myself. One breath at a time.
The shakes come to a stop, and the sobs next door cease. I feel better, and in the peace that follows I hear words echo in my mind.
You give me something, I pay. Think about it carefully.
He told me to figure it out, and well, I have figured it out, but I can’t be sure I’m right, or that I want to be right.
I haven’t seen Nikolai since the strip club, and the week dragged because of it. It doesn’t help Ivan’s been giving me death glares and hasn’t said more than five words to me total since I returned with that envelope. He never growled at me for it, though, or threatened my job. I know it has something to do with Nikolai. I wonder why he’s disappeared like this. I wonder if he’s waiting for me, if he’s drawing me out.
He was so confident I’d go back, but I can’t do it. No way. I’ll figure this out without him.
I have to.
Chapter Eleven.
It’s Sunday, my day off. I’m doing something that goes against all my money troubles. I’m buying Scarlett shoes, and she is so fucking happy. As I stand in line to pay for them, she tugs me on my shorts and I look down at her questioningly.
“You don’t have to buy them,” she whispers to me. “I’m okay in my other ones.”
The other ones she speaks of are on her right now, and they look vile. She keeps having to walk on the sides of her feet just to stop feeling pain in her toes.
“I want to get them,” I tell her, smiling because there’s something so gratifying about looking after your loved one. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to wear Little Kitty around the block.”
Scarlett’s cheeks glow as she looks down at the box of shoes she’s carrying. They’re open, the shoes on display, these pink little light-ups that have the Little Kitty face on the sides. They suit her so much.
When it’s time to scan it through, I pick her up and she hands it to the cashier. I give her the money to pay for them, two ten dollar notes that she hands over, this look of pure joy on her face. The cashier looks between us, and I know she’s wondering if I’m her mother. People often think that when they see us for the first time.
“Pretty shoes,” the cashier remarks, smiling at her.
Scarlett beams. I can tell she wants to say something, but she fights the urge and just nods. She’s too shy and closed off, and I wish I could shake that out of her a little.
Right before we leave the shopping centre, I sit her down at a bench near the entrance doors and pull her old shoes off. I take the new shoes out of the box and slide them on her feet.
“People are looking at us,” she says, suddenly conscious.
I quickly glance around and catch all kinds of expressions of people passing us. One is pity, another happiness, and the one that makes me feel sickest the most is the look of disgust on a young woman heading out the door. She’s carrying bags of just-bought shit in her manicured hands, and when our eyes connect, she blatantly shakes her head at me.
Something inside of me tears wide open. The pain of judgment too thick to ignore. I look away from her and back at the task at hand. There’s no point saying something. No point glaring back either. I can’t show my nasty side in front of Scarlett, but really I want to fucking roar at the woman and scream, “Not everyone can afford a plastic face, you fake ass cunt!”
I don’t.
&
nbsp; I can’t.
It’s a festering itch I have to swallow for the sake of my sister.
“They’re probably all looking at your shoes,” I tell Scarlett in a cheery voice. It’s a bit shaky because underneath that fake voice is an anger that swirls like a vortex inside of me.
Why do people judge so much?
Scarlett watches me closely, trying to determine if I’m being serious or lying. I’m pretty sure she buys it because she goes back to watching me. When they’re on, I ditch her old shoes in the nearest bin. Then we take the bus back home, and Scarlett’s staring at them the entire way as she swings her feet back and forth.
I look out the window, enjoying this tiny moment of victory. Fuck that woman with her look of disgust, and fuck every bill that wants to bleed me dry. I won’t let that negativity ruin my mood. I had to get her shoes. I couldn’t push it back, and even though it hasn’t helped our situation, I feel in my heart it was the right thing to do.
The streets pass by one after the other. People go from wearing trendy business clothes to worn out slacks and tanks. The residents jokingly call this side of the city the Estate, mostly because it sounds posh even though it’s not. The contrast between where I’ve just come from and the Estate is incredible, and I wonder just how the other side lives. What is life like not having to constantly worry about what to eat tomorrow? They must be grateful and happy for it. God knows I would be.
I perk up when the bus slows down in traffic, stopping right across from Nikolai’s pawn shop. I think fate is laughing at me because Nikolai is actually outside, his arms on top of his expensive car, looking down at the ground as we pass.
I can’t see his face, but his body is taut like something is wrong. I wonder what it is. Maybe it’s the reason he’s been away from the store for so long. Something twists in my chest. I think it’s sympathy, but I don’t know why I feel it.
I’m almost tempted to get off the bus right there and then and act oblivious as I walk by him. What would he do if he saw me? Would he stop me? Would my false act of surprise be convincing enough?