by Amarie Avant
“Sir, you cannot park there!” He yells from the sidewalk. “Sir, you cannot park there!”
“Give me a fucking ticket,” I tell him.
Anna comes running down the slope of wet grass. She slides and almost falls. Natasha is glancing around; her caramel complexion is already red from all the crying she’s done. But she seems to be deciphering whether to continue crying or not. She yawns into my arms.
“Igor is… Igor is…” I shift Natasha into my left arm as Anna clings to my right side. I’m holding her 110-pound frame in one arm and Natasha in the other when she tells me something that makes me wanna fucking hit the ground. Anna sobs, “My husband is dead, Vassili.”
I’m too in shock to make a move. I glance at her in confusion, but the cop asks, “Sir, what is your relationship to Mrs. Resnov?”
Anna sobs louder which prompts Natasha to burst into another round of waterworks.
“She is my cousin’s wife. Igor Resnov, is he…” My jaw clenches. Fuck, I cannot say it. My pupils expand as I notice a bloody mess on the welcome mat near the door. There’s yellow tape, a dude in a suit and more uniform cops there. Some other guy, with a SID uniform on, is taking photos. This is fucking real. I’ve seen dead bodies, mangled, tortured, all fucked-over looking. My father would have his enemies lined up. But that was a different time. They weren’t family. The drum of my heart in my ears causes much difficulty for me to hear. “Igor is he…”
“Yes, sir, pronounced dead on the scene.”
“Where is Malich and Yuri?” I ask him, rubbing Anna’s back, and holding Natasha to my neck. Fuck, my baby isn’t to see shit like this. Never.
“A man of the similar age as Igor Resnov was also taken to the hospital.”
My legs fail me. Anna crumples to the ground, I go with her, placing Natasha in my lap as we fall. Yuri is closer than blood to me.
“He should make it, sir.” The Latino says more sympathetically. “Malich Resnov was just escorted downtown for questioning.”
***
I’m at Cedar Sinai, Natasha has fallen asleep in Anna’s arms. The poor woman seemed to hold my one-year-older like a teddy bear, and it brings them both comfort, as I pace around, waiting for word on Yuri. Igor and Anna’s four children are seated in the same row, heads all leaning to the left. The youngest, Albina was a few months younger than Natasha when I brought Zariah to the house for the first time. Albina is now a toddler; her head is rested on the side of Natasha. It’s three in the morning when Malich is released from the jailhouse.
He’s still in his pajamas with a camel coat. My uncle’s skin is white as snow as he enters.
I go to him. “What the fuck happened?”
“Your father.” My uncle’s searing glower moves away from me for a moment. There’s a war within him. He’s angry at my motherfucking father! Malich continues in a serious tone, “Anatoly left us wide open for retaliation. This has something to do with the government official in Italy that Danushka took out for him, I know it. They came up, disrespectful motherfuckers, drove by, shot up the house. Igor went out first. Then Yuri. Before your cousin went down, Yuri confirmed they were Italian.”
I step away from Malich as he sinks down into a chair. I head down the hall to call my father when I see Zariah and Ms. Haskins rush into the double doors. My wife’s face is wet with tears.
“Baby, we’ve called jails, hospitals! Why aren’t you answering your phone?” She’s angry and shaking. “I was just told a Resnov was here, I thought it was you. Don’t ever do that, baby. Don’t ever leave me wondering.”
Zariah rushes into my arms. She’s hugging and hitting me. “I almost died,” she says. And then Zariah sniffles, rubs away her own tears and looks at me. She realizes I haven’t been hugging her back.
“My kazen is dead,” I say the words for the first time tonight.
“Oh,” she clings to me again. “Yu—”
“Igor. Igor… is dead. Yuri is here. He’s in the OR.”
“Oh my god,” Her mother says.
“Natasha is asleep, with Anna.” I nudge my head. Ms. Haskins starts off as I finally hold Zariah tightly. I can feel tears burning in my eyes. The last time I was torn to tears, Sasha died.
Zariah
I have no words to express holding my husband, the fighter, as he cries. I’m clinging to cold, chiseled stone and his tears are falling like rain, dampening my hair. And then his tears turn into a roar. His hot muscles are on fire with rage. “Vassili, baby, you have to calm down.”
I hold onto him tighter. Jesus, we need you now, I’m silently praying. Vassili begins to push me away. With all the strength I have in me, I try to cling onto him, but can’t grasp him hard enough. He starts outside into the darkness, and I kick off my high heels to hurry after him.
“Vassili, wait, wait please,” I call out, almost slipping on the tile. I run across the mat and through the sliding glass doors.
The cement is warm beneath my feet. It’s truly one of those heat drenching nights, but I feel cold and alone. “Vassili, wait, baby!”
He doesn’t. He continues past the stretch of grass and fountains. And then stops at the beginning of the parking lot to pull out his phone. Vassili is calling someone, I can hear the faint sound of it connecting. My heart lurches in my throat with each ring. My eyes plead with his, but I swear that he sees straight through me as if I’m not even there anymore. My stomach turns over. This isn’t right. This isn’t right.
He says something in Russian. Since he is teaching our daughter, I decipher the words, and believe he just called his ‘father.’ That’s not right, he’s never called Anatoly ‘father.’
I listen as he makes a threat, “The next time I see you, you’re dead. If you allowed this shit to fucking happen,” Vassili stops speaking. “I will make due all those times I threatened to murder you with my bare hands, piz’da. You will be dead.” He clicks the off button and fists the iPhone in his hand, again.
A rush of blood crashes through me. Vassili was addressing Anatoly in a voicemail. Damn, I tell myself that Vassili is not like his father, not like anyone else in his family. Tears cloud my visions as he finally stands before me. Thank god, the night is warm, because now, I pull away from his touch. “You promised me, Vassili.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Zariah? I need you!”
“You need me? Hello, we are a team, we need each other, Vassili. You just threatened your father’s life! You can’t do that.” I want to hug him, but Vassili needs to understand a few things. I glare him in the eye. “You cannot threaten your father’s life, Vassili! He isn’t just any person. He might try to kill—”
“The fuck I can’t,” his harsh tone feels like a tornado against my skin. “If Anatoly had anything to do with what occurred tonight, then I will do what I said, Zar. I am a man of my word.”
“A man of your word?” I wipe the tears away and step closer to him. My body wavers, as my gaze seeks his. The darkness of his gaze is tangible, and it sends fear shooting through my spirit. I need to correct this now. Vassili is better than stooping to his father’s level. So, I make the discussion personal. “Vassili, you told me you didn’t want shit to do with what your family does! Vassili Karo Resnov, you promised to me, in my childhood bedroom, the day we broke up that you’d never allow yourself to become like them.”
“Dah! I promised.” He points a stiff hand. “I won’t. But I promise you, now, my beautiful wife, anybody touches my family gets what they deserve. Thus said, any other assurances I made will have to be forfeited, no matter what.”
I rub the tears from my face.
Malich steps outside. “Vassili, you need to go home with your wife.”
His voice is dead. Gone is the always smiling man who in his generous ways loves to cook for people. The man that will ask you what your favorite dish is, if he hasn’t perfected it, by the time you see him, he is a master of it by the next time. That man has disappeared. In his stead, is a man who looks just like the documenta
ries about … Anatoly Resnov. Someone so far gone, without a soul, that it scares me to look into his eyes. And what hurts the most? Vassili just agreed to become the same type of man. I clutch my chest. These two men are better than this.
“Go home you two,” Malich dismisses us.
“Nyet!” Vassili responds. “I will help rectify this.”
“You are a fighter, Vassili, not a murderer. I don’t fucking want your help, I don’t need it.” Malich turns around and heads back into the hospital.
“Listen to him,” I tell my husband. Although, for the first time, I believe that his uncle had tossed the words out at him. Malich wasn’t his usual proud self about Vassili’s fighting skills, no, that was a low blow.
***
My mother drives my car home, and I drive Vassili’s Mercedes. Though I’ve been praying within my mind for the last half an hour, I navigate the streets in silence. Vassili is ramrod still. He hasn’t spoken a single word to me since my mother and Natasha came outside. My heart is conflicted about him. He’s seated less than a foot away and I feel him growing even further from my heart.
“I’m sure that Yuri will be okay,” I try.
I only have the subtle rise of his broad chest to remind me that he has heard me, even if my words do not penetrate.
***
At home, my mother’s eyes are filled with sorrow as she heads to the nursery with Natasha. I close the double doors to our master suite, and turn around. Vassili is seated on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I say kneeling down before him. My head goes to his lap, and I cry into it, reminiscing on a time not so long ago, Vassili hated to see my tears, sad or happy. He’d kiss them away. Malich’s family is his family. Not Anatoly. And my husband still isn’t over the abandonment by his mother at the hands of his father. It’s in my heart to get the truth through to his thick skull but Vassili doesn’t listen. Somewhere within him, he has to know that Malich is grieving, too, and that he doesn’t have to take actions into his own hands.
“Stop, crying, Zariah.” Vassili’s thick, Russian accent breaks through the silence. There’s no heart in his voice, but he says the words, “I fucking hate it when you cry.”
Up until tonight, we’ve yet to be in a situation where I saw tears in Vassili’s eyes. Even when he mentions morsels of time with his mother in the past, he seemed angrier at her and her situation that sympathetic. His dark gaze is glossed.
“Get in bed,” he nudges his head.
Damn, his apathetic tone, and the way his jaw is sculpted in a marble scowl, warns me that there’s nothing left for us tonight.
“Vassili—”
“Zariah, take your ass to bed!”
I sit back on my heels, before him. “Talk to me.”
He sits there, muscles stacked on muscles, glaring down at me like I’m one of his broken ribs. “There’s nothing for us to fucking talk about, girl. Everything I told you outside the hospital, I meant it. If you feel it needs to be reiterated, we can chat tomorrow.”
My arms fold. Vassili has never had such a nonchalant demeanor. “We are a team,” I tell him, reaching up. I try to place my waist between his legs, and kiss him. He pushes my hands down with such quick movements I hadn’t even seen them coming. Though there’s no pain in his touch. I’ve never felt so hurt in my life.
“Girl, we are a team when I say so. And right now, isn’t the time. I’ve told you some shit because I wanted to have you.” His calloused thumb clasps my chin, and his voice is sarcastic. “Dah. I made promises that I hoped to fucking God I would never have to break, like I won’t join teams with my father. Shit, that one’s probably the only one I knew would be true. But if Anatoly sanctioned what happened tonight, like I already told you,” he says gripping my chin, “I am going to deal with it.”
Danushka consumes my mind. She said Horace was sweet, kind. Everything she didn’t expect in a man of her own nationality. ‘Russian men are ruthless, they don’t give a fuck about anything but themselves…’ she had told me one day, angry that Horace wasn’t splitting his time from his many companies with his new wife.
Only with Horace, he had never been put in the situation to choose.
What’s more important?
Your wife?
Or, in Vassili’s case, revenge?
Just as I had told Danny too, I speak up, ready to fight for my marriage. “Baby, you can’t. Vengeance is like a seed, it sets roots. Talk to me, Vassili! Please!”
He starts to push me away. I clasp my hands onto his belt, and hold on for dear life. Sex can’t fix us, but dammit, right now, it’s the only thing I have of him.
“I don’t want to fucking hurt you!” He screams into my face. Seems like the death grip I have on his belt is all I have of him. Vassili could slap me across the room, push me down on my ass, but he doesn’t. I quickly undo his belt buckle and pull out his cock.
He eyes me with a dead gaze as my mouth goes to his dick. I suck for all I’m worth, for all the love we have. My lips wrap around his cock, and I’m banging it to the back of my throat faster than someone can shout ‘Mississippi!’ Using sex to my advantage is a new thing for me, and I hope to God it isn’t a new normal. It’s dysfunctional and most certainly not how you save a marriage, but for right now, it’s working. Vassili grips the back of my neck. He grunts his approval and forces my head up and down. My tonsils are bruised by the strength of his erection, and I suck vigorously.
Vassili massages the base of his cock, since there’s no way I can suck his XL dick all the way down my throat. I’m already gagging as it is. He then pushes off the bed, and I’m back on my ass, onto the plush pile carpet, with him on top of me.
He starts to unbuckle his belt. I push up my skirt.
“Put that ass in my face,” he growls.
I tug off my panties in a flash, reach up to kiss him, but Vassili twirls his index finger. I turn over to my hands and knees. He enters my pussy with such force that my back arches.
“Fuck,” I grit through my teeth. My walls begin to drench down on his cock as he clasps the back of my neck. He works his thumb into my ass. It feels good, gets my pussy quivering for more, but I guess that’s all the motherfucker will offer in the form of foreplay, tonight. And I know that once this false closeness we have ends, I won’t be crying tears of ecstasy, I’ll be crying for my husband to open up, and talk to me again.
Vassili
Zariah is gone when I wake up on Friday morning. The moment I awaken, my mind is on the little things, like telling her ‘have a great day at work.’ Stuff that places a smile on her face. This is part of my routine. I do shit like this because for Christ sake, I can’t be a man like my father. And there should be no doubt in my wife’s mind of my love for her… like there was last night. So, as part of the usual routine, the thought pops into my mind to call her for virtually no fucking reason other than to just say I love you, and yeah, have a great day at work.
But reality slams into my chest, and the shit hurts so fucking bad. My heart isn’t up to the little things. I turn on the shower, allowing it to get hot enough to burn my skin, to remind me what … feeling feels like.
I’m torn between being the man I promised her I wouldn’t be and the man who was given the opportunity to become the one she loves. That might sound confusing. But without Malich and his family around during summers in my childhood, and when I was a teen, getting the hell away from Anatoly, I would do more than beat Zariah’s pussy. And I would’ve never known what true love is, because I’d have guarded myself with more cunts than I can satisfy myself with.
After showering, I have a towel around myself while digging into my top drawer for my passport. I dress quickly, and work over the words in my mind about what to say to my wife.
In the kitchen, Zamora has Natasha in her highchair, with scrambled eggs before her. She eyes my Louis Vuitton canvas duffle, and tilts her head at me. “Oh, Vassili. I made you breakfast. It’s staying warm in the c
onventional oven, but will you do me a favor before you leave?”
Shit, I was just about to ask if she’d watch Natasha today… until I return. “Yeah, sure. Thanks for breakfast,” I reply while opening the stainless-steel oven. Inside is a plate with more scrambled eggs, kielbasa sausage and toast.
“Sliced fruit is in the fridge,” she says, still glancing at my duffel bag. “Vassili, you are a praying man. I owe you lots for being a good husband, the recent events with Mat—”
“Nyet, you don’t owe me anything.” I cut in, although I know where this is headed.
“Alright, well, will you pray before you leave? Wherever it is you’re going, just pray about it.”
“Dah.” I eat.
***
Ten minutes later, I’ve kissed my daughter, and officially asked Zamora if she’d watch her today. Her eyes were expectant, so I told her I prayed already—even though we both can tell that the mumble I sent to heaven landed on deaf ears.
While pressing the garage opener, I dial Zariah’s number. Mid second ring I’m sent to voicemail. I close my eyes wishing I hadn’t used her body like I did last night. Shit, she just sent me to voicemail on purpose.
“Zariah,” I begin, still working in my mind on what to say to this woman I love with all of me. “I won’t be home tonight,” I start with the truth, while backing out of the windy driveway. “Probably not tomorrow night or the next.”
Realizing that I haven’t told her much of anything I add where I’ll be. And end the call.
*** The Next Day***
At LAX, I took the first available flight to Moscow, through KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. There was an extended layover in Amsterdam. By the time I arrive in my homeland it’s the next morning. Grigor and Semion are posted at the terminal entrance when I arrive. My cousin’s dog-ass of a face is set in a deep brown, while Grigor is wearing another power suit, breakfast bag and a cup in hand.
“Privet, brat—hello, brother.” Grigor holds out the items.