Vadik shrugged without turning around as they pulled into her completely plowed driveway, the snowbanks reaching a foot or two on either side. She opened the back door, but the driver was there quickly to finish the job. She fumbled to find the credit card and pay him, but Vadik dismissed him. “Thank you. That’s all we need for today.”
Vadik had moved to her front door, opening a brand new lock with a matching deadbolt. She stared at him in disbelief. “I haven’t been gone that long. How could you possibly have changed my lock? And did you clear all the snow, too?”
“I’ve changed all the door locks in your house and in your garage and added new deadbolts too,” he said, handing her a set of keys, but putting his set into his pocket. “They are all keyed the same. I arranged for a snowplow service do the driveway, and they will come multiple times a day, anytime there is more than three inches of snow. My crew will be here to install your security system tomorrow. We will monitor your home from a remote location, just like we do all of the Petruskenkov properties.”
“Thank you,” she said, struggling to hide her annoyance. She took the keys, moving past him to enter the house and set her bag by the staircase. “Let’s just remember this is my home, and it doesn’t belong to the Petruskenkovs, so I’m going to insist you ask me before you make any other decisions.” Vadik offered her another noncommittal shrug that was becoming routinely annoying.
She prepared to say goodnight, but she turned around in a confused circle as he followed her into the house, closing the front door behind him and passing her in the hallway. “Please stay here, Dr. Anderson.”
Like an idiot, she stood in her own entrance hall while he surveyed the first floor, moving onto the basement and up the stairs. She’d agree to Luka’s silly dictate to allow a driver and to increase her security, but she figured he’d arrange for a daily ride-share and maybe get one of those cameras that hooked up to her Wi-Fi. Maybe, maybe, if he really insisted, she’d pay for a central monitoring service. This was ridiculous.
“It’s all clear,” he said, returning to the entrance hall. “Thank you for waiting.”
“Thanks again,” she said, forcing an even tone and silently willing him to leave. “But seriously, who in their right mind would rob me? I don’t even own a television set. I’ll be fine.”
Vadik glanced at her as though she lacked basic intelligence. “Not every crime is about robbery. Do you deny that the new locks make you feel more secure? Your previous ones were ancient and broken. I entered your home without your key in about thirty seconds.”
He had her there. After spending her life in close quarters, first at home, then with multiple, faceless roommates during her college years, she’d struggled the first few weeks in the old house that creaked and groaned with a life of its own. She was even afraid to go into the basement after dark to do her laundry, saving it for weeks until she grew desperate. Even in the daylight, the ancient furnace would kick on with a whoosh, convincing her it was about to blow up and wipe out her entire block.
But a long hot shower waited for her, and maybe even some of the chores that were piling up. And cookies. She needed to buy cookies or make a batch of fresh ones to surprise Luka, but her day off wouldn’t begin until this guy left.
“It’s all fine, and I do appreciate your help. But I don’t want to keep you. You must have been here during my entire shift to get all of this done. Your... your wife or your somebody must be expecting you at home by now.”
“Alas, I am not married, Dr. Anderson. Perhaps someday, but for now, my days are very full supporting the Petruskenkovs’ business interests in the area. I rent a small apartment near here.”
“Yeah,” she said, hoping a yawn and a stretch would force him back to that small apartment. “It’s getting late though... and...”
“It’s fine,” he dismissed, walking toward a small bag by the back door. “Don’t let me stop you from what you’re doing. I’ll take care of my own needs.”
“You can’t be expected to work twenty-four hours a day. All of this will be here in the morning.” Vadik rubbed his forehead as though he were looking for the right words, but his expression spoke for him. “You’re not leaving,” she summarized dryly. “Are you?”
“No, ma’am. Luka expects me to stay here until he returns. I will be fine on your couch, though. Just pretend I’m not here.”
“My new boyfriend is an idiot. You know that, don’t you?”
Vadik shrugged again, as he took his coat off, revealing a monster of a steel gun nestled into the holster against his chest. “I am a man who values my nice facial features, and you know, my blood, therefore I will not be delivering that message. But if you would like to speak to him, I’d be more than happy to get him back on the phone for you.”
“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth, knowing this was a battle she was going to lose. Luka was about as inflexible as any human she’d ever met, but she made it a point to seek clarity in future negotiations. “I have a few blowup mattresses upstairs, and we could probably push enough stuff out of one of the spare rooms if you’d like your own space. Would you prefer that over the couch?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble, that would be wonderful. And I have two orders of chicken parm in the fridge from the Italian restaurant on the corner if you’re hungry.”
“Great,” she responded without enthusiasm. Her first dinner guest was a three-hundred-pound Russian mobster in her eleven-hundred-square-foot, falling down, heavily mortgaged home. The irony was right up there with the proverbial elephant in the room nobody wanted to talk about. And this elephant was armed.
* * *
After the initial weirdness wore off, the constant sight of Vadik’s gun was harder to get used to than the man himself. Over the next twenty-four hours, he directed a crew of techie-looking workers installing the new surveillance equipment, running more wires, cameras, and alarms than she ever thought possible in her tiny house. He also helped her clear out both spare bedrooms, removing piles of broken junk destined for the trash, but he drove four carloads of salvageable possibilities to the local thrift store.
The only pieces she kept were a set of small end tables with folding wings that left her almost giddy over the free find. “The finish on these is a mess, but with a little sanding and paint, they’ll look great in my bedroom!”
By the time they’d hauled the last of the trash to the curb, one of the bedrooms was a blank slate and the second held the blowup mattress, Vadik’s small overnight bag, and an old brass floor lamp from the living room. “I’ve been dreading this job for months,” she said with a sigh, stacking some boxes so Luka could park his car in the driveway. “I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you, truly, thank you.”
“Don’t forget about ordering that new bed today,” he scolded, his attention focused on every movement up and down the street. “Luka said to remind you, and I quote...”
He changed to an exaggerated deep tone with a cartoon quality Russian accent. “Tell koshka I sleep for eight hours, and if I have to sleep on that tiny bed one more night, she will remember for eight additional hours how unhappy that made me.”
“Try that impersonation on Sunday, why don’t you?” she teased. “I’d kinda like to see how much of sense of humor he really has.”
Vadik laughed, but before he could respond, a car pulled into the driveway behind her, parking crookedly to avoid the piles of garbage. He moved between Mia and the car, his hand resting on the gun under his heavy coat.
“Damn,” she muttered, catching a glimpse of the driver. “Don’t shoot my mother, Vadik.”
He raised an eyebrow before walking to the front door. “I’ll give you some space to visit, but come inside. It’s cold, and I want you where I can see you.”
How the hell her mother had managed to time an almost unprecedented, unexpected visit today, of all days, was beyond Mia’s imagination. She waited for her to climb out of the car, simultaneously balancing a cigarette, her fake leath
er bag, and a cup of coffee from a fast food place.
“For fuck’s sake,” said Joy Latrobe in the way of a greeting. “I’ve been trying to call you for, like, two weeks. I was beginning to think you were dead. Who’s your friend? You didn’t tell me you were seeing anybody.”
“Hi, Mom,” she said as casually as she could, but she couldn’t stop the touch of sarcasm. “It’s nice to see you, too. And he’s just a colleague who, uh, needed a place to stay for a few days.” Recovering from the emotional minefield after one of these visits took days.
Thin and in her early forties with platinum blonde hair complete with a strip of black and gray speckled roots, Joy Latrobe had always looked at least ten years older. A teen mother, she’d dropped out of high school and moved out of her parents’ house weeks before Mia was born, settling in the only place she could afford. Twenty-five years and four kids later, she was still living in the same trailer. She’d always found work during Mia’s long childhood, but minimum wage service industry jobs didn’t spread very far for a family of five.
Mia tried to think about how many messages she’d had from Joy, but surely she’d returned a call less than two weeks ago. Looking to alleviate some guilt, she took out her cell phone, only to remember it was Luka’s new phone and not hers.
Her mother didn’t miss a beat. “Damn, got one of those new ones, huh? Must be nice to make a lot of money. All we’ve got are the cheap ones.”
Yeah, said Mia to herself, and I pay all of your cell phone bills, too. You’re welcome, Mom, but she said nothing out loud. She neither expected nor received any thanks for the money she’d spent helping her mother.
“Why are you really here?” she said with a sigh. “Is anything wrong? Are the kids okay?”
“Do I need an excuse to come see my kid?” Joy snapped, opening the front door.
“No, of course not,” said Mia, still standing in the driveway. Pointing to the house her mother had already entered, she raised her voice. “Why don’t you come inside and make yourself comfortable? But leave the damned cigarette out here.”
“Sarcasm always was your thing.” Joy rubbed the butt into Mia’s sidewalk with the heel of her fake leather boot. “I don’t know why you’re getting so bitchy in your old age.”
She followed her mother into the kitchen where she set her things on the table and looked through Mia’s fridge. Finding a beer in the back, she opened it, leaning against the kitchen counter with her ankles crossed. “So what’s new, Mia? Talk to me.”
Other than her family, almost nobody called her Mia. At work she was Dr. Anderson, and before that she was Ms. Anderson. Even Luka called her koshka. She actually liked her given name, but his nickname made her feel special.
“I am seeing somebody,” she said casually, not quite sure why she was telling Joy. “It’s nothing serious. It’s only until he moves back to his hometown, but it’s been fun.” From a respectability standpoint, Luka wasn’t exactly the crown prince of a foreign country, but she kind of wanted to share her change of status with somebody, and there certainly wasn’t anybody in her social set waiting to listen to her. Despite their shaky relationship, she’d been sharing at least limited information with her mother for as long as she could remember.
“You’ve got to be fucking me!” Joy was excited. “You haven’t had a real relationship since what’s his name back in college. How long has this been going on?”
“Oh, just a few weeks.” She wasn’t going to admit that ‘Danny’ had been a figment of her imagination, keeping her mother off her back for almost a whole year.
“Good, you should get out more. You’re too young to sit around by yourself. If I hadn’t already had a couple of kids at your age, I’d have been out every night.”
That wasn’t the way Mia remembered things. There had been plenty of nights when Mia had been left at home with three little kids, handling everything from homework to dinner to diapers, but those nights were better than the times her mother’s sperm donors had stayed at their little trailer, taxing their already limited space and resources.
But she had no memory of her father ever spending the night or even of her parents in the same room together. The closest recollection she had was Joy standing at the door to their trailer while Mia ran out to get into her father’s truck. She’d spent years wondering about the dynamics of that relationship.
Joy took another sip of the cold beer, picking up the antique knife still sitting on the counter. “You still have this thing? I would have thought you’d thrown it away years ago.”
“How come you never took me to see my dad in prison?” She tried to keep the accusation out of her tone, but Joy had made it easy for the other kids to keep in touch with their fathers. Mia’s father was a ghost.
“That question came out of nowhere,” her mother summarized with a grimace. “But it was for the same reason you never went to see him yourself. He’s a worthless piece of shit who never gave a dime toward your support. He never even bought you a diaper. He didn’t deserve to see you.”
“I never went to see him because I barely knew him, but he paid you something before he went to jail. He gave me birthday presents every year, too.”
“He came around a few times to get his picture taken with you,” Joy responded with a sigh. “He put it out on social media like he was fucking father of the year, but other than that old knife, he never gave you a penny. I just never fed you a bunch of crap about him. I bought those presents and put his name on the card.”
Mia stared with an open mouth, and Joy snapped, “Don’t give me that look. The kids’ fathers might have been losers, but they were around. You felt like shit every time they did something together, and you got left out. What did you think I was going to do, let my kid get her heart broken?”
Even though the news had come as a surprise, she knew it was true. Joy was a lot of things, but she’d never mislead her except when the truth was harder to bear than the lie. In some ways, she’d probably always known it, holding onto that stupid knife because it really was the only thing he’d ever given her.
Neither of them spoke while Joy finished her beer, and after an awkward few minutes, her mother stood taller. “I really can’t stay. I’m sorry to have bothered you, but I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” Dropping her empty can in the trash, Joy looked uncomfortable. “Maybe you can come out this weekend and spend some time with me and the kids. They miss you. I can come get you if you need a ride, unless that car out there is yours.”
Without her own car, traveling to her mother’s house would leave her trapped with a teenager’s need to escape. “That’s not my car,” she said, not making eye contact. “I’m working on getting one, but cash has been a little tight. And I’m a little busy this weekend.”
“Sure...” Joy drawled, pointing to the cell phone Mia had laid on the counter. “That was a down payment right there. Just who is this guy you’re sleeping with? You make a good salary. Don’t pay his way in the fucking world and sell yourself short just for a guy with a tight shaft.”
“He’s fine, Mom,” she said, cringing. “I’m not an idiot.”
“I’m the last person who can judge you. Your dad never was any kind of a real relationship, but if I learned nothing else from Shel and Teddy, I learned what kind of man was going to suck me dry. What do you know about this guy? You’ve got a good job and only a shithead sleeps with a woman for her money.”
The differences between Luka and those two men could never be underestimated, but Joy had hit a sensitive spot, even if it wasn’t for the right reason. The untouched ten grand still stashed under her kitchen table tore through her thoughts like an out of control brush fire, putting two problems in front of her at one time. Giving her mother the money would remove the weight from Mia’s house once and for all, but it wasn’t hers to give away. Even if she could bring herself to do it, the thought of facing his anger if he ever found out delivered an imaginary red spank across her ass.
Her moth
er left with a quick wave and a weak hug. She opened her computer to search for Luka’s name, but after several failed attempts she remembered any internet footprint on him would likely be in the Russian alphabet. Anton had a different last name that she couldn’t remember, but switching her efforts to Slavic and Yuri located several high school sports accounts and even college degrees—Slavic’s from the same state school she’d attended, but several years before her. Feeling like the creepy stalker that she was, she ran their name through a pay-for-service background check. After a few minutes and her personal credit card number, the search revealed several assault charges for both of them.
Looking at the clock on the stove, she moved to the furniture store’s website and chose the cheapest mattress and metal frame they had to offer. The cost was still outrageous, but she dutifully used Luka’s credit card. After that sticker shock, there was no way she’d pay the kind of money they were asking for bedding, so she made a note to run to the discount store before Sunday and finish her task.
She was finishing up when Vadik entered the kitchen without speaking. He grabbed a couple of bottles of water he kept in the fridge and sat across from her, pushing one in her direction. In that small house, it was unlikely he’d missed any of the drama, but he was too much the professional to comment.
“How do you know Luka?” she asked, closing her computer and opening the bottle.
“I’ve worked for his uncle, Pavel, for almost twenty years. That’s where my loyalties lie.”
“But how well do you know Luka,” she persisted. “Have you been working with him long?”
“I only met him about eight weeks ago when he came to America,” he said carefully. His change of subject was just as controlled. “I’ll have a lot of time over the next few weeks, Dr. Anderson. Maybe we can start clearing out your basement tomorrow. In Russia, my father was a carpenter, and he’d be pleased if you let me use the skills he taught me to do some of your small repairs.”
“If you’re really sure,” she said, “that would be great.”
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