by Kyra Davis
Bo-Bo looked down at my arms. “Goosebumps. You’re in shock.”
“I want to see Anatoly. Now.”
He nodded. “I’ll drive you.”
“Dena’s coming too.”
“She probably should go to the hospital anyway. I’ll drive both of you unless the EMTs think she needs to go in the ambulance.”
He unlocked the passenger side door and I got inside. Before he closed it for me he leaned in again. “I need to ask you one more question, just between us.”
“OK.”
He looked around to ensure no one was within hearing distance before leaning in a little further. “Is Marcus single?”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Dena was well enough to ride in Bo-Bo’s car with me and by the time we got to the hospital Anatoly was already stitched up and doped up. The bullet had gone straight through without hitting anything vital. Given time he was going to be okay. When Dena heard this she allowed a nurse to take her from my side so she could get a more thorough exam. I waited until she was out of sight and then just burst into tears. I sat in the waiting room sobbing like I had just been given the news that someone I loved had died. It had been too much. I was still hazy on what exactly had happened and I couldn’t believe how many times I had come this close to death within the last forty-eight hours. And then…when Anatoly was shot I had thought…
Even in my mind I couldn’t complete the sentence. I just cried harder still. The other people in the waiting room looked at me sympathetically at first and eventually they just averted their eyes. I thought about how I had sobbed after kicking Anatoly out. How could I have thought that was a catastrophe? I had been forced to deal with a million bigger catastrophes since then!
I was sobbing for at least ten minutes before I ran out of breath and energy. I gulped in some air and went to the bathroom to throw some water on my face before going to see Anatoly.
Lying in a white hospital bed in a white paper hospital gown he looked more vulnerable than I had ever seen him. I sat by his side and stared into his glassy eyes.
“You and Dena…you saved me,” I said softly, taking his hand.
“Are you going to forgive me now?” he asked in slightly slurred speech.
“I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time understanding you. It’s hard to talk when someone’s drugged you, huh?”
“I take that as a no.”
“Take it as a warning,” I said with a little smile. “The way you handled this was seriously fucked up. One more strike and you’re out for real.”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” he muttered. “They said not to tell anybody.”
I repressed a giggle. I had never seen Anatoly stoned before. “I’m not going to ask if they represent the mafia or our government, because as far as I can tell they’re both do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kind of organizations. I, on the other hand, promise you that I will put you and the friends, family and cat I love most before everyone else. I need you to promise me you’ll do the same. If someone asks you not to tell me something you have to tell me anyway. That’s what love and loyalty are all about. No secrets.”
“Ok.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him but decided it would be more effective to push the issue when he wasn’t high. However there was one thing that couldn’t wait.
“Anatoly, I also need you to divorce your wife.”
Through the glaze of pain medicine I could see a spark of cognizance. He understood the importance of what I was saying and when he squeezed my hand I knew he was aware of how much he had hurt me.
“As soon as I’m out of here we can go to the courthouse to file the papers.”
I tilted my head and studied his complexion under the fluorescent light. Even here in this sterilized room in that stupid gown he had a certain…radiance. Maybe he had started to use the Aveeno after all. We had such a unique relationship. Here he was asking me to go to city hall with him, not to get married but to witness him file for divorce.
“Will Natasha try to drag this out?”
Anatoly sighed. “I think Natasha’s going to disappear.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She made a major mistake and the mafia’s going to find out about it. They’re not going to cut her any breaks on this no matter whose daughter she is. She’ll have to go on the lam.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“I told you I needed to be with her in order to make this whole thing go away. What I didn’t tell you is that one of the men working with her is an FBI agent. He’s the one I was trying to stay close to. I knew he was our only chance of getting out of this. Either I would help him make the arrests necessary to get the pressure taken off of both of us or I would tell Natasha that she had hired an FBI agent into her protection service and would expose her mistake to the higher ups in the family if she didn’t find a way to ensure your safety.
“That would have put Bo-Bo’s life in danger.”
“It would have but he’s a professional capable of taking care of himself and my first and last concern was to keep you safe.” He paused for a moment before adding, “Bo-Bo…that’s what you and Marcus are calling him?”
“Yeah, turns out his real name is Agent Pearson. But to me he’ll always be Bo-Bo the gay Russian thug.”
Anatoly’s mouth twitched at the corners and I giggled. Then he started to chuckle and soon we were both in hysterics. Perhaps the drugs were making him silly and I knew that I was at that point where almost anything could be silly, but hearing Anatoly laugh like that, here, safe, holding my hand…it just made me want to laugh more. Because it was funny and wonderful and everything I wanted…
Everything I wanted was right here, holding my hand.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When I left Anatoly’s room Dena was sitting in the waiting room. For the first time I really saw the pain she was trying to hide. “How badly did you hurt yourself?” I asked, taking a seat beside her.
“It set me back a bit,” she said casually, but you could hear the effort she was making to keep her voice from revealing the full extent of the truth. “They gave me some Vicodin but I’m not gonna take it. I’ll be relying on my cane a little more for the next few months.”
“Dena, I’m so sorry I got you into this.”
Dena toyed with her cane, letting it roll back and forth over the diamond pattern on the carpet. “You know, when it comes to their take on things like ethics and morality I don’t think there’s a lot of daylight between Fawn and her brother.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“In fact,” Dena continued, “it’s almost like he’s the male version of Fawn. Alex is Fawn.”
“Um, okay.”
Dena’s eyes had taken on a bit of a glaze as well, but I could tell this wasn’t drug induced. She was reliving something, whether it was what had happened with Fawn or what had happened with Alex was unclear, but whatever it was, it wasn’t exactly pleasant.
“When I threw that cognac on him, the cognac that temporarily blinded him, it was like I threw it on both of them. When it set on fire…” she faltered for a moment. There weren’t many people in the waiting room now. A drunk in the corner had a magazine lying limply on his lap as he snored; a teenager by the wall bit her cuticles while watching some video on her phone. Dena’s eyes drifted over them as she considered her next sentence. “I’m not some kind of medieval monster. It’s not like I want to burn people at the stake.”
“I know that.”
“But…I’m glad I was there to fight him and…and what they represent. And I’m glad that we won. He was evil and I’m not sorry about what happened to him.”
I nodded. Dena hadn’t been helpless this time. That cane that was supposed to represent her disability had disarmed one man and knocked another unconscious. As brutal as the night had been I could see that this was a multilayered victory. I had meant it when I told Anatoly that he and Dena had saved me. I owed my life to them.
&nbs
p; But the thing is, I also sort of owed my life to Alex. He had tackled Margarita even when his skin was burned and the pain must have been unbearable. Dena and Anatoly had saved me out of love and maybe even virtue. But Alex? I suspected he had saved me due to something that resembled obsession. So I couldn’t exactly be grateful to him for that…and I didn’t really feel sorry about his pain.
But I wasn’t exactly happy about it either.
And there had been another loss too. I raised my fingers to my temples as I thought about my lost manuscript. Maybe my MacBook had survived the fire. Maybe it would be retrieved by the authorities…
And maybe they would hold it as evidence for months on end. That would take me way past my deadline. I squeezed my eyes closed and silently cursed at myself. Anatoly was back with me and he was safe. All my friends were safe.
If someone gives you the moon you can’t complain because they didn’t think to throw in the stars.
It was at that moment that Leah and Mary Ann burst in. “Oh my gosh, you’re okay!” Mary Ann squealed and threw her arms around Dena who yelped in pain.
“Wait, you are okay, aren’t you?” Mary Ann asked quickly stepping back.
“A little bruised and battered. Nothing that won’t heal with time,” Dena said with a dismissive wave that was completely contradicted by her wince.
“I thought you were going to call me when you needed my help!” Leah snapped.
“You did help. You sent me the information mama sent you. Why did she call you and not me, anyway?”
“Because she wanted me to tell her what was really going on!” Leah put both her hands on her hips, perfectly channeling the disapproving principle from any number of cartoons. Even the snoring drunk woke up and sat up a little straighter. “She trusts me. She knows that when things get a little crazy I’m the one who’s going to stay sane!”
That wasn’t quite true. Leah was never exactly sane. She just didn’t take the same over the top risks that I did…but there were extreme sports enthusiasts who wouldn’t take the same kind of risks that I did so that wasn’t saying a lot.
“She called me because she expected me to be rational with an eye toward propriety, caution and prudence and you know what I was doing when she called me, Sophie?”
I shook my head.
“I was gambling! While you were burning down a house full of people I was playing blackjack!”
I repressed a smile and tried to give her a solemn stare. “Leah, I’m shocked.”
Leah blinked and then immediately fell into the seat beside me and buried her face in her hands. “I have a problem.”
“How much did you lose?” I asked.
“I won $39,000.”
“What?”
Dena leaned forward, with effort, so she could see past me to Leah. “Did you say $39,000?”
“I kept thinking, this is it! I’m going to do something totally irresponsible and reckless! I’m going to lose a whole bunch of money and I was going to go home and tell everybody how crazy, irresponsible and out of control I was but then I won like, a whole bunch of hands of blackjack! And the worst part is that when the dealer pushed me to keep playing…you know, because the whole idea is to gamble away your winnings, that’s what people do when they’re being irresponsible… I couldn’t do it! I cut my loses! I can’t even gamble irresponsibly, Sophie! What is wrong with me?”
Dena leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, you’ve definitely got issues.”
“How’s Anatoly?” Mary Ann asked taking the seat next to Dena.
“He was shot and he’s going to need a bit of healing time but he’s going to be okay,” I said.
“Oh wow, well at least he’s going to be okay!” She smoothed the fabric of her skirt before adding, “How are you and Anatoly?”
I thought about that for a second. “We’re going to need a bit of healing time but we’re going to be okay.”
Mary Ann clapped her hands together. “I knew you’d get back together! I knew it! True love always prevails! Ask Disney!”
Dena gritted her teeth. “You know, maybe I’ll take that Vicodin after all.”
I turned to Leah, who still had her head in her hands. “Where’s Marcus?”
“On the way in here we ran into that man…um--”
“Bo-Bo,” I supplied.
“I don’t think that’s his real name.”
“I keep telling people, once a Bo-Bo, always a Bo-Bo.” I got to my feet. “Come on, let’s find him and get Dena back to the hotel.”
Everyone got up and filed out, with Leah and me taking up the rear.
“I can’t believe I couldn’t get myself to gamble at least some of it away,” she moaned.
“Well,” I said carefully, “at least you got it on with an octopus. Not very many people can say that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leah said, her volume a little louder than necessary, “but it sounds absolutely vile.” Then she added in a hushed voice, “I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ll kill you if you tell anyone! Unlike some people here, I have a reputation to maintain!”
I smiled to myself. Yeah, she was the sane one.
I went back to the hotel with my friends. The sun was almost up and they had a flight to take them back to San Francisco later in the afternoon, but everyone needed a nap first. Dena took my room and Bo-Bo agreed to hang out with Marcus in his room…just for added security of course. I had booked a flight back the following day, when Anatoly would be able to fly. As soon as I had made arrangements with the hotel to stay an extra night I was ready to go back to the hospital to be with him. But before I was able to leave Bo-Bo pulled me aside in the hall outside my room. “You’re still going to testify, right?”
“You just give me the whens and wheres and I’ll be there. I want to be sure Margarita and Alex are put away for the rest of their lives…or at least for the rest of mine.”
“Yeah,” Bo-Bo muttered. I watched him shift his weight from foot to foot.
“What’s going on?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little paranoid.
“Look, Margarita’s locked up and she’s not going anywhere, ever.”
“And Alex?”
Again, Bo-Bo shifted his weight. “We didn’t find him.”
“What!”
“We will!” Bo-Bo added quickly. “But it was a chaotic scene, you know? There was a fire, there were dead bodies and we didn’t know at first how many we were looking for and then, somehow in all that, he managed to slip out.”
“He was burnt! His right arm was, like, crispy!”
“That’ll just make it easier to find him, ‘course guys like that always know unlicensed doctors who will see them in some backroom for cash payments, if you know what I mean. Still, we’ll find him.”
My heart was beating a little faster again. “I’m going back to Anatoly. Find him soon, okay? Like really soon.”
“We got all our best guys on this. We’ll get him and you’ll put him away.”
I nodded and went back to the hospital to see Anatoly.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When I got back to the hospital I found that they had moved Anatoly out of the emergency room and put him in a room on a higher floor that was marginally less cold and sterile. He was sound asleep when I got there and I took a moment to confer with the nurse in the hall about his condition. She didn’t really want to talk to me since I wasn’t technically family but she gave me a very basic rundown before briskly walking away. I took a deep breath and turned to go back into Anatoly’s room.
“Excuse me, are you Sophie Katz?”
For a second I panicked, thinking about my first meeting with Natasha. Slowly I turned around. But of course it wasn’t Natasha at all. This woman had a chestnut bob and obviously fake boobs.
“I’m Sophie,” I said, trying to push aside the déjà vu feeling.
“Some guy just paid me $250 bucks to give you this.”
And that’s when I noticed my MacBook carrying ca
se over her shoulder. I stood stock still as she handed it to me along with an envelope.
“Is he here?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t think so. He handed it to me when I came in and told me where I’d find you. He seemed like he was in a hurry to get some place and he kinda looked like he was in pain too. But hey, for $250 I don’t ask a lotta questions.”
I opened the carrying case. That was my computer all right. I opened the envelope and pulled out a 3x5 note card.
“I meant to tell you that I read your unfinished manuscript. It’s quite good. Can’t wait to see how the story ends.
‘til next time.
--A
I stared at the note.
‘til next time.
Swiftly I walked back to Anatoly’s room. Was he really okay? Had Alex been here too?
I walked right up to his bedside and considered waking him up. But as I watched his chest rise and fall in the even breathing patterns of sleep I found myself becoming almost mesmerized and...calm. Anatoly was fine. As Marcus would say, he was so very, very fine.
How many times had I lost myself in his arms?
How many times would I do it again?
At least once…every day for the rest of my life.
I put my purse, the MacBook and the note on a chair and carefully crawled into bed with him, choosing the side that wasn’t injured. Without opening his eyes, he pulled me to him, allowing me to gently put my head on his shoulder.
“Are you awake?” I whispered.
“If I am will you get out of bed?”
“Maybe.”
“Then I’m asleep.”
I smiled as he pulled me closer and kissed my hair.
If I had to, I’d deal with Alex later. But right now…
My smile widened as Anatoly’s hand moved down to my butt.
Right now I had the only man I wanted and he was wearing nothing but a thin paper gown that didn’t even cover that perfect ass of his.
Yeah, I wasn’t going anywhere.
Author Page
Kyra Davis is the author of the critically acclaimed Sophie Katz Mystery series and So Much For My Happy Ending. Her books have been translated and published in eight different countries. After spending the majority of her life in the Bay Area, Davis now lives in Los Angeles County with her son and his endearing but occasionally moody leopard gecko. Find out more about Kyra Davis and her books at www.kyradavis.com