Operation Green Card

by G. B. Gordon

  “What proposition?” he asked as soon as he stepped into the main room.

  Arkady barely took his eyes off the screen, just stretched his arms above his head and said with a yawn, “Oh yeah, like I said, I’m a handy guy to have around and would be happy to pitch in with the renos. I have a vague idea what you’ve been trying to do with the room, so I drew up a plan for you. Do you want to see it? To check how close I am?”

  Jason listened to his heartbeat in his ears, waiting for the rest. An eternity went by before he realized that there was no rest.

  “That’s it?”

  Now Arkady did look at him, one eyebrow up. “What did you think it was? An indecent proposal?”

  For a second, Jason thought Arkady was enjoying this, his discomfort, needling him. “Fuck you.”

  “What? You did, didn’t you? Listen, I know you said the reno wasn’t worth it, but it sure beats the hell out of staring at the wall. And you also said it bugs you. I’m trying to help.” He seemed half-exasperated, half-puzzled now. And, really, why would he play Jason for a fool? He didn’t strike Jason as the sadistic type.

  Not that Jason knew all that much about the man, but his instincts were usually good. Plus Arkady had everything to lose here if he pissed Jason off. But the reno came with too much stuff he couldn’t even explain when he was wide-awake. Much less when he was tired and had no clue which of the thoughts zinging around in his brain was important and which wasn’t.

  “Yeah, okay. Look, I’m tired, just . . . Thanks, but no, thanks.” He fled back upstairs and into the shower for real this time. Only after he’d turned the lights out did it occur to him that he’d forgotten to eat dinner. Fuck his obsession with propositions, fuck his head cinema, and fuck Arkady in particular.

  Okay, there was a thought he hadn’t needed spelled out.

  “You okay?” Natalya asked from across the breakfast table.

  “Sure.” Arkady’s reply came automatically, brain busy with the puzzle that was Jason Cooley.

  “Because you’ve been watching your cereal get soggy and your coffee get cold.” She tapped his forehead. “What’s going on in there?”

  “Nichevo. Nothing. Zero. It’s five in the morning. Brains are dead at five in the morning. Everyone I stay with here is way too obsessed with getting up at dawn. Normal people sleep at this time. I don’t even know how Anna made it out the door half an hour ago; she scares me. Jesus.”

  Natalya didn’t say anything, but didn’t take her eyes off him either. Damn her. He didn’t even last two minutes, before he couldn’t fight the grin anymore. She’d always managed to make him feel a little sheepish. “You know me too well. How do you still do that after all these years?”

  “You haven’t changed. Now, answer the question.”

  “Jason has this old house, his grandparents’, and he started to fix it up the way he likes it but doesn’t have the time. So, last night I offered to help, and he about took my head off.” He frowned into his cereal. “And I have no clue what I did.”

  “Maybe he’s embarrassed about not getting it done himself? Men can be touchy that way,” she added with a wink.

  “Funny. No, I don’t think that’s it. He was perfectly open and unembarrassed about it before. Only said it wasn’t worth it when I offered help. I thought he meant my time. But I have more than enough of that, so I drew up some suggestions. I mean, he’s busy, and I’m not. Right? He didn’t even want to see them. Just, boom.” Maybe it hadn’t been about the renos at all. Maybe it had been about what Jason had assumed he was going to say. Whatever that was. But that made no sense either, because then he’d have blown up before he realized Arkady wasn’t coming on to him. No, it had to be about some invisible boundary Arkady had overstepped. “He’s such a weird mix of lonely and not letting anyone in. He guards his privacy like a dragon with a treasure. Part of that is the leg thing, I think, but there’s something else too, something—I don’t know—deeper, maybe.”

  “You’ve thought a lot about him. Are you falling in love, Kashka? Forgetting this is just make-believe?”

  His heart did a double beat. “No way. Not a chance.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he added, “So not interested.”

  Still nothing. Then the steady tap-tap of a nail on the tabletop.

  He threw her a quick look. “Come on, I’m not falling for a straight guy.”

  “He’s straight, then?”

  “Yeah. I asked.”

  Head cocked to one side, she nodded slowly. “Uh-huh.”

  “What?”

  “You’re so not interested that you asked him if he was gay?”

  Nonono, it hadn’t been like that at all. Had it? Fuck. He wolfed down his soggy cereal until he couldn’t stand the silence anymore. Damn her and her interrogation tactics. “Did you know he has a kid?”

  One of her eyebrows went up. “Nope. Do tell.”

  “Apparently that’s what he needs the money for. She’s a cutie, about Irina’s age.”

  “You’ve met her?”

  He made a face. Yeah, that was weird, that she hadn’t been over, because Jason clearly cared about her a lot. But maybe she came only once a month or something. “No. He has her picture on the fridge.”

  “So he’s divorced?”

  Arkady shook his head. “Never married.”

  “Or so he says.” The chair creaked when she leaned back hard. “You better make sure.”

  “Wait, I thought you trusted him?”

  With narrow eyes she said, “Yeah, before he was about to break my little brother’s heart.”

  “Lay off!” The spoon made a loud clang as he threw it in the bowl. “That is not going to happen.”

  Her lips formed a hard-pressed line, keeping in any further argument as she got up. She was definitely not happy, but there was nothing he could do about that now. She would just have to wait and see. Because it wasn’t going to happen.

  They spent the morning in Port Angeles, where Tasha had some friends. She took him to Vic’s Café and introduced him to the people she knew there who spoke Russian and who, she said, might help him with his homesick blues. He didn’t contradict her, even though his blues had more to do with leaving family behind than with leaving Russia. Or, at least, Putin’s Russia. Seeing fresh faces might do him good. And he’d always enjoyed coffee shop crowds.

  According to Tasha, they were a changeable community, loosely connected through language and culture, but very much the rebels and the disenchanted. Political dissenters, draft refugees, queers, punks, freethinkers—people who, had they not left home, would eventually have found themselves in jail. Some of them had been jailed in the past; some had gotten out by the skin of their teeth; some, like Arkady, had left before things got dire.

  Most of them lived in and around Port Angeles, though not all in the same neighborhood; others occasionally visited from Seattle and even from across the Canadian border. There was a Russian language center attached to the Peninsula Academy, a private college those with enough money sent their children to, but the real hub, where everyone met at one point or another was Vic’s.

  Vic—tall, bald, with one gold earring—could have been cast in a Mister Clean commercial. He was Latvian, not Russian, and he made it clear every opportunity he got that the café was neutral ground. If you entered here, you left your national, religious, and cultural differences and enmities at the door or you’d find yourself booted back into the street very quickly. Vic ran the place with laid-back efficiency and a bone-dry sense of humor. Arkady instantly liked him.

  When Tasha and he walked in, Vic was discussing the terms of catering a fundraising affair with a woman who negotiated like tempered steel. Tasha introduced her as Yelena Mikhailovna.

  “She runs Vanin Enterprises. They do import/export. And I have no idea what else,” Tasha murmured when they sat down with their coffees and sandwiches. “I think she eats people for breakfast.”

  That from Tasha, who was far from a pushover her
self.

  Vic and Yelena seemed to have reached a compromise, despite the tough negotiations, because they soon came over for amiable gossip about people Arkady didn’t know.

  “Has your daughter arrived yet?” Tasha asked at some point.

  Vic rolled his eyes. “Next week. Don’t remind me.”

  Yelena snorted. “Afraid of a teenager?”

  “A teenager whom my ex-wife describes as needing ‘her father’s firm hand.’ Also,” Vic stared tragically into his coffee. “My love life will be fantastic. Like a unicorn. They don’t exist either.” He got up to serve a couple that had sat down at the far end of the room.

  The next time the door opened, Tasha waved to the man who came in. “Grigory, come, meet my brother Arkady.”

  Grigory was short and trim, with a beard like an English lawn, and flamingly gay. He kissed Tasha and Arkady on both cheeks, and gave Yelena the kind of stare people reserved for spiders and scorpions.

  Yelena laughed. “I have to get going anyway. Duty calls. Don’t worry, dushka, I won’t get married a second time, you have nothing to fear.”

  “Grigory’s a wedding planner,” Tasha explained. Her intense eye contact said, I’m giving you a hint here.

  Arkady took a second to get it. “A wedd— Oh. Right.” He turned to Grigory. “We need to talk.”

  Arkady walked away with the feeling that he’d made some friends he could come back to. The thought partly filled a hole he hadn’t been paying attention to, because it had been expected. Because he didn’t do well without ties, and still missed everyone back home like crazy. So, finding friends was like a new beginning. A real one, that would hopefully survive a fake marriage.

  Tasha helped him rent a small car that wouldn’t break the bank and left him fiddling with the GPS on his new phone, because she had to get to work. He had to stop spending money, or get a job. Jason still hadn’t asked how much he’d be paid for his services, but Arkady felt like he was using up money that no longer belonged to him. Not once he had the slip of paper that would allow him to stay, anyway.

  With that thought came the fidgets. He was trying his damnedest to operate under the assumption that he would get the green card, but it was by no means a given. Everything could go wrong at any moment. And then he’d find his ass back in Russia. A gay man in a jail cell. God help him. Stop that. Concentrate on the road. Think positive. Easier said than done, though. Things were moving, but not fast enough. At the back of his mind lurked the uneasy knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade forever. Or even long enough.

  That night he prowled about Jason’s kitchen and living room, trying to shake the feeling that he needed to speed things up, that he needed to do something. Right now.

  Jason stood leaning against the counter, patiently waiting for the ding that would let them know their lasagna was ready.

  When Arkady passed between him and the table, he laid a hand against Arkady’s chest and pointed at a chair. “Sit. You’re driving me bonkers.”

  He was as still and relaxed as Arkady was wired, his hand radiating warmth that Arkady wanted to lean into. Instead he took a step away from temptation and turned to take the indicated seat. “Sorry. Cabin fever, I think. I’m not used to having nothing to do all day. I should try to find a job.”

  “You can’t.” The ding came, and Jason maneuvered the plastic tray from microwave to counter and carefully peeled the top off. “Not legally. Not until you’ve filed your papers and had them approved.”

  Arkady stuck his tongue out at Jason’s back. “I wasn’t planning to scream it from the rooftops.” He idly watched the play of muscles under the T-shirt as Jason divided the lasagna up between two plates.

  “If you get caught—” Jason set the plates on the table and took the other chair “—you can kiss your green card goodbye.”

  There were so many rules, known and unknown ones. They made the whole process seem like a minefield. One wrong step, one crossing of an invisible line, and he’d be blown to pieces. How could a person know all the rules? Did anyone? How many applicants failed? Were they meant to fail? To hold off his rising panic, Arkady latched on to the flash of anger that last thought brought with it.

  “Well, I need to do something.”

  “Are you already done playing tourist?”

  Arkady shrugged. You had to be in a certain mood to play tourist, and he wasn’t. He wanted to do something meaningful, something targeted, not gape at the ocean and buy trinkets with money that was earmarked for the biggest event in his life.

  “What do you want to see or do?” Jason asked between bites.

  “What are my options? What do you typically do in your free time?”

  “Eat? Sleep?”

  Arkady rolled his eyes. “Come on. Beyond that. I know you work a lot, but even you have to get away sometimes.”

  Now it was Jason’s turn to shrug. He did seem to have a hard time coming up with something. “I have a pint now and then,” he finally said. “Or drive up to Seattle to see Lily.”

  “How often do you get to see her? Doesn’t she stay with you every so often?”

  Jason’s eyes widened. He seemed horrified by the very idea. “I go when I can get away. It’s a long drive.” He didn’t even answer the second question.

  “I’d love to meet her.”

  Jason froze for a moment, then said slowly, “I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

  Arkady’s hackles rose. The Too gay for your daughter? was on the tip of his tongue; old defenses were hard to demolish. But then he swallowed the challenge. Because this was Jason, who’d given him no reason to be defensive, who was hard to get a rise out of in any case. And he was right in that it wasn’t appropriate. Arkady had forgotten—it was too easy to forget—that they were only pretending a relationship. He nodded. “Point taken.”

  Again Jason shrugged, and this time it seemed to be an apology. Maybe to take the sting out of his rejection, he said, “Sometimes I drive up to the ridge. For a bit of target practice. It’s—”

  He caught himself up so hard that Arkady was instantly dying to know what he’d been about to say. It’s what? Quiet? Illegal? Not much? Jason wasn’t looking at him, and Arkady suddenly knew without a doubt that he’d just hit on a chance to get to know the big man better.

  “I haven’t fired a gun in years. Be interesting to know whether I can still hit a target. We could pack a lunch, make a day of it if you can get away from work.”

  “I can get away.” Now Jason was watching him, and Arkady wondered what he was seeing, or what he had caught in his voice. Hiding anything from Jason Cooley was extremely hard; he was an uncanny observer . . . He’d be hell to buy Christmas presents for. The thought made him snort, and Jason tilted his head in an unspoken question. Arkady waved it away. “Never mind. Not a bit relevant. Do we have a date, then?”

  “I guess so. Day after tomorrow?” Jason added after a pause, maybe checking a mental calendar.

  Arkady nodded. “Day after tomorrow, it is.”

  They left early. Jason seemed incapable of sleeping in, which, Arkady groused silently, was definitely a deeply black mark against him. At least he served Arkady coffee and a warm breakfast. Apparently Jason’s cooking skills extended to bacon and eggs, which was more than Arkady could claim for himself.

  Once they were on their way, he leaned back and slept in the car, since Jason always drove in complete silence anyway, and this early in the morning even Arkady couldn’t be bothered to try to get a conversation going. But when he did open his eyes again, he was struck by the beauty of the landscape they were driving through, and by how much it reminded him of home.

  “Looks almost like the woods around my parents’ dacha,” he murmured. Only at Jason’s uncomprehending stare did he realize he’d spoken in Russian. “Sorry.” He sat up and gestured out the window. “The trees and everything reminds me of where I grew up.”

  “St. Petersburg?”

  “No. Petersburg is the bi
g city, it’s work and culture and nightlife; it’s nice and all. But this? This is like home.” I could get used to this.

  Jason parked the car at a trailhead and handed Arkady the backpack that held coffee and sandwiches. He himself grabbed the two gun sacks he’d stored in the trunk before they left, then led the way up the trail. It was easy walking at first, but after about half an hour, Jason left the trail and they had to pick their steps through the trees and some underbrush. Jason used every handhold he could find and stepped very deliberately, especially with his left leg. Arkady watched him closely, but to his own detriment found that the terrain didn’t slow the big guy down much. As the hillside steepened, Arkady was soon sweating and out of breath. But just when he was about to cry craven and ask for a break, the invisible path Jason was following leveled out again and soon after opened into a clearing almost the size of a soccer field. A log sat on the ground at the far end, but Arkady didn’t see any bottles or cans like people typically used for target practice. He set the backpack down and watched Jason unpack one of the rifles, the make of which Arkady didn’t recognize. It looked old, but well-maintained.

  “I take it you know how to use one of these?” Jason asked.

  “One of these as in ‘in general’? Yes. That particular one? No, but I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”

  “Show me.” Jason handed him the rifle, then watched him take it, weigh it in his hand, open the straight-pull bolt to check whether it was loaded—it wasn’t—and peer into the barrel.

  “Cleaned both of them last night,” Jason said, “but you’re welcome to redo it.”

  Satisfied the gun wouldn’t explode in his hand, Arkady shook his head and sighted along the barrel at the log. When he turned to Jason again, Jason held out a box of small-caliber rounds and watched as Arkady fed one into the chamber.

  “What are we shooting at?” Arkady asked.

  “Depends. How good of a shot are you?”

  “Like I said, it’s been a while, so I’m guessing. At this distance? Something the size of an apple maybe?”