Her Designer Baby

by Shawna Washington

  I stop pacing as the door opens.

  The door opens and I turn towards it. They come in together; two men I know well. I have known them both for the last fifteen years. Their shoes whisper in a hush against the gray carpet. How many meetings like this have we had? Each one in small, nondescript offices or apartments. Too many to count. And yet, each time we meet, there is the sense of ‘this might be the last time.’ Perhaps more than most, we are acutely aware of the fragility of one moment to the next.

  “Alexei.” Vasily gives me a smile and a nod. The older man takes a seat and looks at me. His blue eyes are sharp, but they are kind. To many, Vasily is an intimidating man. Even now, at his age, he is fit, and strong. His blue eyes burn with intensity and when he gives an order he is always followed. More than even physically, it is his mind that men fear. He thinks faster, but he does not talk faster; always, Vasily is measured with his words, he weighs his responses to any given situation. To me though, he has always been different. His words are not as sharp. I am not sure what I have done to earn the kind of regard he seems to have for me. He studies me, than asks, “Are you alright, Alexei?”

  “Yes.” It is the only answer I will ever give to anyone. I look closer at Vasily. I can see in his somber eyes that something is not right with him.

  I don’t hesitate to question him.

  “What is it?” I look from Vasily to Abram as Abram takes the seat beside the older man. He is younger than Vasily, but today, his eyes are old too. Abram’s broad shoulders slump. His mouth is worn. Outside of the closed door, I know, Vasily’s bodyguards are set down the hall.

  “Sit down, Alexei.” Vasily’s voice is hoarse. He nods to the chair across from him.

  I don’t feel like sitting, but I do. The three of us look at each other, and we don’t. Their eyes are only skimming mine.

  Something is wrong.

  For long moments, there is only silence. I had thought I was here simply to receive orders. Now, I am not so sure. I don’t sit and rifle through the possibilities. That kind of speculation never helps. All I can do is wait. Ready myself for whatever it is they are to say. And I do. Inside, I steel myself. Maybe there has been some kind of an attack at home, back in St. Petersburg, where our main operations are based.

  Or it’s something more. Vasily is taking his time for a reason. As the seconds go by, I know more and more that what he is about to tell me is something much more personal, much worse than an attack across the sea. Even still, I don’t want to try to guess what those reasons are; I can only hope it isn’t something too horrible.

  He is about to start talking, and I feel myself draw a deeper breath.

  It’s something I don’t want to hear. I know this.

  Then, it comes.

  “Boris is dead, Alexei.” Vasily says it very softly; his eyes stay on mine. His eyes stay on mine, and beside him, Abram shifts in his chair. His eyes are on me too. His shoulders are tensed. It is as though they expect I might stand up. Or as though they expect I might do something.

  They are right for thinking so. They have known me for a long, long time.

  Yet, I haven’t punched at walls or even raised my voice since I was very young. I’ve learned how to control my feelings, and they know this. But they know too that hearing this news will test all of that resolve. Were I to stand up and do something, I don’t think either of them would blame me for it.

  With the way I’d already been feeling, this new feeling now...is almost too much to stand. I am an excess of stillness just so I can be still at all. I know, and maybe they know it too: I’m not moving and I’m not speaking because I am afraid to.

  Not Boris. Not him. There is very little in this world that could have made me feel what I am feeling now.

  This is one of those things.

  I had not expected this. This is, very literally, a tilting of the world away from the way I know it to be.

  Not Boris.

  I see it in their eyes. Boris.

  Boris is not alive anymore. I think those words again and again to try to make them real. I try to make myself seem normal.

  “Alexei.” Very softly, Vasily repeats my name again.

  I don’t answer. I just look at him.

  It won’t become real. It lingers in a half-recognized distance. It’s a sound that won’t break the distance. A sight that seems to blur out of cohesion, out of the shapes they are supposed to be in. It feels like it can’t be true. Their eyes are lying. Boris cannot be dead. I think: I just talked to him. I’d just talked to him very recently. Right now, it seems like it must have been only moments ago. It seems so near that it feels like I should be able to reach back to that moment, to pull that moment forward, to make that moment here and now. Make him here and now.

  Make him what he was again.

  “Alexei.”

  This time, I respond to Vasily. My reply is automatic. It is mechanical. “Yes.”

  The room narrows. I don’t hear their breathing. Their mouths are moving but I don’t hear what they are saying.

  I do not move. I do not shift. My expression remains the same. I am too well-schooled in death, too well-schooled in hiding my emotions to show the thing I am feeling now. I don’t even know what I am feeling now. Rage. Sadness. Guilt.

  Horror.

  How. Why. When.

  Who?

  Who is a quiet roar. Who did this? There is no doubt in my mind. Boris did not just die. Boris had been young. And healthy.

  Boris was murdered.

  Their mouths stop moving. Vasily’s blue eyes are watching mine. Something of the distance in myself comes near enough to this to say something that makes sense. I want to know everything. I need to know everything.

  “How,” I finally say. I do not ask because there is no inflection in my tone, no change in my voice. I say it but I say it flat and I say it with a little too much force and Vasily’s old eyes soften even more. His finger flicks, brushes some imaginary piece of lint from his coat. We are men of indifference. Even now, when one of our own is gone, we can’t mourn the way other people do. But our pain is no less. I know Vasily is hurting too. I know he has known Boris since Boris was small.

  In the whole room, there is no sound. It is the silence of breathing, the silence of shifting weight, the somber, heaviness of too little coming much too late. Boris is dead.

  Boris is dead. I repeat it to myself. Still, it does not feel real. I spoke to him just last week. I’ve known him for...years. In my thoughts, he is still sometimes the ruddy-faced, fair-haired string bean of a boy who followed me from bar to bar in St. Petersburg.

  ‘Go away,’ I’d sometimes growled at him.

  They do not answer, yet. They are afraid, I think. Afraid to tell me. They keep their eyes on me.

  I wish they would not keep looking at me; I wish they would look away. Or I wish I could look away from them; I wish I could take the space I need to compose myself. This is a hard feeling to contain, this rage that is beginning to stir inside, this...pain. Boris is one of my oldest friends. I met him when I’d joined the organization years ago. We’d walked the streets together, we’d had each other’s backs, we’d fought and we’d made up and then we’d fought again. If there had been a man I would have asked for help, for advice, for anything, it would have been him. Although I don’t talk to my associates about Radiah, there too, Boris had been different. Boris was so much more than just someone I grew up with, someone I’d worked with. He was even more than a friend—to me, Boris was like a brother.

  Vasily knows this. I have known Vasily for years and it is not easy to hide things from him. I might fool everyone else, but never him.

  “How,” I say again. Now, I demand it. I don’t try to hide the rising tide of my anger. We are cautious. Boris was cautious. Who got to him? Where? Had they infiltrated our organization on some level? Were others in danger? These are answers I must have. Now.

  If the men that did it were here, in front of me now, I know the thing I have alwa
ys felt a kind pride for, I know that the fact that I have never killed, would be a fact no more.

  “Easy,” Vasily murmurs. There is nothing reproachful in the word. Only a gentle kind of soothing. He sounds like he is trying to calm an angry bull and it very much apropos to the way I am feeling. Very little is holding me back right now; right now, all I need is a target.

  Abram shifts. His jaw is tight. His voice rumbles. “We think it was the Italians. We have the surveillance video from the bodega they shot him in front of. It has all of the hallmarks of a hit. And we know they have been...upset at the amount of territory we have been moving into. This was no random shooting, though the NYPD is calling it one.”

  “No. This…was an execution.” Lacing his fingers together, Vasily raises his hands to his chin.

  “They walked up to him while he was sitting in the car.” Abram taps his fingers against the armrest. “Shot him point blank in the temple. He had no chance. No time to react.”

  “But no one,” Vasily interjects, “should have known he was there. How?” He looks at Abram and then back to me again. “How did they know?”

  “We are being watched,” Abram says. It is a simple thing, but a thing that should not have happened. We do not allow ourselves to be followed. Boris knew as well as anyone in our organization the importance of being vigilant. We don’t go to the same restaurants. We don’t take the same roads every day. Habit, in this business, gets you killed. So Vasily’s point is valid. How did they know Boris would be there when, very likely, it was a place Boris had never been to before? Being followed is the obvious answer. In that, we are vigilant too. But, sometimes, there is not enough vigilance. If, for a moment, Boris had noticed a car tailing him...it would have been enough.

  All they’d needed were seconds. All they’d needed were inches. And just like that, Boris was gone.

  I cannot make myself stay still. Rising from the chair, I walk to the window. My footfalls are heavy thuds against the carpet. In the window, the afternoon sun is bright and warm. My stomach does not feel right. It is sucked in too tight. I am forgetting to breathe. I try not to see it. I try not to see Boris sitting there. I try not to feel the instant of terror he must have felt when the cold barrel of the gun pressed to his temple.

  At least it had been quick. One second to the next...one moment alive, and then the next...gone.

  Boris had been like me, alone, young, and directionless. Boris, I remembered, liked to read the comics in the newspaper. He liked to eat breakfast for dinner and he liked to drink a little too much vodka in the evenings and he liked to make people laugh. He had a laugh that sounded like a train roaring down the tracks. When he felt unsure, which was never often, he ducked his head down. He spoke slower. The last time we’d talked he’d been unsure.

  He’d been unsure about living this life anymore.

  ‘I can’t say this to anyone else,’ Boris had told me the last time we’d talked. ‘But I’m tired Alexei. I’m tired of always looking over my shoulder. I’m tired of fighting. I am thinking of resting,’ Boris had said to me. ‘Going somewhere different...maybe Europe…’

  Boris had not gotten his chance. His chance had been stolen. Along with his life.

  Rest easy, my friend, I think to myself silently. At least, like me, he has no family to speak of. No one to miss him. Unlike me, he wasn’t seeing anyone in particular. Thankfully, I think. Boris would not have wanted to leave anyone behind. He would not have wanted to hurt them.

  Like I am taking the chance of hurting Radiah.

  If something were to happen to me, she would suffer.

  If someone were to try to use her to get to me, she would suffer.

  If I cannot give her the things she wants because it is too dangerous, she would suffer.

  She is suffering. And I don’t think I’m worth it. I’d been thinking of saying it. I’d been thinking of, somehow, trying to do something to make things better.

  But this…Only a few moments ago I’d been considering looking for a way out. This, now, though, is not something I can turn my back on. Boris has been my closest friend for years. He was—is—like a brother to me. It is only right that I deal with this.

  I have to take care of this.

  “I will take care of this,” I say aloud. They have not asked me to and I don’t know if that was their reason for this meeting or not, but it’s something I intend to do. Only a direct order to do otherwise will make me stand down.

  “Alexei,” Vasily says. “There are others. You and Boris were close. We know this. We don’t expect you to take this on.”

  I can hear it, and more, in his voice. This does not have to be my fight, he is saying without words. This does not have to be my fight because this is a dangerous fight, a deadly fight. But this is my fight. And I want to fight it. For Boris. We...I…am the only family Boris ever had. Maybe it’s not much of a family. Boris had deserved better. But I am the only family he has. And I will not turn my back on his murder.

  I turn back to face him. “I will take care of this,” I say again, and I say it so there is no more debate, no more argument. They know how far back Boris and I go. They know we started this together and they know, if someone has ended it for Boris, it is up to me to end it for them. If there is anyone in our organization that should settle this matter, it should, by rights, be me.

  They will not contest me on it.

  “What’s your plan,” Abram says.

  “My plan right now is to make a plan,” I retort, maybe a little too sharply. I don’t know enough yet. And I don’t like to rush things. I’m not going to pretend to have a plan when I don’t know what, or who, we’re dealing with yet. If it is the Italians, then they have the upper hand. They have a deep infrastructure in place. They have men everywhere, eyes everywhere. I will have to do this carefully, cautiously, to make sure no one else loses their life.

  Vasily gives me a small smile. He doesn’t mind my approach. If anything, as he has told me before, he likes the way I am methodical, the way I will take my time to be sure.

  ‘For someone who was so hot-headed,’ Vasily told me once, ‘you have grown up into a fine strategist.’

  Abram’s phone hums in his pocket and, as he pulls it free and glances down at it, he stands. “Excuse me,” he says. He walks to the door, opens it, and steps out into the hall. I don’t think the other man minds leaving this to Vasily. I don’t blame him. I feel too...aware of my own emotion right now. Inside, it feels as though I am vibrating and I strive to regain my composure. To many, I’m sure I look perfectly calm. But these men know me. These men knew Boris.

  Abram closes the door behind him.

  When we are alone, Vasily nods to the chair I have so recently stood from. “Sit, Alexei,” he says.

  I don’t feel like sitting, but it is Vasily, and so I do. He knows how much I respect him. But I will not meet his eyes now. Now that we are alone, I don’t think I can. There is too much feeling in me. Too much feeling and not enough space for any of it.

  “Talk to me, Alexei.” He leans back in the chair. He folds his hands over his lap. “Look at me, Alexei.”

  “There is nothing to say,” I tell him. I lean back in the chair. He has told me to look at him, and so I do, but my eyes are defiant. And then I look away. I do not feel like myself anymore. Inside, I feel eighteen again.

  “Alexei.” He says my name so sharply that my eyes shift towards him again.

  “How long have I known you?” he asks me.

  “Too long,” I reply. I almost snort it. He knows full well when we met, and I know his question was rhetorical. He knows me well enough too to know I am not in the mood for this. It is hard to stay quiet now, hard to sit and listen to the lecture I think is coming. In all honesty, I would not accept it from anyone else. Only him.

  “Sometimes…” Vasily sighs. He rubs his hands together. He presses his lips together in a thin line. “Sometimes I regret it. Meeting you. Bringing you into the organization, Alexei.” He makes
a small, wry smile. “Sometimes I think I should have told you, the lost little boy, to get lost.”

  “What?” I frown at him. This I hadn’t expected. I don’t understand his meaning. “Have I done something to displease you?” I work very hard to do my job right. The idea I might have let him down is unsettling to me. Vasily is the one man above all of the others that I do want to please. In many ways, he has been like a father to me. The idea of displeasing him...

  Vasily waves his hand at me. “No, no. The opposite. I never have to worry about your methods, or your results. You always get the job done. And, more importantly to me, I understand you, Alexei. And I feel like you understand me. In so many ways, we are very much alike, you and I.” His blue eyes seem distant. I know the look well. It makes me shift in the chair. There has been too much, already today, of memories. “I remember it. I remember you. You were sharp, even then. Honest, even then. And loyal. All you really wanted was a place to put your loyalty. You craved it. A family. A home. You were willing to give us everything if only we would give you our trust in turn.” He laughs. “Do you remember Sacha? He wanted nothing of you. Said you were too soft. And I told him. ‘No. He is strong. He is stronger than the rest of them.’ It takes strength to have a heart, Alexei.”