by Tessi, Zoya
The image of Alex comatose on the couch had been in the back of my mind all night, as had the sting of remorse for what I’d done. Nikolai had been right when he accused me of acting like a brat and not facing up to reality. My recklessness only confirmed that, but what worried me most was the idea that Alex would be kind of disappointed in me. I wasn’t happy either that his opinion was suddenly so important.
In the absence of a better companion, I lifted my glass of vodka and looked at it questioningly. Maybe there was some truth at the bottom of a glass after all.
“You know, Vodka, all this shit that’s been happening has really rattled my cage, mentally. For real! I already get panic attacks; I don’t want a bad case of Stockholm syndrome on top of everything else.”
The bartender, who wasn’t much of a distance from me, stopped fixing a cocktail for a second and threw me a puzzled look. Ignoring his question-mark expression, I drained my glass and prepared a flirtatious smile for the boys gathered round Beth. I thought I might just let myself go and prove that Alex was just a flash in the pan.
I’d been lonely after breaking up with Tyler and that’s all there is to it.
Ten minutes later I was deeply involved in a totally meaningless conversation with a blonde haired guy. I didn’t catch his name, but I was smiling at him like there were no tomorrow. When he asked for my number, I thought what the hell and nodded. He seemed like fun and made me laugh a lot, but he reminded me of a dollar bill that went through the washing machine by accident and came out all faded.
Very soon, I was standing with my back pressed up against him, feeling strange about his tongue, which was wetly moving around my earlobes. It wasn't as seductive as he, obviously, thought it was going to be.
Observing the crowd in front of me, I saw two men entering the club and blinked a few times in a real state of shock. If the blonde guy hadn’t been holding me round the waist, I’d probably have ended up on the floor.
This is not happening!
The first to appear out of the ether was Paolo. He was dancing frantically to the beat of the music. Behind him, hands in his pockets, coolly scanning the crowd stood Alex, and then his eyes were suddenly on me. I thought for a second I might be imagining things. It was surely impossible that he’d found me so fast.
He started approaching in long strides that were better suited to some big animal of prey set to pounce. Revelers in the crowd seemed to sense something and quickly cleared out of his way, leaving him a straight line in which to approach. I closed my eyes with the foolish hope that like in some fairytale, the monster might just disappear, but when I smelled him close to my face, everything came crashing down.
“Oh, no!” I yelped and slowly opened my eyes.
Alex was standing right in front of me and to my astonishment he seemed quite composed. I’d expected him to lash out, start dragging me off, or even lay into the blonde haired guy. But like the very model of tranquility, he observed me and the scene around without saying a word. Timidly, I raised my eyes to concentrate on his face. There was simply nothing there to read. If any facial expression could reveal absolutely zero, he had it then.
I wriggled free of the blonde guy’s embrace and, feeling as though I were about to face a firing squad, let my legs carry me to towards the door of the club, with Alex trailing behind me. As we were leaving the place, I caught sight of Bethany and Paolo leaning up against the bar, watching in amazement and whispering to each other, but not doing anything to get in my way.
I stopped when I got to the sidewalk and looked around for a big black motorcycle, but it was nowhere to be seen. Moving past me, Alex went straight up to an old Volvo parked at the curb, opened the passenger door and looked me in the eyes. My legs were trembling as I got in, and I expected him to slam the door hard. Instead, it only clicked shut before he moved around the front and got in behind the wheel, still not saying a word.
“I didn’t know you have a car.“ I said, trying to make my voice sound normal.
Ignoring my comment, Alex bent down, twisted two wires hanging down under the wheel and somehow made the engine start. Shocked, I looked from him to the wires, then back again.
“Guess I shouldn’t ask how you got the car...” I finally heard the words come out of my mouth and sat back in my seat.
For some time we drove in silence, my level of anxiety rising with every passing block. A million questions raced through my mind, though I wasn’t sure it would be wise to ask anything given the situation. I glanced at Alex a few times, but he was still a blank slate.
“I’ll tell Beth I’m not coming back,” I said, waiting for a reaction.
Nothing. He didn’t even look at me. I waited a few more seconds, pulled the phone out of my purse and quickly typed a message. It crossed my mind that he must have tried to call me after he woke up, but that I hadn’t noticed it ringing. Curious to know just how many times he’d tried, I checked my missed calls. Seven from Paolo. None from Alex. Baffled, I carefully put the phone back in my purse and turned to him.
“How did you know where I was?“
Silence.
No response, no reaction. He just drove the way a limo driver might, acting like I wasn’t there at all.
I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the road ahead. I didn’t know how to come to terms with his lack of emotion, and after all I’d done this was the last thing I expected. His silence felt somehow even more menacing than the alternative, so I drew my knees up to my chest and stayed that way for the rest of the drive, not saying a word.
When we got to our neighborhood, Alex parked the car in front of the building next to ours, apparently returning it to its rightful owner, then beckoned with a movement of his head for me to follow him to our door. He stayed a pace behind, never letting me out of his sight.
Though I couldn’t see his face, I felt his eyes burn into the back of my neck. I was the one to unlock the door and I had an idea that I might run straight to my room, but when I made it through the apartment door, I stopped straightaway.
The coffee table that used to sit in front of the couch was now lying upside down, and shards of glass from its top now lay scattered across magazines strewn across the floor. Parts of a broken flower vase lay in a puddle of water, along with some wilted roses. I studied the room a little more, but it seemed like the coffee table and what had been on it were the only things that had been damaged.
I thought someone had broken into the apartment while we were out, but rejected the possibility when Alex approached the table and righted it with one hand before moving it back into place. Ignoring the glass that crunched underneath his boots, he walked casually across the room, sat down in the armchair across from me and motioned me with his eyes to sit on the couch. For quite some time I could only look at him, feeling like this was the first time we properly met.
“You’re an animal!” I started yelling when I recovered myself a little, “What gives you the right to smash up my stuff?”
“Sit down,” was all he said, though I didn’t see his lips move.
I felt my palms start to sweat and my cheeks turning crimson, and it seemed like I might actually be getting ready to hit him. However much my instincts told me that was a stupid thing to do, I paid little regard.
“I won’t! Who do you think you are, acting this way? What's the matter with you? Are you mad because a girl gave you the slip? I guess your ego couldn’t take it so you vented your anger on the furniture. You like destroying things, huh?”
“Sasha,” he whispered very softly.
“No one, hear me, no one will tell me anymore what I can and can’t do! It’s my life and I don’t plan on spending it locked inside four walls. Eighteen years I spent hiding, but it's over with it! And if you have some problem with that, you can pick up your stuff and get back to the hell you came from!”
Furious, I rushed to my room and locked the door behind me with shaking hands. Climbing into the bed, I curled up against the headboard and was st
ill breathing fast when Alex's footsteps approached and then fell silent outside my door.
“Sasha,” he pressed down on the handle and tried to open it.
“Leave me alone!”
“Let me in,” he said in an even lower voice than I’d heard before, but not loudly.
“Go away!”
For a few moments everything was quiet, and just when I thought he’d decided to leave me alone until the morning, the door seemed to burst off its hinges, bending first before giving way under pressure. I screamed and pressed my head back even further against the board, watching as Alex came into the room and sat down in my chair, his head bent slightly to one side, an inscrutable expression on his face.
If I hadn’t been paralyzed with fear because a maniac had just broken into my room, I surely would have let rip another almighty scream. As it was, fat tears began rolling down my face, and I wasn’t sure whether they were from fear or anger.
“I spent half an hour with my head down the toilet, trying to puke up the fucking shit you spiked me with, and I can tell you it wasn’t a nice experience.” his voice was calm and composed throughout. “Don’t you ever think of doing something like that again. Never again. Is that clear?”
Without taking my eyes off him, I nodded mechanically.
“As for sneaking out tonight, this will be the last time.”
I sniffed and nodded again.
“Otherwise, I'm gonna tie you to this bed and you’ll stay that way till this whole thing blows over.”
I felt a lump in my throat and drew back. Though his voice sounded calm, I caught a dangerous glint in his eyes and knew he meant every word.
“I don’t know if you lost your mind, or whether you’re just plain naïve as to the situation we find ourselves in,” he put his leg down and leaned forward, his elbows coming to rest on his knees.
“I know you're not happy you ended up with me. We can’t do anything about that now. I suggest you buck up your ideas and quit fighting. My patience almost ran out tonight and, trust me, you don’t want that to happen. It’s a line you do not want to cross.”
He got up from the chair and headed for the door, then turned to cast one last glance over his shoulder:
“It’d be a good idea to mark this date in your calendar over there. You can start celebrating it as a second birthday.”
“Why?” I breathed.
“You have no idea how lucky you were earlier tonight. If I’d caught up with you when you ran, I really might have squeezed your throat too hard.”
With those words he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He didn’t shut it well enough though, because it swung open soon after. I was too scared to do anything about it.
Chapter 8 - The Smell of Rot and Oil
I'd only been asleep for a few hours when I was rudely awakened by the ringtone on my phone, which seemed to be shredding my brain from the inside. Cursing into my pillow, I reached over for it and managed to hit answer on the third attempt.
“Mhh?” was all I could offer.
“HOW DID YOU DARE TO DO SUCH A THING?”
The voice on the other end of the line sounded truly livid and I had to hold the phone several inches away from my head to avoid any permanent damage to my eardrums. Alex had obviously filled my father in all the latest action.
“Irresponsible, devious…” he went on, “If you had even an ounce of brains you wouldn’t...”
From experience I knew it was best to let him finish before saying anything. After around half a minute it seemed like his tirade might be winding down.
“…locked up far away for a long time!”
I waited a few more seconds, just to be sure he’d run out of steam, before I put the handset back against my ear.
“Could there be anything more wonderful than hearing your loving voice in the morning, dad?”
“When I see you next time…” he sounded anything but calm, and I knew first hand that beads of sweat would be forming on his brow, his usually calm exterior ruffled on my account, but never for anyone else.
“There’s no need for threats, I’ve already been through plenty thanks to the monster you left in my closet.”
The night before, I’d writhed in bed for hours agonizing over the scene Alex had made. My deepest insights on the matter had concluded that he actually had every right to react the way he had, given my chemical experiment. But breaking the furniture and busting down my door was still going way too far.
Venturing out on a mission to the bathroom in the dead of night, I’d passed the living room and seen from the moonlight that the table had been put back in its rightful position, and all the glass cleared up off the floor, but that hadn’t quelled my anger. On top of everything, the door to my room was still hanging off its hinges like some sad scarecrow, determined to remind me about Alex’s temper.
“You know, sometimes I wonder if you even know what a psycho he is, the guy you sent here.”
“Serious problems call for extreme measures. Aleksey may be a little rough around the edges, but he’s one of the rare few I’d trust with my daughter’s life.”
“Jeez. Should I feel honored to have him here then?”
“Yes, Sasha, you really should,” he said, evidently growing weary of the conversation, “and you should be grateful, because he’s someone who’d take a bullet for you if it came to that.”
I’m sure the color drained from my cheeks as I heard his words, because somewhere deep inside I felt Nikolai was speaking the truth, and I could even imagine it happening. Maybe Alex and I weren’t on speaking terms, but the thought of it rocked my foundations, and it took a second or two for me to recover enough to speak.
“Well, that’s what he’s paid for, right? It's his job.”
“Yes, but others would probably have a change of heart if it happened for real. Alex would do what he’s paid to do.”
“I’m honestly impressed by how much you trust him, but how can you be so sure? I’m dying to know.”
“If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t have a father to shout at you.” he sighed.
“What are you talking about?”
There was a long pause and I thought the line might have gone dead, but Nikolai’s voice came through again, quieter this time.
“I don’t want to go into details now. It’s enough to tell you that Aleksey went into surgery with three bullet wounds last year, any one of which might have proved fatal, when really it should have been me.”
After coming off the phone with Nikolai, I needed more than half an hour to face coming into contact with Alex again. Though I was still mad at him, what Nikolai had said gave me a lot to think about.
“If you thought you'd achieve something by intimidating me and throwing threats around, think again.”
I was standing in the doorway of the kitchen looking daggers drawn at Alex, who was calmly reading a newspaper at the table. The guy obviously needed his regular fix of current affairs, since he always read at least two dailies first thing in the morning.
“And I didn’t for a moment think you might strangle me. I really didn’t.” I announced.
Alex bent the top of the paper down a little and gave me a knowing look.
“I suggest you don’t test that conviction of yours.”
“Woo hoo. Aren’t you the dangerous one... I’m quaking in my boots,” I raised my nose in his direction.
He let the newspaper drop down on the table and leaned back, then carefully drew his arms across his chest and looked at me. I felt my skin start to tingle under his gaze, so I turned to the window, feeling all of a sudden like a flea under a microscope. It was pretty obvious that I looked as uncomfortable as I felt.
“You know, I wonder... Are you really that bold or just completely nuts?” he let his head fall slightly on one side, regarding me like some wise old owl.
Oh, how much I hate him!
Instead of saying anything clever, I did something that I probably hadn’t done since p
re-school. I stuck my tongue out at him. As far as I could.
I expected him to make a face or offer some insult. He didn’t. Out of the blue, Alex started to laugh. But it wasn’t with his characteristic sarcastic scorn. This was an honest to goodness smile from the heart, and one that was written all over his face, even in the eyes. Dumbfounded, I could only stare. He had the most beautiful smile I've ever seen.
“You know, you're real cute when you're angry. Like a little imp.”
“I. Am. Not. Little!” I jumped from the chair with my hair flying round in front of my eyes, “But you’re an ogre if ever there was one!”
“Oho... pardon me! I didn’t know that five feet was the average height these days…”
“Five feet three, for your information,” I turned on my heel and, with what dignity I could muster, hurried to my room.
I leaned back against my door after I’d forced it closed; the hinges still hadn’t been fixed and the whole thing was out of joint. In my mind, I could still see his face and that radiant smile, and for all my bluster I caught my own reflection in the mirror, grinning like a fool. It felt like I’d discovered a hidden gate leading to a secret, enchanted garden.
Throwing my arms up in the air and letting out a big puff of air, I forced myself to focus on all the junk scattered around my room, very confused as to how I could have changed my point of view so suddenly.
I’d only just started packing my clothes away in the closet when a flash of inspiration struck, like in a cartoon when a light bulb appears above the character’s head. Immediately, I dashed to Beth’s room, clapping my hands together in glee on the way. Opening the door without knocking, I was disappointed to find her wrapped up tightly in her quilt, almost invisible except for a few curls here and there.
“Beth,” I called, but she didn’t move.
“Bethany!”
Her hand emerged slowly from under the duvet, reached for a pillow and made a futile attempt to throw it at me. A little deflated, since it was obvious I’d have to do it without her, I closed the bedroom door gently behind me and went in search of Alex.