Love is a Bloodhound

by Reid Astor

  She sits back down and orders finger food for all of them, tells another story, and barely ever- Niklas notices- takes her eyes off him.

  * * *

  Lars only let go of him when Svetlana made to leave and they all had to stand and make the customary farewell noises as they escorted her to her chauffeur. All the while, Niklas was acutely aware of the man feet away from him, down to the goddamn Hugo Boss that clung to his suit jacket and blended with that never-leaving smell of cigarettes.

  They stood then in the parking lot, immersed in darkness. Niklas feels his hair standing on edge as he goes for his bike; it feels good to just not hear Lars' footsteps follow him. He can hear the decisive snapping of a lighter, but that's all.

  "Baranov." His name bounces off of gravel on the way to him. “Niklas Baranov.” It’s like he’s tasting it, feeling the rolls of it in that fake accent of his.

  "You need to decide a name to call me and stick to it," he snaps over his shoulder.

  Lars coughs a little but doesn’t remark on that. "Hey, slow down. I have something to give you."

  He turns, hands in fists. "Why'd you do that? In the restaurant? Why do you insist on messing with me? Isn't it enough that you are so entangled in my affairs?"

  The man looks a little surprised, then that glee falls into his face again, and his grin is sharp and wolfish. "I'm sorry. Lana makes me nervous."

  He considers that, then thinks, Bullshit. "She makes you nervous? You two are like…” He searches for a moment, for a word, then settles on, “Bosom buddies."

  “She’s too old for that, now,” Lars says with a laugh. “And how long I’ve known her doesn't mean she can't make me nervous. All the more reason, actually. Woman is terrifying. You and I both know she could take the skin right off your dick."

  Niklas considers this. "In your case, I would pay to see that."

  "You wound me."

  “Good. That makes my night better. What is it you have to give me?"

  "C'mere." But even as he says it, Lars paces closer, tugging on something pocketed in the inner linings of his trenchcoat. Niklas observes the gaggle of loose papers, tiny paperbacks and cassettes in the dim streetlight as he brings them out. As a bundle it's small, but he can tell it's a whole conglomeration of ephemera.

  Lars doesn't stop at any explicable point between them, just walks slowly on through. Niklas' reflexes bring his hands up and meet a mess of paper and plastic and feels the warmth of his lips press his cheekbone.

  It's a quick kiss and it's easy to pretend it never happened when Lars steps back and says, "Here. It's your dad's stuff. I just got it so... no container." Unceremoniously, he dumps it into Niklas' proffered hands.

  "...Thank you," he musters, warily, and holds them close to keep them from blowing away or falling out. He takes another step back and stares at the man, expecting.

  Lars takes a drag from his cigarette, and the cherry lights up the features of his face in red for a moment, like a firework. He holds the stick between his forefinger and thumb and looks Niklas over, eyes dim with some kind of thought process. "I don't know if it's because you're a fucking Russki or what. I never got Russkis, not even the women. And there's a lot I just don't fucking get about you," he admits.

  "Same," Niklas returns in deadpan, clutching the bundle close to his chest. "Do you want payment for this, Verdura?"

  "I don't suppose you'd suck my dick," the man mutters, flicking away ash.

  He almost wants to laugh. It's hysterical that he could spend so many years in law school and working his ass off in a cafe to end up in having this conversation one midnight in a parking lot. "No," he says. "I wouldn't."

  "Yeah, thought so." Lars watches him, cocks his head to the side and nods. "You know... someday I'll figure out how to get you on your knees."

  "Maybe. Don't bet on it," Niklas says.

  "Yeah, whatever," the man laughs. "Kiss me."

  Niklas feels his innate, passing moment of triumph already deflating into a husk. And Lars can probably already see that in his face, so he turns away and grits his teeth and holds the material even closer to his chest. He looks down at it, at the Russian pulp novels in his hands, the photographs and letters that he can see, and vaguely wonders where Lars got all of this from. Does he want to know?

  To his credit, the man waits and smokes patiently in front of him. Niklas screws his eye shut, tells himself, just a kiss. Just entertaining a psycho. Just a kiss, imagine it's someone from your past. He inhales sharply and steps forward, into that man's space, turns his head and feels Lars not move- not step back, not step into him. And when they're this close he can feel the heat of his breath on his cheek.

  He curses, and leans in.

  He feels the hand on his neck pulling him in next, as if Lars anticipated him coming in for a peck and running all along. And that grip is vicious, almost as warm as Lars' own lips crushed bruisingly against his open mouth breathing cigarette smoke and heat into him.

  Lars pulls away for a moment and leaves him desperate for air, but the man only whispers, "Relax," one arm falling on his lower back and pressing them together, another half-gripping half-running through his hair and-

  And then they are kissing again, or Lars is kissing him. Niklas thinks that this must be exactly what it feels like to be fucked, to be desperate for air, to have his body seized in and tangled up and completely held out of his grasp.

  The cassette makes the loudest noise clattering to the ground, and the books the second loudest, and he tells himself it was because he was going to punch him. He finds his free hands instead pressed up against Lars' chest, tangled in his shirt.

  Lars pushes him and he sways in a dance of power. And then he's against a streetlight, the cold digging into his back and Lars' body warming him from the front and he feels the man's hands roaming, rough, possessing wherever they grope on his back, his hair, his scalp-

  He only has just barely enough arm space to backhand him.

  The air comes out of both of them like a vacuum, Niklas' knuckles sting, and the man's face is hidden in darkness. He stands there against the streetlamp, heaving for air, as he watches Lars' hand come away splotched with the slightest blood.

  He can only see his mouth when he says, "Huh."

  Niklas takes the moment to brush past him and sprint to the paraphernalia on the ground, scooping it all up as fast as possible. "Suka, blyad, queer fucker," he whispers as his palms are scraped on the gravel in his haste. His lips are still burning and he still feels like he's been touched everywhere at once as he walks hastily to his bike. He throws it all into the storage under his seat, doesn't try to think about anything at all except how to get home.

  "You're welcome," Lars says, eerily calm, from under the lamppost. He doesn't move or turn as Niklas rides past him. His cigarette lays forgotten and thrown away by his feet, emitting gentle tendrils of smoke that crawl out into the darkness.

  PART II

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "Why don't you just go along with it?" Germaine suggests, ignoring the revolted expression that instantly crosses his face. "Yes, it sounds like I'm saying you should whore yourself, I can see you making that face all the way from this table. But listen- why would he ask to kiss you? There are so many things someone would ask of you if they just wanted to demean you. He must have an attraction to contend with as well."

  He scrubs at the countertop like it's got a private detective’s face adorned on it in dirt. "Are you implying that he doesn't just do it to mess with me?"

  "I'm not saying he doesn't enjoy messing with you. But he also enjoys kissing you, and instead of being disgusted, you can take advantage of it," she says, maintaining her unnatural calm and swirling the latte in her manicured hands with the small spoon he gave her. "I don't know the details, but I get the feeling that in this situation your investigator friend is your only true ally."

  Niklas massages his brow, setting down the rag for a moment. "My only true ally and I can't stand him."

&
nbsp; "Yes." She takes a testing sip of her drink, but it isn't quite cool enough so she pushes it away and keeps stirring, adding a full packet of sugar as she goes.

  "Ice cube?" He asks almost automatically.

  "No, but thank you, Niklas. Why haven’t you gone to the authorities? I’m tempted to tip them off myself to any suspicious activity. Anonymously, of course," she says in an implicative tone that sends a little shiver up his spine.

  He reminds himself that this is precisely why he chose to give Germaine a window into the situation he is facing: she wouldn't fuck around.

  "I'm too deep in." She doesn’t need to know how deep, about the fraud and the condemned state of the very building she sits in. He knows she won’t tell.

  "Hm." She gives this a thoughtful nod and looks up from her drink, to the window and the desolate streets beyond. Any moment now, another storm will sweep in- the indications are on the flickering lightning illuminated on the puddles strewn across the sidewalk- but Germaine is in no hurry. "I wish I could say no one is ever too deep in, but then that would make a good lot of people look stupid. But I’ll keep your matter between us."

  Niklas knows her enough to know she doesn't trust most people enough to let them put her own sugar in her drink, so he's strangely reassured by that. He picks up his rag and sprays some more surface cleaner onto the marble and tries to distract himself from the swirl of matters in his head. He only ends up thinking, If only this building became less condemned the cleaner it got. The day my customers stop thinking the slight sagging in the ceiling is vintage and charming, I am dead.

  "But Niklas," Germaine starts, interrupting his reverie, "do me a favor. Whatever you're caught up in, be wise. I think you already understand who your real friends are." You just have to act like it, she doesn’t say. He catches the meaning. She goes on, looking into her own drink with an almost meditative calm, "I don't want to see this place hurt because you let some old lady take control of you."

  She leaves soon after, disappearing into the deluge mysteriously without an umbrella. He supposes there would just be someone out there waiting for her, because when he checks outside after bussing her table, she is nowhere in sight.

  Reassured, Niklas flips the sign on the door to 'Closed' and races back behind the countertop. It is still dirty, but he can't wait any longer. He flips open the cupboard beneath and drags out the plastic bag he's been using to keep the things Lars has given him, and, hauling it to the back room, dumps it all on the metal table they normally use for baking.

  He'd gone through some of it the night before, but had needed to drift to sleep. Now more than ever did he have the time to examine them. Yes, most of the books were trashy vintage science fiction pulps with eBay receipts stuck between the pages, but they were his father's.

  He’d swept through the pages of characters looking for the loose penciled-in remark, first, to no avail. He’d shaken out every single one of the copies for ephemera like the things his mother kept, for nothing. Today, he discards the books completely. He moves on to the papers, expecting bureaucratic jargon and uselessness, gathering age as mould on their typewritten faces.

  He doesn’t quite get that.

  The papers are crumpled and disheveled and in no particular order, but it doesn't take much examination to see that they are not official documents at all, but personal letters.

  Some- they are written out simply, slammed into existence by a typewriter somewhere in stunted English, with the occasional handwritten Russian word hovering over a much more awkward English counterpart, or a full body of remarks scrawled in that whole other language.

  He has to drop the papers for a moment at what he sees. He has to drop them and not look and tell himself it’s not real, and then he has to spiral back down to reality and bring the letters to his eyes and read.

  "My dear Svetlana," "My love Svetka," "Svetka," fills his eyes, but after several disoriented moments shuffling through the papers, his gaze is transfixed on three letters alone.

  January 22 1986

  Anna my love,

  You asked me for a letter to keep a week ago. So I have just gotten this typewriter and writing on it is giving me the greatest joy. So forgive me if my childish excitement comes in through the page and dances with you out of turn. I'm so happy to finally write you properly, proper love letters in English.

  Let me first say that I get what they call butterflies just when I step into the Ishmael, that I have gotten them since a week after I first came. I associate the Ishmael with you, so even when you are not there, my heart is aflutter and my eyes search the crowd for you.

  Let me say, secondly, that my heart will always be yours even as ships take me further and further away. You must keep it safe for me while I'm gone and love me only. Promise me that and I will return to you with arms full of love letters.

  Your Alyosha

  May 11 1986

  Svetka,

  Don't write me those dreary things. You were the one who settled with a pig for an American husband, not me, so why should I suffer his actions through your words? Tell me instead again how you want me in your bed.

  Alexei

  July 2 1987

  Svetka,

  I have just learned I have a son. I learned eight months late but better than never. I'm celebrating with my platoon now, over drinks- they forget I am Russian and forget their racist slurs when they realise we're united in this thing, this miracle... But I must write to you even as I drink. A little terror is in me among all this pride, all this prayer that he will grow up strong and well.

  (What on earth can we do now when I come home, Svetka?)

  Alexei

  And Niklas holds a hand to his mouth and ends up with teeth dug into his knuckles. When Anna took the sparse moment to say something about his father, it was always good, it was always in his defense.

  He’s shaking.

  Yes- he knows- much can change in time, especially in twenty-six years, but still… Svetlana.

  This just isn't something Lars could counterfeit. Could he?

  He forces himself to be calm. Treating it like a ritual, he gathers up the letters and stacks them neatly, smoothing out wrinkles- stacks the books on top in order of size, stacks the cassettes atop of that. In his arms he carries the bundle up the creaking stairs down the short hallway to his bedroom. He sets them down on the desk beside the rosary, and picks up that crucifix to kiss it, to imagine that love exists somewhere and does not answer to anyone. So what if his father had an affair with Svetlana? He was born, after all. He thumbs the crucifix and stares into the silvery miniature of the Holy Son.

  Thinking of prayer only makes a tide of shakes pursue him, so he puts it back down, tries to clear his mind, and ends up going for his mini fridge and the bottle within it.

  Finally, Niklas sits himself down at the table with his bottle. This, he decides, this is the proper way to mourn. He should not have expected an angel from his father, not from someone who was gone for so long. He doesn’t know what he should have expected.

  He uncaps the vodka, deciding the proper way to mourn is to drown his questions, and swallow reality.

  * * *

  He's quite drunk by the time the storm blows over the cafe. He can tell he’s drunk by the way his hand falls heavily back to the desk when he tries to raise it, by how every new word is growing heavier to read through on the paper and they are all seeming to swim together, and how loud and cavernous the sound of rain is even as it’s receding from its assault on the roof.

  At some point in time, he remembers that, in all technicalities, the Ishmael is still supposed to be very much open. Briskly, so as not to allow the intoxication to pursue him, he stands up and gives the letters a noncommittal shove off of the desk, watching with mild interest as they flutter to the ground.

  Coming down the stairs, he hears the rustle and human noise of customers- could Tethys have come in without him knowing?- and starts upon realizing that yes, the cafe is in full swing. Only it's no
t Tethys running the cashier, it's Etburn Novik, cheerfully chatting away and still somehow managing to choreograph himself around behind the counter and dole out drinks.

  "Hello, boss," the youth says cheerfully as he scribbles something down on a pad and rushes to the machines, apparently in the middle of a macchiato, then sweeps back to the back room, where Niklas follows with distant curiosity. "Glad you decided to come down. Are you feeling all right, sir? Sorry for the surprise, I didn't know-" he grunts a little as he hauls a full stacked crate of newly washed mugs out from the rusty dishwasher- "if you would want to be disturbed, so I took the liberties."

  Niklas appraises the situation with serenity. The young man strangely seems to have the entire situation under control, judging from the mostly-served population of customers seated at the cafe. Standing from the hall, he asks, "You seem quite familiar with working a coffee shop, for a trainee."