by Reid Astor
It’s strange how old habits slip right back in with the right people. He always cared for Luka, in his own special way, and the man always reciprocated as a brother, but neither of them could deny that they had expected a day like this to come.
But he won’t kill him when the time comes; he will do anything to save him from being killed. If there’s a worthy man to hunt anyone down, it’s Luka Petrovich, but that’s a matter for his future self to contend with.
He thinks it a small miracle that he even got Luka on the ground, much less took down the two other youths in the car once it had parked here. Granted, his ribs feel like something awful from where his old friend (he needs to stop thinking of him as such, he thinks) crushed his fists into him and his back is still stinging violently where he thinks his kidney is, but Niklas can still walk through the haze of pain, is remembering how to.
“Bychit Kolya,” Luka laughs, voice breathy and sharp, face unseen.
“Blyad, fucking walk,” Niklas grunts, more urgently now, looking out to the light pouring in from where the shutters have been raised in this otherwise empty, dusty shithole. “Don’t make me treat you like the other bitches we used to handle back in the day. I regret, but I remember.”
He snorts irreverently, raises both hands and waves them with some kind of sarcasm, and hawks a spit out- but in all time, with the muzzle digging into his back, he walks. “Mrs. Morris never comes to places like this, usually, you know that, Kolya?” he says as they approach the steps to a metal sheet for a door. He goes stone-still, and glances over his shoulder, eyes piercing through the darkness under his thick brows. Even now he has a comradely disposition, a friendly look to his face. “I’m going to get my keys to this place. In my right pocket. Okay?”
“No,” he mutters, stepping forward and thrusting his hand down the man’s right pocket and feeling the cold keyring sting against his fingers. There’s a razor hooked into them. He snorts, drags them both out and turns the pocket inside out, slipping the razor into his own jacket pocket and handing Luka the keychain. “Open up.”
The man complies with shaking fingers, still seeming a little out of breath as he fumbles with the right key. The door clicks open, revealing a hallway lit by lines of unfiltered fluorescent bar lights. It’s a large area, but Svetlana is nowhere in sight. Niklas eyes it keenly as Luka speaks, “You know, that pretty girl you had back there in the shop-”
“If she’s hurt, I’m shooting your balls, Luka. See how well you fight. If Svetlana hurts my employees, I need to hurt hers. Walk,” he grits his teeth and jabs the man forward.
The hallway is long, desolate, and screams to him of corporate facade, shell companies. The more he knows about Svetlana Morris, the more hollow and see-through she becomes, he thinks, until there’s down to nothing but a core of black, selfish bitch. And he still can’t hate her. The thing inside him is more purposeful than hateful, which is different, strange and bubbling near to this chest. “To think the last time I saw your boss, we were having a nice dinner,” he says as they pace down the hall, bootheels clicking in steady tempo on the floor. “Where are we going?”
“Downstairs,” Luka says, worrying the keychain between his fingers and playing it anxiously close by his side. Niklas watches that hand; he can recall every underhanded tactic this very man taught him when they were both teenagers sitting on the side of the road. Razors in counterfeit watches and boots, the types of rings you want to wear to break bones with. “She stays downstairs.” He halts, points down an adjacent hall that leads to darkness. “Down... Down that way was where your father used to work every day.”
Niklas feels the pulse go through him right then, thinking of that darkness, that mold that his father walked through to an office every day. He wants to ask Luka if he met him, what he was like. Instead, he bites down on his tongue and jabs the Kalash, motioning them forward, moving away from the hallway.
"What's downstairs?" He asks, looking left and right over the rust-eaten barriers of each wall. They seem to be some kind of meld of metal sheeting reinforcement and weak panels- cheap, impromptu work.
Luka grunts ineffectually, looking over his shoulder and shrugging. He's still fidgeting with his keys, but Niklas lets him- his friend has a raw deal any way he looks at it. "A small base, some old shit," he says, crudely, "lots of Babulya’s belongings. She never allows us down there."
"So why here? Because it's quiet?"
This seems to sober him- his shoulders go rigid and he stops playing with the ugly plush cow key chain. "Hmmh. Remember back in our good days, Kolya? The underground rings, the streets?" When he isn't honored with an answer, he says, "The key was always isolation. A whole crowd can gather down there and they can tape off a ring in bright yellow duct tape and kids like we used to be can fight till someone breaks out all their front teeth on the ground. They can yell nicknames, place bets and jeer to their hearts' content- nobody can hear this deep down in hell."
Niklas ponders this as they pass through a shadow of a broken light. His footsteps seem to match up with the memory of a lead pipe in his hands rhythmically coming up and down and beating out a satisfying crunch of relenting bone. There's a cadence, like the needle threading the helix of his ear and the steady burn of his first earring, soldered in by Luka's deft hands. It’s almost too much, because it’s almost comforting to remember something that was always so consistently there in his life until half a decade ago. "You know, I thank God every day you made me take my eye out."
Luka laughs. "Ah, you were something else. Captain Vladimir wanted your right hand, did I tell you that? The stink you made on your way out. That place will never see the likes of you again."
He thinks of raw-faced children staring at their reflections in dirty mirrors lining locker rooms. "No one is that special at eleven year old. There will always be the likes of me in places like that, so long as there are sick bastards who’ll pay to watch dogfights." They're walking at a slow pace, enjoying this catch-up before the shit falls, he realizes. He doesn't mind. "What happened to our captain?" Hard-eyed Vladimir, he remembered, even the love he'd felt for that old man through every pummeling he'd gotten from him. Vladimir only reminded you he was capable of being tender when a woman was present- otherwise he was a demon on two feet.
Luka spits again- it makes a gleaming speck rolling lazily down the old wall. " пизде́ц4. Fell out of favor with Babulya Morris. Too nice to-" he catches himself. "Eh, made the wrong friends. Helped the wrong people. She's sensitive, you know. But she likes you, too much." There’s no resentment in his voice- he talks of Vladimir’s passing like he’s describing how the trash was picked up this morning.
"That's shit," he says, though he isn't surprised. He digs for words to say. "He was a good old man."
[4]
"You should have seen him when you left. He was talking about the poison of America for months after, grousing around with his rum saying one day you would bury him, talking about cyclops and hydras." Luka laughs. "Good devil."
He wants to laugh with him, but his head itches with the thought of Svetlana sitting at the top of the syndicate all along. How long has she been there? How long had she been pushing buttons to send misfortune down his way?
No, he tell himself, he can't blame Svetlana altogether. That's discrediting the dirty looks given to him in church, the slurs in school, the children who took him down and bruised his ribs and called him Dirty Red instead of his name. That does the school a great dishonor for eventually making him true to his name.
Niklas feels any semblance of lightness and rapport fall apart from the both of them as they reach the grim-looking door. It's got a panel of glass somewhere peeking under the multiple stripped-off paper notices plastered all across it. "This is it, then, Luka?" he says. “Do you know how many men are down there?”
The man shrugs, smiles bitterly and- ignoring the rustle of Niklas raising his gun with and aim- turns around. He throws up his hands to each end of the wall, and leans against the d
oor, his short-cropped head knocking against it- tap, tap tap. Every scar Niklas remembers, every story on his prematurely aged face comes in sharp relief under the light as he snorts a laugh. “Bychit Kolya,” he says, “she expected this. I love you, brother.”
Then the gunfire starts.
Niklas doesn’t have time to flinch as Luka’s body is torn apart by the bullets ripping through the door, as splinters and debris fly against his face and body and, unconsciously, he pulls the trigger himself- and he sees the life leave him, and the corpse that used to be Luka staggers, jerking unnaturally as another line of shell is mercilessly shot into him-
When the gunfire stops, the silence that follows makes him wonder where God is, right now. There’s nothing godly in the silence, just the dribbling of blood and a falling corpse.
The body falls on its knees and makes a splattering sound, rolling down the two steps to the door, stopping in a formative puddle flecked with remnants of the ruined door. Niklas drops the gun and feels his small breakfast broiling like acid in his throat. And he falls.
The steps come like the tempo of a march- six-eight, one two three four five six one two-
The sad excuse for a door is kicked down and lands, unceremoniously, on Luka’s body. “Shit. Shit… Ah… You’re here. Shit. Throw the gun here,” a voice says, in shaking American accented English.
Niklas looks up from the blood on his jacket and hands, soaking his pants, and at Etburn. The young man is shaking, glazed eyes staring right through him but gun trained on him all the more. “Come on, boss,” he crows, almost pleading, “just throw it here- somewhere- I don’t know, okay? Come on.”
“After this-” he’s surprised by how soft and firm his voice is. “You still follow her after this?”
His eyes widen and he waves the AK-47, as if it’s some kind of animal that can bare its fangs and hiss danger at him. “Boss- Niklas. Get up. Come on. Leave the gun, let’s go. Morris is downstairs. And y-... you know she means business. C-come on.”
He tries to get up, but halts when he feels blood on his fingers as he pushes the ground. Yes- that’s still there. Don’t let your knees be weak, Niklas Baranov. God is here. He is. He tries again, laying his palms flat on the stained concrete, and rises, ignoring the soft schwip of liquid peeling off his knees and hands as he comes to stand, swaying ever so slightly, and ambles towards the youth.
He doesn’t look where he walks, but feels and hears the last of that door crunching beneath his boot, feels the unsteadiness beneath it and the strong tang of iron and gunpowder rising to his nostrils, hot and heavy. “You disgust me,” he says, calmly, as he closes in on Etburn. At his age he was taller, at his age he-
No, don’t think about that now. His hands curl into fists and he feels his nails embed themselves into his palm so hard it hurts and brings him back out of the black sweeping in his vision. Back to the terror in Etburn’s eyes as the young man gulps. Like he’s forgotten he’s the one with the gun. “Okay, boss, pass in front of me and head down the stairs,” he’s saying. “I’m watching you, man, come on.” His voice is cracking, lapsing in to what very well could be tears, but Niklas can’t muster up one dreg of compassion for him.
He feels the razor in his inner jacket pocket like it’s red hot against his chest. He doesn’t draw it, doesn’t even flinch, and after a second’s thought he passes by the youth and down the stairs, further and further away from Luka one step at a time. Etburn clatters down after him, still following a slower variation of his marching beat.
The room below smells of incense, a smoky sweet odor rising up to his nose like it’s trying to clear away the taste of the blood. He notices how set apart it is right away- the light crawling up towards him is orange and intermittent, like candlelight. And somehow that just affirms to him that it’s Svetlana. He picks up the pace down the stairs, hears Etburn struggle to keep behind him.
Svetlana is seated amid a strew of exotic designed scarves and quilts piled upon and around a settee. The screens and candles are set around the den, hiding a compartment behind but showing the dim sconces of candles through them. Niklas is instantly beset by the impression that this place is very close to her heart. There’s no way she could conduct business down here.
She smiles sweetly at the sight of him, hands set on her lap. Only this time she’s in no cheap tourist clothes plucked off a beachside stall in Thailand, tie-dye and sundresses and beads; Svetlana seems larger in presence in a smart suit and slacks, her dark, white-streaked hair swept back into a bun and showing her wrinkled, pale brow. “Kolyenka,” she says, “Stubborn child. Come closer.”
She must see the look on his face even with her vision and the dark lighting- or maybe she was lying about her vision all along. He wouldn’t be surprised. “Please, child. Don’t be so distant. Come here.” She snaps a finger to Etburn, the saccharine expression falling out of her face, replaced by a cold beadiness in her eyes. “You. By the door. Don’t intimidate my Kolyenka.”
He steps into the center of the room, breathing in the choking thickness of the incense she has on, feeling it like his lungs self-immolating. Words come strangely now that she’s finally before him after everything. He feels like he could start anywhere, on any path, and it would still drop to the same end. In the end, the words he says are- “Is it because I look like him?”
Her eyes crinkle up with some sort of twisted affection. Her small face somehow still manages to make it look loving, kind. “No, my dearest. Even if it was, there’s too much of your mother in you as well for me to ever desire.” With this, she slowly rises, every motion a fragile murmur on a short woman like herself. She approaches him in small footsteps that give away her ailing bones, coming up an entire foot shorter even in heels.
This close, he can make out every single wrinkle that age has carved into the skin of the once beautiful Svetlana Morris.
“Love, you see? I did it out of love,” she says. “The Russian gangsters mark their skin to tell other thieves their story, who they are. Intricate things,” she reaches, draws aside his collar to show the scorpion climbing across his collarbone. “Scorpions with tails pointed down to say you wish to be a thief no longer. Roses to say you had a juvenile birthday in prison. Bulls, even, to proclaim yourself executioner.” She giggles and it is like shattered glass hitting the ground. “All I ever needed was your father’s-” she tugs back her sleeves, and where bead bracelets so commonly sit is old flesh and the initials- A.B. - “-your father’s name to tell me every story to my name I have ever written in my heart. He was the only man who ever got close to me, inside me and my operations. He was the only ambiguous thing between my lives, so clearly set apart.”
“Now I am,” he says, watching those initials disappear once more beneath cuffs.
She touches him again, cold hands brushing his neck. And she tugs, pulling away the collar of his turtleneck. He doesn’t doubt what she sees- he feels the tender skin protest her frigid contact. It’s likely still red, still every shade of violence Lars sucked into it. “Suka, suchka[5]. You’re a whore like your mother,” she says, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. “I am so happy, every day, Kolyenka, to find reasons not to see him in you. I just never expected what you would do to Lawrence, how you would bring him over to your side. All you would find there.”
“You killed my father.”
She takes her hand away, inclines her head and looks to him innocuously. “Yes,” she says, tenderly. “Sometimes we must do that to things we love. If only to prove we can exist independent of them. Alyosha was such a good man, such a good lover,” she shuts her eyes, seeming momentarily swept into a moment of passion that flicks just behind them like an ember, and then she’s back to him again, looking him straight in the eye. “But even to his last he had you on his heart, and your mother.”
“I understand,” he says, softly. “And the renovation? On top of tying me in my debt, into fraud, in... In everything you’ve done to me. You want your money back?” He shakes his hea
d and looks up, to the swirling patterns painted across her ceiling. “Did you run things here when I was with the gang? How long have you... How long have you had your claws in me?”
Svetlana titters a laugh and pats his cheek, pulling him to look down at her again before drawing away. Her hand comes away red, she looks at it for a moment, then smiles. “Child. I’m not telling you everything.”
“Svetlana,” he says. He’s surprised at how natural it feels to call her by her name. “You could have done anything to my father. The little sum of money he took- the things he did behind your back-”
Her hand barely stings when it crosses his face, but he feels it all the same. “It was not little.” Her voice takes an edge, an edge unnatural to his ears after nothing but melodious laughter from her lips. Softer, then, she says, “It was not little, Kolyenka, no. It was his nerve. It was the nerve of both of them. And I could have done anything to him. Yes,” she nods, the joy flooding back to her eyes. “Anything at all. So easily- too easily. So I decided to have you, instead. See the man you became. And ah- you’re a fine enough boy, Kolyenka, but beside your father you are so, so disappointing.” She pats him again, not seeming to mind how he is soaked in Luka’s blood. “But do not be sad. That is not a bad thing, necessarily. Svetlana will take care of you. I will remember what you’ve done- I never forget- but I will be kind to you. Kinder even than that violent lover of yours. This is how your family is, this is what your brothers always wanted to be.”