by Greg Smith
She sighed, finished the glass of wine.
“Okay, enough wine for this farm girl. I’m not used to this stuff. Gimme a shot and a beer, I know my limits. This shit sneaks up on you.”
Aleks spoke in a sing-song manner.
“Bottle o’ wine. Fruit o’ the vine…”
Sheila joined in and they sang the next stanza together.
“When you gonna let me get sober?”
“Leave me alone. Let me go home,” Aleks soloed.
“Let me go back and start over,” Sheila finished.
She sighed, slipped into a melancholy funk.
“I wanna start over. I really do, Oshkosh. Do you think I could? Do you think I can start over?”
“I don’t think you have any choice, Sheila. I think you’ve already begun starting over.”
Me, too, he thought.
“I suppose you’re right,” Sheila said, slumped her head against his shoulder. “Maybe we could both go back and start over,” she whispered.
Aleks didn’t answer immediately.
There’s no going back, he thought.
If there was, if he could, he already would have.
“Well, there’s no going back,” he said. “But, here’s to starting over.”
He finished off his glass of wine, kissed Sheila on the forehead. She turned her face up, slipped a hand behind his head, pulled him close to kiss him on the lips. He returned the kiss, broke it off after only a few seconds, gently pushed Sheila into a sitting position.
“I, uh, I think I should head out.”
He stood.
“I had a great time, Sheila. Jacqui is amazing. You’re amazing. You really are. Thank you for dinner. Thank you for a wonderful evening. Thanks for everything.”
“I’m the one who needs to thank you, Step. For being so nice to Jacqui. For…for being so kind to me. For being such a good listener. Letting me ramble.”
Aleks smiled at her.
“‘A good friend knows when to listen, when to stop listening. When to speak, when to stop speaking,’” he quoted. “‘When to pour…and when to stop pouring and just hand over the damn bottle!’”
He held up the empty wine bottle, handed it to her.
“I saw that on a t-shirt somewhere. Seemed appropriate.”
“Wow. All that on one shirt?”
“Well…it was an extra, extra large,” he deadpanned.
Sheila burst out laughing. She hugged the bottle to her chest. Aleks turned to go. At the bottom of the porch stairs, he glanced back. Sheila gave him a little wave and a smile. He waved back, turned, headed off to spend another night at PS #234.
Along the way, he experienced a twinge of remorse over allowing Sheila and Jacqui to believe his name was Stepan.
• • • • •
CHAPTER 66
New York City crept into the holiday season like a late parishioner slipping into the back of a church during service. Hat in hand. Not wanting to attract any attention. Not wishing to disturb other parishioners. Keeping a low profile.
Parades and traditional events took place as scheduled. The Columbus Day Parade. The Village Halloween Parade. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting. New Year’s Eve in Times Square.
Each holiday was celebrated with guarded tentativeness as New Yorkers went through the motions of being festive. For the most part, however, the mood remained somberly hospitable. Celebratory, but pensive. Like a Mardi Gras parade on mute. For those who had suffered losses, the holidays magnified their personal tragedies. Those who had not suffered directly seemed almost afraid to celebrate too loudly. Lest Catastrophe take notice. Pay a visit to their door.
After the dinner evening at the Cahill home, Aleks and Sheila began seeing each other more and more frequently. By Halloween, they’d arranged to bump into one another at St. Paul’s nearly every day. Aleks would appear for lunch, show up for a bottle of water or just stop in for a needed rest. They’d sit together or wander through the shrine area, drawn to the individual stories of victims as they were remembered by their loved ones. They would often simply collapse into each other’s arms at the end of a long day. Exhausted. Taking comfort in each other’s silent company.
They dined together nearly every Friday in November, either at the Cahill home or out at a restaurant or diner. Aleks began attending Jacqui’s basketball games, passed along foul shooting tips. Keep that elbow tucked tight to your side. Most importantly, follow through.
They felt like a normal family whenever they were together.
Sheila invited him for Thanksgiving dinner, eschewing an invite to join the other families from John’s firehouse. Aleks eagerly accepted. The weekend before the holiday, however, Sheila noticed a change in his mood. He was distant, non-communicative, seemed anxious. Her greatest fear was that the tall mystery man she’d grown to love would suddenly decide he wanted his old life back. Whatever that had been. The possibility he was about to leave them crossed Sheila’s mind.
Aleks attended Jacqui’s game that Friday, didn’t make his usual complimentary comments about how well she’d played. He was detached. Distant. Provided only the briefest of answers when questioned. Claiming he was tired, he left early. Sheila didn’t see him again until Monday. His mood had worsened. They spent only a few minutes together. Aleks was tense. Edgy. Too anxious to leave.
Sheila grew uneasy when the tall man didn’t show up at St. Paul’s for lunch or an afternoon break the following day. By five o’clock, she was more than a bit concerned. She tried to convince herself he might have been found out using his fake ID. Or, worse, that he’d been injured while working on The Pile. She shamed herself for even considering either of those possibilities in lieu of his having left her.
At eight p.m., after hours of anguish, she finally found him.
He was outside the chapel, near the memorials lining St. Paul’s fence. Kneeling in front of a framed picture. Unnoticed, she watched as he set a small candle in front of the portrait, lit it. He paused long enough Sheila thought he might be saying a prayer. He stood, took another long moment looking at the picture. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes, turned to leave, was suddenly face-to-face with a stunned Sheila. He averted his eyes, mumbled his customary greeting.
“Pulaski.”
Sheila stared, mouth agape, heart fluttering like a ribbon tied to an oscillating fan. As she’d approached, she’d seen that the picture the tall man had been looking at, the photo he’d placed the lit candle in front of, was his image. The heading running across the top of the poster read “Happy Birthday Binyak!” She’d naturally assumed the photo was his twin brother.
But when she’d gotten close enough to see the caption beneath the photo, a deep feeling of dread had crept through her.
Stepan Bagdasarian
11/20/1966 – 9/11/2001
Stepan? But that was… It was his name. The name on his…
The possibility that the tall man had faked his own death, that he wasn’t actually a twin at all, immediately crossed her mind. Her eyes darted nervously as she considered that she may have made a huge mistake letting a con man into her life. Into her daughter’s life.
Aleks had turned back to the picture, continued to stare at it as he spoke.
“Today is our birthday. We’re thirty-five.”
Sheila remained alarmed, speechless.
“I…I’m pretty sure I can remember every birthday we ever had,” the tall man continued, speaking solemnly. “This is my first one without him.”
He turned to face Sheila.
“Stepan’s dead, Sheil. He was the one who died in the North Tower. I’m Aleks.”
Sheila couldn’t comprehend why the man she’d dared to befriend would pretend to be his dead twin brother.
“But…you…your driver’s license…,” she stammered. “You told me your name was…that you were…Stepan.”
Aleks shook h
is head.
“I never told you I was Step. You saw his driver’s license. You thought it was mine. And you assumed I was him.”
“But you…you…you never corrected me. You never said you weren’t him.”
She’s right, Aleks thought.
“No. I didn’t.”
He knew if he had any future with the brown-haired woman from Pulaski, Wisconsin, it was time to tell her the truth. Tell her everything. About Step’s death. About the Russians. About Connie. All of it.
It was time to come clean.
He led her to a bench, sat next to her.
“Look, Sheil, I, uh, I’ve got some things I really have to get off my chest,” he muttered.
Sheila looked at him in distress. She was confused. Anxious. She’d been dreading this day ever since she and the tall stranger had gotten serious. The day he realized he wanted to go back to his old life.
The line from the wine song flitted through her mind.
Let me go back and start over.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Aleks said.
His words sent feelings of even greater anxiety through the brown-haired woman. She felt the tears growing, ready to spill. She closed her eyes. Aleks placed both hands on her upper arms.
“Let me start by saying that I love you, Sheil. I really do. Jacqui, too. I love you both. Deeply. You…you’ve been a life saver for me.”
Sheila’s tears dripped over the ledges of her eyelids. Like water spilling over the top of an overfilled bathtub.
“Please…please don’t say it. Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say,” she sniffled. “Please don’t, Oshkosh.”
Aleks tipped her chin up, gave her a quick kiss on the lips.
“Shhhhh. Stop, Sheil. You don’t have to cry. I’m…I’m pretty sure I’m not going to say anything close to whatever it is you think I’m gonna say. Now wipe those tears away.”
He ran a finger down her cheek erasing a tear. She managed a small smile.
“Admitting I’m Aleks is the easy part,” the tall man confessed.
He took a deep breath before continuing.
“Step…oh, god…Step…”
He broke down, took a moment to regain his composure.
“Step…uh…he…uh…Step didn’t die…when the, uh…when the Tower collapsed.”
Sheila’s questioning eyes expressed both bewilderment and concern.
“We had a fight. The night before. He, uh…he caught me with his wife. Connie.”
His eyes were sad, remorseful when he looked at the brown-haired woman.
“I’m not proud of this, Sheil. Any of it. But it’s the truth. I swear. I’m telling you the god’s honest truth.”
She grasped his hands, nodded for him to continue.
“Connie and I were having an affair. We were in my office. The night before 9/11. Monday night. The tenth. Step walked in on us. We fought. I grabbed something off my desk. I hit him with it. I was just trying to get him off me, but I hit him too hard. On the head.
“I killed him, Sheil. I killed my own brother. My Binyak.”
Sheila was awestruck, could barely manage a whispered, “What?”
Tears began rolling down Aleks’s cheeks. Sheila was crying as well.
“Step…he, uh, he’d gone after Connie first. I…I’d never seen him so angry before. He was such a gentle soul. He lunged at her. He was strangling her. I managed to knock him off her. Then all hell broke loose.”
Aleks had been holding both of Sheila’s hands as he related the story. He released them, stood, began pacing. He’d pushed the memories of that night to a back corner of his mind. Now had to use the flashlight of his memory to relocate the elusive details.
“I’d tackled him,” he said, as he slowly recollected the event. “I’d knocked him off Connie. We scrambled to our feet. He rushed me. We fought. He was so furious. He had crazy-man strength. We fell to the floor. Then he was…he was strangling me. I almost passed out. It was all I could do to grab the statue, smash it against his head.
“I…I didn’t mean to kill him, Sheil. Whuh–why would I? I just wanted to knock him out. But that statue. It was…it was pretty heavy.”
He hung his head a moment before continuing.
“He’d… Step somehow managed to stab Connie with a letter opener before he attacked me. She, uh, she… Well… Connie bled to death. He’d only stabbed her in the thigh, but, I…uh…I…I guess he nicked her femoral artery. There was a lot of blood.”
“What did you do?” Sheila asked. “After…”
“I left them there.”
Aleks looked as though he was perplexed by his own actions.
“I didn’t know what else to do, Sheil. So I…I left them there. I went home. And I drank myself to sleep. In…in the morning, I went for my usual jog. As though nothing had happened. As though I hadn’t killed my twin brother the night before. As though he and-and Connie weren’t lying dead in our office in the North Tower. I was…I was trying to figure out what to do. I even considered turning myself in.”
His eyes grew wide. He blinked several times.
“Then I saw the North Tower on fire. I watched in a bar as…as the second plane hit the South Tower. Then…both Towers collapsed and…and…he was…Step was…”
He stared wide-eyed directly into Sheila’s eyes.
“Step was gone. And…and Connie… She was gone, too. As though none of it had ever happened.”
Sheila didn’t know what to think. She ran the story through her mind. The man she loved had just confessed to having an affair with his twin brother’s wife, then killing the twin brother in a fight over it. After the twin brother had killed the wife. On top of that, it had all happened in the North Tower the night before 9/11. Everything had been destroyed when the Towers collapsed the following morning.
As though none of it had ever happened.
“Then what?” she probed.
Aleks averted his eyes, stared at the ground, as though searching the pavement for the rest of the story.
“I still wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to be at Ground Zero. I wanted to be near Step. So I…I snuck into an old school that was being used as a supply center. I got the gear I needed. I stole an ID. And I went to work on The Pile.”
A gentle smirk made a brief appearance in one corner of his mouth.
“Then I met you.”
He smiled warmly at her.
“When you saw Step’s license that day and assumed I was him. I…I just went with it, Sheil. It was easier than the truth. I, uh…I guess I thought it…it was a way of keeping Step alive.”
Why is he telling me all this? Sheila wondered. Just so I have his name right? That can’t be all of it. There’s more. He’s leaving. He’s going back to his old life. He’s going back to being Aleks.
“And nuh–now you…you…you want to go back…to…to being Aleks? Is that what you intend to do? Is that whuh–why you’re telling me all of this?”
“I needed to come clean, Sheil. That’s the main reason for telling you. It’s been weighing on me. And, yes, a part of me does want to go back to being Aleks. It’s just…”
He sat back down next to her, again held her hands in his.
“I may be better off if I just keep on being Step. Aleks has, uh, he has a bit of a problem.”
He scoffed.
“Actually, Aleks has a big problem.”
Sheila worried about how many twists his story could have.
“Long story short, Aleks…uh, I accepted money from this Russian guy. He claimed to be an investor, but I knew he was a mobster. I knew he needed his money laundered. I, uh, I lost the money. Investing in speculative stocks. He didn’t like it. He wants his money back. He says if I don’t repay it, I’m a dead man.”
He released her hands, stood again.
“I never paid him, Sheil. I…I don’t have the money.”
He sighed.
“Then all this…9/11 happened.”
�
�Jesus, Step,” Sheila exclaimed. “I mean, Aleks. I mean…exactly what should I call you?” she asked with exasperation.
“I know. I know. When I talk it all out like this it’s…it does sound crazy. It really does.”
“Crazy? That’s putting it mildly. I need a second to get my thoughts together.”
In addition to everything else he’d just laid on her, that he was an adulterer and a murderer, her new lover had admitted to having Russian mob connections.
“Sheil, I, uh, I know how ridiculous this may sound…but…I’m…I mean…I’m not some deviant. I’m not a criminal. I’m the same guy you met two months ago. The same guy you went off to Coney Island with. The same guy you brought home to introduce to your daughter. But I’m not the same man who did…who was involved in all that. You have to believe me, Sheil. I loved Step. I can barely live with myself knowing I’m responsible for his death. And I do love you. I was hoping, uh…well…I, uh I just hope you realize that.”
Sheila tried to grasp the entire story the man who claimed to love her had just related. Whether he was Step or Aleks really didn’t matter to her. Whatever name he went by, he was right. He was the man she’d fallen in love with. She could understand why he’d hidden the truth. It was more a matter of survival than deceit. While he admitted to having killed his brother, the act hadn’t been malicious. It had been self-defense. Unless he was lying. But, why bother telling her a lie when he could have just kept quiet about the entire event? If he’d never breathed a word about it, she’d be none the wiser. So he was an adulterer. So what? Half the men on the planet were adulterers.
Her lack of a response put Aleks on edge. Though he felt relief at finally telling Sheila the truth, at getting it all off his chest after so many weeks, he was beginning to regret his decision. No woman in her right mind would involve herself with an admitted murderer. A womanizer to boot. Especially a woman with a teen-age daughter.
Sheila was cautiously kicking around a possible angle the tall man might be pursuing. The notion made her sick to her stomach. He’d mentioned that he owed money to a Russian mobster. That his life was in danger if he didn’t repay it. She wondered if he could he have latched onto her because she was a 9/11 widow? If he thought think she might be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.