“Yes, fuck it! The money. He offered me a sum I couldn’t refuse.” A long pause and then another shrug of the shoulders. “Every man has a price, you know. It’s just the amount that varies.” He gets up from the windowsill brusquely and starts pacing around the kitchen. “Don’t you understand, the Russian would have had you go on with the Fights whether I agreed to train you or not. It was better that I did. How can you not see that?” He exclaims. “I trained you so well, better than anyone else could have. You understand? It was lucky for you that it was me and not somebody else. Don’t you remember, you almost fucking died in that cage before I started training you.” He takes a step toward me, but I back away from him.
“Damn it, girl, you yourself wanted me to train you! What difference does it really make that I got paid for it?”
Can it be possible that he doesn’t see the difference? Oh, there are so many things I want to shout at him, but I contain myself. I pick up the check from the floor. “Seventy-five thousand dollars. Is that for the last fight you trained me for?”
He freezes in one spot and is silent for a while, avoiding my eyes. Then he turns his head, his motions slow yet determined, and looks me fully in the face. Something tells me that the words he is about to pronounce will hurt even more. I am not sure I want to hear them.
“No, that’s for the next fight,” he says.
A shudder runs through my insides, and the sinking feeling intensifies to such a degree that I actually have to place my hands on the back of a chair to steady myself. I breathe in and out deeply several times.
The next fight? There wasn’t supposed to be any next fight. My deal with Sergey was for the five only, and I’ve done them. Yet they have already arranged for my future Dark Fights. They’ve decided between themselves that there is no way out of the cage for the Samurai Princess.
Yes, Drago trained me well, yes, he made me such a good fighter that I started to enjoy myself in the cage, hooked on the adrenaline and the high of the battle. My brother is right though—no matter how good a fighter you are, the risk of getting crippled or killed is ever-present as long as you are in the cage.
And the man who I thought loved me takes money to get me into that cage again and again.
Last night we went out to celebrate the end of the Dark Fights. We talked about taking a trip to some remote beach, where we could swim for hours as far away from the shore as we like and lifeguards would not whistle to us to come back. We ate and had a couple drinks and laughed, and Drago was in one of his affable moods where he barely criticizes the restaurant food and is almost civil to the waiters. Everything was wonderful in the restaurant, everything was wonderful during the ride home. While driving he noticed me look at him, smiled without turning his head, took my hand, and kissed it several times. Back in the apartment, he picked me up in his arms and carried me to the bedroom, and the night we spent together left me drained of all energy and overflowing with emotions.
And it was all a lie, a lie, a lie. I am nothing but a contract to him.
“Was fucking me a part of the deal too?” I ask and rush out of the apartment without waiting to hear the answer. I feel almost nauseous thinking about all the times we had sex, how I let him fuck me without a condom.
I press the button hoping the elevator will come as quickly as possible. I just want to get out of this building, away from the man in whom I put my absolute trust and whose betrayal is now causing such a painful reaction in me. The elevator doors open and, as I step inside and turn, I see Drago coming toward me fast. I press the “doors close” several times. The doors start shutting, but he presses the outside button, and they open again.
“Don’t get in!” I press the button repeatedly. He places his foot in the way of the doors.
“Stop it, don’t act like this,” he says, looking at me out of his serious, almost severe eyes. I hold his gaze, and all of a sudden the corners of his eyes wrinkle up and such a familiar smile appears on his face. This is more than I can take. I try to push him back so that the doors would shut, but his stance is too strong and grounded.
“Listen,” I say, “do you remember how a long time ago I asked you if you are entirely good or bad? Do you remember what you answered?”
Well, I am not completely rotten, he’d said back then, and I can tell that he does remember now.
“What you did to me was a completely rotten thing to do to somebody. I fucking loved you and you lied to me and betrayed me!”
He cringes when I pronounce the L-word. It makes me think of an oyster squirming when you squeeze lemon juice on it. Suddenly I realize how useless all this is, the shouting, the accusations. If he loved me, he wouldn’t have been able to go through with the work that Sergey had hired him to do. But he went through with it all right. And as an extra bonus, he got to fuck me. So no wonder my mentioning the L-word now makes him cringe. I thought it was impossible that if one person loves so much the other should not feel the same way. I was wrong. Not only is it possible, it is probably happening left and right in this fucked-up world.
“Listen, girl,” he says. “You are too young and see everything in black and white. There are areas of life that are gray and cannot be easily defined or separated. Listen . . . the money for your next fight . . . I haven’t yet agreed to accept it.”
“But will you?” I ask quickly.
No answer. I wait for one, I wait for a long time, but it doesn’t come.
“You know, Drago, you are just like those samurai you told me about—who were nothing but hired-hands and did everything their lords ordered them to do, as long as they got paid for their services.”
A deep frown creases his forehead. “Stop this, girl! Just come back to the apartment.”
“Fuck off.” I push him again, as hard as I can, and the doors finally shut, and the elevator goes down.
Chapter 18
Waking up, my head feels extremely groggy and as if stuffed to the brim with cotton wool. The first thing I am able to comprehend is that I slept for over twenty hours, but I can’t figure out where I am or how I got to be here. I look around and see some unfamiliar room. It is a very large L-shaped studio, fully furnished with comfortable and elegant pieces in dark blue and gray colors. There is a knocked-over vase on the table and a whole bunch of white tulips strewn around. I pick up the card. It is damaged by the water, but the words “Welcome, beauty. So glad to have you here” are still legible.
Staring at Sergey’s note, my thoughts clear up.
I remember running out of the building on Roosevelt Island and seeing my brother on the bench by the church waiting for me. His silent, compassionate face and his very own gesture of knuckles gently rubbing against my forearm trying to comfort me. He volunteers to go up and get my things so that then we can go together to 82nd street and leave the whole Roosevelt Island life behind. Barely a few minutes after he is gone, Head Tattoo appears before me and invites me into the familiar metallic gray BMW waiting at the curb. I get in and the car drives off right away. I ask about Danny and my things, but Head Tattoo just tells me to relax and not worry about anything. I think the car is taking me to 82nd Street, but when I look out the window, I realize we are on the FDR going south. I look at Head Tattoo and he nods and shows a thumbs up. I do not ask any questions. A strange apathy takes hold of me, and I really don’t seem to care where we are going.
The car drives up to the entrance of 2 Gild Street. Head Tattoo escorts me inside. We ride in an elevator to the nineteenth floor where he opens the door to one of the apartments. A huge bouquet of white tulips is the first thing I notice inside. Head Tattoo shows me around, opening the kitchen cupboards filled with plates and cups and stuff, the huge fridge stocked with fruit, juices, various snacks, the bathroom with the towels, the hair dryer, and bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion. He tells me this is my new home and asks if I like it and if I need anything else to make me more comf
ortable here. I sit down on the couch, rest my head on the soft cushions, and don’t reply anything.
Head Tattoo takes out of his pocket a small plastic bag with several pills and explains he was instructed to give them to me. “These are just sleeping pills,” he replies to my silent question. After he leaves, I hold a pill in my fingers for a long while, just looking at it, unable to gather my thoughts. I then swallow it, and a few seconds later a second one, washing them down with gulps from a bottle of Armagnac, another present from Sergey. Within about fifteen minutes my body starts feeling very light, almost weightless. I get up from the couch taking the bottle with me. I cannot walk straight and accidentally knock over the vase and stare zombie-like at Sergey’s white tulips scattered across the table and the floor and the water dripping from the vase. I stumble across the room, having to make an effort to reach the bed. I take a few more long drinks of the Armagnac, and, as soon as I lie down, every shred of a thought disappears from my head and I fall fast into a dark, dreamless sleep.
And now here I am, waking up alone in this unfamiliar apartment at 2 Gild Street. I peer out the window at the surrounding high-rises of Lower Manhattan. I shiver, feeling a momentary chill run through me and thinking that it is definitely not a coincidence that I should end up in this place. Nothing in Sergey’s web is accidental. Perhaps I’d be better off getting the hell out of here as fast as I can. I feel utterly lost and dispirited, though, and this apartment is so cozy and peaceful. The soothing colors, the comfortable furniture. Nothing here seems menacing or dangerous. Why run away? I am not a prisoner here, after all.
*****
After a while I realize I am so hungry I am almost shaking. There is stuff to eat in the fridge, but I want a real hot meal, so I get dressed and ride downstairs and walk under the archway, turn the corner, and open the door to Wolf Flannigan’s. This pub is practically an extension of 2 Gild Street, but it does not occur to me to go anywhere else. The familiar bartender is behind the counter and he greets me as if he’s seen me here only yesterday. As I glance toward the back room, I remember the subterranean route I took to my first Dark Fight. I immediately turn away and don’t look in that direction anymore.
I sit at the counter and ask the bartender what’s good today. He recommends broiled cod. I ask for the sides of salad and baked potato and he puts the order in right away. While I am waiting, he brings me some grilled calamari to snack on and says the appetizer is on him. We discuss what I should drink and after careful deliberation and some going back and forth decide on a mojito, easy on the sugar.
The pub gradually fills with people. Soon all the seats at the counter are taken. Men on both sides of me try to chat me up, but I don’t respond, focused on my meal and only talking with the bartender. We discuss briefly why it is that real old-fashioned bars have mirrors on the back wall behind the counter. The explanation that seems most plausible to both of us is that this way the bartender can see what goes on and what trouble the customers are up to even when he is reaching for a bottle from a shelf or doing something else that requires him to face away. When other people join in the conversation, I lose interest and stop participating.
After the meal I take a walk to the South Street Seaport. I move my feet slowly, pausing every once in a while. Damn it. Without Drago everything just seems like a heavy cloud—a sticky, damp, cotton wool cloud, and I will have to be dragging myself through it for the rest of my life. What a bleak perspective.
What is it, this damn love, this inexplicable attraction to another human being, his skin, his voice, his smell, his mind? Why is it so intense and powerful? And it takes such a hold of you that when it’s taken from you, you feel like you’ve been thrown into a bottomless bog? You struggle to stay afloat, but inch by inch your body submerges into the mud, and you are struggling for breath, being buried alive.
I feel such a heavy pain inside me that I wish I could vomit it and be rid of it.
One question tortures me the most—did he really not feel anything for me?
How is it possible? Drago, you were inside me, nothing separating us—nothing. We were as close as two human beings can possibly be, and yet you did not love me at all? No, that just cannot be. You did care for me, didn’t you? Perhaps even loved me in your own way—it’s just that you love money above all else.
I catch myself having a conversation with him. I must be pronouncing some words out loud, as I notice people giving me strange looks. That man had such a strong impact on me, that now everything inside me is permeated with him. “You fucking knew how much you meant to me, Drago!” I shout out in desperation, scaring a couple of tourists who jump aside and hurry away. “And your betrayal hurt more than the most brutal technique in the cage ever could.”
“All these big useless words. ‘Love.’ ‘Betrayal.’ You are just torturing yourself with them, girl,” his voice pronounces in my head. “Think of the gray areas in life.”
Gray areas, yeah right, how fucking convenient.
I go out to the pier and sit at the very edge in one of those plastic chaise lounges they put out when the weather is good. I sit there for a long while thinking of him, of his voice, his different facial expressions, the types of smile that he has. That little smirk that often hovers on his lips and gives him a slightly smug appearance. And that wonderful, sincere smile that lights up his face sometimes when he looks at me. When he used to look at me. Damn it. Such heavy sadness fills my entire body. Ah, to run my fingers along his arm, to press my body into his, to smell him, to have his weight on top of me. But no, I will never go back to him. Whatever we had together is now completely corrupted, broken and unfixable. I think I loved him too much and got too badly burned.
I crack my knuckles and bite my lips until they start bleeding.
Back at the apartment at 2 Gild Street, I try to watch movies, but can’t focus on the story line at all, and end up staring out the window for hours on end, and then I take a sleeping pill and go to bed. Next several days I repeat the same routine that starts with a lonely meal at the bar and ends with a sleeping pill. I can’t say that the food at Wolf Flannigan’s is especially good, but the cozy ambience and the bartender’s friendly disposition makes up for the culinary shortcomings. A couple times Danny eats with me. I am worried how the presence of all the liquor might affect him and suggest we go somewhere else, but he insists we stay and only drinks ginger ale.
From my brother’s hints over the years I have gotten a picture of 2 Gild Street being Sergey’s little kingdom, where every night of the week wild parties take place, gambling goes on at all hours, and other illegal events such as porn movies shootings occur periodically. Now living in the building, I haven’t seen any such activities yet. In the elevators I do encounter tons of people dressed for parties, but where they go after exiting the elevators I do not know. Other than Danny and the bartender I don’t talk to anyone for quite a while.
*****
One evening, Head Tattoo comes into the apartment. Instead of his usual uniform of a white button-down shirt and black pants, he is wearing his training clothes.
“Let’s go down to the gym,” he says.
I ignore his suggestion. Training is the last thing I can imagine myself doing right now.
“Did you bring them?” I ask.
He takes a little bag with pills out of his pocket and throws it on the table.
I reach for it, take one out, and want to put it in my mouth. He stops my hand.
“Do you really want to go to bed at nine in the evening?”
I shrug my shoulders. I did not know what time it was, nor does it matter to me. I just want to take a sleeping pill and fall asleep, so that my tortured brain can have a few hours rest.
“Listen,” Head Tattoo says. “Life is like a sieve. Many people come into it, and the insignificant assholes fall through. You understand? Because they are so small and insignificant.”
I
look at him somewhat surprised. I did not expect to hear such a philosophical statement from him. “Who said that?” I ask.
“I just did.”
“OK.” I am pretty sure he lifted that saying from somewhere. “And?”
“And . . .” He pauses, wrinkling his forehead and looking for words to express his important thought. Eloquence not being my tattooed friend’s forte, the pause lasts quite a while. “And, the Balkan asshole fell right through,” he finally pronounces. “So pull yourself together and come down to the gym. Training will do you good. Better than sleeping.”
I have a sudden urge to ask him a bunch of questions. I bet he knows everything that transpired between Sergey and Drago, all their deals and arrangements with regards to me. Yet I contain myself and don’t ask anything. It just does not matter anymore.
I look alternately at the sleeping pills and at Head Tattoo, unable to decide—go to bed or train?
“Come on,” Head Tattoo insists, and I let myself be persuaded to change into my training clothes and take the elevator down to the gym.
I warm up, stretch for a long time, going through the motions on sort of an autopilot. Once we get to real training, I realize that I have absolutely zero energy or motivation. I am dragging my feet, am barely able to block attacks, and when I do a technique that Drago once showed me, I almost start crying. I don’t want to train without Drago. That’s just it. I can’t seem to be able to make my body perform when my mind is so miserable.
Right in the middle of yet another failed technique, the door of the gym opens and Sergey comes in.
Chapter 19
The Russian is accompanied by the doctor who works for him, the same one who always treated my cuts and bruises and other minor injuries right after the Dark Fights and assessed if I needed to be taken to a hospital for further medical help. The two men sit on the bench and watch me and Head Tattoo work on some throws. My motions are sluggish and awkward. I fail to unbalance my training partner before attempting to throw him. At one point my knees give out and I sink down and stay down.
The Dark Fights Page 21