The Dark Fights

by Alexandra Vinarov

  “Well, all right,” he finally says. “I’d like to caution your brother to stay the hell out of your business and not give you any stupid advice about quitting the Dark Fights. Too much is at stake here. He needs to stop throwing careless words around or he might learn the lesson the hard way.” The tone of Sergey’s voice leaves no doubt as to the seriousness of his statement.

  “Are you threatening us?” I ask.

  “No, just giving your brother a friendly advice.” He slaps Danilo hard on the back again. “And if it’s the pannekoeken that he craves so much, we will find a restaurant here in New York that serves true Dutch pannekoeken. You can find anything your heart desires in this town. And if, for some reason, there are no pannekoeken available here, I will fly in a chef from the Netherlands. There is nothing that I cannot do. There is nothing that I would not do. You hear me?”

  What the hell. There is nothing that he cannot do? There is nothing that he would not do? Is he still talking about the pannekoeken?

  “So, I will leave you two now.” Sergey starts walking away but then pauses and turns toward me. “You are to step into the cage again very soon, beauty. The Big Night event awaits,” he pronounces in a quiet but weighty voice. “You love the Dark Fights. You crave that high that only a Dark Fight can give you. And remember, you don’t have anything else outside the Dark Fights.”

  “That is not true!” Danny shouts. He has been silent this whole time, but I could see fire building up in him and hoped he would contain himself, but now he just snaps. “She’s got a life outside of the Dark Fights. She’s got me.”

  “Well, something can be done about that, no? Ha-ha-ha.” Sergey laughs as if he had made a good joke. “We understand each other, my friends, don’t we?”

  “Not in the least. We do not understand each other,” Danilo says. “First you get me into the Dark Fights just so that you can get to my sister later on. And now you have her entrapped and would not let her out. But I will not just sit and do nothing about it. I will convince her to quit. I will!”

  Sergey watches him for what seems like a long time, his gaze intense and heavy. He then nods and walks to the door.

  Danilo and I exchange a look. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but changes his mind and remains quiet. For a few minutes we sit silent and motionless, both deep in thought. After a while he asks the bartender to give him a whiskey.

  “Jameson?”

  “Hmm, nah, Macallan.”

  “You got it.”

  “Oh, Danny, no, please,” I say. “You’ve been doing so well. Please.”

  “It’s Ok. Just one drink. I really need it now.”

  The whiskey arrives and Danilo picks up the glass and holds it close to his mouth for a few seconds. He then slowly puts it back on the counter and pushes it away from him.

  “There is never just one drink,” he says.

  “Danny,” I say, take his hand and squeeze it.

  I am so proud of him. My brother, who in the past had never been the strongest and most disciplined of men and could never stick to his decisions and keep his word, now seems quite different. I think the change started that morning when Drago woke him up brusquely, dunked his face into the sink filled with freezing water, grabbed him by the collar, dragged him out of the apartment, and drove him to a rehab on Long Island. Drago stayed with him for a few days, and I never asked either of them what exactly happened there. I have a suspicion that that man really helped my brother, and that the rough, forceful manner in which he did it worked when nothing else would have. Drago might have shattered something in me, but he did save my brother. A part of me . . . some part that doesn’t feel betrayed and hurt, is grateful to him.

  *****

  A phone call wakes me up in the middle of the night. A man’s voice introduces himself as Officer Lau and verifies that he is speaking to Danilo’s sister.

  “I am sorry to inform you that your brother was in a hit-and-run and is now at Parkside East Hospital.”

  At first I cannot quite comprehend the meaning of his words.

  “Hit-and-run? I don’t understand. My brother does not drive.”

  “I am sorry I was not clear. Your brother was the one who got hit.”

  At this I jump up from the bed and start pulling on clothes as I continue talking to Officer Lau.

  “How is he? Is he OK?”

  “He is in surgery now.”

  “I’ll be right there!” I shout into the phone and rush out of the apartment.

  There is a cab at the curb of 2 Gild Street, and a group of party goers are about to step in it. I push them all aside and get in and shut the door right in front of the nose of an angry yelling face.

  “Parkside East Hospital,” I tell the driver. “Please drive as fast as you can. Please.”

  “I got you,” the cabbie replies. “We’ll take the FDR and will be there in fifteen minutes.”

  *****

  Running into the hospital through the main entrance, I tell the man at the desk, “Surgery. Trauma surgery.”

  “Thirteenth floor. Elevator to your left,” he replies instantaneously and prints out a pass for me.

  My hands are shaking, and I can’t seem to scan the pass correctly to go through the turnstile. A security guard helps me.

  On the thirteenth floor I see a police officer in a hallway.

  “Officer Lau?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Danilo’s sister. Is he still in surgery?”

  “Yes. It will take a while.”

  “But how is he?”

  “When I arrived at the scene, your brother was lying unconscious on Madison, close to the curb. He was taken to Parkside East right away and went straight into surgery.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “A doorman from a nearby hotel said he saw your brother come out of the Brave Argonauts bar and start crossing Madison, when a car, driving at full speed hit him and drove off. I am sorry, that is all the information I have right now.”

  The words “unconscious” and “driving at full speed” drill into my mind and I lean against the wall and look at officer Lau and want to ask him more questions but feel my jaw and my lips trembling and know the words will not come out.

  “Would you like some water?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “You’d better sit down. Please, the waiting room is right through here.”

  *****

  I sit in the waiting room for several hours. A few times I get up and walk around a bit and pause by the window and stand there for a while, pressing my forehead to the glass. I then go back to my seat. There is nobody else in the room and I can choose any chair I want, but I always return to the same one I sat in first.

  Time loses all its regular properties and starts playing tricks on me. There are moments during my waiting, when I feel that one minute lasts and lasts for hours, but then later on a whole hour seems to pass in a mere second.

  There is already light outside when two doctors come in, and I stand up and they ask if I am Danilo’s sister.

  I look them straight in the eyes and right then, at that exact moment, my world cracks. It just fractures in two parts, the before and the after, with rugged sharp edges that can never be attached again. I look away, glance around the room, cannot find anything to fix my eyes on, then look down and see one of the doctors’ shoelaces are untied.

  I stare at the untied shoelaces the whole time the doctors are talking to me.

  “We are very sorry. A team of doctors tried to save your brother’s life, but his injuries were too severe and unfortunately we could not save him. He had a traumatic head injury, hemorrhaging in the brain, and a chest injury with both lungs collapsed. During the surgery he went into a cardiopulmonary arrest, and we could not resuscitate him. We are very sorry.”

  �
�Was he ever conscious?”

  “Your brother lost consciousness at the moment of the accident and never regained it.”

  I hope he didn’t feel any pain. I hope he didn’t lie there on the street suffering, the pain invading his body until he was nothing but the pain itself. Somehow my mind fixates on this one idea and doesn’t let go. My brother, my Danny in pain, unbearable, all-consuming pain. No, no, that cannot be. He must have been spared that. He must have.

  “You may see him a little later if you like,” one of the doctors says. “A nurse will take you. Again, we are very sorry for your loss.”

  “Doctor,” I call when they start walking away. They both stop and turn. I point to the untied shoelaces.

  A nurse comes to take me to see Danilo. In the hallway I see officer Lau talking to the two doctors. The nurse leads me to the door of what she calls a “recovery room.” I stare at her in disbelief.

  “A recovery room? This must be a mistake.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s just a term we use, just a name. I am sorry.”

  Before opening the door she hesitates for a moment.

  “Miss, I must warn you . . . your brother . . . we were not allowed to remove any of the tubes, IV lines, catheters. They are all still in. I’m sorry, it’s a protocol, for the medical examiner, you see. I am so sorry.”

  “Medical examiner?”

  “Yes, the autopsy. The police have opened a criminal investigation. I’m sorry.”

  We walk into the room and she switches the lights on, but they clash with the light coming in from the window and she switches them off. There are several stretchers in the “recovery room” and my brother is lying on the one closest to the door. I look only at his face. I try to convince myself that it is my brother’s face. That it is still him. That this mouth, this nose, these eyes are still my brother. Yet the longer I remain in this room staring at the face, the stronger I feel that it has nothing to do with my Danilo. It is just not him anymore. My brother is not here with me, not in this room, not anywhere. Danny. My Danny.

  Chapter 24

  I don’t know what day of the week it is, nor what the date is. Night and day make no difference to me. The blinds are closed and the thick blackout curtains are drawn. I do not leave the apartment, except to go to the precinct once or twice, and am alone the rest of the time. Seeing or talking to people is absolutely unbearable to me now. My phone rings every once in a while, but I only answer Officer Lau’s calls.

  The pre-operation bloodwork revealed, and the postmortem confirmed, that Danilo had a high alcohol content in his blood. Cameras from the street showed he stepped off the curb on a red light. Officer Lau assures me they are, of course, doing everything to find the car and the driver. He also mentions the word “accident” several times.

  My mind clutches onto that word. An accident. Damn it. I remember the way Sergey looked at my brother at Wolf Flannigan’s. That steely, hard gaze. “There is nothing that I cannot do. There is nothing that I would not do,” he said.

  High alcohol content in Danny’s blood—that alone is extremely suspicious to me. He had stopped drinking and was being really strong about it. Somehow they got to him. And that unidentified car, I don’t think it was just a random car. No, I do not believe it was an accident, but I do not share my thoughts with Officer Lau nor do I mention Sergey’s name at all. I do not see the point.

  I have a strong suspicion that in Sergey’s empire such an “accident” is a common occurrence and is carried out with great mastery, without leaving traces or lose ends. The police are looking for the car and the driver. Yeah. Something tells me they will not find them. The thread of the investigation will break and will never ever lead to Sergey. A drunk man crosses the street on a red light and gets run over. The criminal investigation will be closed eventually.

  *****

  Danilo is buried on what is called a “family plot” at the cemetery. Grandpa bought it when our parents died. Now my whole family is laid to rest in that plot. I am the only one remaining above ground.

  After the burial service, which I requested to be short and simple, I throw the first handful of dirt on his coffin. Some of Danilo’s friends know the tradition and follow suit. Others don’t seem to understand what is going on, exchange glances, but after some hesitation proceed, throwing dirt into the grave too. I don’t stay to watch and start walking away. The bartender from Wolf Flannigan’s wants to keep me company, but I shake my head silently and he falls back.

  Near the cemetery exit, Sergey comes up to me, four of his men at his side, and expresses his deepest condolences and says he is here for me, for whatever I need. I listen to his little speech standing very still, my eyes fixed on a spot on his neck with a pressure point where it would be best to strike before getting him into a neck-break. I do not reply anything to his words, but I lock my gaze on his for a few intense moments, and I suppose he reads something very definite in my eyes that makes him avert his. He walks away and I stand alone for a long while, watching him disappear in the distance, his bodyguards following close behind.

  No, the funeral is not the time or the place. I will get him, though. I do not know how or when. I do not have an exact plan. Back at 2 Gild Street, I go up to his apartment. One of his bodyguards opens the door and says Sergey Petrovich is not available. I ask to speak to Head Tattoo. I am made to wait out in the hallway until he appears. I tell him I want to see his boss. He shakes his head and avoids looking me in the eye. “I’m sorry,” he mutters under his breath and wants to say something else, but I do not listen and walk away. I try to gather my thoughts and plan my actions out, but I can’t think clearly. At another time I go up to a rooftop party, half expecting not to be let in. To my surprise they do let me in, and I wander in my old jeans and a T-shirt among the elegantly dressed people, physically in their midst, but feeling as if I were on a different planet. I spend quite a while looking for him, but Sergey is not at the party.

  How long will he be avoiding me? I guess I need to wait it out, till things settle down, and Sergey is convinced I do not blame him for my brother’s death. But how long will I have to wait? I don’t know if I have the necessary patience.

  I suddenly remember that the interrupted Big Night Dark Fight is to resume a few days from now. I am scheduled to fight. Sergey will be there, for sure. I have not quite formulated in my head what I will do when I get access to him. He will be on high guard, surrounded by his men, not trusting me right now. But one thing I know with certainty—it is simply impossible that I will let Danilo’s killer go unpunished. Danny dead and Sergey alive and well? No. It seems to me that something would be terribly wrong with this world if my brother’s death were not avenged.

  My thoughts, poisoned by the pain, hatred and rage keep running in a circle, a never-ending circle that drains me of all energy and leaves my mind exhausted and limp. To stop myself from thinking for a bit I take a sleeping pill and wash it down with alcohol. It gives me a few hours of deep, dreamless sleep, and then I wake up with a heavy head and the thoughts rush in again, continuing their circle.

  I feel cold all the time. It started at the burial when I was watching the casket being lowered into the ground and thinking that the procedure, the ceremony, had nothing at all to do with me or with my brother. The object in the casket, the body with Danilo’s limbs, his face, his hair, his skin . . . was not my Danny and was far removed from everything that my brother had been.

  It was a hundred degrees outside and I suddenly started shivering from cold. And now, days later, I am still shivering and cannot get warm.

  *****

  I am lying in bed under a heavy blanket when I hear the intercom ring. I make an effort and get out of bed, and a doorman informs me that there is food delivery for me from Chauve-Souris Café. My first impulse is to tell him it is a mistake. I have not ordered any food. Then the name Chauve-Souris Café catches my attention. It is th
e place across the street from the dojo. Strange. I tell the doorman to send the delivery person up.

  I open the door and the man standing before me removes his cap, which was pulled extremely low onto his face.

  “Liam,” I whisper. I don’t know why I am whispering. “Liam.”

  He steps into the apartment, I close the door behind him, and we stand for a few minutes just looking at each other. I now see in his eyes the same tenderness and affection that I thought I noticed a couple times while living at the dojo but was sure I was mistaken. I know I am not mistaken now. He holds a large paper bag in his hands. He puts it on the floor, comes up close to me, and wraps his arms around me.

  In his arms, I feel the steel ring that has been sitting around my head and pressing on it start to let go. All of a sudden I am crying. I have not cried at all since Danilo’s death. Not at the hospital, not at the funeral, not alone in my apartment. I just have not been able to. And now, holding on to Liam, I cannot stop crying for a long time, the heaviness that has built up inside pouring out of me with these tears.

  “Liam . . . my brother is dead, my Danny is dead,” I pronounce in between the sobs. This is also the first time I have said it out loud.

  “Sasha,” he whispers into my ear and strokes my hair gently. “Baby. I am so sorry I was not with you. I am so sorry you had to go through that alone. But from now on I will always be with you. You will never have to be alone again.”

  He leads me to the armchair, sits me on his lap, and rocks me like a baby, all the while stroking my hair and whispering to me. After some time I stop crying but still continue sitting on his lap, my cheek pressed against the wet spot on his shirt. I start having hiccups and Liam gets me a glass of water, which I drink in small sips until the hiccups go away. We then move to the couch, and I curl up against him, and he places his arm around me, holding me tight. He tells me that he only learned about Danilo’s death earlier today and immediately tried to see me, but the doormen would not let him up, and so he had to resort to this masquerade of food delivery.