by Sergey
A little girl and her teddy bear.
It was laughable . . .
“Aspirin,” Julia said on the speaker, “are you still awake? Twenty seconds to go.”
“Uh-huh,” he said distractedly.
. . . to rent a flat in London would be too expensive for him, at least until he got a job. That meant a certain amount of time living with his parents, who refused to remember that he was thirty-four, not fourteen. Not having a place of his own where he could bring a woman would be quite humiliating. Almost as much as running away from Alyona . . .
“Aspirin . . . ,” Julia hissed.
“And so, my darlings, we have our first caller. What is your name? Nina? Hello, Nina—Ninochka, a student, an athlete . . . What would you like to confess, Nina?”
. . . or should he go to Pervomaysk? Find that woman, Luba Kalchenko, and find out for himself—had it ever happened? She was clearly a real person, at least according to Whiskas. So maybe Alyona was lying about where she came from and actually was from that city?
“Very good, Luba. I mean Nina. Your alma mater is surely touched by your declaration of love. Incidentally, have you ever been to Pervomaysk? No? Shame. It’s such a lovely town . . . And now we’re going to listen to Cher and relax, thinking warm thoughts . . .”
His head swelled up with bits of nonsense. Random puzzle pieces still refused to fall into a complete picture. Mishutka the bear killing the dog and maiming the hapless thugs, if one were to believe Alyona’s words. And yet, what other explanation was there that made any more sense? But that meant the thing was a transformer. Teddy-X.
To hell with the bear. But what about that tune Alyona played on the very first day? When the china doll shattered all over the keys? When Aspirin wanted so desperately to embrace the girl?
Relax and think warm thoughts.
Of course he could always drop everything and go to Pervomaysk, but it was bound to be a complete failure. He was positive he’d find nothing there worth his time—nothing that explained what was going on. Because this was beyond blackmail, beyond housing fraud. Whiskas was right, albeit grossly understating the situation: This was not good. This was absolute misery. This carried all the signs of a psychological assault—a classic case of delirium and fantasy and conspiracy rolled into a mess and stuffed inside him. I am being chased by aliens, the CIA is torturing me with electromagnetic radiation, they are modifying my subconscious mind, they have planted hallucinations on my subcortex . . .
“Aspirin, you seem a little out of it today,” the speakers said with concern. “You’re on!”
He waved off the booth, took a sip of coffee, wiped his lips, and fixed his headphones:
“The working day is gathering speed, some of us are driving, some are walking, some simply sit in their offices, curing their boredom with social media . . . Life goes on, everywhere, even inside mental institutions . . . That was a joke, in case someone missed it. Radio Sweetheart presents a half-hour segment of public confessions, only eighteen minutes are left, and we have our next caller . . .”
He got to his car and called Dasha. Almost a week had passed since he saw her last; they did not part well that day—Alyona had slept on the floor in the hallway, Aspirin had a splitting headache, and he thought he and Dasha may have quarreled a bit.
“It’s you,” Dasha said on the phone, and the tone of her voice told Aspirin that the stars would not align tonight.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked out of inertia, knowing what the answer was going to be.
“Going to the sauna.” Dasha laughed a little. “Girls’ night. Why?”
“I miss you,” Aspirin said.
“Don’t.” Dasha yawned loudly. “And you know what? Why don’t you do me a favor? Get lost.”
She hung up.
Aspirin sat in his car for a long time, elbows planted on the steering wheel, head hung low. He’d enjoyed the last six months of the carefree, no strings attached relationship with Dasha. It had to end at some point—everything must end, as the song goes. But not this abruptly, not in this way . . .
This little monster, whoever she was, had needed only one week to ruin Aspirin’s personal life. And now he sat in his car feeling violated, yet also pissed off—and not at Alyona. Dasha had told him to get lost. Who the hell did she think she was?
It didn’t dawn on him to ask the same question of himself.
Dark as a storm cloud, Aspirin started the car. His next step was the Housing Management Office. There, in the basement, he found the cement walls of the juvenile delinquents’ room.
“This is not our jurisdiction,” the uniformed woman said. “We are not authorized to deal with a child who has not committed any misdemeanors.”
“So are we to wait until the child stabs someone?” Aspirin inquired grimly.
The previously indifferent youth liaison officer now glared at him with obvious distaste. “We do what we can. Do you know how many homeless kids we deal with? And in your case, as I understand it, no one had kicked the girl out on the street.”
“You could at least check whether the girl is on the missing kids list. Her parents may be going crazy with worry, while she got on a train and rode away . . .”
As he spoke, Aspirin thought of those clean socks with the red stripes that he saw when Alyona first took off her shoes in his hall. Her new freshly ironed shirt. And no money whatsoever. Alyona definitely did not come by train.
The youth liaison officer turned to her monitor. Aspirin waited.
“Grimalsky, Alyona Alexeyevna, is not on the missing persons list,” the officer said.
“She may have made up that name. She may be called something else entirely.”
The officer sighed. She deeply disliked Aspirin. The feeling was mutual.
“What would you like me to do, then? I can only go by the information you give me. In the hallway we have photos of all the missing persons—have you checked them for yours? If you don’t find her there, we can’t help you.”
“What if I give you a statement that she . . .” Aspirin hesitated. “That she stole something from me? That she’s a juvenile delinquent? Then what?”
Aspirin was reminded of Alyona’s teddy bear: the inspector’s eyes had the same expression as Mishutka’s plastic ones.
Thursday
The day was cloudy, and by eight o’clock he had to turn on the headlights.
“This is Radio Sweetheart,” Tanya Polishuk purred through the speakers; Aspirin had slept with her once a while ago, and they had—unsurprisingly—not repeated the liaison. “We are with you, you are with us, we are together on this nice summer evening, and evening is the best time to relax and dream, so let’s dream together about what we expect in these last days of the summer, because August is the evening of the summer, and September is the morning of the fall, evening follows morning, and this is how it’s always going to be . . .”
Aspirin turned off the highway onto a dirt road. The evening grew darker and he turned on the brights. The rain made the road slippery; potholes were filled with standing water, and the drive was making him nervous and uncomfortable.
The gun holster also made him nervous and uncomfortable.
After all, he was a modern man, not a cowboy, and a thick wallet or a credit card gave him infinitely more confidence than a dubious weapon under his arm. Unfortunately, the issue that led Aspirin into the woods on a dark evening could not be helped by a wallet or a credit card.
“From here we’re on foot,” he said to Alyona. “You see the condition of this road, right? We can’t drive anymore, we’ll get stuck.”
“Are we going to just leave the car here?” Alyona asked incredulously. “And all our stuff?”
“Of course not,” Aspirin said, improvising. “We need to get to the lodge. My friend is a ranger. He can use his tractor to tow our car to the cabin. Meanwhile, we’re going to wait for him in the cabin, drinking tea and listening to music.”
He mentioned music to make sure
Alyona complied. Any other kid would probably have to be promised television or video games or candy—or all three.
“It’s dark,” Alyona said. “And it’s about to rain.”
“It’s not far.”
“I need to get Mishutka. Pop the trunk.”
“Don’t,” Aspirin said, a tad too quickly. “If it rains, he’s going to get soaked.”
Strangely enough, the argument worked. Alyona never asked whether she and Aspirin would get wet, and what about raincoats or umbrellas—she simply followed him down the road, and the car with its lights turned off soon disappeared from view.
Aspirin used the flashlight to show the way. The road was terrible—they had to stick to the side and walk on the wet grass, pushing branches out of their way and making throngs of mosquitoes very happy.
“They can’t bite through jeans,” Aspirin murmured. “Do mosquitoes like you? What’s your blood type?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good, you should know that.”
“Is it far?”
Not far enough.
Ahead of them was darkness, and behind them was darkness, and nothing could be heard aside from rustling branches and creaking tree trunks.
“We are here,” Aspirin said and turned to look at her. Alyona was hunched over, hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of her jacket. Aspirin directed the flashlight at her and the reflective stripes on her sleeves lit up in white. Just like that night in the street archway . . .
“Listen, my friend,” he said, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “You are going to tell me the truth. Who you are, where you come from, and what you want from me. And if you don’t tell me, I am going to tie you to a tree and leave you here. This place is remote enough.”
Alyona was silent. Aspirin moved the flashlight directly into her eyes, and she shut them and covered her face with her hand. Those guys in the old building had scared her a lot more, Aspirin realized; the thought made him angry.
“I have a gun.” He reached for the holster. “The hunting season started already, so if anyone hears shots, they won’t think much of it. I am going to cover you up with leaves and walk away. And if anyone asks about you, I will tell them you went home to Pervomaysk. And they will believe me.”
Alyona was silent. Her scornful composure would drive a saint crazy.
“No one would look for you!” Aspirin shouted. “Or will they? If so, then who?”
The girl stared at him through her fingers. He couldn’t quite read the expression in her eyes, but knew one thing for sure: It was not fear. She wasn’t scared of him in the least. She held him in brazen disregard. She thought of him as a loudmouth, a coward . . . what did she say that day, “a coward and a traitor”?
He grabbed her collar and pulled her closer: “You are not from Pervomaysk. Tell me!”
“Let go of me.”
He shook her so violently that her jacket ripped. He forbade himself to think of the teenagers manhandling Alyona in the lobby of the old building, quite the opposite: he forced himself to remember all the terrible things she had done. Her threats . . . her “he made me walk around naked.” The fake photograph that disoriented Whiskas . . .
“Will you speak?”
Silence. For one deranged moment Aspirin seriously considered leaving her there under a pile of leaves, forever.
“I will make you speak,” he growled, pushing the flashlight into her face. “Who are you?”
“I told you.”
“You lied!”
“No.”
“You lied!” He shook her with all his might. “Don’t pretend to be an idiot—you are plenty smart! Who sent you?”
“No one! You brought me home yourself! You, of your own accord!”
She was right. Aspirin wanted to slam the flashlight into that arrogant mug.
“And you didn’t want to give me back,” she continued. “You, yourself!”
Aspirin was mistaken—she was not calm in the least. She was shouting, and she clearly wanted to kill him too.
“Yes, I did. Because I felt sorry for you.” But he didn’t feel that way now. He pushed her against the trunk of the closest tree. “And now I feel sorry for myself! Goddamn my altruism! Am I expected to pay for that for the rest of my life?”
“Let go of me, you are hurting me, you idiot!”
He grabbed her thin throat with his left hand, and with his right he held the flashlight next to her face.
“So,” he said in a near whisper, “tell me how I can get rid of you. What am I supposed to do to make you go away? What should I do to make you disappear, you little bitch?”
“You are a coward and a traitor,” she whispered, no longer shutting her eyes against the light, staring into his eyes. “Coward and traitor. You are lying when you say you felt sorry for me. You’ve never been kind. You—”
She fell silent. Aspirin saw her pupils widen. A second later he heard the sound of snapping branches; the sound was getting closer and louder. The earth shuddered rhythmically.
He let go of the girl and pulled out his gun. His hands trembled; the shaking flashlight illuminated tree trunks on both sides of the road, the low-hanging branches . . . and a dark, indistinct shadow hurtling toward Aspirin like an express train.
He screamed and pulled the trigger. Again. Then again.
His eyes opened to absolute darkness.
He thought his right ear was missing.
He struggled to reach his head. The ear was still there, but it appeared much too big and was coated in thick, sticky goo.
The gun!
He fidgeted, slapping his hands on the ground, trying to get up; he was reminded of a beetle turned on its back.
A white circle blinded him. Aspirin squeezed his eyes shut, but the circle only changed its color to dark red, like a cooling star.
“Get up,” a thin, quivering voice said. “Get up! Now!”
The gun was nowhere to be found. In vain, Aspirin moved his hands over the wet grass.
“Get up, or I will shoot you! As you said, the hunting season started already . . . They won’t think much of it.”
The intense hatred in the girl’s voice made Aspirin shudder.
He pushed himself up on all fours. He was dizzy and nearly blind. Red spots swam in front of his eyes. He assumed the girl was standing close, pointing the flashlight into his eyes.
“You shot Mishutka.”
Groaning, Aspirin leaned on a tree trunk. His ear burned, his shoulder ached, and he had no idea whether he would be able to stand.
“Stand up!”
He remembered the shadow hurtling through the trees. It was at this point that he knew everything had been lost. No more trying to fool himself with stories of Pervomaysk and simple vacations, odd coincidences and serendipitous oddities; no more pouring brandy into the abyss that had just formed between Aspirin and the rest of the normal world. The world ruled by common sense.
That world was gone. He was in Alyona’s world now.
“Get up,” she said. “Let’s go find the car.”
He managed to stand up, holding on to the tree.
“If you take one side step, Mishutka will kill you.”
He turned and walked down the path following his own black, limping shadow. Alyona walked behind him, flashlight pointed at his back. Aspirin’s shadow stretched its neck forward, blocking the sides of the road; thickly entwined branches framed their way.
Occasionally he would turn his head to the sound of a snapping twig. He was afraid of seeing a light brown shadow gliding along the path. He never saw anything, though—the forest was empty and quiet, and only light rain rustled among the leaves. Every now and then raindrops sparkled under the flashlight like tiny meteorites.
The car was exactly where they’d left it. At first, Aspirin saw the hood and the left-side door with the broken glass and thought that was bad enough. He took a few steps closer and nearly collapsed again.
The trunk was ripped open fr
om the inside, like a tin can, the edges jagged and crumpled.
For two or three minutes Aspirin simply stared at the car. The rain grew stronger.
“Let me go,” Aspirin said finally.
“You shot Mishutka, and I will never forgive you.”
He turned his head and saw the plush teddy bear in her arms, stuffing poked out in a few places.
“I haven’t done anything to hurt you,” Aspirin said. “I only felt sorry for you . . . once. By accident.”
“By accident,” Alyona sounded cold and indifferent. “There is no turning back. Now you will do what I tell you, or you will die.”
“My life is over. I’m already dead.”
“Don’t be such a baby. Drive us home.”
“My home?”
“Our home.”
And he wasn’t quite sure if she meant his and hers, or hers and Mishutka’s.
They got home at half past midnight. Aspirin left the car unattended, which he never, ever allowed himself to do. However, the car—with a ripped-up trunk—held no significant value anymore.
Sveta the concierge opened the door and gasped, flinching. “An accident? An accident, Alexey?”
“Yes,” Aspirin said, covering his face.
“We skidded and smashed into a light pole,” Alyona explained in a clear calm voice.
Once back in the apartment, she placed the gun on the kitchen table.
“Put it away,” she said with disgust.
Aspirin put it in the closet, then locked himself in the bathroom and stared at his reflection for a long time. Four long scratches on his left cheek were bleeding slightly. Another one was on his neck—long, but shallow. The ear was swollen. He had a black eye and a bruise on his shoulder. All this was child’s play compared to the fate of those two thieves.