14 #2
I blow out a breath, grab the napkin, and blot my lips, full drama queen.
“Marina, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t fuck you tonight. Or stay. Or charge you. Or anything. I’m a mess.”
She blinks, her killer armor drops, and the person shows up. The table goes weird, the server swings by and drops an empty bowl nobody ordered, I think about ordering gyoza so I won’t cry, I’m an idiot.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. Let me explain. It’s just… I’m seeing someone.
Well, ‘seeing’ is a big word. Fucking. But also catching feelings.
You know. And she’s here.” I point toward Nat’s table on the sly.
Or so I think, because with a few glasses of wine in me my discretion is questionable.
“Her, the blonde… she’s the source of my drama. ”
Marina turns her head, looks for two seconds, comes back, sucks in a breath. Then she lets out a whisper that singes my eyelashes off.
“Oh my God, Alaska. Do you know who you’re tangled up with?”
“What do you mean? Is she famous? Survivor? Celebrity Big Brother ? Does she show up in some soccer player’s stories?” I try to sound grown-up; I sound like a ditz. I both disgust and pity myself.
She leans over the table. She side-eyes Nat and the other woman, then looks back at me. Her voice drops, her glass forgotten.
“The Chinese woman with the perfect face is Rashel Velikanova.”
Velikanova. Nat’s last name.
My brain searches the cloud for family ties; nothing loads, my internal W i? Fi is down. Partner, cousin, accountant, bodyguard, data analyst… how the hell should I know. As long as she’s not her wife, I’m good.
“That’s a real name? Rashel? It sounds like a knife catalog or an Instagram filter that erases your pores and leaves your morals in the gutter.”
“She’s real. Rashel Velikanova is the right hand of the queen of shadows, Irina Popova. Seriously, listen to me—I’m not joking.”
“Irina Popova sounds like a pop diva.”
“No, honey, no music. Popova is Russian mafia: endless dossier, rumors of laundering, shell companies, yachts, art, and people who pay cash. The kind you can’t lay a finger on—and you can’t stop shaking when they walk into the place where you’re eating sushi.”
My stomach flips, but I keep drinking, because wine is my brave little companion in this situation.
I turn half an inch and catch Nat watching me, running the whole show, sexy and dangerous, that mix that wipes out my will.
She texts me.
Nat: Don’t move ??
A current runs down my spine and I nod without thinking.
I’m a joke, I’m obedient, I’m her doll. Later I’ll cry in the cab and, tomorrow, I’ll tell her again not to control me, that I’m free.
And I’ll end up back on my knees in the living room because I damn well want to and because I’m fucked up and happy.
"Marina, I owe you dinner, I owe you money for the hassle, I owe you a massage, I owe you a good joke, I owe you everything. But I can’t today."
Marina squeezes my hand, reads my whole face.
"You're about to leave right now, aren't you?"
"I’ll leave when she lets me stand up." A miserable little laugh slips out, which I hate, but it’s true. Damn it. And while I’m at it, I pry. "What about mine—Nat? Is she also in the ladies-who-launder club?" I ask, knocking back my wine so my hands don’t show the shake.
Marina sets down her glass, wearing the face of a grand dame who’s seen a thousand divorces and who, if she felt like it, could spring me from jail with one phone call and three veiled threats. The kind of attorney who doesn’t ask who did it, just how we make it disappear.
"Look, honey, I don’t have the girl’s whole file. But that blonde with the unfair genetics some of us envy with our entire sinful souls—I’ve kinda got her pegged."
And I, already picturing myself in the mirror doing hara-kiri with a cocktail toothpick, scream internally: if she doesn’t tell me now, I’m going to start emotionally jerking off to insane theories.
"Spit it out already, for the love of Dior, Marina!"
"Okay, relax. Here’s the deal—couple years ago at the firm, a huge shitshow blew up: big lawsuit against a company that reeked of bribery and laundered cash, the kind that ships money to Moscow on private jets with chrome-plated wings.
We’re talking tax evasion, deluxe. That blonde spent the whole trial posted in the last row without moving a single eyebrow, with boss-face and that butch bodyguard energy that makes you nervous even if you’re straight as an arrow. "
"Are you messing with me, or what?" I cut in. "Her last name is Velikanova, same as the other one. She told me right to my face today: ‘Quit that job where you get paid to collect other people’s orgasms, because it pisses me off that you fuck whoever, and by the way, my name is Velikanova. Go tell your boss you’re with me.’ Just like that, full-on mafia empress, as if my boss would even know who she is. "
"Her family tree is one for the books. They might know."
"Explain, for fuck’s sake, Marina—you’re killing me."
"Okay, here’s what I know. Rashel Velikanova was married to a certain Boris Velikanov.
Boris was a big boss in the Popova network—org chart level with a red arrow and weird-crypto alerts.
They divorced, but Rashel kept the last name, the business, and a portfolio of shell companies that smell like some far-off beach with no beach bars and no IRS.
And Natasha Velikanova"—she says, tipping her chin—"yours, the blonde, is that Boris’s younger sister. "
I freeze—don’t even breathe. Marina could steal my purse and I’d still be here, on pause, processing that my latest situationship is a post-Soviet, pornified version of The Sopranos. And here I was thinking the worst she was hiding was an ex in London and a trauma with bananas.
The restaurant cuts to black and suddenly I’m at a long table: everyone toasting with vodka, women in retro Adidas tracksuits yelling in Cyrillic, bills floating, napkins on the floor, caviar without utensils, and a grandpa planted at the door with a sawed-off shotgun.
An extremely unhealthy fantasy, but it springs up all on its own.
"Look, Marina"—I try to keep my voice from shaking—"are you telling me the blonde I’m letting hog-tie me and do things to me I didn’t even know existed in the catalog of human perversions… is some kind of hitwoman with abs of steel and a shady past? That instead of a top-of-the-line Satisfyer on her nightstand, what she’s got is a pistol with a silencer and a list of people to pay a courtesy visit? "
Marina shrugs, her face still serious.
"Hitwoman, hitwoman…" she whispers.
And in that split second I spin up a Tarantino flick, dyke edition: Nat in a black suit, impossible rooftop jump, reciting verses in Russian without a hair out of place, snapping some suit’s neck by raising an eyebrow.
I’m behind her, on a crummy rooftop with binoculars and a glittery notebook, taking notes for my unauthorized memoir. Like the drills at the group home: observe, write it down, don’t talk, smile. I learned well. I call it humor now, but it’s still obedience with glitter.
"I don’t know if that’s the exact word, Alaska, but she is no cloistered nun, and as for a shy librarian with thick glasses, even less."
I’m two lines away from pulling out a recorder and a fake mustache.
"But come on, Marina." I slip into gonzo-reporter mode. "Did you get this from Cosmo, tinfoil-hat edition, or are we talking real intel—sealed file, rubber stamp on the folder, and gray suits with dead eyes?"
Marina gives me the "kid, listen more, talk less" face.
"That woman is not a civilian, I’m telling you.
I watched her for weeks at the trial I told you about.
She didn’t move a muscle. She watched. Courthouse security clenched their jaws when she walked in.
She’s not arm candy. Not a secretary either.
And if she’s out for drinks with the sister-in-law, who’s number two, this Natasha is not bussing tables on the crime pyramid.
She’s at the top, penthouse key, view of the slammer, gold Jacuzzi, and a minibar stocked with vodka they don’t sell at Costco. "
I picture my obituary: “Alaska died as she lived: screwed, confused, and smelling like someone else’s expensive perfume.” But I give Marina the face I use when they ask if the orgasm was real.
The whole scene comes apart; the table stops being a table, the napkin glues itself to my fingers, the wine tastes like cologne, and I want to crack a window, lean halfway out, and scream that I am not ready for dates with people who can open safes without looking.
Now what, I tell myself in stereo, with interior echo.
Do I keep tugging the thread and treat myself until reality snaps my nails and leaves me on read?
Do I ask if, between fucks, she buries things in other people’s gardens or smiles at men with briefcases in small airports?
Or do I WhatsApp her an eggplant, some splash emojis, and a badly timed ha ha—peak lesbian who hasn’t been to therapy since 2018?
My crotch—clinical fact—lights up just thinking about Nat. Everything else catches fire too.
And my gut, which sometimes actually nails it, breathes another idea in my ear: Nat could give Vega and me a hand with our thing, and I get to check whether the wire’s copper, gold, or live.
"Sweetheart, if that blonde is your girlfriend, I’m not even saying goodbye with the two-cheek kind," Marina jokes (or not), giving my arm a nudge. "Call me if you’re free again, and be careful, seriously."
She blows me a kiss, swings her bag, and disappears into the crowd.
I’m left planted in my chair, glass sweating in my hand and my heart doing kick drum.
I refuse to look at Nat—no side-eye, no reflections, not even my phone screen—so, classy coward with a PhD in ducking out, I stand with what’s left of my poise, which isn’t much, and head straight to the bathroom, the only place I can stage a meltdown without a waiter as witness.