Natan
When Eduard calls, he is straight to business, which is how I know it isn’t a conversation.
“Teplov,” he says. “He’s been selling the night gate at the second yard. Two loads last month that weren’t ours, riding over our bridge on our paperwork.”
“Where is he?”
“Sheremet’s shop on the eastern road. Mechislav is ten minutes out.”
“How much of him do you want left?”
“He needs both hands to work on Monday.” There’s a pause, and then the part he actually called to say. “His wife knew nothing about any of it. Keep it inside the building.”
I put the empty trays on the counter at Purr & Pour and Delilah starts to say something about the state of my face. I’m out the door before she finds the end of the sentence.
Sheremet’s shop smells like primer and hot metal, and there’s a Mercedes up on the lift with half its panels taped in brown paper. Teplov is sitting in a plastic chair near the compressor with a cup of coffee, which tells me nobody has approached him about this yet.
Mechislav is against the workbench with his arms folded, letting the quiet do the early work. He likes a man to arrive at his own conclusions. I take the coffee out of Teplov’s hand and set it on the bench.
Teplov begins with the version where he doesn’t know what this is about. I let him get four sentences in, then take his left hand, spread it flat on the bench, and break the smallest finger.
The noise he makes goes up into the roof and comes back down again.
“Names,” I say.
He gives me three, then a fourth he’d been saving when I take his ring finger in the palm of my hand. Mechislav writes them on the back of a job sheet.
“You no longer work for us,” I say. His face changes from pained to desperate.
“No,” he begs. “I need this job.”
“Then why were you working for Keplov?” I demand. “Taking his shit across the bridge in Federov vans?”
“It was just two birds with one stone, man,” he whines. “I got a kid on the way…” he trails off when I lift an eyebrow.
“I’m not in the business of second chances,” I say.
Sheremet finds him a bag of frozen peas from the crib room, which is more hospitality than I’d have offered.
Outside, Mechislav is standing with his hands on his hips.
“Everything okay?” he asks, and actually sounds like he means it.
I look at him through my shades. “Of course I’m okay, why do you ask?”
He shrugs his shoulders and lifts his chin in a non-committal way. “No reason, you just seem off your game.”
“Off my game?” I demand. “What the hell does that mean?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead he asks, “Have you gone soft on me, cousin?”
I don’t hold my fist back. It connects with his jaw and he spins on the spot, losing his balance and falling to the floor. We always fought as kids growing up. Sparring, wrestling, honing our skills. I’m surprised he didn’t see it coming.
“Slav,” I say, almost in surprise. “Are you going soft?”
He grins up at me, his teeth bloody. “Thought I’d let you have that one. That’s how I know I’m right.”
“Asshole,” I call him. “You coming to the opening, then?”
My apartment takes eleven minutes with the traffic running the other way.
I shower the smell of primer out of my hair and stand in front of a closet that holds work clothes and one charcoal suit from Eduard’s tailor, that I wore to his wedding, it’s not a tuxedo, but it is smart and made to fit me perfectly.
I put it on with a dark shirt and a darker tie and the shoes I keep polished.
When I empty my jacket pockets onto the bed, her thong is in the left one, pale pink, exactly where I put it last night. I’ve carried that scrap of fabric with me since the moment I peeled it from her body. I harden instantly. Annoyingly.
The gallery at twenty past one is loud enough that I can hear it from the sidewalk.
There are forty people in there, maybe more, wine in most hands. Kimmie is at the far end in the gray skirt with her hair coming down at one side, talking to an older couple, using both hands to describe something to them and making them laugh.
Then I’m three steps inside the room, and the volume drops by about a third.
Two women by the cheese boards stop mid-sentence.
A man I recognize from the corner store puts his hand on his friend’s elbow and says something into his ear without moving his eyes off me.
Somebody’s phone comes up, angled down at their hip in a way they believe is subtle.
A boy of about nine stares at me with open admiration until his mother turns him around by the shoulders.
I’ve been walking into rooms like this my whole adult life. It has never once bothered me. It bothers me now, because it’s happening in hers.
Kimmie sees me. Whatever her face does first, she puts a smile over the top of it, crosses the floor, and says brightly, for the room, “You came! Perfect timing. Let me show you the piece in the back.”
Then she has me by the sleeve in the corridor by the storeroom, between a mop and four rolls of bubble wrap, and she isn’t smiling anymore.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“It’s your opening. I’m here to support you.”
“What do you mean, support me?” Her hand goes up and down, indicating all of me. “You can’t come in here dressed like that, looking like that.” Her hand is making circles near my face now.
“You told me to bring everyone.”
“I know what I said.” She glances toward the doorway and lowers her voice further.
“Half those people signed the letter about the green paint. Mrs. Vasey from the framing shop just asked me if I’m in some kind of trouble, and I had to laugh like it was a joke, and Daisy has been photographing the room all morning for the town paper. ”
“I see.” I keep my voice level. “You’re ashamed of me.”
“That is not fair,” she says, and her eyes go bright and furious. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then tell me what it is. Last night you had your hands in my hair while you were panting my name, and this morning you couldn’t look at me.”
She stands in front of me, her mouth opening and closing while she tries to think of the words she needs.
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it,” I say. “Anything.”
She takes a breath, and she holds it a second too long, and I watch her decide.
“I’d like you to leave,” she says.
There’s a version of me that stays. He argues in the store room with a woman on the biggest day of her career. But I don’t want to be that man with her.
“All right,” I say.
I pick up a large, empty box, and go back through the gallery. The talking picks up behind me before I reach the door. Out on the street, Japer and Delilah walk past me, both looking at me like I’ve grown an extra head.
“Where are you going?” Delilah asks, eyeing the box.
“I’m not welcome,” I grumble.
Sammie is locking up the cafe as I cross the road. “Looking mighty fine there, Mr Federov. Isn’t that the suit you wore to our wedding?”
Eduard, who is pushing the pram, looks me over. “Sure looks like it,” he says. “Didn’t you bring Mechislav with you?”
“He wasn’t far behind me,” I say, then continue walking to my car.
It’s parked in the small lot I always use when I come down here. I flatten the box and slide it into my trunk. Then I get in the driver’s side but don’t start the engine.
Through the glass I watch her work the room, back with the older couple, then a man in a tweed jacket who I’ve heard Sammie call Bill in the cafe.
She welcomes Delilah and Sammie with a hug and kiss on the cheek, then the same for Jasper and Eduard.
Mechislav arrives, looks for me, sees I’m still in my car, and frowns.
He isn’t as big as I am, but he is pretty close. She doesn’t ask him to leave.
I sit there and take last night apart.
She wanted it. She was the one who put her hand around me.
She said my name in a way I’ll be hearing for the rest of my life.
Then I said I’d wanted her since the first time I saw her that day in the café.
That I’d been lying awake in my apartment thinking about her hands, that every day for weeks she was the only thing in my head, and she went stiff in my arms and couldn’t get her dress on fast enough.
Every word of that was true. I turn it over like I would a manifest, looking for the line that doesn’t match the weight, only I can’t find it. She just doesn’t feel the same way.
I scrub my hands over my face. Just because Eduard and Jasper managed to somehow secure relationships, doesn’t mean we all will. It’s ridiculous to think that because I feel this strongly about someone I barely know, that she would feel the same.
I’m an asshole. Maybe it runs in the family.
A black Jaguar pulls up outside the gallery, and a man gets out and looks over the gallery with his lips curled in what looks to me like disgust.
I know his face. Jannick Johansson bought the warehouse two doors down from our second yard three years ago and has never once put anything in it.
He stands on the sidewalk, straightens his cuffs, and goes inside.