Chapter 6 The Leather Pants
The Leather Pants
Misha wasn’t alone.
Three women and two men accompanied him, and of course, one of them had to be Ana.
The guys were some flavor of thug with thick necks and torn-up knuckles, with gold chains resting in a field of dark, curly hair on their chests. The women were tall and wore leather pants, fashionable chokers, and expressions of general boredom and disgust.
Vitali’s face was a swear word he didn’t voice, but he stood and when Misha came over, they firmly shook hands. Two tables scraped the wooden floor as they pushed them flush with ours, splashing the champagne and destroying my hopes for a romantic evening.
“Mish, get the hell out of here,” Vitali said, the words both calm and threatening, and completely useless against the already drunk Misha.
“And here I was, thinking it was too early for dinner.” There was a certain joy on his face that fully understood what he interrupted. “And what is this? You hate oysters.” His paw-of-a-hand closed in on them from across the table.
The others sat down, the women shimmying into whatever space they could find. They pulled out their own chairs, I noted smugly.
“Oh, is that Katya?” Ana said, as if she’d only then recognized me. Somehow, this was doubtful. “What a surprise!” She leaned over to another girl and whispered something. Her friend raised an eyebrow at me, shamelessly whispered back, and they both glanced at Vitali.
“Nastishka!” Misha bellowed. “Bring bread and schi! And veal cutlets!”
“Da, Mish.” The server affectionately laid a hand on his shoulder. “You want your bottle of Ararat?”
“Two, Solnishko.”
“I need a glass of vodka,” the woman not seated next to Ana said, but Misha pointed at her with his thick finger.
“Never vodka! Drink it at home.”
“We should leave,” Vitali muttered.
“Who are these people?” I whispered.
“My employees.”
It was time to come to terms with the fact that we weren’t going to stay for long enough to try the risotto. Vitali’s hand tightened on my knee proportionally to the noise around the table growing louder and more jovial as we waited to politely make our exit. Of course, that didn’t happen.
The large man hollered something I didn’t quite catch, but I did notice Vitali’s fingers tapping harder on the table.
“Mish,” he said again, and he didn’t have to say the name twice to be heard. “Remember yourself.”
The man nodded and tapped another man’s chest with his fist. “Mind your manners.”
“What fun is that?” Ana teased, but one look at Vitali soured her good mood. “Alright.” She turned up her nose at me. “We’re in ‘polite’ company after all, aren’t we?”
“To health, friends!” Misha proposed, and all the glasses clinked around the table. Vitali joined, but he did not take another sip for the rest of the evening.
The men were Boris and Ivan, and they looked like brothers, although everyone called each other ‘brat,’ so any actual familial ties remained a mystery. The two women were Mila and Tamara, probably no relation.
We did stay for the risotto at the insistence of everyone at the table, and then the stuffed sturgeon, and again for the cream and berry tartlets.
All the while, the table got rowdier, and the conversation more confusing.
I had never felt less liked by girls or more interesting to men, as each made it a point to ask me questions that sounded like inside jokes.
Vitali redirected some and stopped me from answering others, and finally said we are leaving and snapped for the attendant to bring my coat.
The women eyed it just like they’d been eyeing me all night, but the men quieted as they appraised my nearly bare and fully exposed legs.
This, Vitali found pleasing as he took his time situating the furs on my shoulders, just high enough to land at the hem of the dress.
He looked each man in the eye before we left.
Misha was the only one to say anything. “Looking good, boss,” he grinned. “Sure like that color on you.”
Vitali smirked.
The BMW was out front and already warmed, saving me from my regretful choice of thin clothing on a Siberian October night.
“They like to dine,” I said.
“It’s a popular spot.”
“The girls—do they work with you too?” I asked in the most nonchalant way I could manage, but all I could think about was the way the leather pants hugged their thighs, creating that beautiful gap between their legs.
“No,” Vitali said, “they’re just… around.”
Not reassuring, because he didn’t say any of them were together. Just a bunch of beautiful single women floating around the workplace, as they do.
Did they go on these ‘business’ trips to countries with no phones?
“What’s the restaurant called? I didn’t see a sign,” I asked.
“The Labyrinth.”
“Appropriately hard to find your way out,” I muttered, and he chuckled.
It was cold—so cold, but freeing in the same way the inside lounge was suffocating.
Without the booming voices and rolling laughter on the background of constant chitter, the quiet felt personal between us, and not just because we were alone (we weren’t, the nice man who I thought tried to kidnap me was still smoking his cigarette) but because it made it feel like an ‘us.’
“I’m sorry. That did not go as I wished, Katya,” he said with a hint of defeat disguised as exhaustion as he got into the driver’s seat. “I think our first dates are cursed.”
I twisted my fingers in my lap and wished he’d rest his hand on my thigh again as we pulled out onto the street. “I did not think it was so bad.”
“You deserve better than I’ve given you.”
“I think the microwave was a lovely gesture. I’ll think of you every time I heat my soup.”
Again, he laughed, and the warmth in my heart grew.
“Do you like movies?”
“Hm?” I glanced up. “Of course.”
“I’m away for the next week, maybe week and a half. When I return, I’ll take you to the movies.”
“Alright…” I bit my cheek, hating that I had to ask. “But you’ll call?”
“I will, Kotik.”
* * *
The next day, I took a chunk out of my savings and went shopping for leather pants.
Elena met me at the market, and even before I saw her face, I knew something was wrong. She pulled the red scarf with green and yellow flowers too high, crushing her curls as she tucked her hair into its folds.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Well, hello to you too. It’s nothing.”
I shook my head, disappointed that she’d think I wouldn’t notice, and stepped close enough to yank the scarf down before she could jerk away. My fear stared back at me in the form of a purple bruise crawling across her skin like an ink stain, its corners feathering out into a dull blue.
“Oh God, Elena…” I whispered as she lowered her eyes and allowed me to examine it. “Who did this to you?”
“I fell—it was embarrassing enough, so let’s not talk about it. There was a patch of ice.” She pulled irritably out of my reach, but I followed.
“Elena.”
“Katya, please. Can we go?” she pleaded.
My fingers hovered over the bruise, but I lowered my hand in the end and let her pull the scarf up. Shopping for leather pants seemed silly now, but as we walked the rows of tents, her mood improved and so did mine. There would be time to talk about it later, when she wasn’t expecting a reprimand.
The outdoor market consisted of fifty stalls, some canvas cloth and some metal, each offering everything from baked bread to fake China-made shoes to expired make-up and bubblegum.
I stopped to browse through the sticker books for Maxim and ended up buying one featuring a slightly off-looking team of Ninja Turtles.
The cashiers always appeared a little extra angry, like you were inconvenient to their sunflower-seed spitting gossip hour sitting between the haphazardly stacked crates.
“Why do you suddenly want leather pants?” Elena asked, trying not to seem too eager, but the message was clear.
I gave her an embarrassed shrug, pretending to be interested in a pair of open-toed sandals while my nose grew red with the biting chill. What was I going to tell her?
“Who did you see wearing them?”
Ah crap.
“We saw Ana at the restaurant,” I said. “She was with his guys. All the girls wore them.”
“You think that’s what he wants to see? Katya, come on. Bad enough you forgave him for the whole thing, now you’re dressing up for him?” She rolled her eyes. “What restaurant was it?”
Elena, the subject matter expert on all things expensive. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed earlier, but that thought brought attention to the gold earrings peeking out between her locks.
“The Labyrinth?” I said uncertainly.
“Hm… never heard of that one.”
“It was very secretive.”
She hummed and ran her fingers wistfully over a pair of German boots. “So how much do you like him, really?”
I bit my cold-stricken lip. “A bit.”
“Are you really doing this?” She snorted. “Come on, Katenka.”
“He makes me think that maybe I’d waited so long for a good reason,” I said.
“Are we shopping for leather pants or a wedding dress?”
“He could probably import me one from France.”
Her hand on my arm jerked me to a stop.
“You don’t believe it, do you?” she asked. “That he works in a warehouse?”
“I have no reason not to.”
She blinked as if I’d spoken a foreign language.
“Katya. My papa works ten hours a day at the factory and barely makes enough to buy us chicken once a week. I sneak money in the pockets of his laundry so he doesn’t feel like it’s a handout.
Mama xeroxed a bus pass so she could get to work and back on one ticket.
And Vitali took you to a secret restaurant and bought you oysters and champagne.
You aren’t stupid, I know you aren’t stupid. You have to understand that.”
Was I not?
“He deals with a lot of foreigners…” I muttered. “It’s different out there. They pay different.”