Chapter 9 The Hungry Dog
The Hungry Dog
Vitali called once in the next week, and the conversation was brief. I listened to the background of honking vehicles on his end as he checked up on me. ‘Are you warm? Are you eating? How is Mama’s leg?’
‘Is Maxim getting good grades?’
It was light enough that Mama’s nosy ears caught nothing of importance. She’d been vigorously scrubbing the tub just around the corner from the kitchen where we kept the phone. I was surprised she hadn’t worn a hole through the steel, because she spent that whole time on a single spot.
I wasn’t enthusiastic about the conversation at first, but then he made me laugh, and I began thinking that maybe I was being a bit dramatic in my remembering of our last date. He was charming, I’d give him that, but he knew he was charming and that made every word dangerous.
When Mama got tired of eavesdropping and went to discipline Maxim about bedtime, I slid down the wall, hugging my knees with the receiver wedged against my shoulder.
“Mama left,” I said quietly, and the pleased grunt I received was as good as being thrown a parade.
“What did you buy yourself, Kotik?”
“Nothing,” I said, then hurriedly added, “yet.”
“Less than two months until New Year’s. I think you need a fur coat to keep warm.”
“Vitali—I can’t,” I sighed. I didn’t want to, in fact I didn’t want to spend a kopek of his money, but I also couldn’t buy such things.
“I can’t bring it into the house. There is no room, and if someone sees me carrying it—much less wearing it—with the way things are, it will look bad. So bad. I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“What did you buy Maxim?”
“A new pair of Nikes and a puff jacket.”
“Very good, Kotik. Listen, I have to leave for a while.”
“Again.” I rested my head against the wall. Funny how I could wish to never see him again at the beginning of the conversation and whine about it by the end. All it took was my pride dying.
“I don’t know how long, yet. I don’t know if I’ll be able to call.”
“A country with no phones.”
“A country with no phones,” he agreed and laughed. “I wish I could give you more.”
“It’s fine.”
It wasn’t, and I hated that it wasn’t because I liked him.
I wanted him to come by and sit on my couch while I fussed to feed him something I’d claim was easy to make, but really, I had spent the whole day cooking.
I wanted to sit on the floor together and go through my CD collection so I could figure out what he liked besides Chloé Dae. I wanted to… have him around more.
“I know it’s not fine, and it’s not fine for me either.”
I breathed in, for courage. “Will you ever tell me? Why you have to go away so much?”
The cars beeped and someone yelled ‘Ey!’ in the background of his silence.
“Katya,” he finally said, very seriously. “Katya, I will give you all my best days. You make my days best. But you won’t hear about my worst, that I can promise you. Alright?”
“Alright.” It wasn’t alright. There shouldn’t be so many bad days in warehouse management. I rolled my eyes.
“I have to go,” he said, and then there was a long pause where I opened my mouth and tried to say anything but ‘goodbye.’ He saved me. “I miss you, and I’ll come see you as soon as I can. Do you like Italian wine?”
“Are you going to Italy?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
I was rewarded with another laugh-like grunt.
“I’ll see you soon, Kotik.”
I wouldn’t be seeing him soon.
* * *
The scariest event of my life (so far, because it got so much worse later on) happened two weeks later.
It wasn’t uncommon for people to get robbed. It happened at night; it happened in broad daylight. It happened to kids and the elderly. It happened on the streets and in podyezds and markets. It happened to me on my way home from work.
By mid-November, Kurov saw very little daylight. By the time I left work, it was already dark. It had snowed off and on all day, giving the snow time to melt and freeze, melt and freeze again. The result was dirty, unreliable sidewalks that wouldn’t get cleared except by pedestrian feet.
Elena and I weren’t on the same shifts anymore and stopped taking the same bus.
It was easier for me to take the tram anyway.
Because my office was so central, the stop had a spacious shielded area almost always stuffed with people holding plastic bags, backpacks, and screaming children on their shoulders.
As cold as I was, there was no room, so I stood next to the lamppost covered in old, scraped stickers and etchings of names and swear words.
My wool gloves were already damp, and toes achy from the cold.
The season soon approached where fashion wouldn’t be a factor in the face of winter—but by God, we held out longer every year.
Somewhere in the building at my back, a window slid open and the sound of a nasally talk radio host began announcing the news.
Then—
I smelled him in the same instant his hands dug into my purse. Pungent vodka-marinated skin and unwashed clothes were amplified by the cold air as they hit my nostrils. He didn’t tug—he ripped the bag off my shoulder.
I knew better. I always held it protectively trapped under my arm and close to my body, but the man didn’t care because he meant for me to struggle. It only slowed him for five seconds. Long enough for me to scream, but not long enough for anyone to come running out of the tram stop shelter.
And then the world flashed white and blasted my ears with a deafening pop as I went flying backwards and onto my butt.
The man who fired the gun kept walking. Just like that.
One moment I could only see my attacker, then a passerby with his head down reached into his jacket without so much as slowing, and bang.
I was splattered in a stranger’s blood with bits of what used to be him clinging to my frost-covered coat.
The sweet iron overtook the smell of vodka.
The body buckled, still clutching the purse strap he’d torn off.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, just stared at the stranger’s back.
It was the same man who’d followed me to work—the one in that wide coat and the ushanka.
People shrieked, and someone bellowed for the police, but it sounded far away. My ears rang. The sense overcame me that I shouldn’t wait—I shouldn’t be there when they arrived—so I slapped away the people trying to help me, and I ran, all the way home.
That night was sleepless. My drumming heartbeats woke me every time I nodded off.
I had never seen someone murdered before. I hadn’t seen a dead body up close, and even from afar it was of natural causes and guns weren’t natural.
By morning, my head pounded and I called work saying I wouldn’t be coming in. I lied to Mama and said I was sick just so I could stay in my room. Of course, this was wildly counterproductive because she took it as her civic duty to check on me every fifteen minutes from then on.
‘Katya let’s check your temperature.’
‘Katya here is a pot of potatoes—put your head over it.’
‘Katya wrap this scarf around your head and soak your feet.’
Finally, I told her it was just a headache and got smacked on the back of the head, although that was probably not one of the remedies.
The phone didn’t ring that day, but by evening, someone leaned in on the keypad downstairs, sending a buzz throughout the apartment that rattled the dishes. Maxim was the first to the receiver. He pressed the key to open the downstairs door, shrugging at Mama and I when questioned.
“Some guy is here.”
“You buzzed a stranger in?” I hissed, rushing to the door and all but slamming against the peephole. “Maxim!”
At my back, Mama began her lecture as she ushered him away, and I waited, holding my breath.
The police. It had to be the police. I washed blood out of my clothes the night prior, and now I stood on my tippy toes with my cheek to the metal, waiting to be arrested.
The elevator opened, and the peephole was immediately blacked out. The rapid knocks vibrated through my skull before I could jerk back from the door.
“Who is it?” I asked tightly. I wasn’t about to open it, possibly ever again in my life.
“Katya, it’s Mikhail,” the voice boomed and I blinked dumbly, then squinted as if that’d make me see through the steel.
“Misha?”
“I’m not staying, just dropping off something for Vitali.”
I swung the door open to Misha awkwardly holding a bouquet of red roses. He gripped them like a snow shovel.
“Oh…” I said.
“Don’t cry about it,” Misha said. “You know how hard it is to find roses in November? Blyad.”
“Who is it?” Mama yelled from the other room.
Misha’s face went pale even in the jaundiced light of the stair landing. “Katya, hate to do this, but I gotta interview you,” he said, careful not to get Mama’s attention.
“What?”
“Well-being and all. You want to step out before I’m spotted?”
“Uh…” I fumbled for some slippers, but it was too late. She’d sighted him.
“Come in, come in! It’s cold, close the door you’re letting the heat out, come in!” Mama chirped. Misha glanced at me with a cringe asking if there was any use fighting. I shook my head.
“You got beer?” he whispered, his hefty form taking up the hallway as he sat to slip off his boots.
“No, you’ll have to go in defenseless,” I told him and took the flowers to the living room, where Mama was already preparing for war.
“Who is this?” she whispered, seeing the roses. “Katya, it is not good to bring so many men around. I know that at your age you have to—”
“Mama, no!” I hissed. “These are from Vitali. Misha is his… friend.”
The condemnation of my soul left her face and she pranced over to Misha who followed me into the room. For someone claiming knee injury, she was sure spry when it came to receiving company.