Chapter 18 Danger
Danger
Our first week at the apartment on Mira Street (I wouldn’t understand the irony of living on a street named after ‘peace’ until later) was a blur of errands and discovering what we didn’t have, which in turn inspired more errands.
Vitali took Maxim and me to see Mama (he remembered to bring milk when he picked us up), and I got an earful of every complaint and objection she could think up, which was good because it meant she was feeling better.
They told us she would be there for a couple weeks.
Vitali was right, it was an excellent hospital.
Still incredibly crowded with overworked staff and sorely lacking supplies, but they had new equipment and Mama said the nurses were attentive, which was more than we could hope for in these times.
Then, we were able to visit Maxim’s new school.
The walk wasn’t long, and wouldn’t take him down any major streets—mostly across parks—so he could go alone once the weather improved.
The Director gave us a brief tour, although we didn’t enter the classrooms since it was a Wednesday and classes were in session.
We went clothes shopping, got a new set of pots and pans, and had lunch at a gimmicky restaurant with a rooster holding a fork and knife for a mascot.
Concerning, considering they served chicken.
Maxim loved it, and I bitterly realized Vitali would almost certainly work it into our routine as a result.
Our routine.
Vitali, who hadn’t been in our lives for a month. Who I hadn’t even met half a year ago. Who so easily slipped into the very core of my family and my heart.
This was why it was only at night, when things got quiet, that I remembered the sounds of the machine guns and people screaming to the booming Take Me Home Tonight across the speakers. The darkness of those thoughts reached for me, and its hands were rough.
Otherwise, things were as perfect as I could have ever dreamt of.
And then, Vitali showed up at my door (his door, technically) with a gun.
“You’re going to learn how to shoot,” he told me unceremoniously. “Get a coat on. And gloves. The metal is cold, and you’ll need to concentrate on other things.”
“Absolutely not!” I protested as I followed him through the hallway into the kitchen where he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Do you have a thermos?”
“I’m sure there’s one in the cabinets somewhere—I’m not touching a gun.”
“Yes,” he said, casually as if discussing lunch plans, “you are.”
“I’m not touching a gun.” I crossed my arms. We stared at each other, but he was unfazed, and my heart pounded because a part of me knew when Vitali said something, it was happening.
“Katya.” He set the cup down and leaned against the table. “I’m giving you a gun because I can’t always be here, and I need to know you are capable of protecting yourself. I want nothing more than to put you somewhere you can forget guns exist, but that is not reality, so you’re getting a gun.”
“But Roman—”
“Has to sleep. He’s got twins at home, and they’re still in diapers. I can’t have him sit in a car outside your podyezd all day.”
He patted his knee, and I unthinkingly closed the distance between us, stepping in between his legs, thigh against thigh. He cupped my chin and adamantly looked me in the eyes.
“It will be alright, Kotik. I’ll teach you, and we can practice in a field. All I ask is you keep it in your nightstand. Loaded.”
Ask? He never asked.
My defeated expression was a satisfactory answer because he said, “Good. Fill two thermoses; it’s sunny, but it’s still cold. We might be out there for a while.”
We were on the road within the hour.
White-frosted trees rushed past us as we entered the countryside. The deep winter snow had completely flattened out the already level ground. Soon, nothing remained but bright white fields with the occasional grove of bare trees fading into the horizonless sky.
I was afraid to be with you, Chloé Dae sang. Now I know love is fear you make it through…
“You never told me,” I said, and he raised an eyebrow but otherwise did not move, or look away from the road—for which I was grateful because there hardly was a road to see, “about the bus. You said you remembered it when we met.”
“I do. What’s the question?”
“Why did you break that man’s hand?”
Vitali hummed, then gave me a dismissive one-shoulder shrug.
“What were you doing on a bus anyway?” I persisted, waving a hand at the interior of yet another new car. I didn’t even know the make of this one, only that it was big and high enough off the ground that the ice wasn’t scraping the bottom as we flew down the snowed-over road.
“I don’t like to stand out.”
I snorted, and he gave me a curious glance.
“I don’t,” he repeated. “I don’t carry a cellphone. I don’t live anywhere flashy. And I don’t drive unless I have to. I have a good reason for it all, Katya.”
“You’ve never come over on a bus.”
“I will never make you ride the bus.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He thoughtfully rubbed his jaw, his fingers tapping the steering wheel.
Again, he didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled off the raised road into the sea of sparkling white—and I yelped, grabbing onto whatever I could because the tires slipped and there was no way to tell how deep the snowdrifts were. Vitali chuckled.
“Trust.”
I did, but I still braced myself as the car tilted and bounced until we made it to a patch of trees so far from the only road that I couldn’t tell where it was without looking at our tire tracks, and stopped.
“Is this necessary?” I asked, gathering what was left of my nerves off the muddy floor mats.
“We’re going to make some noise. It’s best no one is around to hear it.”
I sank up to my knees in the snow, which was surprisingly shallow for this time of the year. Vitali didn’t have this struggle. He handed me both the thermos and a blanket from the backseat, then circled to the trunk.
“Lay that out on the hood,” he called, and I threw the blanket up, calculating just how difficult it would be for me to climb so high up. Could I sit and shoot? Was that a thing?
“Oh God—” I fell back as he came around casually carrying two giant machine guns (or, they seemed giant at the time because I’d never seen one up close).
“It’s okay, Kotik, these aren’t for you. You’ll try one—but I don’t think it will fit in your nightstand.” He pulled two pistols from the breast of his coat and laid everything out on the blanket. “Have you ever heard of an AK-47?”
I had. Mostly from the movies and overhearing teenagers lying to each other on the bus. I was not about to fire one.
“Well, this is an AK-74. It’s better. Much lighter. We’ll save that for after. Just for fun.”
“Fun…” I muttered. “Just for fun…”
“This is a Makarov,” Vitali continued, prompting me to take the pistol. “Small. Like you. Hold it while I set up targets. It’s empty, don’t worry.”
I held it helplessly and watched him carry two wooden planks out into the field. No one looked graceful trying to make their way through deep snow, and Vitali was no exception.
I tried to hide my cheeky grin as he returned. “Shouldn’t they have something drawn on them? Targets?”
“Kotik, you’ll be lucky to hit the plank today. Now, this is how you load it.”
There was a lot of pointing and patience on his part. I did my best to follow along, but somehow doubted I’d be able to do it on my own. When the time came, he moved my hands in place under his, body against mine, and I felt the charge of it even through the layers and layers of our winter clothes.
Palm on the back of the grip—thumb along the frame. His gently moved over mine.
“This is the safety,” he said, voice low and so close to my ear I shivered.
But it wasn’t purposeful—when it came to firearms, he was all business.
His eyes never lingered on me in the way they usually did, and his touch was purely educational.
Somehow, this made me want him more—something about that ‘teacher puts his hands on you in public’ dynamic that I wanted to explore. Later… couldn’t have those thoughts…
The first time I fired, my heart stopped, but the shot didn’t sound like Elit at all.
It was a boom, just the one. I wasn’t ready for how hard it kicked, but Vitali’s hands were still atop mine and softened the impact. The next time was easier, as was the next and every one after that. I emptied four magazines before he let me stop.
Three bullets actually hit the planks, which, in all fairness, was more than he expected of me.
Then, we sat on the hood and drank coffee, and talked about books I’ve already read, and those slowly making their way into Russia after having been banned. He promised to get me an unabridged copy of Doctor Zhivago that Sergei had stashed away in a box somewhere, possibly in that fabled warehouse.
That’s where my books were now. In boxes. Things we didn’t immediately need were neatly stored back in Mama’s apartment. Books didn’t need the heater to work.
“Can I ask you something?” I kicked my feet and a dirty piece of ice dislodged from the sole of my boots and crashed against the bumper.
“Go ahead.” He leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows.
“You said you have a sister,” I began. Having heard everything Misha had to say, and pieced together what Sergei added, there was still a lot of…
unpleasant mystery surrounding Vitali. But it was a process, and I had no intention of hurrying it along.
I had time. We had time. And, I had to be careful, Elena was right about that.
“Dasha, right? I didn’t see any pictures of her in your home. Where is she?”
This time, he lay all the way down, an arm comfortably under his head. Every moment of silence was wound, like a spring, but the bite of it never came.
“She’s in America,” he said. “In New York. After our parents passed, she was adopted, and I didn’t know where she’d gone.”