2. Arsen
2
ARSEN
Jasper springs out of bed when I barge into his room. He’s pale. The t-shirt he’s wearing swallows him whole. Underneath it, he’s just skin and bone.
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Getting sober can do that to you.”
I take a quick scan around the room. It’s bare and depressing—a single bed pushed against the window and a lopsided dresser with a stack of coasters where the fourth leg should be. There aren’t many places to hide a stash in this room, but Jasper was always creative.
“I know that look.” He squares his shoulders. “I am sober now, Arsen. Painfully so.” He opens his arms like it’s a magic show. “It only took four months and a couple of suicide attempts before I saw the light.”
I’ve read his reports. Not once, but twice, he tried to slice a knife across his wrists. Matvei and Valentin were there to stop him. Without them, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I can’t decide if that would’ve been the better outcome.
“Have you really seen the light, Jas, or are you just telling me what I want to hear?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You’ve done it before.”
“Let me rephrase: I wouldn’t lie to you while I’m sober.” He drops down to the edge of his bed and runs a hand over his shorn scalp, eyes downcast. “I know I let you down. I know I fucked up. And I know it’s not for the first time.”
I lean against the doorframe and say nothing.
“How is Dominik?” he asks, fidgeting in the awkward silence.
“Recovering. I can’t say the same for his opinion of you.”
Jasper sighs. “I can’t blame him. This is the second time I’ve put him in the hospital.”
“Glad to see you’re keeping count.”
“And it’s going to be the last time, Arsen,” he grits. “I swear. I’m done mixing with the wrong people. I’m done being stupid.”
“I’ve heard it all before, Jas. Why should I believe you this time around?”
He chews on his fingernails, though they’ve already been nibbled down to the quick. “Sobriety has been a bitch, but it’s given me some clarity. I can see how pathetic I was. How weak. I went through a bad time when you were released from prison before I was. And I blamed you for it.”
I arch an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t make sense, I know,” he adds quickly. “But at the time, it felt like I was being, like, abandoned. And when I was finally released and I came to you—” He clears his throat awkwardly. “—we were in two different places. I felt so far beneath you. It was like I was being abandoned again.”
“And now?”
He stops his pacing and stands at attention before me, the picture of a loyal soldier. “Now, I’m willing to do whatever you need from me. Send me into the trenches, make me work my way up from the bottom, set me on whatever demeaning job you can think of. I’ll dig ditches, for fuck’s sake. I’ll shovel shit. It won’t break me this time.”
I hear Dominik’s voice in my head. An addict’s loyalties will always be to his addiction first.
As he stands tall again, I notice the angry red scar on the underside of his wrist from his first suicide attempt. I can make out the perpendicular lines of Matvei’s haphazard stitching job.
“Alessandro Calcagno is dead, Jasper,” I tell him bluntly. “Enzo is in charge now.”
“That’s—” His eyes narrow like he suspects a trap. “Why are you telling me?”
“Because my men should know what is happening,” I say evenly.
His eyes shimmer as the meaning settles over him. “I see.”
“You still have a lot of work to do,” I remind him. “A lot of trust to build.”
He nods eagerly. “I’m aware.”
“You’re gonna have to start from the bottom and follow orders.”
“Goes without saying.”
I take a step towards him and clasp his shoulder. “Stay out of trouble, Jasper, and you could find a place here. You’re on your last life.”
Something flashes across his eyes. “I won’t let you down, sir.”
“Don’t slam the door in my face! I come in peace.”
Polina’s eyes thin until they almost disappear behind her reading glasses. “Arsen.”
“Missed me?”
“I miss the man you used to be.”
She’s got the door cracked only a few inches. All I can see is a sliver of her face, but it’s enough to understand that she’s no less furious than she was the day she left.
“If you’re gonna bust my balls,” I say, “at least invite me inside first.”
She purses her lips, weighing a no. Then, after her hesitation drags on long enough that I start to wonder if she truly might deny me, she sighs and opens the door.
“Fine, but I’m not doing it for you; I’m doing it for your mother.”
“I wasn’t aware she was watching.”
After the way the last few months have gone, I hope, for her sake, she’s not.
“If you want to talk to me, you’re gonna have to check that attitude at the door, young man.”
I hold up my hands. “Consider it checked.”
She steps aside just enough to let me squeeze inside. It smells like apples and cinnamon, just the way I remember. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, to this cozy little apartment in its cozy little cul-de-sac. I’d offered to upgrade it years ago, but she refused. I’d offered again, and she threatened me with a butcher’s knife until I dropped the subject altogether.
She leads me into the living room with the same faded yellow sofa. “Tea or coffee?”
“How about ten minutes of your time? That’s all I really want.”
She drops into the green armchair opposite me. “If you’re here to ask me to come back to work, the answer remains no.”
“You don’t know the circumstances of my being here.”
“Are Laila and Nina back in that house?”
“No—”
“Then I’m not interested.”
I lean back and cross my legs. “You know, it’s a little disheartening to know that in a matter of months, Laila bewitched you so completely that your loyalty to her is greater than your loyalty to me.”
“It’s not about loyalty, Arsen. It’s about right and wrong. Sending Laila away like that was wrong. Simple as that.”
Polina hasn’t taken any of my calls the last few months, but I have a feeling, like Laila, she’s been talking to Dominik. They all sound a little too similar for it to be sheer coincidence.
“I did what I had to do to keep her safe. Do you believe that?”
“I believe you believe that, but it doesn’t change anything for me.”
“I’m not surprised. You’ve made your opinion on this subject clear enough.”
“And you’re still refusing to listen to me. I’m not surprised, either.” She looks like she wants to hurt me, and those knitting needles of hers are a little too close at hand for me to relax fully. “I know you, Arsen. I know what you’re scared of.”
“I’m not?—”
“After what happened with your father, I can’t blame you.”
I tense, white-knuckling my knee. “Despite what you seem to think, my past doesn’t dictate every decision I make in the present.”
“Hm.” Polina fixes me with an unblinking gaze. “Why are you here, Arsen?”
“I want you to come back. The house isn’t the same without you.”
“Didn’t you just say I’ve made myself clear? You know my conditions.”
“I also know, as much as you want to strangle me right now, you won’t. You know me, Pol, which means you know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a compelling offer.”
Her shrewd gaze fixes on me. “What is it?”
“I’m offering you the chance to trust me. You can come back and?—”
“And forget what you did? How you hurt the people who loved you?” she all but spits at me. “I won’t. Not even for you, Arsen.”
Maybe Dominik was right—I work alone now. I could tell Polina what I have planned, but I have no desire to. If she doesn’t trust me after the years we’ve lived and worked together, then I don’t want her back at the house. I’ll make sure she can live comfortably in this little shack, and she’ll never have to speak to me again.
But part of me—the same part that ate the apple cinnamon cakes Polina made every birthday, the part that watched her face grow lined and papery—wants her to trust me. I want her to come back.
“You always said I was my mother’s son, Polina.” I push to my feet with a sigh. “Come back and let me prove it.”
I’m out the porch and halfway down the drive when I hear the front door open. “I’ll be packed in an hour,” she calls after me. “Are you going to send a car for me or do I have to take the bus?”