At my abrupt entrance everyone stopped and stared at me, surprise quickly resolving itself into hostility as the Russians realized none of them knew who I was. Judging by the black leather jackets and tattoos peeking out from collars and cuffs of their dark clothes, I had stumbled on Mitnick’s boys or some kind of punk rock mortician meeting.
By the distance from the main party I bet this is where their boss had some of them stowed away, keeping everyone placated with vodka and herring. Now that they had found lady companionship, they weren’t too happy about being interrupted. Fortunately, all eyes were on me otherwise someone might have noticed Sophie’s surprised recognition.
The one with the cue stick stopped using it as a pretend phallus and shifted it to one hand as you might a club. He said something I didn’t quite catch, but I’m sure it was some variation of “Who are you?”
I went to raise an apologetic hand, prepared to leave the bunch when I noticed the man sitting next to Sophie, barely older than a fresh-faced recruit. He was very close to her indeed, and had a hand placed on her knee, perhaps there due to some joking or maybe with some encouragement. That tiny thing stopped me as surely as he had pointed a pistol at me. I felt my jaw reflexively clench, as if prepared to take an incoming fist.
When my withdrawal from the room wasn’t immediate the man with the cue stick repeated himself. The words, increasing in hostility, brought my attention back to him. He wasn’t the most senior of the men, maybe half-a-dozen in all. There was a variety of ages among them, but he was on the grayer end of the scale, a buzzed cut mafia middle manager with hair thinning at his temples. His ears stood out prominently from his head and I had to control a sudden urge to pin them back to his skull. Instead I blinked moisture out of my eyes and said, “Sorry, what?”
One of the men behind Ears began to get up, a big bruiser who easily picked up the young dirty blonde who had been sitting in his lap to set her aside. Some part of me noticed that Sophie and all the women appeared to be fine and unthreatened, which should have made it easy to leave. I continued to stand there.
Ears made a small gesture for the bruiser to hold back, thankfully wanting to show some patience in the boss’ house, and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
I brought out my best sugar-on-top American voice and smiled past a sudden pain in my forehead and swelling feet. “Sorry fellas.” Knowing I should exit immediately or endanger everyone I instead said, “You seen Sergei around?”
The growing heat of promised violence in the room went as cold as the vodka that I desperately wanted a sip of now. Ears shifted his weight to his back foot, narrowing his eyes to an evaluating stare. “Sergei?”
“Yeah, Sergei,” I repeated, all polite and oblivious. “He’s Ukrainian. Like you.”
That caused a slight bristling. Ears said, “Russian.” In the background I noted Sophie getting up and moving slightly to the side, readying herself for whatever might happen next.
“What?”
Ears gestured to himself and the others, “Russian.”
“Oh.” I blinked in a confused fashion, which I didn’t have to fake. Mitnick had Russians in his house. I covered this up by saying, “I thought that Ukraine was, you know, a part of Russia.”
Ears laughed in a way that suggested it might as well be, but said, “No. It is its own country.”
I followed with something that I knew was the wrong thing to say. “My mistake. But that’s a like asking you boys to know the difference between someone from Georgia and Mississippi.”
That caused more puzzlement, Georgia being both a U.S. state and a former republic of the Soviet Union. This resulted in further fuming – like most tough guys when someone started to speak about something they didn’t understand, it made them feel stupid. Lesser. Not a position they were happy to be in.
Having gotten everyone off balance, I pushed a bit more, “So you fellas seen Sergei? He’s a Ukrainian.” I smiled, having met enough Eastern Europeans to know that blissful American cheer would antagonize them further, but unable to stop. As if all this wasn’t enough I threw in, “He’s usually with that crazy brunette? The pale one.”
One of the men shot up, nearly spilling his drink. Another, an older vory at the back, so pale I had thought he was wearing a white shirt, leaned past the two girls that were flanking him to stare accusingly at the younger man. Judging by the number of tattoos and the prominence of the elder’s tattooed star, it was good for his longevity that the younger man quickly gave a believable, bewildered shrug. Ears remained still, keeping everyone else in their place, his squinted eyes, belying a low heat. “You know Sergei?”
I smiled, making like an idiot, happy that we were getting somewhere. “Yeah. We met at the Factory.” Thinking about what Sartre had said about allowing Mitnick’s crew into the club I gave Ears a sly look and said, “Say – haven’t I seen you there with him?”
The growing anger in Ears went out like he had snuffed a candle, so much so I thought I could see the smoke trailing off him. I should have paid more attention to that. Instead I listened more to what he said next. “Sure.” He stepped forward and almost put a hand on my shoulder, but stopped, thinking better of it. Instead he pointed at the door I came in and said, “Go out,” followed by a series of left and right directions. Trying to mentally follow along, I was fairly certain the instructions would take me back outside.
I gave a quick glance to the rest of the crowd to see the other men setting down drinks and moving to stand, getting ready to help me leave if I didn’t. All the women were staring anywhere but the source of the conflict, attuned to the possibility of violence and desiring nothing but to avoid it. Except for Sophie. Behind the men she glared at me, her eyes dilating with the clear message that it was time for me to leave. She couldn’t have made her intentions more clear if she had been signaling with me semaphore.
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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