(adj.) composed of both good and evil
Albert occupied the chair in front of my desk, his careful gaze and silence on my skin. He had a good reason to be cautious. It was a while since I’d been so angry my hands shook—three months exactly, when I found Pasha’s body mutilated by Mikhailov hands.
The irony of the situation was one of the reasons I’d forced myself to sit here and wait for the rage to cool before I shot my men one by one to find the traitor in our midst. The other reason . . . well, it made me a little nauseous. It was the idea Mila’s soft eyes were almost permanently snuffed out by a cup of tea. The burn in my chest whenever I thought of it reminded me of the time I fought for air in an old Volkswagen filled with icy water.
I wasn’t sure why I shared that story with Mila considering I didn’t even tell my brother after walking into our apartment later that night dripping water on the cracked linoleum floor. I didn’t often dwell on the past, but the odd sense of . . . relief Mila would live reminded me of my first breath after breaking my head through the surface of the Moskva.
“Where have you been?” Kristian asked me in Russian, pulling his gaze from the tiny TV with rabbit ear antennas that sat on the floor.
“Swimming,” I answered.
Momma was passed out in the apartment’s single bedroom. Dark hair covered her face, and an arm hung off the bed, a cigarette dangling from her fingers. I used to think she was pretty, but now, at eight, all I saw when I looked at her were burned silver spoons, empty eyes, and a heat in my gut that expanded further every day.
I grabbed the baggie of crack rocks off the table and flushed it down the toilet. There’d be hell to pay for that later, but I doubted it would be worse than another night of my momma smoking that stuff. It made her act crazy, and she’d say things that didn’t make any sense.
After I stripped out of my wet clothes, I plopped down on the stained mattress next to Kristian and stole the remote from him.
“You don’t know how to swim,” he said, keeping his eyes on the TV.
I flipped the channel. “Do now.”
“It’s March.”
My brother could be so annoying. He kicked me in his sleep, watched boring shows, and thought he knew everything. The fact he was mostly right irritated me even more. I’d also punch any kid who was mean to him. Momma’s friends were mean to him the most. They never bothered me, but still, sometimes, an angry red mist covered my eyes when they were here. Those men were too large for me to hurt now, but someday, I’d be big enough.
> “Everything’s still frozen,” he said.
I wouldn’t admit I’d held onto a piece of ice until I reached the shore even if Kristian saw me at it. With a shrug, I said, “I got hot.” In fact, I was feeling a little sweaty from the shaky nerves and my cold skin. I wiped sweat from my chest onto his cheek. He glared at me and rubbed it off with a hand.
The room went silent, the dark room lit by the TV with a broken speaker. “We should go there,” he said to the TV, to a scene of New York City. “To America.”
I shook my head. “I want to stay here.”
His eyes came to me. “What are you gonna do, sleep on this mattress all your life?”
“No, dimwit, I’m gonna be like him.” I nodded to the TV as a political commercial came on.
“He’s the president,” Kristian said.
“I know.” I didn’t know that. I just liked the way he looked in expensive clothes, with an audience in front of him.
After a moment, he said, “You could be the president if you wanted to be.”
“I don’t want to be the president.” I rested a sweaty arm on his shoulders. “I’m gonna be something better.”
“Like God.”
The old lady next door invited me and Kristian over sometimes. We went for the tea and biscuits while she read us passages from the Bible. So many “thou shalt nots” and pointed looks over her glasses.
“Kind of like God,” I said, and after a moment of silence, a smile touched my lips. “But I’d rather be the devil.”
I took a drag from my cigar. My mother didn’t remember what she’d done until the police knocked on the door the next morning and asked why her car was in the Moskva. She talked—or, rather, fucked—her way out of it, and then she made me and Kristian syrniki. The decent meal was almost worth it.
“Viktor is questioning Anna,” Albert said.
I stared at him, not knowing who the fuck Anna was.
“The girl who’s been serving your meals for the past three years.”