“Ha! He is half a man, at best. You’ll see. Sergei will come back someday and set this place right again. Go and deal with him, kids. I’ll stay here and hold the fortress against the horde of idiots.” Ovar aimed a clumsy, friendly slap towards my shoulder as I swept past, and I adroitly sidestepped his hand and pushed ahead into the corridor. The gauntlet cleared, I drew a deep, steadying breath.
“See what I mean, Lexi?” Vassily spoke when we were out of earshot, eyebrow arched. “Why’d you shrug him off like that? You hate people.”
I grimaced and fixed my eyes ahead. “I respect Ovar, but his voice sounds like a truck laying out bitumen on a new road. Also, he’s a little bit… grabby.”
My friend’s laughter rang out sharply against the concrete walls as we turned the corner. A pair of girls talking and laughing about the other dancers teetered down the hallway towards us. Vassily tipped an invisible hat to one of them as she pushed out her bubblegum-pink lips and winked. I gave them a wide berth. Their voices were yellow and jagged. I could barely relate to the men here, let alone most of the women. Morosely, I sucked on my mint. I could feel the club’s music in my teeth.
We found the security office and muster room nearly empty, with four of the nine radios already checked out for the night. Only two of the bouncers were in the room: Petro and Maxy. They were playing dominoes with their handsets turned off. Typical. If Ovar was a refugee from a harem romance, Petro was an escapee from an Armani fashion show: tall, strikingly handsome, always well-tanned and well dressed. Maxy was a small guy with a pinched face and a mullet, a mustache considerably less impressive than Ovar’s, and hard black eyes. On the way past, I glanced curiously at their tiles and rapidly calculated the odds. Petro was going to win.
“Oh my god. Look who the fuck just walked in like he owns the fucking place!” Petro rose up from his seat, his face alight. “Vassily! You look like a million bucks, man!”
“I feel like something a bear shat out. How’s it going?” Vassily went in for handshakes and shoulder-pounding, while I hung back and glanced at the corkboard, looking for the security roster. Unconsciously, my mind pieced together shapes made by the pieces of paper: they were arranged in a hexagonal pattern, alternating colors. I like patterns like that. Patterns didn’t move, unlike people, and they didn’t nauseate me in the way that human faces did.
Vassily’s dark blue voice and the pink-and-gray nattering of the other men ground on behind me as I stepped in to look over the roster. Six men were on shift, including Nic, but only four radios were missing. Idly, I left the table and went to the register, flicking back through the logbook to check the sign-ins. Mikhail, Petro, Nic, Maxy, Ovar, and Yuri were on shift, but Yuri’s sign-in was missing.
“Hey, shorty. Was it your body they found today?”
“Body? What body?” I replied absently and glanced over at the trio. They called me a few different names here. Men like Ovar stuck with the names I’d earned as titles of respect—Charivchik, Magician, or Molotchik, ‘Little Hammer.’ Not all of my nicknames are so flattering.
“I heard that one of Manelli’s boys turned up weird and dead on our turf this morning.” Petro crushed his cigarette into the tray.
“We was betting it was Vanya that called the hit. He’s been all kinds of happy the last couple of days since that last shipment of snow came in,” Maxy added.
I stiffened in place. Rather than lift my chin to look up at Petro’s face, I glared at him from under my brows. It was never good to look up at taller men, because that allowed them to look down on you. “No, it wasn’t, and that’s business that doesn’t have any place in the staff room.”
“Nic told us, jeez. Calm your tits.” Maxy grunted unhappily around his own cig as he swept the dominoes together and mixed them around. “Why don’t you try pulling the stick outta your ass for once, Alexi?”
My stomach twisted angrily, dropping like I was on a roller coaster: a roller coaster that would end with Maxy’s nose being smashed against the edge of the table if he didn’t shut up. I took in a slow breath, threw another mint in my mouth, and crunched down on it to feel it splinter under my jaws. “My ass, and the contents thereof, are none of your business.”
“That stick’s shoved up so far it ain’t ever coming out.” Petro wiggled his fingers at me as he dropped back into his seat. “But you gotta keep that hole nice and warmed up for your boyfriend, right?”
“Lexi’s right. Shut your cockholster, Petro.” Vassily stepped up to my side before I could retort. His shoulders were slightly hunched, defensive—but I didn’t need a guard dog. I needed respect.
“Come on, Vasya. Alexi can take a little shit.” Petro smirked around his next cigarette, cupping a hand around the end as he lit it. “We’re all grown-ups now, even if he ain’t exactly the man his daddy was.”
“Good. Because he was worthless.” I ground the words out bulldozer-flat, and stared at him until he met my eyes. “And putting him out of my misery was the best thing I ever did.”
A toxic silence descended over the room. Vassily’s head turned sharply, and he looked down at me in genuine surprise. Petro’s malice flickered like a candle, briefly flaring before he turned back. Maxy’s silent scorn faded, and he began to toy nervously with the dominoes in front of his fingers.
Well. That did it. There was one guiding social force within the Organizatsiya: respect. To be respected, you built a dual reputation as being both useful and dangerous. If you maintained a suitable ratio of competence and intimidation, people didn’t have to like you. They respected you. Being useful without being intimidating got you trampled; being a bully without being useful led to people getting a lethal grudge. Waver in either quality, and someone was always waiting to shove a pistol in through the chink in your armor. As usual, I was off the mark. My retorts were always either too slow or too sharp.
Vassily looked back and forth, mouth twitched to one side. “So uh… is Nic in his office?”
“Yeah. Fuckin’ slackass.” Petro did not look at me. “Boozing it up before he goes on the floor.”
I didn’t look away from him; instead, I made a point of staring at the side of Petro’s face, counting the pulse that jerked rapidly in his throat.
“Well, I better go in and pay a visit before shit hits the fan here.” Uncertainly, Vassily glanced back to me. “Meet up afterwards?”
“Yes.” I pulled my gloves up higher on my wrists, tight enough that they creaked around my fingers. I bowed from the neck. “Excuse me.”
Maxy looked like he was about to say something smart, but seemed to think better of it. I swept out of the room, and once I was alone, ground my teeth until they groaned. Dammit, Vassily. He hadn’t meant to, but he had just cost me a lot of face. And what the hell did Nic think he was playing at, defying Lev’s orders? Gossiping with Maxy and Petro, of all people.
Resignedly, I ate another peppermint. To get to the offices, I had to walk out past the dressing rooms, cut behind the main stage, and get to the stairwell. I headed backstage around the end of the stripper’s catwalk and was greeted by the sound of pandemonium from beyond the heavy velvet drapes. The lights beyond were flashing, lighting up the star dancers who rested their feet while they waited on their sets. Quite suddenly, I felt my mood lift. Perched on one of the stage boxes in her corset and feather-tufted heels was the Woman. Crina was smoking a black clove cigarette in a long holder, wrist cocked back, her eyes closed. She was tiny and curvaceous, with a hard-planed, boxy little face on a long slender neck. Her hair was very dark, her skin only a few shades deeper than cream. Had she been blonde, we could have passed as brother and sister.