“Say it again, what’d you call me?
“Fuck off, Proshin,” said Tokha. “We don’t give a fuck about your sports rank. We’ll beat the shit out of you, all of us together, before you can get a peep out.”
“They … they’ll fucking rake you all through the coals!” Fedka started going psycho. “What’re you, wearing his colors, that you keep covering for him?”
“If we’re wearing his colors, then what’re you doing? Don’t forget Trefilov made you his sweet little teacher’s pet in wrestling.”
“You faggots!” Fedka jumped up. “Just fucking try telling that to anybody and see what happens!”
“Fuck off.”
Fedka left, we stayed behind. What we were supposed to do now — nobody knew. However big of an asshole Proshin was, he still got us all real worried. What if Trefilov really was a homo? Maybe he was doing his dirty little business somewhere, on the side, maybe he was even getting his rocks off with one of us, or someone we knew.
“Short version, just be cool,” said Zheka.
He wasn’t the toughest or the smartest in the class, but people respected him, because he never pissed himself and never said stupid random shit. Even though we were twins, Zheka always acted older. I didn’t complain. I didn’t want to be older. All that crap was gonna happen anyway, all by itself — the fuck’s the point of running ahead of the train, like our dad always said. Dad, by the way, saw Zheka as higher up the totem pole, too, and talked about house stuff with him all the time, no problem.
“What if this fuckhead really does waste Igorich?” asked Tokha.
“He doesn’t have the balls. He’ll just graduate first, then start talking shit about Trefilov.”
That sounded about right, too — Fedka was just barely hanging on in school, and mostly thanks to Sergei Igorich. Proshin had a lot of talent in sports and wrestling. He brought up our stats in all the competitions, and because of the good results, the school got extra money from the government. But in academics, Fedka couldn’t’ve been doing worse. If something wasn’t working out, he’d rip up his notebook, throw his pen at the teacher, slam his fist on the desk. Most of the teachers only put up with this because Sergei Igorich stood up for Proshin. If it wasn’t for our head teacher, Fedka wouldn’t have a chance. Which only made his plan look dumber — only a total idiot would pick a fight with the only teacher who supported him.
The talk over, everybody went home.
All the way back from school, Zheka and I didn’t say a word. And only when we got home, he started pawing me all over right there in the hall. We fell to the floor, practically crawling on all fours to my room, stripping each other’s clothes off the whole time, not even putting on any porno — we did just fine without it.
Just don’t be thinking that we were, like, homos and all that. Zheka and I both got off on chick porn (the only kind we ever saw), we had our walls all covered with posters of naked girls. Him and me had our favorite movie stars to jerk off to. But every once in a while we’d feel this urge, this fear of being alone, it was too much — being together was the only way out. Sometimes we did it at night, all worried, listening for sounds in the apartment — did Dad wake up? did he hear us? But he was always just snoring and didn’t hear squat.
And then, yeah, of course, we were ashamed. We couldn’t even look each other in the eye, other people maybe thought we’d had a fight. It wasn’t like that. Zheka and I were tight. It’s just that our hearts were breaking, ‘cause we could only show our, like, tenderness like faggots. But we didn’t wanna use that doll we kept in a special closet, that we could have used any time. A doll’s not a person. So what if you can use all its holes however you want, without it talking back? It won’t breathe on your neck, it won’t squeeze you like it’s terrified of losing you. And we didn’t have a maid, either.
It wasn’t cheap to keep a maid. Constant training, a separate room, monitoring bracelet, cosmetic surgery, medicines, clothes, make-up. Plus it was risky. It happened that sometimes the training didn’t take, and the maid just went nuts. Well, anyway, you already know all about that now, so I don’t think I need to explain it.
After our togetherness we scoured the deck, like we were getting rid of crime evidence. Bed sheets, clothes — to the laundry; then me with a vacuum and Zheka with a mop and rag — we went through every room, opened the windows wide to air out the apartment. I was thinking how to help Sergei Igorich. Zheka was too, but not quite in the same way. After the clean-up I took a shower, washing myself good. When I came out of the bathroom, Zheka was peeling potatoes in the kitchen.
“We gotta call,” he said.
“Igorich?”
“The police.”
“Are you fucking nuts?” I was stunned.
Zheka didn’t get mad. He didn’t even turn around to look at me. He just kept standing there by the sink, carefully taking a thin little ribbon off а spud.
“Shut your mouth and listen,” he went on. “It’s 100 percent that all our dudes are snitching right now to their rents about Fedka and his fucking Uncle. If their rents aren’t idiots, they’re already calling the cops. And if Trefilov really is an ass-fucker, and we don’t call, it could turn out bad for us. They’ll be asking, “How come you’re the only ones who didn’t call?”, they’ll start investigating us …What the fuck do we need all that for?”
“But you were the one who —”
“Kolyan, if we don’t do this, we’re fucked, okay? And Dad’s fucked, too. We gotta …”
“I get it, I’m not an idiot,” I snapped. “Just do it without me.”
“If that’s how you want. Will you finish these potatoes? I need to take a shower too.”
I took his place.
“Just don’t get mad. We gotta do it.”
“Sure.”
There was the sound of water running in the shower. I was peeling potatoes and thinking. Of course Zheka was right. On TV and the social networks, they were always talking about dudes our age who had disappeared, and about, like, unidentified bodies. You could wake us up in the middle of the night, we could bang out the rules for how to behave with strangers for you, with no mistakes. We didn’t just have the rules memorized, we followed them. But still, every six months, every year, here and there, some dudes would disappear. Trefilov could’ve turned out to be a pedophile with a really good cover.
But I didn’t believe that.
“Zheka, I’m done,” I yelled. “We need bread.”
“Money’s on the nightstand,” I heard him through the noise of the water.
That was the last time I heard his voice.
Don’t think I wasn’t scared. I’d never felt more scared in my life, not even later, when everything turned out much worse. I had that feeling like you’re being watched, around every corner I saw Fedka Proshin’s ugly face, I thought every stranger walking by was that Uncle Gosha from Siberia that I didn’t even know. A couple times I almost turned back, but I knew that if I didn’t do now what I had decided, then Zheka would do it, and something really bad might happen to him. Plus, I knew that it might break him. It’s true that of the two of us he was more serious and confident, but I was more patient and, like, methodical.
I still stopped at the store on the way and bought a rye-and-wheat loaf, mostly just to calm myself down. The smell of freshly-baked bread always made me feel better, and on the way to Trefilov’s I sniffed the loaf all over.
We had been over to Sergei Trefilov’s place a few times. We visited him when he was sick, dropped by to wish him happy birthday, and brought him our work when we didn’t turn it in on time at school. His one-room apartment was all spartan. The only luxury was his maid Sasha. Sasha was our sex instructor, too; she taught us how to use a woman’s body to get the most pleasure. Sasha wasn’t beautiful, but she really really knew how to use her body. There was always was a long line in front of her office, and she would do five people at a time. But of course in Trefilov’s apartment she belonged only to him, and Sergei Igorich always locked her out on the balcony when we would come for a visit.