I began rubbing my thumb slowly.
He grabbed my hand again and pushed it. “Harder. Remember what’s at stake.”
I rubbed harder.
“Rub. Don’t stop.”
I rubbed and felt bits of skin roll under my thumb.
As I rubbed, Boris kept drumming his fork on his hip, and there was something almost mesmerizing about its beat. As the pain grew, I focused inward. I thought of double-digit division to cool my fear when the swelling under my thumb grew hot, and when I felt a stinging sensation spread, I counted prime numbers to contain it, to ignore it. I rubbed. A long slice of skin rolled loose, and I restarted at three hundred and seventeen. My thumb became smeary with sap and I continued counting, retreating to a world where I’d been to before, back when the policeman told me a truck driver had plowed into Father’s car and I’d walked along the Moskva River counting out my steps, until I walked into a bright, sterile place in my head, a place where there’s no fear, no pain. Cocooned, I didn’t feel a thing. Not the gooey feel of my flesh. Not the blood making my thumb slick, or the pulsing in my veins. Not the rounded, contented humming Boris made as he studied me, a tuneless melody. I counted and the numbness wiped away the bits that hurt, zeroing out everything.
I rubbed.
“Stop.” I didn’t feel Boris touching my neck. “You’re quite a boy.” He sniffed his fingers, then wiped his hand against Luka’s shirt. “Ten days. Get me what I want. Now, get out.”
1.45
Luka drove six blocks away before he slammed the brakes and pulled his gun out. “It’s your fault.” He shoved the muzzle into my ear. “Why did you get out of the car?” he shouted.
I felt nothing. Flat.
“You’re shivering,” he said, suddenly uncertain.
No, I’m not. I’m frozen. I can’t move, so how can I shiver?
Luka tucked his gun into his waistband and rubbed his face with his hands vigorously, as if he could awaken from a bad dream. When he lifted his hands from his eyes, nothing happened. “No, no,” he said. “It’s me. I was careless.” He touched my shoulder and I flinched. I don’t like it when people touch me. “Andrei, forget it. Forget it all happened?”
Forget. A command. I tried to empty myself out, flushing everything away like an unwanted cache. “I’m ok.” I heard the words come out funny, all echo-ey, like I was hearing myself from someplace else, a distant stereo.
Luka reached for my neck, then drew his hand back. The hazard lights ticked, a constant and comforting sound. His seat creaked like a rusty spring as he shifted uneasily.
I tried speaking again. This time, my voice sounded closer. “Is what he said true?”
Luka took a deep breath. “Half,” he said. “My wife—she never told me what she was up to. I’d have stopped her. Her friends got her into it. Those idiots.” I heard his teeth grit. “I’d have gotten rid of them, if I knew what they planned. She kept it from me. But none of that concerns you. You don’t have to get involved.”
The emotion in his voice filled the vacuum in me. I touched my neck and felt it ooze. “Do you have a plaster?”
He took out his wallet and fumbled inside for a crumpled plaster. He peeled it. He pressed the plaster to my wound. The fake skin felt warm from his body heat. Soothing.
“I’m ok,” I repeated like a mantra. I’ll be ok, I’ll be ok.
We drove until we reached a seemingly endless road. We were in the northeastern outskirts and we passed a lit sign for the metro station. On a side alley, people huddled around a smoking trashcan, basking their hands in its shimmery heat. One of them glanced over as we pulled over before them, then he nudged the trashcan with his foot, as if afraid we’d steal it. The hazard lights ticked on the car’s dashboard hypnotically.
Luka looked at me, as if wondering whether I’d get off. We never shared where we lived, and he didn’t know that my home was at least an hour away from here. That wasn’t why I felt reluctant to get out. “Who is Boris?” I asked.
“Andrei…” Luka said, as if warning me not to ask. I stared at him, until he spoke. “He’s a middleman. When he told me my wife was alive, I agreed to the deal. If anyone can arrange this, it’s him.”
I thought of the way Boris looked at me as I rubbed my neck, his eyes curious, yet bored. “Why?”
“Why,” Luka repeated, not understanding my question.
“Why is he like that?” Behind it was a hundred other questions crowding against it.
“Why? He just is. In this game we play, people climb to the top only if we can set aside bits of themselves. We have to, to justify the things we do.”
We, he said.
He continued, “Once they’re there though, they realize their lives haven’t changed. They feel resentful of all they’ve given up. Those bits and pieces of themselves they can never recover.”
They, he said this time. He didn’t notice the switch, a single word which divided his life into two halves for me, both at odds with each other. He gazed at the trashcan fire, as if he saw something in the haze of heat, a sign, an answer. “Boris probably thinks that what he does, who he is, is normal. That everyone is like him.”
“Are you?” I said. A memory nagged at me. Don’t trust anyone, Luka always told me. Half of what Boris said were lies, he said just now. Which half? Doubting Luka made me feel guilty, but I had to know. In the distant skies, a gray head of clouds roiled, a storm hammering into the western part of Moscow, pounding it free of dirt and grime.
Luka’s expression was inscrutable. “Those years I spent in the F.S.B.—tap this person’s phone call, read that person’s email—I believed in what I did. Until they took my wife. That was when I realized my life was a lie. I’ve been looking for her for a long time since. Now, I know she’s alive. I have the chance to do something for her.” His voice was thick with emotion. He pounded the steering wheel slowly as he spoke. The Matryoshka doll hanging on his rearview mirror wobbled, its smiling face swaying. “I should never have let you come along. Stupid. It was stupid. But…I need your help, Andrei.”
He needs me, he said. Something in me glowed bright and brighter. Pride. Belonging. How could I have doubted him? How could I have thought he was to blame? I was the one who insisted on going, I had jumped out of the car. I was to blame.
The hazard lights continued ticking.
Luka drew out a metal-capped flask from his jacket and offered it to me. “Drink,” he said. He tucked a cigarette into his mouth, then lit it. His lighter rasped like the schnick of knives. I pressed the flask to my lips. It’s my first time drinking vodka neat. After a few sips, the glow in me surged. It browned my insides and toasted my bones. It felt good. I eyed Luka as he leaned his head back and puffed out. He wagged the cigarette at me. “No, no, you’re too young for this.” He handed it to me anyway. I took a puff and held the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could.
I exhaled, then threw the dead cigarette out the window. I wasn’t certain I liked it.
“You didn’t cough,” he sounded approving. The old Luka was back, calm, reassuring. “Listen, Andrei. I’ll handle Boris. Do as I say and you’ll never see him again.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Your birthday’s coming.” He remembered. “Fifteen—that’s special. You become an adult. I’ll get you a present, a special book. Books are good teachers. They ask the right questions.”
“I don’t need anymore questions.”
“Of course you do.” The joviality strained his voice. “You need them to find the answers. Tomorrow, don’t go to the warehouse. Rest. Forget. And don’t tell Anton anything.” Luka leaned over to open my door. The last light of dusk cut into the car and I couldn’t see his face clearly. My hand clutched the car door handle.