“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I think he’s dead,” she said.
We were all silent for a moment, and then the woman with the knitting started softly crying. Luckily, it was still early and the roads were not busy, but in just a few seconds, several cars coming in either direction stopped just short of hitting the bus. People came out of their cars and gathered around it.
“I’m afraid to take my hand off the brake,” said the nursing student.
There were beads of sweat on her upper lip. I approached her slowly. It was as if the bus was dangling off the edge of a cliff. The key to the ignition was on the floor just below the driver’s dropped hand.
“He’s dead,” I said.
The nurse and I stared at the key.
“Do you think he shut the bus off before he died?” she whispered.
“He must have been very well trained,” I added.
“The emergency brake, can you reach it?” she asked.
I leaned over the driver and pulled the lever on the brake.
I woke as the brakes screeched as we stopped for a red light. Startled out of my nightmare, I hit the window with the back of my head. The bus driver was just fine and steering his vehicle straight ahead. My fellow passengers were as they had been, sitting, staring, knitting, and sleeping. The next stop was mine.
The arch-shaped neon sign for the Liberty Motel glowed like a radon tube in a frozen centrifugal chamber, just like we had at the old lab. In the morning mist the motel looked otherworldly, like a good setting for a mystery. If I’d let my fantasy continue, the police and several ambulances would be arriving at the scene—a good opening for a gangster story. As the accident occurred, simultaneously a dark car would be disappearing through the mist up the motel’s driveway. Then the scene would shift to the inside of the bus. The nursing student would have the first line. “Is anyone hurt?” she would say. The other people on the bus would brush off, stand up, and start gathering their things from all over the bus. We would hear various comments from the passengers.
“I think I’m OK.”
“I lost my purse.”
“Where are we?”
“I can’t find my shoe.”
“I dropped a stitch.”
The character playing me would have bumped her head and suffered amnesia. She would not remember that her mother had died or why she was on the bus. A police officer with a crowbar would pry open the door of the bus. There would be a rush of activity, and the emergency medicals would pull the bus driver from his seat and lay him down to resuscitate him. They would pump his chest and throw an oxygen mask over his face.
“I need to get to my job at 27 Blodgett Hill Road,” the woman with the knitting would say.
The pumping and pushing on the driver would make it look as if some life was coming back to him. But when they stopped working on him, there would be only silence. My character would get off the bus, dazed from the event, and start to wander up the hill, mysteriously drawn to the motel. Her boss would be coming down the hill to see what all the commotion was about. Upon seeing her, he would run to greet her, and she would fall into his arms, not knowing who he was or why he had embraced her.
My fantasies run deep.
The doors of the bus opened. The bus driver was still wiping his brow.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Have a good day, ma’am,” he replied.
The scent of the pine trees on the sides of the driveway leading up to the motel mixed with the strong smell of bleach from the laundry room and made it feel as if I were walking through a sterilized forest. My eyes watered and the tears burned as they streamed down my face. These were chemically induced tears. They were not salty like the tears for my mother.
As I walked up the hill to the motel, there was no greeting from my boss, just like there was no accident. The light was still on outside the office. I could hear the rumble of the washing machines; Mr. Suri must have put in a load of linens. There were several black cars lined up in the parking lot. The motel was busy for such an early hour.
The next bit of my story will explain how my life in Berlin, Connecticut, and in the world, suddenly and completely changed.
Chapter Eighteen: Mr. Suri and the Mob
Apparently, Mr. Suri had a bad reputation that I was not aware of. When I walked into the office, he was not alone.
“Stalina, what are you doing here so early? This is not a very good time,” he said.
He was seated in the office chair, several men in dark suits wearing mirrored sunglasses surrounding him. The office was close and steamy from all the bodies. They were like a pod of seals jockeying for space on a sunny piece of rock. Any one of us was about to jump or get pushed off.
“I couldn’t sleep, and I had nowhere else to go,” I told Mr. Suri.
“Who is this dame?” one of the black suits asked.
“She just works here. She doesn’t know anything,” Mr. Suri explained.
“Stalina, what kind of a name is that?” the same suit asked.
“I’m Russian,” I said. “Ever heard of Joseph Stalin?”
“Stalina, don’t be rude to these gentleman,” Mr. Suri warned.
I understood the irony from his tone. These were not gentlemen, but small-time hoods acting like big-time gangsters. I cared for Mr. Suri and could tell he was in a prickly situation. It was a mystery to me that would soon be revealed. I understood this to be a delicate circumstance, and I would, as they say, play my cards right.
“Hey, the boss is Russian. Maybe you know her; Nadia Tamovsky is her name,” said the short, squat black suit with a widow’s peak and a pencil-thin mustache.
“The N is for Nadia? I thought your boss was a he. You always just called her Big N,” Mr. Suri added with surprise. “You work for a woman?”
“You better watch it, Suri. What’s the difference, anyway? She’s the boss,” another black suit added as he spit a lump of tobacco into a small cup.
Mr. Suri was silent.
“I had a childhood friend—her name was Nadia Cherkovskaya, not Tamovsky, but there are many Nadias in Russia,” I said. My stomach turned with the memory of Nadia and Pepe.
The gentleman spit into the cup again. “It’s chewing tobacco, a bad habit, but I can’t give it up,” he admitted when he noticed I was staring.
“You’re going to get cancer of the mouth,” another fellow with a high-pitched voice added.
“Hey, the boss ain’t no man, that’s for sure.” Everyone laughed as the spitter indicated with his arms the ample chest with which she was endowed.
“I believe the name would be Tamovskaya, for a lady,” I said.
I heard a car door slam. Mr. Suri went to look out the window but was restrained.
“Sit!” said the smallest of the lot, who was wearing black patent leather shoes with wedged heels.
“Her nickname is ‘Treasure Chest,’” the spitter added.
“Hey, Bacco, don’t go disrespecting Big N,” said a fellow with thick hands.
“She told me she likes that name,” he added.
“Russian women are very proud of their bodies,” I said.
The door to the office opened.
“Yes, we are proud,” said the person coming through the door.
“Welcome, boss, we were just finishing up with Mr. Suri,” the gentleman with the mustache said.
“Who is this?” she asked, looking at me.
“A fellow comrade. Stalina is her name.”
It was Nadia. My Nadia.
“I knew a Stalina when I was young,” she said as she turned to look at me.
Our eyes took focus. The age lines did not keep us from recognizing an old acquaintance. A small line of a scar at the edge of her left chin was all that remained of Pepe’s bite. Nadia carried herself with importance and elegance in a tailored black suit. Her hair was long and wavy and a couple of shades lighter than I remembered. Her lips were perfectly lined with pencil and filled in with a deep red lipstick.