“Take that mask off or I’m going to rip that hat off your head.”
Bobby enunciated slowly as though he were exasperated with their supposed language barrier. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m going to rip that hat off your head so your disgusting half-ears are there for everyone to see. And then everyone will see you for the human scum that you are, and whatever con you have going will be over before you can collect.”
Bobby tried to look nervous, as though the car dealer’s threat was resonating.
The car dealer wiped his nose with his shirtsleeve. “No? Suit yourself. I would have liked to have been your partner on whatever it is you have cooking here, but I like a good freak show just as much.” He lunged for Bobby’s hat.
Bobby sidestepped him and deflected his arm with the outside of his own hand. The car dealer slammed into the wall. He retained his balance, swore under his breath, and turned toward Bobby.
“What was born in the Zone should stay in the Zone,” he said. “Next best option? Throw it overboard.” He lowered his head and started toward Bobby.
Bobby raised one hand, pulled his mask off with the other. “No. Stop,” he said in Russian.
He kept his voice low, as the car dealer had, and quickly looked around the restaurant to make sure they hadn’t attracted attention. Some of the men at the car dealer’s table were watching, but as soon as Bobby removed his mask and the dealer stopped charging they laughed and returned to their card game. The other forty or so people in the cafeteria were engaged in their own conversations. They weren’t paying attention to what was happening in the corner.
The car dealer’s eyes lit up. “It is you. Adam Tesla,” he said, using Bobby’s old name from Ukraine, the one he’d been born with. “Deformed, derelict, and deranged. Still playing hockey?”
“Hockey?” Bobby tried to sound sarcastic, like a kid who was trying to hide his fear. “Sure. There’s a nice rink in Vladivostok. I’m headed there now for a pickup game.”
“Sure you are. And I’m Yul Brynner’s long-lost son. I’m going to his birthplace in Vladivostok to claim the family inheritance. Now do you want to stop bullshitting me, or do you want me to jump up on a table and tell everyone who’ll listen that they’re on a ship with a piece of radioactive scum?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Finally you say something that makes sense.”
“So we’re done here, right? Nice to see you again, can I go back to my nap?” Bobby reached for his chair.
“That’s funny. You were always good for a laugh. Not because you were funny. How could you be? You barely said ten words over the course of how many transactions? More than ten. How many pieces did you sell me from the Zone? Was it closer to twenty?”
Bobby shrugged. He’d sold him twenty-four different vehicle parts, from starter engines to full sets of wheels. Each time he’d been petrified he was getting infected with radiation again. Each time he’d prayed it was the last. To the best of his knowledge he hadn’t been infected again, and he executed his last theft with Eva five days before she died.
“Doesn’t matter now,” the car dealer said. His face took on a sunny disposition. “The important thing is we’re friends.”
“We are?”
“Of course we are.”
The car dealer was changing tactics. He must have realized that if he hoped to profit from whatever he imagined Bobby was scheming, bullying wouldn’t help him achieve his goal on a ferry. His mistake was that he hadn’t thought of that from the start. Not that Bobby wouldn’t have seen through him immediately. He would have had more respect for him, though.
The car dealer slapped him on the shoulder. “We’re good old friends. No, wait. That’s not true. We’re not just good old friends. We’re the best of friends.” He pulled Bobby’s chair back to one of the tables. “Come, my friend. Come sit down with me and tell me a tale.”
He wiped the smile off his face to make sure Bobby knew he had no choice. As soon as Bobby stepped toward him he resumed beaming. He grinned at Bobby as though it were his turn to speak, but Bobby knew better than to open up so quickly. He had to make sure the car dealer believed he was coercing him into revealing why he’d been in Japan and why he was on the ferry.
“Are you hungry? Have you been eating? You’re looking a little peaked, my boy. In fact, that was my first thought when I set eyes on you and thought I knew who you were. That looks like my old friend Adam Tesla and he doesn’t look well. I wonder if I can help him.”
“Lucky for me I ran into you.”
“Lucky. Yes indeed. You’ve had bad luck most of your life, haven’t you, Adam? But now your luck has changed. Something to eat?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Something to drink, perhaps. Coca-Cola?”
Bobby raised the bottle of water he kept by his duffel bag.
The car dealer looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then he pulled his chair closer to the table and leaned into Adam. “So tell me, what’s the deal?”
Bobby frowned. “What do you mean?”
The car dealer rolled his eyes. “Takaoka. Vladivostok. This ferry. You’re working an angle. It’s money. I can smell it off you the way I could smell you’re from the Zone even if I didn’t know you.” He tapped his nose with his finger. “A middleman can smell the money. It’s his gift.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Me, I don’t have any gifts.”
The car dealer turned serious. “You used to have two gifts, far as I can remember.”
Bobby raised his eyebrows. Two gifts. For the first time, he didn’t know what the car dealer was talking about.
The car dealer stared beyond Bobby. “You could skate, my boy.” Nostalgia peppered the car dealer’s voice.
His sincerity prompted Bobby to forget they were adversaries. At least for the moment.
“I used to watch you during the games on the cooling ponds. My God, could you fly. And handle the puck. No one ever saw a kid handle the puck the way you did.”
Bobby was reminded of his year at Fordham Prep and all the practice he was missing. The stakes notwithstanding, a melancholy washed over him.
“That was your first gift,” the car dealer said.
“I didn’t know I had a second.”
A sympathetic look flashed on the car dealer’s face. Once again Bobby was left at a loss. The car dealer was clearly being sincere. Bobby actually felt a genuine connection with the man. They’d both done business in the Zone. They’d both seen the hideous effects from radiation sickness handed down through generations. And they’d both profited from the wasteland the disaster had produced.
“Your second gift was your biggest one,” he said.
Bobby shook his head, modestly disturbed that he wasn’t able to keep one step ahead of the car dealer.
“The girl. The beauty who tried not to be one. The one with the legs that went from Kyiv to Minsk. What was her name again?”
“Eva.”
“The first time I met the two of you — tractor transmission, I think it was — she acted more like your sister. Last time you both did business with me? A month before she died. Last time I saw the two of you together? I could tell that she loved you.”
Bobby lost his breath. “How?”
“The two of you stepped out of her father’s car. You walked up to me with the goods. A wind was blowing. You both started shivering. You offered her your coat and she looked at you as though you’d insulted her.”
“I remember that.” Bobby could picture her glare, offended that he dare suggest she couldn’t handle the weather as easily as a man.
“She gave you a look, the kind a strong woman gives to a man. But you walked behind her and draped the coat over her shoulders anyways. And when you stepped forward to hand me the box with the goods, she looked at you again.”