Fresh Kills (11 page)

“Listen to me,” said Maxine. “He killed a man.”

I didn't answer her.

“Artie? You there?”

“It was complicated,” I said.

“No.”

“He's different now. You'll see. He's fine.”

“I don't want to see,” she said. “I don't want him anywhere near where my girls are, or our apartment, not now, or later. I don't want anyone knowing he's there. It makes us a target,” Maxine added. “If he's there, then take him someplace else. I don't want him around, and I don't want to talk about it either.”

“Wow, that's tough.”

“I'm sorry if you think so.”

“You'll see how different he is,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I don't want to see.”

*

In bed, I spent a lot of the night staring at the ceiling. It was Wednesday morning now. There wasn't much noise, not even a garbage truck, just the distant hoot of a tug on the river. I saw the clock at three, again at four, and all I could think about was Maxine's chilly tone when she refused to discuss Billy with me.

I didn't remember falling asleep. In the morning my head was killing me from a hangover. I reached for the phone to call Maxine, but it was five a.m. in California. There wasn't much to talk about anyway. She didn't want Billy here.

“Wake up, Artie.” Billy was standing over me with a glass of orange juice in his hand. He was wearing faded jeans, a denim shirt and his black sneakers. He was fine. It was morning.

I swung my legs over the bed, took the orange juice, drank some, realized I was naked and Billy was looking at me. I got back under the covers and finished the juice, not knowing why it made me uncomfortable, him seeing me like that.

“Thanks,” I said. “That was great.”

“Service with a smile,” he cracked. “You want me to make breakfast for you? I'm a pretty good cook. Mom taught me.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost nine.”

“Shit,” I said. “It's late.”

“For what?”

“We're going out for breakfast. You feel like making coffee, though? You know how?”

“Artie, I'm fourteen.” He left the room and I went and took a shower, got dressed and went into the kitchen where Billy was making coffee. He poured some into a mug. I drank it.

“Good. Thanks,” I said. “You like music, Billy?”

“Course. How come you're asking?”

“I was just wondering.”

“I like it a lot, all kinds of stuff, I even like to listen to classical music, like Ellie plays.” Elena, his older half sister, Genia's daughter by her first husband, played the flute with an orchestra in Seattle. “I looked at some of your CDs,” Billy said. “Was that OK?”

“Sure,” I said. Come on. We have to stop by my loft. You remember? The place I lived before Max and I got married. We're going to stay there, you and me, so I need you to get packed.”

“I guess Maxine doesn't want me here,” said Billy and I wondered if he'd been listening in to our conversation and tried to remember if I had called Max on my cell or on the land line. Land line, I thought. Had there been a click? Stop it, I thought to myself. Stop.

I didn't lie to him either.

“She doesn't know you yet.”

“It's OK, Artie. I understand,” he said. “I'd like to stay at your loft. I always loved it there when I was little.”

“We'll be there together.”

“You mean you and me?”

“Yes. Billy?”

“What?”

“Did you go out at all last night?”

“No way.” He said, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I wouldn't go out without telling you. I got up and you weren't around, so I had a cigarette, I'm really sorry I did that, Artie, I'm so totally sorry, and I went back to bed. I know you have like a life, I want that for you, and I just figured you went out to get a drink, or something. But maybe you could let me know next time, 'cause I was sort of worried, which is dumb.”

I felt bad. I had accused him of something I'd done, and I
said, “You're right. I'm sorry.” I gestured at the newspapers piled on the couch. “You were reading?”

“You don't believe me, or what?” His tone was soft, a little disappointed, but not hostile. “About going out?”

“I believe you. So what do you read first in the papers?”

“When I'm away, when I'm down there, you know, in the place in Florida, I like reading stories about New York. Sometimes I can't remember myself when I was younger and living at home, I can't feel it, and reading stuff about New York helps me.”

“I feel like that sometimes, the thing about remembering myself in the past.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think they felt anything?”

“Who?”

“The people in the plane?” he said.

“Probably not.”

“I wish I knew how they felt.”

“Why?”

“To understand more. Who are we having breakfast with?”

“After we drop your stuff at my loft, we're going over to a friend's, Tolya Sverdloff, who has a place in the Meat Packing District. He's pretty crazy and he was a famous rock star in the Soviet Union. Also, his Russian's a lot better than mine, so you could practice with him if you want.”

“I'll get my stuff.”

Billy went into the bedroom and came back quickly with his duffel bag and fishing gear. We left the apartment together, and I got my car and we rode over to Walker Street where my loft was, left his things, then headed for Tolya's.

“So, listen. I have to check something out today,” I said. “It'll only take me a couple of hours. You think you could
maybe hang out with Tolya? Then I could pick you up and we could go fishing.”

“Can't I go with you?”

“Not this time,” I said.

“You have any cigarettes left?”

“You're worse than me,” said Billy and started laughing, which made me laugh, too, and he got out his pack of cigarettes. There was only one left.

For the first time since yesterday I didn't look over my shoulder. We shared the cigarette, Billy and me, like kids smoking in secret, passing the smoke back and forth, still giggling.

“Surprise! Surprise, surprise.” We were barely through the door, when Valentina Sverdloff, Tolya's daughter, was all over me, kissing my cheek, greeting Billy, introducing us to the little girl who grasped her hand as if for life support and whose name was Luda.

Val had brought Luda back from Russia and she barely spoke English. In Russian Val told Luda I was her dad's friend and like family and she should call me Uncle Artie. Then I introduced Billy. He couldn't keep from staring at Val, who was beautiful and then, when she kissed him, he turned red and looked at his feet.

“I wanted to completely surprise you, Artie, darling, you didn't know I was home, did you? I made Daddy promise to absolutely not tell you. Should I still call you Uncle Artie too?” said Val, letting go of the little girl who climbed into a red egg-shaped chair where she dangled her feet over the edge.

Luda was about nine, with a solemn Slavic face, big eyes, and thin blonde hair in pigtails fastened with floppy pink satin bows. She wore pink shorts, shirt and sandals. In front of her was a large plasma screen that hung on the wall and on it, encouraged by Val, she watched
The Incredibles
. Every few
seconds, she glanced away from the TV and at Valentina as if to make sure she was still there.

“Billy, could you sit with Luda a little while?” Val put her arm around his shoulder. “I think she'd like that.”

“Billy speaks good Russian,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” said Billy who went and sat on the floor near Luda's chair.

“He's terrific, and very handsome. Who is he?” Val said.

“Billy's my nephew.

“Wow.”

“I think he's in love with you already.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“When did you get back?”

“I got back from Moscow yesterday,” Val said. “I brought Luda with me.”

“Where's your dad?”

“Out getting bagels. He said he had to go to Murray's for them because other bagels are not up to his standard.”

Billy was chattering to the little girl and she was beaming at him. I sat next to Val on the huge cream leather sofa and said, “You look great. Different.”

Six-one and gorgeous, Valentina was just out of her teens. Last time I'd seen her, she'd had a platinum crew cut, but her hair, long now, was heavy and dark, pulled back into a ponytail. She wore tight black jeans and a sleeveless black turtleneck. Her feet were bare. She was beautiful enough you couldn't look at her without staring. Her face trapped you like a magnet.

“Do you think I'm beautiful?” she had said to me the last time we met, before she left New York for Russia.

Val could see herself through other people and it made her nervous. I was always a little ashamed of how easy it would have been to fall for her, but she was half my age, and she was Tolya's daughter. He would have killed me.

“What's Moscow like now?” I said.

“Let's have a Bloody Mary or something,” said Val.

I looked at Billy and Luda, who were still in front of the TV.

“They'll be fine,” Val said and I followed her into Tolya's immense stainless steel kitchen where he was smoking a little cigar and scooping caviar out of a blue can onto plates that held warm blini. He was wearing big linen shorts and a linen shirt and a pair of cream suede Guccis, no socks.

“You're admiring my legs, Artyom? I have very nice legs,” said Tolya.

“I thought you went out for bagels,” I said.

He pointed to a bag that must have contained two dozen. “I went. I return.” He gestured to a door. “Kitchen door goes out to the stairs. My Valentina looks wonderful, yes?”

Years earlier, when Val was a child, some hood in Moscow who wanted to hurt Tolya kidnapped her and cut off one of her fingers. Tolya took his then wife, Val's mother, and Val and her twin sister, Masha, to Miami. The girls grew up American. No accent, no mannerisms, nothing to remind them of home except for Val's finger which was only a little stub of flesh.

“Yes,” I said. “She looks terrific.”

Val got a pitcher of Bloody Mary out of the fridge and poured it into heavy squat glasses and we sat at the table while Tolya finished fixing breakfast, heaping bagels onto a platter, unpacking the salmon he claimed to have smuggled in.

“How was Russia?” I said to Val.

She sipped her drink and it left a red mustache on her lip.

“I went to Moscow,” she said. “I went to the small cities, I traveled a lot, I even went to Chernobyl, and the towns near by in the Zone of Exclusion, like a dead Soviet world, which of course made daddy completely freak out. I met children. No one gives a shit, Artie. People talk all kinds of intellectual bullshit about the post-Soviet world, but it's the kids who have cancer from leaking nuke plants, and the kids who got it worst
in the siege at Beslan and the Moscow theater. Others get dirty needles used on them in hospitals where the nurses sell the clean ones to addicts. Some kids are just plain vanilla regular victims of poverty.” Val knocked back her drink; it made her choke slightly and she put it down. “I drank that too fast. I drink too much.”

“What about Luda? Who is she?”

“She's nice, isn't she?” said Val. “She's a sweet girl. I brought her here for a vacation. They allow you to do that. She was at this orphanage. Her father is dead. Her mother can't support her and she's dying anyway from cancer. Don't look at me like that, I'm not trying to save the world,” she said. “I just want Luda to have a nice time once in her life.”

“Artie?”

It was Billy. He'd been standing in the doorway that led from the living room to the kitchen, listening.

“What's up?”

“I think Luda is hungry or something. She's crying. I like didn't know what to say. I'm sorry.”

“I'll go,” Val said.

“Did I do something wrong?” Billy said anxiously.

“No, sweetheart, no,” said Val. “You're just great.”

“Let's eat,” Tolya said. Val returned with Luda's hand in hers, and we all sat down at the kitchen table.

“Is Luda OK?” said Billy to Val in English.

“She's fine,” Val said.

The table was loaded with food, the salmon, blinis and caviar and a bowl of sour cream and one of crème fraiche, white fish, sable and chubs and smoked sturgeon. There was chopped herring and three kinds of cream cheese – scallion, caviar, vegetable – mountains of bagels – onion, raisin, sesame – and sticky buns and croissants. I was hungry.

“I forgot the juice,” Tolya said.

Half a bagel in his hand, Billy jumped up from his chair. “I'll get it.”

He opened one of the doors of the huge restaurant-style fridge, a massive hulking stainless steel giant with clear glass doors and a motor that purred. It was like an enormous animal in the corner of the kitchen. Carefully, Billy extracted a pitcher of orange juice.

“That's like so huge, that refrigerator,” said Billy to Tolya. “You could climb inside if there wasn't so much food. You could like chill out.” He laughed at his joke. “Did you know we saw a plane crash on the beach yesterday? Me and Artie. We were on the beach at Coney Island and we saw it come down. Did you see that on TV? It was everywhere. It was in the newspapers. I saw it for real.

“I saw,” Val said briefly. “Let's eat.”

Billy went on talking about the plane crash.

“Maybe we could talk about it later,” Val said while Luda examined a croissant, and Billy, realizing he had said something wrong, and not knowing what, inspected his bagel.

“Should I like apologize?” he whispered to me.

“Don't worry.”