“As expected.”
“How did the girl take it?”
“That’s not your problem. Thorpe is squarely on my side. It’s coming down to a proxy fight. She’ll lose.”
“Yes, you said it would. Give me the names of the holdouts.”
I swallow. “Let me call them first.”
“As you wish. Call me this afternoon and tell me you have succeeded, or give me the names of the holdouts.”
He hangs up. Vitali is only a man for niceties when it suits him, which is mostly when he thinks it’s funny.
They call him the hammer for a reason. He once told me a man’s toes look like grapes after you take a masonry hammer to them.
What have I gotten myself into?
Worse, what have I gotten Eve into?
Before I agreed to any of this I extracted a promise from Vitali that Eve would not be hurt.
Then again, it wasn’t much of a promise, and I didn’t extract it, exactly. When somebody like Vitali promises somebody won’t be hurt, it’s like when they come around and promise your shop won’t burn down if you pay in the insurance money. That kind of a promise.
I’ll keep her safe, I swear.
I start by calling a dozen old men and begging, pleading, arguing, joking my way through to thwarting Eve’s attempts to bring the biscuit company under the Amsel umbrella, and when that doesn’t work, lay down a few veiled threats.
When I call Vitali to tell him it’s a go, I make the conversation as brief as possible. He hangs up on me again.
Dick.
I guess I should be proud of myself. I saved Jim Thorpe’s company from Eve’s claws. I sold them to the Russian Mafia instead. Russian Mafia biscuits. I hope they don’t start putting ground up witnesses in the batter or something. With that done I flop back on the bed.
Air. I need air. It stinks in here. Opening the windows won’t help, it just makes the smell worse. I dress quickly and duck out of the apartment, walk down the street with my hands shoved in my pockets. Two stores down the block there’s a bar. Bad idea. Me plus booze plus crowd equals fight, equals parole violation, equals back to the cell. I walk to the corner and just stand there, ignoring the walk/don’t walk signal. If I stand too long some cop will roll up and ask what I’m doing, so I keep moving. Across Market Street and up 4
th
. I’m heading in a bad direction. I turn around, start back. The air out here isn’t any better. It’s cold today, colder than yesterday and there’s a breeze off the river, with all the lovely smells you’d expect. I make sure to wait for the signals before I cross, stay in the crosswalk, keep my head down. Last thing I need is to eyefuck some stranger into a fistfight.
As I start up the rickety cast iron stairs to my so-called apartment, I hear shouting, some in English, some in Korean, and a thump, and a scream.
It’s coming from my downstairs neighbors.
A louder scream.
Oh God damn it.
I’ve never been in one of these places before. The only signage is a red paper lantern hanging by the door, a pretty universal signal. It’s a red light. Yeah.
Inside the first door there’s another, locked. I hear more commotion and ring the doorbell.
No answer.
Turn around, Victor. It’s not your problem. Leave it be.
There’s a deadbolt. It gives under one blow from my shoulder, rips the strike plate out of the wall with a shower of splinters. I hear the sound of a fist on flesh and rush towards it.
Inside is chaos. I’ve never been in here before, never had any interest. It’s a maze, a bunch of rooms off a twisting hallway. A half-naked
masseuse
wearing nothing but a bright blue thong and one high heeled shoe runs past me, away from the noise.
Then a short Korean woman with a shocked expression comes tumbling through a door, wide-eyed. She lands on her ass and grunts in Korean, then starts shouting. I walk down the hall towards her, and out comes a pretty good sized, middle aged man, dragging a tiny slip of a girl by the arm. She’s completely buck-ass nude, and in other circumstances I’d
been getting quite a show, but her nakedness is just shameful. There’s a bruise on her cheek.
Bad move, big man.
“Finish!” the girl screams, in broken English. “Hour done! Hour done!”
She pulls at his fingers and pounds his arm with her fist, and I realize he’s dragging her
back
into the room.
Oh Jesus.
“
Hey,”
I bark out, so loud it rattles the ceiling. “Party’s over, handsome. Get your fucking hand off the girl.”
The woman looks at me. The girl looks at me.
The big guy looks at me.
“You think you’re a big man, don’t you? You want to go? Let’s go.”
It all happens at once. He shoves the girl. She’s still got her fucking heels on. Time slows, that way it does, like in a car accident. You learn to keep your head on a swivel where I’ve been. When I see the girl’s ankle fold under her as she goes down, it’s like something cracks in my chest and scalding, molten fury burns in my lungs.
The big man’s fist hits my chin. He’s fast. He’s good.
I fight dirty. I roll with the blow, turn, pivot, and lash out with my foot. I take him in the side of his leg, the knee. It knocks him off balance, and I bring my shin up between his legs, a savage kick that crushes his balls and sends him back, howling. He’s forgotten about me.
I’m not done.
My fist hammers into his nose. I feel it fold under my hand, feel the snap and the spray of blood. I get him by the hair, grabbing a handful right above his forehead, turn, and pull. He claws at my hand, but I’m not pulling his hair. I let go and he goes face first into the wall. This an old building. Plaster walls as hard as stone. A lot harder than his face. He bounces back, flails, and starts to grapple with me, but there’s blood in his eyes. I feel something pop in my hand as I hit him right in the cheekbone, but something in his head pops from the blow, too. He slams against the other wall and goes down, grabbing at my legs. His arms wrap around my legs and I go down with him, hit the floor hard. The world flashes when the back of my head hits the hardwood floor. Then a first hits my jaw, and the world starts spinning.
Hands yank me up by the collar of my shirt. It rips, but not enough. Then a white flash as my head hits the floor. A fist raises over my head, ready to come down.
When your head is braced against something rigid, that’s a bad way to get hit. I jerk out of the way at the last second, and he howls as his fist hits the hardwood. Then I knee him in the stomach, grab his throat, and kick him in the balls again. His howl comes out choked, and he claws at my wrists, but I’m stronger. I feel his grip weakening.
A shadow falls over me and there is a tremendous
clang
.
Big man rolls off of me onto the floor, a bloody gash on his head. The woman hit him with a fucking frying pan.
“Police come,” she says, offering me a hand. “You go. Out the back.”
I’m not arguing. I limp along with her past a half dozen girls
in states of dress varying from “string covering clit” to pajamas
and one wearing a goddamn chef toque (am I dreaming this?) and out the back. Christ, if somebody sees me I’m fucked. I run back around to the side and lurch up the stairs, through my door and fall to my knees on the floor.
My fucking head. Figures I’m out of booze.
Half an hour later I get up. It’s daylight outside but it’s overcast now, enough for the red and blues to flash in my window. Quickly I discard my clothes. My t-shirt is bloody, and I’m not sure if it’s mine or not. I get all my clothes off, shove them in a trash bag and frantically dart around the room, naked. If the cops come banging on my door asking questions and see something incriminating they’ll bust in and I’ll be on a bus back to prison by dark. Once I’m reasonably certain there’s nothing poking out that would catch their attention, I get under scalding hot water in the shower.
“Fuck,” I grunt.
A fight just makes me feel more alive. Feeling more alive makes me want Eve that much more. I rest my head on the grimy tiles and run the water until it goes cold.
Chapter Six
Evelyn
My assistant finds me at my desk, slumped and leaning on my hand. She stops in the door and flinches when she lays eyes on me.
I know why. At this point I’m using my computer screen for a mirror more than anything else. My hair is a tousled mess, my eyes are bloodshot, there is an ugly bruise on my face and I look like I haven’t slept, because I didn’t. I laid awake all night staring at the ceiling, and my eyes are red from crying, livid lines running down my cheeks like claw marks. Even my unbruised cheek is puffy, and there’s a fine crust of blood around the nostril on the side where he hit me. A cup of cold coffee sits next to me on the desk, glued to the wood by a drying brown ring. An untouched bagel rests beside it, the cream cheese still sealed in the little cup. I take one look at Alicia and look back down at the desk.
“Go home,” I murmur. “I can’t work like this.”
She closes the door and sits in the chair in front of my desk.
“Miss Ross,” she starts.
“Eve,” I correct. “Call me Eve. My name is Eve.”
“Eve,” she says, rolling the syllable around her mouth like an unfamiliar taste. “Eve, I was talking to my husband last night. We think you should call the police.”
I sigh softly. “About what?”
She touches her cheek.
“What are the police going to do for me?” I say.
“Honey, you can’t let him hurt you like this.”
I blink a few times. She sounds like a mother.
Makes me wonder what my mother sounded like. I stifle a little noise that’s almost a sob, fold my arms on the desk and plunge my face into them. Then the sobbing starts. I’m still in my pajamas, plain powder blue terrycloth. Victor bought them for me. The blue brings out my eyes, he said.
The longer I sit there the harder I sob. I don’t care if Alicia sees me crying anymore.
Gingerly, she rests her hand on my back, behind my neck, and rubs.
“Hey. Hey. Here.”
I sit up and she hands me a box of tissues. I snatch a handful of them and scrub at my face, and wince when I touch the bruise. It still hurts. I need to cover it, but I don’t much experience with makeup. I could drape some hair over that side of my face, I suppose. I used to wear it that way when I was younger, when I first started school. I was so afraid of my tutors.
I continue to stare dully
at nothing as Alicia drags her chair around to my side of the desk, and sits next to me. I can’t bring myself to look at her. I just sniff, whimper and stare at my desk. She takes the uneaten food and sticky coffee cup, wipes the desk and carries it all away. A few minutes later she returns with a yogurt cup and a can of Coke. I look at them with disdain, and she simply ignores me, pops the top of the can and peels back the yogurt lid, and sticks a spoon in it.
Then she sets it before me like she expects me to eat it.
Grudgingly, I pick it up and cradle it in my hand, and take a small bit from the tip of the spoon. I choke down a half-chewed, half-frozen blueberry and feel like I’m going to puke.
“You need to eat,” she says, firmly.
Every bite is an effort. I hate yogurt anyway, but something about her folded arms and unyielding stare makes me eat it, then sip at the soda. I have no idea why she thinks this garbage is healthy, but it works. I feel just a bit better when I’m finished.
She sinks into the chair next to me. I sit back in my chair and look up at the ceiling.
“Tell me, whatever it is.”
“You’ve lost Thorpe,” she says, her voice flat. “They signed on with… with Victor.”
I nod slowly.
“I see.”
“I haven’t heard from your father.”
I flinch when she says it.
“Eve,” she says.
I shake my head, slowly.
“There’s nowhere I can go. Nowhere I can run. I can’t get away from him. Only one person could ever protect me from him and he…” I suck in a breath, and go rigid.
“Yesterday,” Alicia says, slowly. “When you were alone in that room with him.”
“With Victor.”
“Did he… did he force,” she swallows, hard. “Did he do something to you?”
The sides of my mouth curl in a small, secret smile. “Nothing I didn’t want him to do. He never would.”
“You’re in love with him.”
She has a way of stating questions so they come out as statements, this woman does. It hurts, to be seen through so clearly. I can’t look at her.
“He didn’t seem so terrible. What did he do?”
I clutch my hand over my mouth, press my eyes shut and suppress a full body shudder.
“I gave him everything,” I choke out, “and he threw me away like I was trash.”
She blinks a few times, and cocks her head to the side. “I thought… I was under the impression he was your stepbrother.”
“He was. Is. Is he still my stepbrother if his mother is dead? I don’t even know. It wasn’t like that. We first met when I was eighteen. I’d just finished high school.”
“How did you meet?”
“My father was dating his mother. When it got serious he brought me to meet her. He was here, of course. It’s his house.”
Not was. Is.
This is not my place. I wish I knew where my place was.
“That sounds like a cute way to meet.”
“Our parents got married.”
“So? It’s not as if you grew up together.”
I sigh, long and loud. “I’ve heard that before.”
“From him,” she says.
“Yes.”
“I’m here if you want to tell me. I’ll listen.”
I look at her. I look around the office.
“Morning report?”
“You have three-hundred and seventy two emails, six calls, four requests for meetings, the Wall Street Journal wants an interview, TMZ wants a comment on…”
“Nevermind. Wait, TMZ?”
“Your, ah, encounter yesterday is all over Twitter.”
“Twitter?
Who the hell on Twitter cares about what I do?”
“Lots of people, apparently. You do realize you’re famous, right?”
“I am?”
She sighs. “Sweetheart, you’re the tenth richest woman in the world.”