Making Promises (26 page)

It was his pleasure. He dished up the Panda Express and brought a bowl to her usual place on the couch. She had pressed pause on the television and he could see that she had been watching a movie on cable.

He had to smile.

“One of my favorites,” he said.
The Knight’s Tale
—it really was.

“I love this movie,” she told him, smiling. “You and my son, you have good taste in movies. Is it wrong to spend so much time living in other worlds?”

Shane shook his head. “Nah—I always figured it just made it easier to determine what kind of person you’ll be in this one, you know?” Ylena swallowed a small bite and smiled at him warmly. “Da—I think it is this way with Mikhail too. It is hard to be the person in your dreams in real life, but movies—they give a primer. What is good, what is honorable. I think you and my son take these lessons to heart.” Shane blushed. “That’s a nice way to look at it.”
Loser. Nerd.

Psychopath.
There were definitely worse ways to look at it, and that was the truth. They watched the movie for a while—it was more than halfway over—and when AC/DC belted out the closing credits, Shane attempted his biggest lie to date.

“Hey, Ylena, since I’m here, I was wondering if I could check Mikhail’s room for something. My friend’s sister knitted me a brown scarf that I lent him—I’d let him keep it, but she’s been asking to see it on me, and I sort of need to get it back.”

Ylena arched a bald eyebrow at him that let him know he wasn’t being that smooth, but he’d been visiting on Wednesday nights for nearly two months now. He had even come the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, with a little offering of turkey and mashed potatoes (which Benny had walked him through and which had turned out a damned sight better than the chicken casserole). The Bayuls had been eating dinner with Ylena’s church the next day, or the compulsion to shove Mikhail in the car and make him eat dinner at Deacon and Crick’s would have been overwhelming.

“I think he may have worn it today, but you are welcome to check his room,” she said with a smile. “We trust you here, Shane.” Shane smiled back, warmed and relieved. They trusted him. Damn, that felt good. He stood and took the plates to the sink to wash them off and then walked back into the little hallway to Mikhail’s room.

It was orderly but not neat. There were piles of clothes in the corner, waiting for the Laundromat, and folded clothes on the bed. The bed itself had a comforter—blue and green plaid—pulled up over piled pillows, but nothing was pleated or smoothed down. Shane liked it. An orderly, self-152

sufficient mind, but no obsessing over tiny things like pillow creases or folds in comforters.

Where do you keep your money?

Where all Russian peasants keep their money. In my sock drawer.

He was praying that Mickey hadn’t been kidding or lying about that.

He was standing in front of the veneered dresser and about to pull out the top drawer, when he noticed the box. It was a large cedar box—the kind that women kept jewelry in—and the kind that someone might keep money in if they didn’t trust banks, so he decided to check it first.

He spotted the two-inch tag of yarn first—one of Benny’s unwoven ends—carefully clipped and placed in one of the little cubicles in the top of the box. And then he saw everything: the receipt he’d written his number on, the little vial—now half-full—of scented oil. There was a free bookmark from the first time they’d visited the bookstore and a cheap plastic toy leftover from when Shane had taken Benny and Parry Angel to dance lessons once for Deacon. It had been floating around the bottom of the car, and he’d wondered where it had gone. Now he knew.

In the bottom of the box—the bigger compartment—there were pictures. A heartbreakingly young Ylena, holding a brand new infant. A three-year-old boy with a thousand-yard stare, wearing dance shoes. A flyer from a performance, and another, and another. A pair of ballet slippers so small even Parry Angel couldn’t have fit in them. Two tickets to a concert, probably, but written in Cyrillic so Shane couldn’t tell who was playing.

He closed the top of the box gently, with a shaking hand. A treasure box. Carefully hoarded mementos of a man that claimed not to keep such things. And the smallest moments spent with Shane had a place of honor.

Shane pulled in a shaking breath and firmed up his spine with resolve, then opened up the top drawer of the dresser.

“Have you found it yet?” Ylena called from the front room.

“No—I’m looking in his dresser if that’s okay.” There was a silence, and then she must have figured he wouldn’t have told her this if he had meant to steal something.

“Yes, this is fine.” And he continued on. Of course, he’d seen the scarf hanging on the coat peg at the dance studio or this whole thing would be for nothing.

And there it was. Pay dirt. A neat stack of bills, completely out of order, rolled tightly in the corner of the drawer. Excellent. Shit. They
were
out of order. Shit shit shit shit….

Shane reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of fives, tens, and twenties almost as big as the one in the drawer. With clumsy fingers, he took the bills and shuffled them into Mikhail’s roll, trying to make them not stand out too much. He’d washed and dried them six times with brand new jeans and an old pair of tennis shoes—and his washer and dryer had the repair bill to prove it—but they were still a little crisp. He wasn’t sure they’d fool Mickey, but at this point he had no choice. The deadline for getting the money in was on Friday, and the ship left on Monday. Mikhail had told him he’d be counting the money tomorrow.

That way, if I do not have enough money, I can panic on you when
you get here. How is that for needy—am I a satisfactory fuck buddy now?

It had been a mean-spirited thing for the other man to say, and if Shane hadn’t been able to read the absolute terror in his voice, he would have been hurt beyond words. But he
had
heard the terror, and he
had
been there for the nakedness of Mikhail’s past. Instead of getting angry, he had simply reached a hand across the car and cupped Mikhail’s cheek until the tension had left the other man and the shame washed over him.
You should
probably at least get some sex out of a person before he says something
that shitty to you, shouldn’t you?

I wouldn’t complain.
Shane’s answer had been mild, but the truth was, sex had been the last thing on his mind. He’d been coming up with this crackbrained scheme, and now it might be the undoing of everything.

He listened with half an ear for Ylena to decide he was too weird to be trusted in her son’s room, and with the rest of his attention he kept shuffling bills into the stack, trying to still the beating of his heart with some comfort. He was sort of committed to this, and what was Mickey going to do? Accuse him of stuffing money in his sock drawer? What kind of psychopathic loser did something like that?

With a gasp he slipped the rubber-band back around the roll and stuffed it back in the drawer. His hands were sweating, and he’d never felt 154

so guilty in his life, but he managed a bit of theater and started talking to Ylena on his way out the door.

“I can’t find it in there,” he said with a good-natured sigh.

“He might be wearing it,” she told him. She hadn’t moved from the couch in the hundred or so years he’d been rifling Mikhail’s drawer, and Shane could only be grateful. “He will be very sorry to see it go.” Perfect. Excellent. It was like she had read his mind for his next line.

“You know, in that case, don’t tell him I was looking for it. Benny will understand—in fact, I think she’ll be thrilled that someone liked her work so much. It’ll give her an excuse to knit another one for me, right?” Ylena looked at him levelly, as though she knew exactly what he’d been doing, and nodded with complete serenity. “Yes. I think that would probably be best.” She made as though to rise from the couch to see him off, and Shane put her off with a wave of the hand, moving to the couch to kiss her cheek. The first time she had lifted her cheek in farewell, he had been surprised, but now he wouldn’t think of leaving without bidding Mikhail’s mother goodbye like she was his own.

“You take care of yourself, Ylena—Mikhail’s counting on that cruise, you know.” She stopped him from moving away by taking his hands and peering up into his face from her place on the couch.

“I am living for him, just so he can give me that. It will make my going so much easier.”

Shane nodded, his throat going dry. She had never spoken of dying to him, but apparently neither of them were good at lying. “Your son is going to miss you,” he said roughly, and she nodded.

“I kept hoping, you know, that he would find a girl, because girls will take care of boys like men will not, you know?” Shane blushed. “Yeah. Girls can cook.”

And of all things,
that
made her smile, and the smile made him realize how young she had been in the picture, holding Mikhail as an infant—how young she truly was now.

“I do not mind if you cook, Officer Perkins. What I care about is that you seem to see into the heart of my son and find it good. It will, perhaps, Making Promises

be easier to go, knowing that someone like you will be looking out for him.”

And now that blush was everywhere. Oh God—he had not been a part of the game Ylena and Mikhail had played, the careful dance between telling her the truth and dashing her hopes that her son would find a home the way she dreamed.

“Ylena, what does ‘loobeeamee’ mean?” he asked, feeling awkward.

But she answered without hesitation.

“It means ‘beloved’.”

Shane nodded. He’d known Mickey had lied, but he hadn’t known the full extent of it. “So, it doesn’t mean ‘buddy’ or ‘my friend’?” Just to make sure.

Ylena shook her head, smiling slightly. “No—it means ‘love’, like, say, a mother to a child, or, perhaps, one lover to another. Where did you hear this word?”

“Mikhail used it.”

Her smile widened then, almost shyly. “And he told you it meant

‘my friend’?”

“Yeah—I didn’t buy it at the time.”

“You should not have. My son lied. Why do you think he would do that?” The smile tilted up at the corners, and, like her son, Shane mourned her lost beauty. Oh, this woman would have been a stunner.

“I think he knew it was important,” Shane said softly. “He was a little afraid of how much.”

“I think you are right,
lubime
,” she told him, and her smile faded but not in a bad way. “I think you just keep reminding him how important you are, and one day he might not lie about it. And I will be glad when that day comes—it means that my work is done, and someone else will care for him. I can sleep with no bad dreams.”

“No bad dreams, Ylena,” Shane murmured and bent down to kiss her cheek again. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“I look forward to it.” She said it with enthusiasm, but before Shane was out the door, she had put her head on the arm of the couch to rest.

SHANE was patrolling in the car the next day when he got the phone call.

He hit the button on his earpiece to hear Mikhail’s rapid-fire voice, pattering so quickly he might as well have been speaking in Russian.

He pulled off into the liquor store parking lot so he could savor the conversation.

“Mickey, slow down—you’re not making any sense!” It was the first time Mikhail had called him since that one, miraculous call the night after they’d met.

“Money, Shane! We have money! I counted, and we have enough for the cruise, and for the better cabin. There is even enough for a new dress for Mutti….” There was a deep breath as he tried to get hold of himself.

“We can do it, Shane. We leave next Monday. We’ll be back the sixth of January. We’re going!”

Shane grinned. “That’s awesome, Mickey. Really terrific. I’ll miss you at Christmas—I sort of wanted you to meet the family, but that’s okay. We can do that when you get back.”

There was a sudden silence, as though it had just occurred to him that they would not be together over the holidays. “I… I will miss you too,” Mikhail said, and Shane was glad he had pulled over because he could picture that look of sudden revelation the man got when something he’d never thought of just walked up and bit him on the ass. He’d seen it often—when Shane had shown up with food for lunch, the first time he’d arrived in time for their date, when he’d kissed Ylena’s cheek the first time. More recently he’d seen it when Mikhail’s head had been thrown back and his eyes closed while Shane’s mouth was on his cock.

He’d made Mikhail look at him because that expression alone had almost made him come.

“You’ll have to take pictures for me,” Shane said, and then he heard another stunned silence.

“I did not even think about that. Shit. I shall have to buy a camera….”

“No worries—you can buy those disposable ones, get them processed at the drugstore.”

A happy laugh. “Oh God, yes. There. See? You are indispensable.

You… you will be there to see us off? I… my mother’s church people could give us a ride into San Francisco if you cannot, but I… if you can get the time off, I would….”

Shane wasn’t sure what he looked like with that goofy-assed grin on his face at the moment, but the world would have to live with his weirdness. He wouldn’t be anyone else in the world. “I’d love to see you off, Mickey—maybe I should borrow another car, though. The GTO isn’t as comfy as it might be, and it’s a long trip for your mom.” A silence, and it sounded like Mikhail swallowed—hard—into it.