Rhapsody (53 page)

"Tonight," Misha said, politely lifting his
glass and taking another large swallow.

The young man walked toward the end of the
conservatory and stood looking out again. "The reason I came by,"
he said, his back turned to Misha, "is that I wanted to let you
know what's happened with this Russian thing. The tour."

"I don't really care what's happened," Misha
said, scowling. Suddenly he felt a little woozy. I'm more tired
than I realized, he thought.

"Well, you'd better start caring," the young
man said, his back still turned. "Because these people are very
upset with you. They don't like taking no for an answer."

There was an unusually aggressive tone in his
voice, and Misha laughed, despite being annoyed. "I don't think I
have anything to be afraid of," he said. He took another swallow of
his drink.
Almost gone
, he thought.
Then politeness will
force him to leave when I refuse another
.

"I wouldn't be so sure," the young man said.
"These are dangerous people." He turned to face Misha. "They're
capable of hurting you. Or Vera. Or Nicky." He paused dramatically
for effect. "Even Serena," he added.

Misha started to rise to his feet in outrage.
I will not listen to any more of this kind of talk
, he
thought. He shifted his weight to his feet to get up, but it was as
if his body wasn't quite getting the message from his brain. The
effort was suddenly too much.

What the hell?
he wondered, puzzled by
his sluggish reactions. He set his drink down on the table next to
him, almost spilling it as he did so. What the hell? Then it dawned
on him.

The son of a bitch has drugged me!
he
thought.

"You ...you've ...drugged me," he said,
staring quizzically at the young man.

"Yes, Misha," the young man said, walking
toward him. "I have indeed." Then, with lightning speed he withdrew
the handcuffs from his overcoat pocket and slammed them around
Misha's wrists, snapping them closed with a loud metallic
clank!

Misha didn't comprehend what had transpired,
the movement had been so swift, and when he finally did, he coughed
a short laugh. "Ri-dic-u-lous," he slurred.

When the young man continued to stand and
stare at him, smugly smiling, Misha began to think that perhaps
this wasn't a joke after all. "What the hell—" he began, panic
slowly beginning to seize him.
My hands!
he thought.
My
hands! I need my hands
!

The young man had taken the small roll of
duct tape out of his pocket, and now peeled off a length and
slapped it unceremoniously across Misha's mouth, pushing it hard
against his lips with both hands.

Misha's hands moved up toward his mouth but
dropped down again, as if the effort was too much. He eyes,
however, were wide with rising terror.

The roll of tape dangled at the end of the
strip across his mouth until the young man roughly ripped it off.
Then he calmly peeled off another length, this one much longer, and
wrapped it once around Misha's head, placing a second layer of tape
across his mouth. Finally, taking the roll, he got down on his
knees and wrapped the tape around Misha's legs, pinning them to the
chair legs.

He stood back up, finished, admiring his
handiwork. "You never looked better, Misha," he said sarcastically,
wiping beads of sweat from his brow. His breathing came in labored
gasps from his exertions. "Never."

He shook his head from side to side and wiped
his brow again. "
Now
you're going to listen to me, aren't
you?" He barked a laugh and walked back into the sitting room,
where he poured himself another scotch and water. Then he returned
to the conservatory and stood in front of Misha, sipping the
drink.

"How does it feel to be on the bottom?" he
asked in a malicious tone of voice. "Well, for once in your life,
you can't answer, can you? You have to listen to
me. I'm
the
boss. Now you know how I've felt all these years, having to do
whatever you told me to do, having to be at your beck and call.
Having to ride on your coattails because I wasn't good enough to
make it on my own."

He paused and took another sip of his drink,
still staring at Misha. "I didn't have the talent or the
looks
— and that's part of your success, you know, your
pretty face—so I had to kowtow to you, taking a tiny percentage of
your huge income. Now comes along a chance for me to make a big wad
of cash—this Russian deal— and you? You just won't do it, will you?
Because of your fucking principles."

He took the small sledgehammer from the
pocket of his overcoat and began to swing it loosely in his hand,
getting used to its heft, strutting back and forth in front of
Misha.

Misha's eyes followed the sledgehammer, his
panic beginning to reach a crescendo. He knew what the sledgehammer
was for. Sweat began to roll down his face, getting into his eyes,
burning them and blurring his vision. He desperately wanted to wipe
it away. He tried to scream, again and again, but all he could hear
were muffled grunts. He tried to kick, but his legs were
immobilized.

What am I going to do?
he wondered in
horror. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest, despite the
drug, and at the same time thought that he might close his eyes and
pass out at any minute, succumbing to the drug's soporific effects.
I've got to stay awake
, he told himself.
Got to stay
awake!

"Now, because of
you
, I'm not going to
be getting that nice tax-free wad of cash," the young man
continued. "Now, because of
you
, they may go after your wife
or your kid or your whore. But you know what? I don't care. I don't
care what
they
want anymore."

"I"—he paused and thumped a hand against his
chest—"want
you
." He pointed an accusatory finger at Misha,
glaring, then straightened up and smiled at him crazily. He
suddenly turned and grabbed one of the heavy patio tables and
scraped it across the floor.
Just the thing
, he thought.
Jerking Misha's hands by the handcuffs, he slammed them down on the
tabletop, holding them there with his free hand. The other held the
sledgehammer.

Misha's chest and face felt as if they would
explode from the effort to scream, and salty tears began to roll
down his cheeks. He was helpless to defend himself, and he knew
it.

God help me
, he prayed.
God, please
help me.

The young man began swinging the sledgehammer
again, rhythmically, back and forth, back and forth, in higher and
higher arcs, watching Misha's eyes, enjoying the terror he saw
there. Finally, he swung it up to his shoulder, got a good grip,
and started to bring it down with all his might.

For a fleeting second Misha imagined he had
seen a ghost.
I'm dead
, he thought in a daze.
He's killed
me, and I'm already dead
. For nothing else could explain what
he fancied he had seen.

Then he felt an explosion of pain, an
excruciating white-hot pain such as he had never known could exist.
It seemed to blast his hand to smithereens, then consumed his
entire being. His head jerked back, and in the instant before he
blacked out, Ins imagination—mercifully, he thought—took over. For
he glimpsed Vera, Nicky's Samurai sword in hand, standing over
Manny's body, blood everywhere.

As Vera watched from behind him, Misha gently
touched his trembling fingertips to the mezuzah on the door frame.
He then leaned over and touched his lips to it reverently. Tears,
unbidden, came into her delft blue eyes. She had never seen him do
this before, and had always thought it curious that he'd insisted
on the cheap mezuzah remaining where he'd put it the day they'd
moved into the apartment.

He turned to her. There were tears in his
eyes as well, she noticed, but he was smiling, even if
ruefully.

Vera reached up and tenderly stroked his
tears away and kissed his cheek. She smiled and then turned and
unlocked the door. They entered the apartment together, an arm of
Misha's slung across her shoulders. In the entrance foyer he
abruptly stopped in his tracks and stood still, an alert expression
on his face.

"What is it?" Vera asked, looking at him
quizzically.

"Where's Nicky?" he replied. "There's no
'Daddy, Mommy. Daddy, Mommy.' " He looked at her, and they both
laughed.

"He's over at Sonia and Dmitri's," Vera said.
"I thought I told you. He's going to spend the night with
them."

"You probably did," Misha said, taking his
overcoat off. "And I forgot."

"That's understandable under the
circumstances," Vera said, taking his coat, and shrugging out of
her own. She hung them in the hall closet, then tinned back to
Misha. "How about a drink?" she said. "Maybe a brandy? There's a
very fancy bottle of something in the kitchen that your new manager
sent over. It's supposed to be really special."

"That'd be great," Misha said. "I'll get
them."

"No, no," Vera said. "Go sit down. You've
exerted yourself enough today." She was already on her way to the
kitchen. "I'll get them."

"Okay," Misha said. He walked into the vast
double- height living room. A fire flickered in the grate, its
flames glinting off the treasures they'd both collected over the
years, giving the room a warm, cozy, and homey glow, despite its
grand proportions and furnishings.

Misha put another log in the fireplace, then
kicked off his shoes and spread out on the sofa in front of the
fire. He stared into its dancing flames, pondering the day's
events. How strange it's all been, he thought. Yet how
wondrous.

Coral Randolph had invited friends of
Serena's to her magnificently elegant apartment on the Upper East
Side, where she gave a combination memorial service-cocktail party
in Serena's memory. When the engraved invitation had come in the
mail, Misha had thought that Vera would ignore it or summarily
throw it in the garbage.

Well, he mused, I should have known my wife
better than that. She'd surprised him for the thousandth time.

"We must go," she'd said. "Both of us."

"But, Vera," he'd replied, "don't you
think—"

"Misha," Vera had interjected, "it's the
least we can do. The two of you had a kind of love for each other
after all. And I love you. We owe it to her memory, Misha. We must
go. I insist." While Vera didn't relish the idea, she thought it
was important that Misha go, with her there to be supportive. He
needed to grieve Serena's death properly to help him overcome her
tragic loss.

He had acquiesced and was glad now that he
had done so. The steely Coral Randolph had been very gracious, warm
even, and had wept openly during the short service in her living
room.
She's actually human
, Misha thought,
and she really
loved Serena
.

Only Jason had spoken, his nicks and scrapes
not quite healed, and his brief tribute to his mentor was movingly
and lovingly delivered. The service had given Misha at least some
sense of closure. The horrors of the days after Manny's attack had
only been compounded by Serena's terrible death.

All that beauty!
he thought.
All
that talent! And the youthful enthusiasm and creative force at work
in her. Only to be destroyed by a land mine left over from a war
long over
.

He heaved a sigh. Life's not fair, he
thought. It's not a fair world. But as Vera had reminded him, we
must try to live as fairly as possible even so, and to remember to
be grateful, no matter the circumstances, for the mystery and gift
that is life itself.

He smiled to himself. Her advice sounded so
much like old Arkady, his long-dead friend in Moscow. It was almost
as if Arkady were speaking through Vera, watching over Misha from
somewhere beyond the grave.

Thank you, old friend
, Misha
whispered, his eyes closed prayerfully.
Thank you. For without
you, the memory of you and your love, I might have lost
everything.

Misha opened his eyes and looked into the
fire again.
I've been so fortunate
, he thought.
To have a
companion who loves me so unquestionably, so
unconditionally
.

An involuntary shiver ran through him as he
remembered that afternoon in Tokyo. Coolly elegant Vera had struck
Manny a potentially lethal blow with the sword, although she'd
deliberately slammed it down onto his head with the flat side, so
as to injure, not kill.

Misha hugged himself, remembering that
horrible day. He hadn't known Vera had flown in, that she'd been in
his hotel suite sleeping that afternoon. She'd come to save their
marriage, she'd told Misha, to fight Serena for him if necessary.
She hadn't known, of course, that he'd ended his affair with
Serena.

His thoughts turned to Manny. Poor Manny. He
would never have dreamed that his friend could be so insanely
jealous, that he would become unhinged and finally go over the
edge. He'll spend years behind bars, he thought.
Either in a
prison or mental hospital. Who knows?

With Vera's help, he'd already hired new
representation and was negotiating a new recording contract. Under
the circumstances, extricating himself from Brighton Beach Records
certainly wasn't a problem. He supposed he'd heard the last of
them. Sasha had left, simply saying that he and his new girlfriend
were going to leave town in search of new adventures. This came as
a surprise since Misha, like everyone else, had assumed that Sasha
and Manny had been lovers. Well, it doesn't matter, does it? he
thought. Misha had wished him luck.

Vera quietly came into the living room,
carrying two brandy snifters. He looked over at her.
Vera, my
avenging angel
, he thought.