David Duffy - In for a Ruble

A flash of fire in the SUV as the driver struck a match. The flame illuminated a blood-drained face as it lit a cigarette held by misshapen teeth.

The spectral driver drawing on the smoke was Nosferatu.

The music was coming from my apartment. Only two to the floor, one at each end of the hall, the elevator in the middle. My door was ajar. Loretta Lynn, I was pretty sure, backed by steel guitar, bass and drums, floated in my direction. She was singing about being true to her man while he’s gone—if he doesn’t overdo it. I like Loretta—but I don’t own any of her records. No question, though, she was on my stereo. My first thought was that I’d been followed, but Loretta didn’t seem Nosferatu’s style.

Almost ten o’clock. Nosferatu had smoked his cigarette, then two more. He’d made two calls on his cell phone. I didn’t move a muscle the entire time. No one else came down the block, vehicle or pedestrian. The guy in the other car, if there was a guy in the other car, stayed out of sight. After the third smoke, Nosferatu climbed out and went into the building using a key to open the front door. I watched the windows on the third floor. No light came on. Coryell could have drawn curtains or shades. Nosferatu could be doing his work in the dark. He could be visiting someone else altogether. Still no movement at the car down the block. Ever so slowly, I got out my phone and tapped Coryell’s number, not sure what I’d say if anyone answered. No one did. After a handful of rings I got a recording.

Nosferatu was inside exactly twenty-four minutes. When he came out, he walked up and down the block, ten yards in each direction. He stopped about five short of the car where I’d seen movement. Once again, I didn’t move a millimeter. Neither did the guy in the Chevy. If he saw either of us, there was nowhere to run. After two minutes that stretched through half the night, Nosferatu got back in his SUV. He smoked another cigarette, made another call, started his engine and drove off. I waited another fifteen minutes before I started breathing normally.

I took a chance and walked to the other end of the block before turning left and back to Queensboro Plaza. A calculated gamble—I had little to lose. If there was a guy in the car, he’d already spotted me going in and out of Coryell’s building. If he was Nosferatu’s man, I wouldn’t be walking around. If it was Tan Coat, he already knew what I looked like. Sure enough, a man in a Chevy Malibu tried hard to look invisible as I strolled past. Definitely not Tan Coat—this guy wore a suit and had a full head of hair. Lots of people appeared to be interested in YouGoHere and Walter Coryell. Forty minutes later, as I got off my elevator, I was still thinking about that. But my immediate concern was who was in my apartment. Nosferatu hadn’t spotted me, I was almost certain of that. But what was this?

A pause on the CD and a new song started, Loretta singing about a honky-tonk girl crying out her lonely heart. My heart did a back flip and landed in my throat. I got my breathing under control for the second time in an hour, walked down the hall, and pushed open the door.

Victoria sat on my couch, glass in hand, looking drop-dead gorgeous and staring straight at me.

“Goddamned Russians. It’s about time you got home. I’ve been here since seven, and I’m hot and hungry—or I was when I arrived. When the hell are you going to learn to keep some wine in the house?”

We didn’t get any dinner. Not much sleep either. But when I awoke at my usual 6:00 A.M., her head on my chest, my arm around her shoulders, her leg across mine, all was right with the world.

I had a thousand questions, of course. She hadn’t let me ask one. We went straight to bed and rediscovered each other slowly until heat and passion took over, and we thrashed across the sheets like two teenagers who have just figured it all out. When we came up for air, she still wouldn’t let me say a word. The second time was slow, contained passion until the very end, when we both exploded and collapsed in a single mass of sweat and flesh. Just like the first time—even better. Before I fell asleep I told myself this time I’d resort to padlocks and handcuffs before I let her leave again.

She seemed to read my mind.

“Don’t worry. I’m not making the same mistake twice,” were her only other words that night.

I believed her, but I also thought it would be just my Russian luck to go for my morning run and come back to an empty apartment. I couldn’t move without waking her, which I didn’t want to do—truth be told, I didn’t want to move at all—so I lay there, dozing, thinking about what had brought her back and trying not to let the ghostly image of Nosferatu, smoking his cigarettes, intrude on an otherwise perfect morning.

“Don’t you go running or jumping or pumping at an ungodly hour of the morning?” she said, smiling at me, her eyes as big and green and deep as the Nile.

“Pumping perhaps. And I’m not leaving,” I said.

“Jesus. I’d almost forgotten the humor. You don’t need to worry. I told you that last night.”

“You are a woman of your word.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what it says. You told me you’d leave before, without so much as a kiss good-bye, and that’s exactly what you did. I’m staying put.”

She laughed. “You’re right. I did. But not this time.”

“What changed?”

“Not you, I’m willing to bet.”

“Guilty. But I can try.”

“Uh-huh. We both know how good you are at that. We can discuss it. We can discuss lots of things, which I’m looking forward to, but first, I’m ravenous. I never did get dinner. I couldn’t find anything worth eating in your fridge last night, and believe me, I looked. Get out there and hunt or forage or whatever men do, besides pump. I want a real breakfast. Bacon, eggs with Tabasco, remember? Move it!”

She rolled out of my grasp with a playful slap and skipped to the bathroom. She flicked her beautiful behind for my benefit before she closed the door.

I lay there another minute holding on to the image of a present-day Aphrodite frolicking across my bedroom. Victoria de Millenuits, Victoria of a Thousand Nights, was ten years younger and two inches shorter than I am. She had a figure that would make Sophia Loren take a second look and turn green when she did. Long, thick black hair, those Nile-deep green eyes, a big laugh, and a Bardot pout when she was unhappy. She had brains to match her looks and a temper that trumped both. She also had that highly successful legal career, most recently occupying perhaps the top prosecutorial position in the entire country. And a firearm permit. The first time I met her she threatened to have me deported.

What she hadn’t had was luck with men, a run I perpetuated when I came close to breaking her heart—after promising twice that I wouldn’t put myself, or her, in that position. Compounding matters, I couldn’t even provide a good explanation of what had happened without putting Aleksei’s life at risk, and I couldn’t explain that either. That’s when she left.

Something had brought her back, she’d tell me the story in her own time, but it sure looked like love. I was going to keep my promise this time, I told myself again, knowing as I did so, I was being untrue to her and to me. Fate has a way of letting you know when you’re making commitments you can’t keep.

The hell with fate. Love was stronger than that. I’d fucked up once. I wasn’t going to do it again.

She’d just come out of the shower—Aphrodite, like Sophia, would have been green too—when I joined her in the bathroom.