James Baldwin - Blood Hound

“Of course you did.” Vassily rested his head against the back of the seat and snorted. “That wasn’t what I was gonna ask, though. You still into the woo-woo?”

Magic was the one part of my life he had never understood and I never shared. “Of course. Why?”

“Maybe you can explain something for me, Mister Wizard. I thought about the sea a lot while I was in.” Vassily’s brow furrowed. “Dreamed about it. What do you make of that?”

“Emotion. The sea is symbolic of ocean and the mystery.”

“The mystery, huh? What mystery?”

“ The Mystery. Ocean is a powerful symbol for the subconscious mind, for the things we don’t know and can never know about ourselves,” I replied, gesturing to the road ahead. “We know it is the origin of life, but we cannot survive in it. It is full of oxygen we cannot breathe, animals we have never seen, forests we cannot walk through. It’s the mystery which represents the greater mystery of our existence.”

“I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but I’ll think about it. ‘Mystery’ wasn’t ever much of a big deal for me, except for like… you know, ‘what’s in the fridge that I can still eat for breakfast?’ But I had a lot of time to learn how to think.”

“That is probably the most profound thing I have ever heard emerge from the sphincter you pass off as your mouth,” I said.

“Fuck you. I was the token white guy in prison. I got along by keeping my mouth shut.” Vassily jerked his shoulders back, rolling them, but there was laughter in his eyes. “So, did you ever get around to the Tao Te Ching ?”

“I did.” Books had kept our friendship alive while he was in prison, a point of connection when everything else had been taken away, and I smiled. “ He who knows how to live can walk abroad without fear of rhinoceros or tiger. He will not be wounded in battle. Why is this so? Because he has no place for death to enter .”

“Yeah, I knew you’d love it. Verse forty-four’s my fave. It helped a lot with these weird nightmares I had. I was always dreaming about falling up into a black hole. Black holes, or the sea, but it was always up. I felt like I was coming apart sometimes, you know?”

Yes, I did know. You couldn’t work in my profession and not encounter it, that void of no-future. My father had fallen into it, and he had tried to drag everyone around down with him. “Indeed. Though bear in mind that black holes are often associated with feelings of guilt.”

“Guilt? Yeah, right. Anyway, off topic. I held off asking for as long as I could, I swear, but I gotta know. Are you still single?” He switched topics so quickly I almost lost track of his voice. “Do I have to keep worrying about you never getting laid?”

What I needed to say was technically a lie, albeit one with a kernel of truth. I had been preparing for this question for years. “Not entirely.”

“I’m not trying to pry or anything, but like I said, I… wait.” Vassily paused mid-thought, hand raised. His mouth worked as he struggled to process what I’d just said. “Hold on. ‘Not entirely’? As in, ‘No, Vassily, I’m no longer single’?”

“I know a woman.” Not knowing how to elaborate, I shrugged a second time.

“Is she… uh… is she real?” Vassily’s brow furrowed in concern. “Like, alive, and not a magazine cutout with a hole for your dick?”

I tch’d and rolled my eyes. “Don’t be a putz. Her name is Crina Juranovic. You met her a couple of days before you went to prison.”

“I don’t remember a Juranovic. She Serbian? Croatian?”

“Possibly. She speaks Ukrainian, but she grew up in Germany.”

“Well, I… huh. Right.” Vassily trailed off and began to twitch, drumming his fingers on his thighs. He hesitated for a moment before speaking again, voice catching. “That’s good, because guys like you end up in the Weird Obituaries section of the papers, Alexi. I worry I’ll come in and find you’ve choked yourself out from the doorknob with a pair of dirty stockings someday, and—”

“Vassily.” If I rolled my eyes any harder, they were going to burst out the back of my skull. “Please, give me some credit. The stockings would be clean.”

He busted up laughing. “Okay, fine, fine. Girl or no girl though, I’m glad you haven’t really changed much.”

“What do you mean by that?” I gripped the steering wheel and fixed my eyes ahead. I was surprised at myself, how immediately defensive I sounded. “I’ve worked my way to independence. Nic trusts me, Lev trusts me… I have a lot of work from them. The money is excellent.”

“I’m not talking about what you do, Lexi. I’m just talking about… you. Like the heart of you. It’s still the same.” Vassily looked back out towards the rush of gray and brown as we entered the gaping oven of New York City. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I mean, it’s good to get out and have at least one thing still be how it was, ’specially after all the hard news. You’re lucky you weren’t wasted when Lev took over.”

“I’m more worried about the Manellis,” I replied. “Lev does a good enough job. His maneuvering has the best interests of the collective at heart. I’d rather have him as Avtoritet than, say, Vanya.”

“Well, yeah. I’d rather see a dog turd as Avtoritet before Vanya.”

“Indeed. The biggest test will be how we hold against one of the Five Families,” I said. “This new Colombian cartel arrangement has been incredibly successful. Every yuppie from Miami to Boston is buying at the moment. Now that John Manelli knows who’s in charge, I have no idea what we’ll do. Lev hasn’t really talked about it. Nic has only fears. Unfortunately, I am no seer.”

I trailed off when I noticed Vassily had fallen uncomfortably silent, staring down at his hands. Unspoken was the same anxiety I had also nursed, off and on, for the past half a decade. His incarceration had driven us both to think about our friendship for the first time, how tenuous our freedom together really was. His release was already overshadowed by fresh violence, and both of us would have to be there when the shit hit the fan, parole officer or no parole officer.

After a few minutes of silence, he smiled, and I watched his light flicker back to life. “So, we’re going straight to Gletchik’s, right?”

“Of course.” I desperately needed food. My stomach had given up trying to tell me how hungry I was, and I imagined it shrunk down to the size of a bean, the walls of my gut gnawing at itself for sustenance.

“Thank God. I’m gonna hit that menu so hard.”

The idea was utterly perplexing. I frowned. “Why would you hit the menu?”

“For fuck’s sake.” Vassily rolled his eyes. “Alexi… I’m not actually going to hit the menu.”

“You order from menus.” I shook my head stubbornly.

“Fine. Okay. I will order from the menu. Everything from the menu.” He sighed. “Fucking hell. I forgot how literal you get when you’re tired.”

Ordering everything on the menu didn’t seem a whole lot more practical than hitting it, but I kept my mouth shut and focused on my driving. In any case, if buying everything was what he wanted to do, well… I guess we could make space in the refrigerator for it all, if we tried hard enough.

Gletchik’s was as good as usual. We ate as much as we could, but there was no time for rest. Vassily needed ID, a new bank account, new clothing, and all the other minutiae of mundane life after being released from prison. We returned to my apartment with far too much food for the old one-person refrigerator and wet food for Binah. My new cat greeted us enthusiastically at the door, and when Vassily stooped and picked her up, she stuck her head out, purring, and began to wash the bridge of his nose.