James Baldwin - Burn Artist

Vassily managed to chuckle and snort at the same time, while I coughed, getting to my feet.

“Godspeed, good lady.” Vassily saluted her. “Needless to say, I don’t envy your position. Any of them.”

“He’s fine. He’s a good man.” She laughed. “I hope I see you around, Alexi.”

We watched her stride away. I frowned a little. “Did she just use me to pass the time?”

“Pfft. She’s a hooker. Who knows.” Vassily pulled on my sleeve. “Come on, man, let’s go outside.”

We went down the stairs, sidling between people on their way up, and emerged into the most raucous part of the party. I had an earplug in my good ear and could hardly hear out of the other, but the physical vibration of the music drilled right into the nerves in my back teeth.

The street was comparatively cool, leaden with humidity and the lingering, radiant warmth trapped in the concrete. There was now a smaller party going on out here. The old gopniki [22] A mildly derogatory slang term used to describe young, poor, working-class men who typically hang out in small gangs. The stereotype is of an Adidas-loving, gay-hating, heavy drinking kid who spends a lot of time squatting in the middle of the road with his friends and committing petty crime. For men from that background, it can be a reclaimed title and an in-joke. jailbirds were out here, squatting along the edge of the gutter like a line of crows. Nicolai, my father, Ovar and Mo – two of the security guys and protection racket toughs – and three of the Red Hook union guys were drinking, smoking, and laughing uproariously at something we’d just missed. Knowing them, it probably involved guns, their dicks, or things they did while in prison together. Vassily and I moved down the street a ways and stood under the shadow of a dark green awning, where he lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall.

“What’s the problem?” I watched him, hands jammed in my pockets.

“Nothing specific, to be honest.” Vassily drew on his smoke with a low sound of pleasure. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.”

“What?” I frowned. “I… that makes absolutely no sense. Do you or don’t you know?”

“Don’t worry about it. You seemed to be getting along great with that girl.” He laughed uncomfortably, fidgeting with his hands. “Think you’ll take her home?”

“No.” I pursed my lips, annoyed. “So the business you so urgently needed to talk about was a drunken ramble on my lack of a sex life? Again?”

There was a loud whoop from down the road. He paused, and both of us looked over to see our brat’ye setting a beat with their hands while Nicolai did his best to dance within their circle. Further down the road, there was a large and loud group of black kids coming down the road from the corner, ten or eleven mixed men and women. A bad combination, though it wasn’t the newcomers that raised the hackles on my neck. All the men celebrating outside were drunk, prickly and intensely racist.

“Nah, that’s not it.” Vassily broke the moment of alarm, waving his hand as he struggled for his words. “It’s the court thing on Monday, I guess.”

“I thought you weren’t worried about it?”

He ran his hand back through his thick hair. “Well, I’m not. It’s just like… the possibility, you know? And if I was sent to the slammer—”

“You’re not going to prison.”

“If I was going to prison, it would be for the stupidest fucking thing possible. Money laundering? Credit cards? Corporate credit cards, no less. After all the shit we’ve done, that’s what I was nabbed for? The totally bloodless shit.” He sniffed, eyes narrowing. “I bet the Fed wouldn’t care half as much if you or me were killed, or if one of those chicks down there got raped or something. I’ve heard of guys getting six months for a rape, and you know what I’m facing? Ten fucking years for credit fraud. Says something about the world, doesn’t it?”

“You’re going to be fine, Semych. You’re drunk and maudlin.” I crossed my arms, putting my back to the wall. I didn’t lean. Instead, I looked over to the antics down on the road. The big group of clubbers had stopped, and I had the awful feeling they were laughing at the drunken dancing. When I turned back to Vassily, I found him looking down at me, and there was something wild and fearful in his eyes. Of all the faces in all the world, Vassily’s was the one I could most reliably read and interpret… but not right now.

“What?” I was beginning to feel peevish now. “Spit it out. You know I’m not a mindreader.”

“I know, it’s just…” He pressed his knuckle to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut as he searched for what he wanted to say. “Before this whole court thing, I wanted to—”

“Hey! The fuck you looking at? Shakhtor !” [23] A really rude, racist term for anyone with dark skin.

“Fucking c hernasty , [24] ‘Cherni’ means ‘black’. Another nasty racist term. fuck you want to do that again?! Put your finger up at me again!?”

We turned to see my father and Anton, one of the Unionists, stalking across the road, bottles in hand, weaving through the moving cars like they weren’t even there. The clubbers were on the other side, some of them laughing, some of them posturing, others trying to pull their friends away.

“I ain’t done shit! Y’all think you gonna get anywhere by coming over here?” The ringleader – a tall, fit jock with the clothes and build of a basketball player was doing exactly the wrong thing by pointing and jabbing at the direction of the two men who were closing in on him like a pair of rhinos. “You’re gonna get your teeth knocked out, is what’ll happen!”

“Jesus haploid Christ.” Vassily pinched the bridge of his nose. Whatever he’d been about to say was lost as their friends got to their feet. Nic ran inside, while the rest jogged over to join Grigori and Anton. Before the theoretical offender could even really get his guard up, Anton drove a ham-sized fist into his face like a pile driver and then shoved him, putting him to the pavement. The others in the group converged on him, and suddenly, he was fighting for his life.

“It never ends, does it?” Vassily called out to me as we broke at a run to join the brawl, shucking our coats off on the way.

No, it didn’t. And I doubted it ever really would.

We closed in with the others as 57th Street dissolved into a warzone. Women screaming, men fighting, women fighting, men trying to drag their girlfriends away from the collective thousand pounds of angry Slav who all too happily engaged with the lot of them. Vassily and I joined the fray without any uncertainty, setting on one of the guys who had managed to get Ovar in a headlock. We pulled him off and beat him from both sides, then threw him to the ground. No matter who started the fight, your people had to be the ones to finish it.

The guy who had flipped off Grisha was now on the ground getting the shit kicked out of him by three men. In front of me, Mo lurched and dropped with a punch to the jaw. The man he was fighting came at me next, fist pulled back. I wove and ducked the haymaker, slammed him in the sternum and then up under his chin. He went forward instead of down, yelling furiously as he bore me to the ground. We kicked and punched all the way to the pavement. Vassily hauled him off by his cornrows and gave me enough room to knee him square in the balls and scrabble out and up to continue on.

The fight was over as soon as Nicolai got out with our allies: close to twenty drunk, excited Eastern Bloc muzhiki who descended on the fight in a wave of peaked caps, Adidas tracksuits and leather. The clubbers did the sensible thing and hauled ass, pulling their fallen friends up off the ground and running as a hail of empty vodka bottles, screams and obscenities followed them down the road. As soon as it was obvious they weren’t coming back, the laughter and cheering resumed.