James Baldwin - Burn Artist

“We don’t know, exactly.” Lev tilted his head, drumming his fingers on the table. “There is… some concern that he’s investing in a side business. Gambling, maybe. Drugs.”

That was not good news, and whatever fractional relief I’d gained from a couple of drinks evaporated. Merit was not hereditary in the Organizatsiya, but debts were.

“My point being, Alexi, that you should make sure you have plenty of money saved for the short term, depending on what happens tonight and tomorrow. If not then, then in the coming twelve months or so,” Lev continued. “I’m aware that there is growing tension between father and son… so I’d like to advise you to let nature take its course instead of interfering directly. You could turn current events into a good opportunity for a promotion in the coming years. Naturally, if you were to learn anything about the money and what your father has been spending it on, you should consider reporting it to me directly.”

I got what he meant, and was both puzzled and slightly threatened. Why would he help me? “I see. I’ll take it under advisement, Advokat. ”

Lev glanced over my shoulder, and then rose as Vassily returned with Nicolai. I filed Lev’s information to the back of my mind as they sat, setting down a bottle and two more glasses to play the time-honored Slavic game of ‘drink the bottle dry’.

Somehow, one bottle turned into three. After that, we were out of the booth and playing some kind of game involving dominos at Rodion’s table with him and our other brat’ye , who clearly didn’t regret Grisha’s absence. My memory began to get spotty at that point, the same point where I began to feel good – very good. Warm, limber, even loud. The sense of inclusion was markedly different like this, and Vassily had been right: I didn’t suddenly want to beat up on women or scream obscenities at black people. Loosened up, I was relieved of an undercurrent of pain in knees, back and shoulders that I hadn’t even realized had been there. And while Vassily wasn’t always next to me, I was always able to find him in the room by his sly sloping smile, wicked and playful.

It had to have been 4am that we left, because the doors to the bar were closed and we were suddenly outside. The remaining ten or so Yaroshenko men were belting out Russian rock songs at the top of our lungs while we waited for taxis, much to the amusement of unrelated patrons.

“ And dream we not of the thunderous spaceport, not of this icy void! We’re dreaming of the grass outside our homes! ” Vassily and I were mostly on key, but that was probably a subjective matter as we broke off and tried to find our way to the car.

“Goodbye, brave cosmonauts!” Vassily called back to the other men, who hooted back to us.

I managed to open the door after a few tries, and sunk down in front of the wheel, shaking my head to try and clear it as I fired the engine. The wheel swam in front of my eyes. It was no good.

“Can you drive?” I said – or, more accurately, tried to say. “I’m… I will run us into a telephone pole.”

“I’m an expert at driving!” Vassily pulled me out, and we changed places, and resumed singing a modified version Trava u Doma, the song about cosmonauts. “ The risk and bravery is justified! The music of space is flowing into our conversation, and Rodya is getting head in the alley beside Vaselka! ”

A weird, stiff spasm bubbled up from deep inside my chest. A laugh? “That is… that is the funniest thing I have ever heard. Why do that call it that, anyway? ‘Getting head’?”

Vassily mimed the act with his hand, and the laugh came out again: harder, this time. I collapsed back against my seat, cackling, as we wobbled our way down the road. Intoxicated I felt like a different person, like some other, more human Alexi sharing the same body with me, but when I looked across at my friend and saw him laughing and happy, I didn’t mind.

I remember reaching the bridge, and I remembered – vaguely – the complicated process of getting from the car to our apartment. It seemed to involve a lot of vertigo and the strange desire to be as physically close to Vassily as possible.

“What was it… what were you saying before?” I couldn’t find my keys in my pocket with my gloves on, and ended up fumbling around for what felt like an hour as I leaned against the threshold.

“What?”

“When we were at the, the restaurant. You were saying something, before my piece of shit, cocksucking excuse for a father started the fight on the street, but I can’t remember.”

“I don’t fucking remember. Jesus, what do you think I am?” He laughed.

We stumbled into the warm darkness of the hallway together, and then I found myself pinned against the wall and unable to breathe. Vassily was kissing me. Heavy, full-mouthed kissing, blue and sweet and delirious, an action I had no idea how to respond to. Everything smelled like blueberry Rakija . I’d never kissed anyone before, but I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began as we slid along the wall and turned around the edge of my bedroom door.

It was pitch black in here, and I fell back onto my bed dizzy and queasy, my skin rippling with the sensation of fur. I felt hands – long, fine boned, and strong – push me down and begin to unbutton my shirt. A great weight pressed down over me, submerging me in the sweet smoke and peppermint scent of Vassily’s breath and the faded cologne of his neck. Even though I knew something was wrong, that I was doing something wrong, I didn’t want it to stop… but underneath the relief and pleasure of a touch that didn’t hurt was nausea so profound that I knew if I didn’t sit up, I was going to throw up.

“Vasyl… my stomach…” Urgently, I pushed up and I scrambled back along the sheets as I tried to avoid being sick, and then my head spun and I plummeted into a single moment of dark nothingness.

The dream continued in fits and starts: dreams of hands turning into birds that drilled into my temples and the back of my neck, attacking me as I fled down a black stone corridor away from some nameless terror at the other end. Pain and dehydration roused me from an unquiet sleep.

I woke on my back, half-on, half-off the bed. My shirt was still buttoned up, contrary to my memory, and I was hard: an uncomfortable congested erection that showed little sign of abating. My head was pounding in time with my hot, throbbing stomach. It felt like the worst food poisoning I’d ever had, except that food poisoning generally didn’t involve embarrassing hallucinations and priapism.

“Good God.” I moaned aloud. My voice was still slurred. I rolled onto my side, and then slowly pushed myself up on my hands. The movement only reminded me of the discomfort downstairs, made worse when I sat up the wrong way and accidentally pulled something the wrong way with a sharp, tearing pain. That woke me up. Wincing, I reached down and tried to adjust to a more comfortable position. It was partly successful, in that I no longer felt like I was going to punch through the end of my foreskin like the Kool Aid Man, but it only reminded me of other kinds of discomfort as my dream faded back in in fits and starts. I closed my eyes, confused and ill.

I could still feel Vassily’s mouth against mine. It had felt so real that I could hardly believe I’d dreamed it. It was humiliating… I wouldn’t do that. HE wouldn’t do that, not in a million years. Vassily never stopped talking about women, and he’d had girlfriends all the way through college… why would he do that? My conclusion was that he hadn’t. Most of my memories after leaving the Tea Room were simply gone. My dreams had been very surreal in other ways… that kind of fantasy wasn’t a stretch to imagine.