On the Palazzo Pool Deck, he makes the mistake of chatting up the wrong MILF and finds himself getting dunked underwater by a beefy tourist who looks insecure in both his relationship and his masculinity. He knows he deserves it-not because he'd been flirting with that lady, no. He deserves it for the litany of sins he has committed. He swallows chlorine water (and probably urine, considering that most pools on the strip are half piss) and if he closes his eyes he could imagine that the man trying to beat the tar out of him is Potter, and everything is fine, and they're just horsing around like they always did in the pool behind his house.
But it is not Potter, and Boris stops struggling. Sometimes getting your shit kicked in is not so bad. Sometimes he feels like he needs it-it's why he'd provoke his father sometimes, back when his father was around. How Potter had looked at him that one time-more tender than anyone ever had-when his face was smashed to hell and his back was banged up kept him awake late at night after he'd left.
Fyodor. That's all he can think about. Fyodor-golden undertones of his skin coming out in the sun as he rests on his back beside the pool. Fyodor-steely blue eyes with the pupils blown wide after he taking a hit off a spliff. Fyodor-unwashed, unfed, unkempt, unloved, a secret treasure that no one else seemed to notice. Fyodor! Fyodor! Fyodor! The only person he had ever loved. The only person who had loved him back. The person he had most betrayed.
The beating is over, and Boris sees himself out. His nose is bloody but he's been through worse, and he takes off down Sands Ave with the guy's wallet he'd managed to swipe during the whole thing. It's just the sort of thing that'd have Potter in stitches, and he imagines telling him the story in Potter's living room, jumping around, Popchyck bounding after him: "And while this big guy was holding me under the water, he didn't even feel me reach into his pocket. Who keeps their wallet in their trunks while they swim? Americans!" It's almost enough, to just imagine Potter's intelligent gaze, his knowing snickers, their easy companionability. After he left, Boris felt hollow. He chased chemical highs, forged connections with people he didn't really care about, carrying that fucking painting around with him like some kind of lunatic.
He'd unwrap it, stare at it for hours. Fyodor. There were shirts at Xandra's house that he had not packed, and when Boris had finally wormed his way into the house and into the old room, he had taken the unwashed button-ups, the white cotton T-shirts stained with beer and blood and whatever else, the fucking balled-up socks under the bed, and he wept like a child. Sometimes, he wakes up in that little bedroom still thinking he is fifteen and Potter must be just down the hall, throwing up, cheek against the bathroom tile, watching the sweating porcelain of the toilet. He should get up. Bring him some water. And then he remembers that it's been a year since he saw him.
And then it's two years.
Three. Four. Five.
He wonders how tall Potter got, getting propper meals and no longer smoking and sleeping restfully. Meanwhile, Boris, smoking three packs a day, drinking vodka like water, never getting enough food, barely made it to 5'9. He searches the name: "Theodore Decker." Then, "Theodore Decker New York," when all the comes up is some guy in Ohio.
He turns up articles about antiques, a picture of Potter in a tweed suit shaking hands with an older gentleman in a little shop that he can only assume is Hobart & Blackwell. He looks well; taller than his father had been and more handsome, with the same smile that would look smarmy on anyone else.
Just seeing his pixelated face racks him with guilt, makes him sick with longing, makes him want to get in a fight a lose. How is it possible to feel this way, still, after all this time? Surely they are different people now. Surely the driving force that bound them no longer exists. They are no longer hungry, dirty children.
And, more frightening: Surely Theodore Decker hates him for what he did. It would take a saint to forgive such a transgression, and Boris is well aware that everything he has, he has because of Potter. Some people prayed to gods for fortune, some kept Maneki-neko in their shop windows. Old women in Russia used to keep five roubles in their left shoe to reap unexpected wealth. He had told him, long ago, that he did not believe in anything. That was no longer true. He believed in Fyodor. And someday he would make this right.