Part 91

St. Patrick's day came around. Zander went to the Connors, as they had invited him to come over, along with Pete and Sergei.

"The luck of the Irish prevails," Quinn said, opening the door. I have day shift for today and your birthday tomorrow. What a great birthday! The day after St. Patrick's day!"

"I knew you had some connection to the Irish, Zander," Danny said. "You only missed by one day."

"I wore my green tie to work," Zander laughed. "And now, see, I have a green T-shirt."

"You're learning," Joe said.

Tim's birthday had been a couple of weeks before. He had decided to become musical again, taking out his old guitar and brushing up on playing it. So many of his birthday presents had been in the form of books of music to play. Zander had found a book of Irish songs for him.

He now took this out, and commenced to attempt to play them. Everyone else tried to sing them. They used their best Irish brogues; only Danny had a really good one. Quinn's wasn't too bad when she thought about it and spoke slowly. But singing distracted her away almost totally.

Zander smiled at the songs. He knew some of them from the CD Quinn had given him for New Year's. Most of them were amusing. They were lighthearted, like the Connors.

"The Connors are very Irish," he said to Joe. "They are funny, like the songs."

Pete got into the spirit of it, taking the book from Tim to read the words, until Tim took it back from him to read the chords. This procedure began to amuse everyone. The boys therefore took the book from each other with bigger fanfare each time.

They had a great time with one of the songs especially, "The Ballad of James Connolly." Whether it was the similarity of the name or the chance the song seemed to give to condemn the English, Zander could not tell, but he enjoyed listening to them and watching them take up the song with such enthusiasm. They especially liked the ends of the verses where they music made it necessary to accent the wrong syllable of the last word. They sang this phrase with a zest that would have brought a house down had there been any audience other than Zander and Sergei.

God's curse on you, England, you cruel-hearted monster
Your deeds they would shame all the devils in hell
There are no flowers blooming but the shamrock is growing
On the grave of James Connolly, the Irish Rebel

The Four Courts of Dublin, the English bombarded,
The spirit of freedom, they tried hard to quell,
But above all the din, came the cry: 'No surrender!'
'Twas the voice of James Connolly, the Irish re-BELLLLLLLLLLLLLLL,
they sang, acting the part of the rebel Irish so thoroughly as to get Zander laughing out straight at their antics.

"Pete is the most Irish of them all," he told Quinn later, "he must have been born Irish, you would have thought."

"You can be turned into an Irishman yet," Kathleen had heard, and said this to Zander, patting his shoulder.

Later, Sergei showed him something that looked like a photo album. "Look at this thing, Sander, it's wonderful," he said. "Joe give it to me for taking him to the race. Look, we have pictures of the track and pictures from a magazine of the racers and of Marlin fixing his damn car in the middle of the track! And a picture of Joe looking at Nash's car, the one we sponsored, before the race, when we were down at the pits before it started. And look, Quinn got a picture of you and me she gave to Joe for it."

Zander looked through it. Joe had added a printed-out list of the names of all the racers, with their pole positions and their cars, and another list of how they had come in, from the winner, Ward Burton, on down.

"This is nice, Joe," Zander said. "It took some time to put together."

"It was a pleasure to do," Joe said. "I'm glad we got a picture of you and your Dad."

"Brad did a good job with that picture on the computer," Joe said to Quinn later. "Nobody suspects I was in it."

"Did you get rid of my picture half?" Quinn smiled.

"I did. I took it by his office. He took it and said thank you and asked how you were."

"And you told him I was doing quite wonderfully," she grinned.

"Told him you were doing wonderfully," he repeated, dutifully, "fantastically. Happy as a lark and happy as a clam."

"OK, so long as you exaggerated as much as humanly possible."

"Didn't have to. You look glowing today as usual lately."

She gave him a hug.

The next evening, Zander went to Oksana's house, knowing he had to put up with a birthday party. He had not dealt with this at all since Sergei had celebrated his 16th birthday in Russia, and no one seemed to appreciate how tough it was for him to see it suddenly noticed now.

He was amazed to see that Sergei was allowed over for this occasion, and so thought a little more of it. Rosa, Lisa and Diana were there, and every Irish-descended man and woman he knew. Alexis was there, and Amanda, and even Cheryl Shue. Zander felt shy to the point of nervousness about all the attention at once, and no one seemed to have pity on him about this at all.

Sergei told him to come outside to see his present. "You didn't give me a car," he said, "if you did, I'm not taking it, no matter what scene it makes at your party."

"Ah, no, it's not a car," Sergei said. Zander was surprised Oksana came too, and Quinn. Oksana had just asked her to come. This surprised but pleased Quinn.

"You just lied," Zander said. The new car was a Porsche, a dark green in color.

"You said a car," Sergei said, "this, now this, is a car."

Quinn wanted to laugh, but could see Zander was in no good mood over this.

"You can't make up anything with material things," he began to insist. "You shouldn't do this. Which one of you did? And what has the other done to try to top it?"

"This plan existed," Sergei said. "From when you were a baby. Before you could even walk, we had this plan. It was a joke then. We did not think we could really do it. Now we can, so we did it." He put his arm around Zander's shoulders and hugged him.

"We?" Zander started to have that lost look, one Quinn recognized as indicating the fear he sometimes had that his parents were up to something he could not control or do anything to prevent.

"We both went, and pick this car," Oksana said. "We get along the whole time."

"Both?"

"Yes, it's from both," Sergei said. "See, we worked in the sporting goods store, and we had this customer, he had a car like this, top line, in that day. We liked it. He gave us rides. Let me look at the engine. They make the best engines. Anyway, we sat on the beach with you later, and swore we someday be able to get a car like that. We think we probably could not, ever, but said when you were 21, we would, and you would have it, because we would be too old to look cool in it. You cry right then. But of course you did not understand, but we joke about a boy crying to have this car."

"When you were happy," he said, "Like you told me about," he said to Oksana.

"Sure," she said. She put her arm around him too, and leaned her head on his shoulder for a minute. He was still, and let her do this. "So you gotta keep this car," she said. "Anyway, you see you gotta keep it long enough to let Quinn drive it."

"Quinn," Zander said, looking up.

Oksana smiled at Quinn and moved away from his side, as if to tell Quinn to take over. Quinn walked over, hardly thinking, and looked at Oksana, amazed. She put her arm around Zander and took his hand with her other hand.

Oksana said, "We go in, you stay here with Quinn a minute. Remember we will take you, just you, out to Kelly's, like Gail said. We can get along for that."

"That's OK," Zander said. "I can do that."

"You been hesitating, with Gail, I can tell, about that. Now you see, we can do it. OK?" She left.

Sergei patted his shoulder again. "What else a guy like me can do for his kid, my boy? You need a better car than the one you got. I want you to have the best one. Don't forget. Don't drive too fast, either. The cops around here - they seem like they know you." He went in.

Quinn held him awhile, thinking it better he not talk for a bit. Eventually, he lifted his head and kissed the top of hers.

"They used you, did you see how they did?"

She thought it better not to argue with him just then. "Sure," she said. "Do you think their baby story is the truth?"

"No," he said, but then he sounded hesitant. "But they came up with it together."

"That's something," she said, laying her head back against his chest.

"I asked her, on the way over to my grandparents, to tell me about when they were happy. For awhile she insisted like they never were. Finally, she told me about keeping me in that sporting goods store in a baby carrier, and sitting on the beach in front of the house they later bought. She said she was happy then. I don't see how they could have been sitting on the beach there, because it's a private beach. You saw it," he added, as if asking her to be his witness.

Quinn tipped her head back to look up at him. "And they would never trespass," she said, with a bright smile.

"No, never," he said, but he laughed. He kissed her. "Finally, I can buy you a drink," he said.

"Oh, heck, now I have to take my turn at designated driver."

"No. That never has to change."

"You're sweet," she said.

"I tried to remember, from when I was young, about how the Soviets had all these bombs they wanted to rain down on us and how we had just as many bombs and how we could mutually blow each other up with the rest of the world," Danny was telling Sergei, as Quinn and Zander came back into the living room of the house, "Now it is funny to think I know two people who were there, and I was supposed to want to bomb them. I was supposed to think you and Oksana were dangerous, or something."

"Us too," Sergei said. "The West was always gonna bomb us. I always suspected against that. But a person would never dare say it. "

"Was it suspicious, that you couldn't travel?" Quinn asked, joining into the conversation.

"Sort of," Sergei said. "Hard for you to get this, but nobody left because nobody wanted to. This is how they got it to look. Like we live in a good, wonderful, Communist state. The West was so awful. Poor people on the street everywhere. Starved. Ragged clothes. Awful houses, falling apart. Big highways nobody could drive on, and people camping out under the overpasses, because they were too poor to have a house. We heard it when we were so young, we believed it all."

"Then you got to leave with the ice skating team," Zander said. "What did you think when you saw it wasn't true?"

"Hardly knew what I was supposed to think," Sergei said. "I see now I was supposed not to. Supposed to think only about winning the competition, and worry about the Westerners cheating. We hardly went anywhere, so some claimed we went through the areas they keep nice for show. Always heard about how much they do for show in the West. And they kept sure to know where we were, and that we didn't go anywhere or see anything they didn't plan for us to see."

"Who do you mean by 'they' Sergei, KGB?" Joe asked.

"Yeah, exactly. They were always around when we were abroad. To defect, you gotta get away from them. It is hard to plan, you whisper, and you have to trust the other person. Oksana, I had to trust. She could tell them what I was trying to do. Later, after we did defect, we meet other Russians who did too. They scared us with stories about how the KGB runs all over America, and will take your children, to take them back to Russia for a proper communist education. We used to keep Sander right next to us every minute. That is how he had to miss nursery school."

"I'm crushed," Zander said, "at missing that. But tell Quinn about the time you thought KGB agents were spying on you."

"Oh," Sergei laughed. "My friends laughed at me. I had heard those rumors, though. When I first defected, American government officials at the immigration asked me a lot of questions. I knew they had to suspect a person like me. You could be doing it to spy. So they asked me all kinds of questions about things in the Soviet Union. They already knew, and wanted to see if I told the truth. Or they wanted to find out more. I did not know much that they could use on high levels, but they still were curious about all I knew about who was involved in athletics and the names of whoever I thought were KGB. I spended hours with them."

"So in a couple of years, I had heard all these rumors about the Soviets in America, and it appears to me like a couple of guys are following me. I keep seeing them. I start thinking, they look like damn Russians. See a car over and over, and thought it was them."

"Was it?" Quinn asked, eyes wide.

"No!" Sergei laughed. "They were two guys following me around. That was real, no matter how many jokes about how paranoid I was anybody can make. Everybody tease me. They did not think I was crazy, but it is easy to sound crazy when you say the KGB is following you around. But the guys were following me around. Finally, I go to the FBI. The local agent looked into it for me. They were not the KGB. It was the Americans, whose spies thought they heard of some plan to do something to somebody! So they were looking after us!"

"See, so he wasn't being followed by the KGB," Zander said to Quinn. "He found out, to his total relief, that he was followed by the CIA!"

Danny, Quinn and Joe laughed. "That's great!" Danny said. "What a story! So you weren't paranoid after all!"

"Nope," Sergei said. "The CIA was following me."

"You must have been relieved to see the USSR dissolve," Joe said.

"Yes. It was the best news. I never thought that would happen in a thousand years."

"And no more CIA followers!" Danny said.

Sergei laughed. "That was a good part too! But the Americans can spy on me all they want. No more KGB - that is the best thing."

Peter gave Zander a new tennis racket. Cheryl gave him a tie. Alexis had always been the one to give him a suit. She gave him a really nice one, dark gray, this time.

"I remember how much you liked him in a suit," Alexis told Quinn.

Rosa and her nieces each gave him a sweater. "Three sweaters," Rosa said. "Because it's so cold up here."

"I told you so, didn't I?" Zander said, giving her a hug. "You lived through one winter, in spite of your Florida blood. That's a good sign."

"All the sweaters you gave me helped," she said. "And the gloves. I especially need those. My hands get cold first. After my ears."

Amanda gave him a book of short stories by James Joyce. "Now these make more sense," Quinn said, looking through the book with Zander.

"Are they as racy?" he asked her, with a mischievous grin. She smiled at him.

Quinn gave him a framed picture, of a map of Florida superimposed on a map of Russia. The distance of the West Coast of Florida was about the same as the distance between Moscow and St. Petersburg. "This is your own personal work of art," she said, pointing to the signature, "see - I got V. Ardanowski to do it. She generated this on a computer."

"This is beautiful," he said, kissing Quinn on the cheek. She put her arm around his shoulders and looked at it with him.

He had a model of a Daytona race car from Joe, and a computer program about American History from Tim and Brad, and an illustrated map of American History from Danny and Kathleen. "Somebody told you about me and history," Zander said, putting a hand on the top of Quinn's head. "Thank you. This different stuff to look at seems like the best way for me to study something."

"We're going to fly down to Monticello," Amanda said.

"That's wonderful!" Kathleen said. "Between Zander and the rest of us, we'll turn him into a history expert yet."

Alexis was outside Kelly's watching Zander with Oksana and Sergei. She was supposed to be at the law library during this meeting, but decided to keep an eye on it instead.

She shivered. She saw Jerry Jax walking by. "What are you doing out here in the cold?" he asked. "Let me take you in."

"I need to spy on somebody in there," she said, and went on to briefly explain. "But I'm glad you came by," she added, looking around. "What do you think of the offer I described, now that you've had some time to sleep on it?"

"Well, it sounds pretty good, actually," he said. "I almost think there has to be a catch."

"None. Unless you think maybe getting rid of the local mob is a catch."

"Really?" he said. "Aren't you a brave one?"

"When I introduce you to my client, then you'll see where my bravery comes from," she said, hopping up and down a little to keep warn.

"I think it might be a real blast to be in on it," he said.

"Smart move," she said. "I knew you were a smart guy."

Zander felt a lot better after his parents left. Gail had advised Oksana and called Sergei to advise him that they would be better off if they listened to Zander without getting critical about anything. That could lead the other to disagree and mess the whole thing up, if they couldn't keep that to themselves.

The meeting was rather stiff; Zander telling them only things that he thought would not be controversial, and distrustful of whether or not he might be wrong on them, too. Oksana said she would be happy to show him around Deception, and Sergei said he would get Alexis to help him explain some of what he was doing. Both of them liked the story about V. and Elizabeth's sketches, and Zander took them out of his backpack to let his parents see them. Admiring these took up some time.

The whole fifteen minutes went off without a fight. Zander thought he had witnessed a miracle. Oksana had not criticized him at all, and she had listened to Sergei without saying anything in response. Sergei smiled at Zander and even seemed to try to agree with Oksana where he could.

Thus they had agreed 1)that it was cold out today 2) that Sander looked very good and obviously was studying pretty hard and 3) that the girls who had done the sketches could draw very well.

Alexis ran around a corner when she saw that Sergei and Oksana were getting up to come out. Jerry ran with her, laughing at her.

"This spying business is very exciting," he observed.

"You have just seen a major summit," Alexis said, "and it appears that a truce is in reach. Don't complain when you see history in the making."

"All right, but I suppose it is your friend Zander and his parents?"

"Both at once. This is the divorced couple from hell, and they actually talked to their eldest for 15 minutes in a public place without declaring war."

"I'll remember this date," he said, eyes twinkling.

"Poor thing," Joanna was saying to Quinn, as they left work to go hang out at Luke's Bar for awhile. "Parental conspiracy to give him a Porsche."

"Well," Quinn answered, "he has the craziest life of anyone. All topsy-turvy. So it is not the same as it might be for you or for me."

"He really distrusts them, and for what?"

"I don't know. He's used to taking care of himself without them, so it must hit him a different way. He doesn't trust them because they turned his childhood life upside down."

"I know, but there's a point - what can they do with this car? He's the one in control of it."

"He must think they'll want something in return that comes at a higher price than any car."

"I don't know. If he doesn't take that car, I'm going to take him to Ferncliff myself. But seriously, I can understand. He's right. I try really hard to keep the kids out of whatever happens between me and Charlie. And I might not if not for knowing Zander's story. It is easy to slide right into. Just the other day, I was complaining to Heather about her clothes that got left at Charlie's. Then I stopped right in mid-sentence, realizing what I was doing."

"See, he's not so crazy."

"Oh, no, Quinn! I didn't mean that. I'll say another thing for him. He is way more interesting than Paul!"

"Interesting. Interesting. OK, I'll go with that," Quinn answered, giggling.