REVISED / RE-EDITED 11/16/2022
Chapter 6
February 1974
"The gym's closed tonight!"
The 1-2-3 rhythmic pounding and rebounding of a speed bag echoing through the empty house of Loughran's Boxing Gym was interrupted by the clamoring of the locked metal front door and followed by the boom of an aggravated male voice.
After a long pause, the 1-2-3 picked back up again.
…only to be derailed once more by the same metallic racket.
"I!"…1-2-3…" Said!"…1-2-3…"The!"…1-2… "GYM IS CLOSED! Can't you fucking read!?"
His incensed voice reverberated off every surface in the joint.
It was Wednesday night and management posted a sign on the front door stating the gym was 'Closed for Private Session'. The sign was supposed to prevent interruptions like this one from happening. Dimitri Belikov was meant to have the place entirely to himself while he went through his cool-down routine following a brutal three-hour strength training session, however, an impatient someone outside seemed to have a different definition of the word closed. It sounded very much like they were attempting to kick the door open.
He ignored the interloper as best he could and tried to squeeze his mind back into the zone.
When Dimitri trained, and especially when he fought, the chasm between his conscious and subconscious mind narrowed. Muscle memory and instinct took the helm, and he forced everything else that was leftover of himself down into that altered space. All the excess bullshit in his life ceased to exist. Fear, rage, self-doubt, jealousy, and joy - all of it - it all faded together into a single nebulous hunk of metaphysical matter that he kept way down in the hole. His kinetic senses brought about a new primordial awareness. Nothing could defeat him because, suddenly, he was nothing. He became an intangible energy.
Or if he was something, he was the fight.
The zone was where Dimitri was his utmost Dimitri.
But right now, the person out there at the front door was fucking…up…his…shit.
He went back to it, the grind he needed to keep sane.
1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, stamina, speed, accuracy, focus, 1-2-3, focus, focus -
The door shook again.
Dimitri's third shout for whoever it was outside to piss off was followed by a fourth door rattling - even louder this time. The zone was gone, and the zone was not coming back. He ground out a string of Russian and English expletives through clenched teeth and abandoned the bag in defeat. Apparently, now he had to go find out what was so goddamn important that someone was willing to risk a pummeling from an irritable young man - just out of teenagerhood - who was up to his nuts in stress from training for a third consecutive Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship title. He shoved his water jug into the crook of his arm and crossed over to the front door while unwrapping his hands. His breath was visible in the frigid air of the uninsulated gym, but his blood was still pumping fast enough from the intensity of his workout that he was nearly oblivious to the chilly atmosphere or the cooling effects of the sweat dripping from his skin. His body always ran a little on the hot side.
So did his temper.
Dimitri unlocked the door and threw it open without checking the window first to see if they were friend or foe. It was a rookie mistake, but he was tired and too damn mad. He didn't give a shit who was behind that door, they were getting a faceful of Russian cuss words and flying spittle.
"Kakogo cherta ty khochesh?!"
Sadly, he received no satisfaction from his outburst, because he was shouting at the back of a man's head.
The back of a head he recognized as belonging to a man he thought he'd seen the last of, Sergio Parisi.
Sergio was standing at the far edge of the gym's covered cement porch, casually leaning against a post with his hands jammed into the pockets of an oversized, expensive-looking brown cashmere coat. The angle of his arms could have indicated a concealed weapon of some kind, but Dimitri figured it was more likely to be the case that he was just freezing his ass off out there posturing for such a long time for the sole purpose of achieving peak levels of annoyance.
Americans didn't know what real cold was; their blood was thin.
Sergio turned around slowly to face Dimitri and smirked when he saw the results of his deliberate antagonizing. He grew up in a family of six boys, with him being the youngest. He'd had a lifetime of practice at being an annoying little shit, and he could get a rise out of just about anyone. Messing around with a stick in the mud like Belikov was almost too easy for him.
Didn't make it any less fun, though.
"Hey, Comrade. I heard yuh stompin' across the floorboards a second ago like one of those fuckin' Budweiser Clydesdale horses so I took a few steps back just in case. Or maybe yuh were just squat dancing in there?"
"What do you want?" Dimitri demanded, as though he'd never seen the man before in his life.
"Marone. That salty disposition of yours…tut-tut." He snarked. "It'll get yuh into some real hot water one'uh these days." He took a couple of steps towards the door.
"The gym is closed to visitors on Wednesday evenings for the next six weeks." Dimitri was unmoved.
"So I read on your little sign there."
"I'm the only one here -"
"Yuh don't say!" Sergio interrupted, eyes widening in mock surprise.
"- AND I'll be heading out as soon as I finish stretching and taking a shower. If you're looking for Spoon, he'll be back tomorrow. Wish I could say it was nice talking to you, but we both know that's not true." Dimitri tried shutting the door right in the jerk's face, but he lunged forward and blocked it with his foot and forearm.
"Not so fuckin' fast, there, kid. I'm not here lookin' for that toothless fuck. Although if he has any fuckin' sense of self-preservation he better be out scrounging together the three large he owes, not to mention the five more behind it, or I'll be forced to come back to this place and voice our fuckin' concerns at a not-so-much later date. But he'll keep. Bobby wants to see yuh. Now."
"Why?"
"I don't know why, he just does. He sent me over here to pick yuh up and drive yuh out to The Mill."
Everything seemed to freeze with that.
The Mill.
He fought the urge to shudder, and against his better judgment, Dimitri left the door open behind him and motioned for Sergio to follow him back inside. He grabbed one of his gym towels off a metal folding chair and rubbed it vigorously over the back of his neck and his face. He was sopping wet and beginning to shake from pushing too hard tonight. "I can't go all the way out to Dover now. I still need to finish up here and my mother is expecting me for dinner at nine. Plus, I have to be at the shop early on Thursday mornings for deliveries."
Sergio glanced around the gym in unmasked disgust. "Do your stretching in the shower, and call her from the office phone to tell her not to wait up. Yuh don't have a choice to make here."
None of this was sounding right to Dimitri.
"I don't have any business with Bobby. I haven't spoken to him in months."
"Be that as it may, he's got fuckin' business with yuh." Sergio insisted.
"That last shitshow of a collection you sent me on was my last, and he said I was free to go because I'd earned it!" Dimitri jammed his thumb into his chest for emphasis. "Now he sends you over here to black bag me and drag me out of town against my will, and I'm not even allowed to know why?!" He was moving past anger into uncharted territory.
"Do yuh see any black bags?" Sergio asked rhetorically. "I'm bein' a damn sight more polite about all of this than I ordinarily would. As I said, he didn't tell me why. I get my orders and that's all that I get. Now shake yuh tail feather because the clock is tickin'."
Dimitri started to worry. He wasn't afraid of Parisi. The only thing frightening about him was his complete and total lack of morals. But Lombardo? He was a whole different kettle of fish - an unpredictable, violent kettle of fish with a crew of twenty soldiers at his side.
He needed to regain his cool, and fast. "You really don't know what he wants?"
Sergio shook his head, smiling. "Fraid not."
"And he needs me to drive all the way out there tonight?"
"...Where no one will hear yuh scream."
Silence.
The gym was completely silent.
Sergio's expression was uncharacteristically ambivalent right up to the moment he started laughing.
"Hahahah! Relax, Belikov. You're not important enough for him to kill yuh himself. If he was gonna whack yuh, he would've sent Sal or Sven to make it look like yuh slipped and fell into a trash compactor in one of these factories. Or maybe they'd start a fire here at the gym, and lock yuh inside. The Mill is in the middle of nowhere, but it's still a fuckin' bar that's in his name on paper for the W-2's. Bobby's not in the habit of shitting where he eats. Now hurry up."
Dimitri sighed and nodded reluctantly. There was no way for him to get out of this. He grabbed his gym bag and walked back to the lone shower stall in the Loughran's Gym bathroom. He'd puke in there if he wasn't so hungry.
1967
Loretta Tanner was playing a very dangerous game of chance: stirring a massive bowl of Olivier salad on Olena Belikova's kitchen countertop while smoking a cigarette with no hands. Every few seconds she glanced away from the bowl to mark the growing deficit of white paper to gray ash on the Viceroy 100 perched on her bottom lip, but the situation was still very precarious.
Olena hovered around behind her for a few minutes eyeballing the situation with a rescue spatula in hand just in case, until she finally decided enough was enough. She plucked the cigarette out of her friend's mouth, flicked the inch and a half of ash into the sink, took a long drag of it herself, and then stubbed it out in the ashtray on the pale peach oilcloth-covered kitchen table. The spatula never left her hand.
"Hey!" Loretta balked, none too pleased about having her smoke jacked. "I was being careful. I don't know how they do things in Siberia, but here in the US of A taking a woman's cigarette…well, thems fightin' words."
"You can sprinkle as much ash as you want into your rice balls, but any black bits people see in my Olivier will be pepper," Olena replied smartly.
"The 'rice balls' are called arancini, and I promise yuh, they look and taste much better after they're fried."
"I didn't know tobacco ash tasted better when fried." Olena raised her brows in mock confusion. "Italian recipes are still such a mystery to me."
Loretta dropped the spoon. "Ha. Ha. Fine. I know when I'm not wanted. Stir yuh own damn potatoes. I'm having a drink." She grabbed an open bottle of wine from the refrigerator and settled in at the table with a tall pour over ice and another cigarette. She liked her wine cold, not chilled.
"Why the fuck did I agree to go to a Tupperware party?" She asked after a long drag. "I've got four kids still living at home, plus your lot comes over all the time. Chance would be a fine thing if I ever had extra food that needed saving. That Marie Esposito isn't fooling anyone. I know she's just using this lousy party as an excuse to force people to come and look at the in-law unit she's been renovating for the last two years. She talks about it every time she comes into the laundromat. She talks about it before, after, and sometimes during Mass every Sunday. If I see her at the market, she talks about it. It's wallpaper, carpet, and a few pieces of wicker furniture - how long does it take to haul out the junk and load in the new stuff?" She tapped her glass in annoyance.
"You agreed to go because you're still trying to strong-arm the women in this neighborhood into accepting me as a member of their club." Olena gave her reply without looking up from her salad bowl, but a Mona Lisa smile blossomed on her face. "And you think I'm too dim to recognize what you're doing."
"Oh yeah. I knew there had to be a reason." Loretta smirked. "But mark my words, if that woman spends more time talking about her hacienda - as she insists on calling it - than she does about kitchenware, I won't be held accountable for my actions."
This time Olena did laugh. "I'm no politician, but I don't think attacking her will build many bridges for your cause."
"I won't get physical with her. But I'll certainly tell her that one man's hacienda is another man's finished basement, and the only thing more boring than listening to her talk about her basement is listening to her talk about her husband's aunt Charlene who's going to be living in it, and how bad her case of the gout is." She flopped back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest mulishly.
Olena's eyes flitted briefly over to the clock above the refrigerator. "Why are we making all this food to bring to her home if you dislike her so much? Not that I mind."
"Because otherwise there won't be a fuckin' thing there we can eat. Marie puts ketchup or Jell-O in everything she makes." Loretta shuddered a bit.
"You're joking, right?"
"Hand to God. On the fourth of July a couple of years back she made a dish that had ketchup and Jell-O in it." Her face contorted. "I think there were water chestnuts in there too because it had chunks. Maybe they were canned pears?"
Olena finally stopped her mixing, and looked up to see if Loretta was pulling her leg - something she did often.
She was not.
"No one touched the stuff when most of the eating was happening, and as the day went on, it started developing a weird layer on top. It looked like skin. Mikhail Christopher and his friends ended up taking it out into the streets before it was dark enough for fireworks and used it to pretend they were vomiting up blood. They called it The Blob."
"He's a very creative boy, your Mickey." Olena smiled and checked the time again.
"That he is. But they made a mess like you wouldn't fuckin' believe, and Marie went off on me saying it was my responsibility to clean it up because it was my son's idea for them to do it."
"And she's still living? I can only imagine how that went over with you."
"Like a fuckin' lead balloon," Loretta confirmed. "I told her that she made The Blob, and she could scrape its carcass up off the two-lane blacktop where it died." She took another drag of her cigarette and followed it with a solid glug of wine before speaking again. "Okay, quit watching that damn clock, will yuh? The boys have only been gone an hour. It takes a while for the bus to get all the way to the stop by Loughran's."
"I wasn't watching the clock." Olena denied, a little too quickly.
"Oh. My mistake. Yuh just keep looking at the cereal boxes on top of the fridge, and not at the clock above it. That's a completely normal thing to do. I am a little surprised yuh allow Cocoa Puffs in this house."
"They're my mother's. She's developed a taste for them."
Loretta considered this. "Yeva's really got a lot of layers, hasn't she?"
"That is a very kind way of putting it. There are a few sayings we have in Russia for her sort, but I'm hesitant to share them with you. You already swear quite a bit in Italian, Gaelic, and English."
"I'm a fair hand at Yiddish too when the mood strikes." Loretta quipped. "Now put the bowl away, and have a seat. That salad never did anything to yuh."
Olena sighed. Her friend had a point. She had been stirring all her anxiety into that bowl for the better part of an hour; any more stirring would just turn it to mush. She wiped her hands on her apron and returned it to its hook. Once seated, she wasted no time pouring herself a glass of wine and lighting up one of Loretta's cigarettes. The house would need airing out for a week, but smoking and nattering with a girlfriend was a necessity of life sometimes.
"I promise yuh, there isn't anything to be worried about. They'll both be back in this kitchen, and eating yuh out of house and home before yuh know it. Checking the time will only make it take longer."
"I'll stop."
Loretta snorted.
"I'll try to stop."
"Yuh don't need to be so damn worked up over this." Loretta struggled to keep the exasperation she felt from her tone. "I went to grammar school with Tommy Shanahan. Everyone's always called him Spoon, but don't ask me why because I have no idea. Those types of nicknames are usually nonsense. Maybe he plays the spoons? Who the fuck cares?" She shook her head at the brief detour her mouth had just taken her down. "Anyway, he's been running the place since Casey Loughran died. I gave him yuh number here, and he promised to call when they are all set up over there. No one would dare mess around with them at the gym, and the bus stop is only about two blocks away."
Olena's right foot kept tapping against the table leg. "I'm just a bit worried that maybe this wasn't the best idea."
"The pair of them are only doing a trial session at the gym. They don't have to go back if they don't want to. They take the bus over there, work out for a couple of hours with some of the guys showing them the ropes, and then they take the bus back. The worst that can happen is they don't like it and this is a Friday wasted."
The conversation lulled for a moment. Olena was a ball of nerves, and Loretta was about halfway to drunk. They each flicked more ash and took more sips.
A thought suddenly occurred to Loretta. "Yuh know…I didn't tell yuh this earlier to avoid the scandal, but I got tonight's session plus a next session, if they want it, set up for free because I gave Tommy his first handjob back when we were kids, and I said he owed me one." She gave a saucy wink. "Of course that was back when he had all his teeth. Christ, we weren't much older than the boys are now. Time does go by."
Olena was too preoccupied with her thoughts to properly respond. She barely heard Loretta's follow-up joke - something along the lines of, 'talk about a five-finger discount.'
"Yuh get it?! Five-finger discount!" Loretta repeated, wiggling the digits on her right hand just in case her friend hadn't laughed because of the language barrier. "Ehhh?"
All Tanners were loath to allow a real zinger to go unappreciated, even Tanner's by marriage.
Loretta turned slightly to address an audience that wasn't there, gesturing toward Olena, "I'm talking to a fuckin' brick wall over here! Yuh gotta get it together, woman. Everything is going to be fine."
"I know it will." Olena tried to convince herself aloud, and Loretta could sense a 'but' coming. "But it's so far away. They have to take the bus across nearly two towns."
"He can't be tied to your apron strings forever. Around here kids take the bus by themselves all the time. And he's not alone, Mickey's with him." Loretta hadn't noticed the worry lines on her friend's face until now. To be fair, the lighting in the kitchen wasn't doing either of them any favors, but Olena's body was strung up like a puppet.
The wine just wasn't doing its job right now.
"Look," Loretta began levelly, looking Olena straight in the eye. "I try to be the best parent I can be, but Mikhail Christopher is becoming a man now. He needs to be around other men, and some decent ones, too, not the ones kicking around this neighborhood. All they'll teach him is how to lift crates off the back of a truck when no one's looking, and where to fence the stuff once he's made his getaway. If we're shopping around for Dutch uncles, our boys could do a lot worse than Tommy Shanahan."
"I know that Dimitri is in need of a positive male influence in his life." Olena conceded with a slight nod. Her eyes fell to her lap where she'd begun wringing her hands. "I've been concerned about that for years. It's - maybe it's the violence that worries me? Randall rarely hit the girls, but he struck Dimitri on several occasions."
"Everywhere you go, there's an asshole."
"I'm worried it might bring back bad memories, or - " The words stuck in Olena's throat. She couldn't help the way she felt, but speaking on it would feel like a betrayal of her baby boy.
Never one to leave a stone unturned, Loretta filled in the blanks. "Yuh think punching a bag is going to somehow lead to him punching a woman?"
Olena's head shot up, "What?!"
"Apple doesn't fall far from the tree - that old chestnut?" Loretta craned her neck, ensuring Olena wouldn't be able to shift her gaze away without a fight.
"No! No, no, nothing like that. But…"
"But?"
"...I don't know. I'm not sure what the matter is. With Dimitri or with me." She admitted and it was the truth. "He just seems so sullen and angry all the time. He doesn't yell or lash out - that's not his way, but he caves in on himself. Some days he won't say more than five words to anyone, and then he hides out in his room or in the treehouse, behaving like a sick animal. He's doing well in school, and he helps around the house without having to be asked…he's just not happy. The only time he laughs is around Mickey."
Loretta couldn't stand seeing her friend so upset. Olena was one of the few people in the world she believed to be wholly good. "He just turned fourteen. Every kid is a moody little prick at that age." She reached out and placed one of her hands on Olena's, partially to comfort her and partially to prevent her from drawing blood with her nails. "I wouldn't worry about it. As long as he's not starting fires or killing neighborhood cats, it's probably just regular change-of-life stuff. Puberty."
"That is of little comfort for the members of my family. My brother Yevgeny was such a nightmare during that time. There was never any peace for my parents in the house, and he was always…you know…" Olena's face heated. The woman conceived and gave birth to four children, and she couldn't bring herself to say the word 'masturbate'.
Her eyebrows had to do the talking.
"Oh, believe me, I know." Loretta rolled her eyes. "That alone could be the whole reason I sent Mickey down to the gym in the first place. He won't leave that goddamn penis of his alone now that he figured out what it's for. I've spent the last two years marching around our house like a fuckin' Continental soldier, making as much noise as possible and knocking on every door twice to make sure I don't walk in on him stroking his salami. 'Oh, uhh-ahh…MA, SHUT THE DOOR! I'LL BE DOWN IN A MINUTE!' She lowered her voice, and did her best impression of a deer getting caught in the headlights by his mother while pretending to just be reading a magazine.
The two mothers held in their shared hilarity for a torturous red-cheeked, wide-eyed moment before they exploded into howling cackles. Loretta grabbed the side of her stomach, and Olena feared she might have wine come out of her nose.
They both jumped in their seats when their laughter began to subside and the sound of a third voice joining them cut through the room. Yeva, clad in her large yellow robe, was leaning on her cane in the kitchen entryway and making a noise halfway between chuckling and coughing.
"Mama, it's not polite to eavesdrop." Olena gasped in English.
The grizzled septuagenarian took a few steps further onto the linoleum to ensure she had command of the space. "You two hens keep clucking in here," she began in heavily accented English, "I'm trying to watch Bonanza! I come in here to tell you to be quiet, and I hear you discussing filth."
"Sorry, Mama." Yeva could reduce anyone to feeling like a dog that just had its nose rubbed in a mess on the rug, and no one felt it more than Olena.
"Why should you be sorry? I'd rather you laughing about filth than hear you fretting about Dimka all night. Loretta is right. Leave him alone on this." She paused and spoke her next words to somewhere off in the distance rather than to her child. "For him, fighting will be good. It will take him where he needs to go."
Olena remained silent, mulling over her mother's prophetic words.
"I'm sorry, what was that yuh just said, Yeva? Loretta was…?" Loretta cupped her hand around her ear and dramatically leaned toward the ancient lady to make sure she was really shitting her. "Right?! I'm fuckin' right for once?! Alert the presses, hell just froze over. Mussolini must be ice skating around down there."
Yeva pointed a wrinkled finger in Loretta's direction. "You have a big mouth, even for an Italian. It's big for an American, too." She switched to Russian, ignoring Loretta's dismissive wave and exasperated ppffft combo, and motioned to her daughter.
"Come over here."
Olena stood and went to her mother. The elderly woman reached up with her free hand to grasp her daughter's chin and looked deeply into her eyes. She spoke her next words slowly, and even to the ear of a non-speaker like Loretta, they sounded heavy with the weight of wisdom that only came with age. "Ты просто зря потратил мое драгоценное время, не думай дважды, все в порядке." She patted Olena's cheek, signaling the end of this particular life lesson.
Olena wiped the mist from her eyes. She was touched to the core by her mother's uncharacteristically simple and supportive words." Thank you, Mama. I feel so much better just hearing you say that." She almost whispered.
With a final nod, Yeva turned and left the kitchen, the tennis ball on the bottom of her cane squishing down the hall with each labored step.
Olena returned to her seat and her glass of wine, feeling more at ease than she had all week.
Loretta lit yet another cigarette. Yeva had just made some real progress there, and it was her job now to bat cleanup. Olena was clearly feeling vulnerable tonight, so she decided her best bet would be to open up a bit herself in an effort to even things out. Touchy-feely wasn't her strong suit; she'd have to dig deep and stick the landing.
Fair was fair.
"My brother Michael was a fighter. He was a pretty decent welterweight for a while there. Of course, he did most of his training in the can after he got busted pushing dope. There's not much else to do in jail besides lift weights and hit the bags." She began toying with her wedding and engagement rings, already feeling a little forlorn over the subject matter.
"I've never heard you mention someone called Michael before." Olena gently encouraged.
"I haven't spoken to him since he was a no-show for our mother's funeral back in '59. Michael always was her favorite - the baby of the family, but he was too fuckin' busy getting high somewhere in British Columbia to see her buried. I wracked up a phone bill sky-high calling that little bastard long distance, trying to convince him to just get on a plane or a train or a goddamn boat. I dealt with the hospital while she was sick, organized the funeral once she passed, handled her estate, and I cleaned out her house which was an absolute nightmare all on its own. I did everything, and I never complained or asked for help from anybody - mostly because I knew I wouldn't get any from my siblings. His one job was to show up and he couldn't fuckin' do it." She sighed, appreciating she'd gone off-topic and gotten herself worked up at the same time. "Eh, that's another story for another bottle."
Loretta didn't much like to think about problems that couldn't be solved. Michael was always a problem and he refused to be solved.
Fair was fair, though.
"Anyway, Michael took to boxing because of the structure it provided. When fighters train, every day they work toward a new goal. It's either achievable or it's not, but they set them and they work hard for them. For some people, a strong sense of purpose in one area spills over into the rest of their life. His fighting days were the longest stretch of sober he ever did as an adult. Dimitri is a horse of a different kind to Michael, but a little regiment and some firm, short-term goals might help your son snap out of his rut. I don't see how it could hurt, right?"
Olena was beginning to come around on the idea of Dimitri's possible new hobby, partially because she could hear the sense in Loretta's words, but also because a little reflection had her thinking she might be the real problem here. Moving to America had a deeper effect on her emotional stability than she ever expected, and sometimes she felt crippled by her own insecurities. It was entirely possible she was just projecting her issues onto her children and worrying about them rather than cleaning her own house. If the two people she trusted most in all the world, two people who never saw eye to eye, were both telling her she was being silly over nothing right now…then she probably was.
Loretta could smell a win in the air - the delicate scent of someone coming to terms with the obvious, sprinkled with the salt of just a little I-told-you-so.
"There are plenty of people in this world who deserve a good punching - that piece of shit ex of yours for starters. Your Dimka and my Mickey should know how to throw some real haymakers." She jabbed the air. "Sometimes that's how people learn."
"Alright." Olena acquiesced. One word and one long release of the breath she'd been holding all day.
The two ladies continued chatting for a little while longer, each of them smoking another cigarette and having another glass of wine over ice. The topics of conversation grew lighter as their glasses emptied; their laughter grew louder.
"I told Mikhail Christopher that he was going to have to start washing his own goddamn tube socks if that's what he was going to be using them for. AND he keeps taking my bottles of Avon Skin So Soft into his room!"
They were able to finish putting away the food for the following afternoon's gathering as well as throw together something for the boys to scarf down when they came back from the gym. All that was left to do now was the cleanup. Loretta handed Olena a wet plate to dry and put away in the cabinet and reached into the sink for another dish to scrub. "Hey, what did Yeva say to you before? It didn't sound like much, but you were near tears when she walked out."
Olena was slow to reply. She wasn't sure if she wanted to keep their mother-daughter moment for herself or not. In the end, she decided to answer her question with the truth. After all, Loretta was both a mother and a daughter. "The translation isn't exact, but she said, "You're just wasting precious time. Don't think twice, it's alright." Loretta's hands faltered, and she dropped a bowl back into the soapy sink water. Olena continued on without marking her friend's reaction. "I was just surprised by it, I think. Usually her…abilities lead her to say things that are too cryptic or too limited in detail to be helpful, and they're usually just bad omens. She rarely makes any sense until it's too late, and it can be very frustrating. She loves nothing more than to say 'I told you so'. But this time - well, it was nice to hear her say something simple and reassuring for a change. I am overthinking everything and worrying for nothing. I need to trust my son to know his own mind."
"That's a Bob Dylan song." Loretta said, after a beat.
"It's a what?"
"Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. It's the title of a song by Bob Dylan. And the other part sounds like one of the lyrics…just changed a bit.
"Bob Dylan?" Olena asked, confused. "The folk singer?"
"Yep. The hair...the sunglasses...Greenwich Village...like a rolling stone - that's the one.
"Certainly not. How would she even know who he is, much less know his music well enough to quote it? She only watches two television programs, and refuses to look at magazines and newspapers from America."
"I have no clue. Nothing about that woman makes any fuckin' sense. But I'm positive on this one. Mikhail Christopher is obsessed with the guy. He has a few of his records, and he'd play them till they melted if I let him."
Olena quietly stared ahead at the window over the sink. It was dark outside, so she saw more of her own reflection in the glass than she did the deserted street just past their chain link fence. Aside from the sound of her jaw clicking and the sink water slowly squealing down the drain through a tiny gap in the stopper, the only noise in the room was the faint wafting of the goings on at the Ponderosa Ranch from the television down the hall.
Her mother did have a lot of layers, and most of them were terrible.
"Yeva," she muttered under her breath a few times, along with more than a few Russian cusses. The old woman just rattled off a song lyric to shut her up. She didn't care that her daughter was in the middle of a crisis, she just wanted to know what was going on with the damn Cartwright family!
Loretta said nothing as her friend seethed. The old lady had really pulled one over on her, and though she found it very funny, she held her tongue. She really didn't want to go to that stupid Tupperware party alone tomorrow, which meant Olena couldn't bring their evening to a close by committing matricide.
She needn't have worried too much.
Olena snapped out of her angry daze with a new air of determination. "I think these dishes can wait." She headed straight for the table and lit a cigarette.
"Uhhh…Okay." Loretta pulled her soapy forearms out of the sink and wiped them awkwardly on the folded towel laying on the counter to her left.
"Would you care to join me in the living room, Loretta? I believe I have the last -" she checked the clock again, "- thirteen minutes of an episode of Bonanza to ruin for a certain someone."
Loretta grinned. "Yuh go on ahead. I'll just crack open another bottle of wine. We'll probably all need it."
Fall 1975
"I'm being a very naughty girl right now, you know that right?"
"Oh yeah?"
"Mhmm. This is dangerous behavior."
"How is that, exactly?"
"Well, I got into a car I've never seen before with a strange man because he offered me treats. I have no idea where I'm being taken, and I'm fairly certain his intentions aren't pure at all.
"Is that right?"
"Uh-huh, in fact, I'm starting to think he's a very, very bad man."
"I'm not sure I agree with you calling me strange, but I can't really argue with the rest of it. No, that's not true. I don't recall mentioning treats until we were already driving."
"Dimitri, you wear a leather jacket in 100-degree weather and you walk around shirtless when it's snowing outside. You're at least a little strange."
"What's strange about that?"
"Ummm, all of it? But lucky for you, I find it very cute. There is still something I'm a bit unsure about, though…"
"I'm almost afraid to ask."
"My mother told me not to talk to strangers, but she never said anything about not talking to tall, dark, and handsome cowboys who are just passing through town in their pickup truck. Cowboys with accents and great, big, strong, thick…hands. So maybe I'm not really as wild and devil may care as I thought? This all might be completely appropriate behavior for a young lady."
"Are you worried about your reputation, Roza?"
"Absolutely! If I don't have my name up then what do I have?"
"Well how about this. I swear to you on everything I hold dear - on the steering wheel of my brand new truck, as we sit at this intersection waiting for the light to turn green - I will use my strong, thick cowboy hands to protect you from every single stranger we meet. And I'll even do you one better. I promise you that I'm absolutely, without a doubt, enough of a bad boy to make a bad girl outta you. Now, sugar, If that doesn't put your mind at ease, then I don't know what will."
"I bet you say that to all the girls you kidnap."
Rose had been ecstatic when Dimitri pulled up to the diner in his brand-new ride just as her morning shift was coming to an end. Somehow he managed to time it so perfectly, like a scene from a movie. She'd just walked out the front door and was too busy rummaging around in her bag looking for her bus pass to pay much attention to what was going on around her. He rolled to a stop right alongside the curb where she was standing and leaned over the passenger seat to holler at her through the open window.
"I must be in heaven, girl because I'm looking at an angel."
Rose had a tendency to look with her moth and not with her eyes.
"Eat shit, assho - Oh my god!" It took her a moment to register what she was seeing - her big beautiful boyfriend grinning at her from the driver's seat of a big beautiful red Ford F150. "Shouldn't you be at work!? Who did you steal this truck from, Dimitri!? It's gorgeous!"
After more than a year of apprenticing, Dimitri finally had the hours under his belt to receive his full status as an electrician, and with the title came a huge jump in the pay scale. He'd purchased his previous truck used from someone who had also bought it used. That truck was probably never new. It was a rust bucket and a lemon, and his sisters couldn't resist any opportunity to make fun of it even when they were asking him to borrow it.
Well, Betty - a name his former truck only had for the last few months since Rose was the one who named her - was gone now, and in her place was the truck of his high school dreams.
"She's all mine, baby! Signed, sealed, delivered. Now hop on in before I get in trouble for parking in a loading space." Dimitri ordered with mock impatience. He leaned over and used his long reach to push open the passenger side door for his lady in a show of modified chivalry. He wasn't getting out of that driver's seat yet for anything in the world, but he was going to open her door for her.
Rose jumped up and down a couple of times to wiggle out her giggles and then flung herself over most of the bench seat into his arms. After a healthy dose of kisses and a firm door slam, Dimitri was finally able to shift the truck into gear and get back on the road.
"I know you said you were thinking of getting a new truck, but I didn't know you meant today. Mmmmm…new car smell." Rose turned in her seat to check out his new digs, fiddling with every knob, handle, button, or mirror that was within reach. "Thank you for coming to pick me up from work in your slick new wheels. I was not looking forward to that bus ride home after the morning I just had." So far, her day had been 100% pure shit, but this surprise was definitely breathing some life back into her soul.
"You're welcome," Dimitri replied, reaching out to take her hand. "But I'm not taking you home just yet."
His playful tone caught her attention, and she put her inspection on pause for a moment. "Where are we going?"
Dimitri raised an eyebrow, and she melted a bit on the new seat.
"Boyfriend secrets. I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."
Her eyes narrowed. "Sneaky-sneaky." She snatched her hand away. If he wasn't going to dish the dirt, then she was going back to her shiny new toy admiring. Every surface was so smooth and pristine. She wasn't typically much of a "car girl," but she knew Dimitri had worked long and hard to buy this beauty. His boyish enthusiasm and manful pride were infectious. "You know…I don't think I've ever seen a truck with a backseat before."
Dimitri laughed. "They didn't make them before."
"That would explain it. Hey, what's in the box back there?"
Half his backseat was currently taken up by a sizable cardboard box. At first, it appeared to be just a standard brown moving box, but when she looked at it more closely she saw a thin white ribbon tied around it like a present - a strange hardware store-looking present. She turned around in her seat, maneuvered onto her knees, and began reaching for the box with both arms as if it were magnetized and her small hands were made of iron.
"That's another secret!" Dimitri shouted. Rose's ass was in the air right by his head and he gave it a swat. "Sit yourself back down, Ms. Hathaway, and hands off until we reach our destination." He shook his head; she was incorrigible.
Rose didn't change positions, but she did stop reaching for the box. "Is it for me?!" She demanded. "You know I'm not good with suspense, and especially when it has to do with presents! Tell me what it is! Please?"
"Nope. My lips are zipped."
She turned and stared at him as hard as she could over her own butt. Sitting back down was the same thing as admitting defeat, and she wanted to know what was in that box! It was suddenly the most important thing in the world, that box. Dimitri kept his eyes on the road, only shooting her a brief glance when traffic permitted. Usually, he would have caved by now, but he was holding tough.
"Please?" Rose wiggled her butt as seductively as she could manage at that angle. "Pleeeeeeeease?"
"No." He stated firmly, shielding his peripheral vision on that side with his hand. He knew her feminine tricks.
They carried on like that for nearly a mile before Rose finally admitted defeat.
"Fiiiiiiiine. You're no fair." She harrumphed. She crossed her arms over her chest in a full grouch before slumping back down in her seat like a first-class brat. "I don't want to look inside your dumb old box anyway. It's probably full of dumb stuff. Like a…dumb belt sander or something."
They both knew it was a lie. They also both knew that Rose had just named the only construction-related item she could think of at the time, but that was beside the point. She would gnaw off her own foot to get her grubby little mitts on that box if it wasn't for the fact that Dimitri had actually said the word 'no' to her. He never said no to her. He gave in to all her silly little whims and whines, usually with a shake of the head and an indulgent smile. They fought over the big stuff when they didn't see eye-to-eye, but this was the kind of thing he would typically just let her have.
She decided to let him have this one.
But that didn't stop her from sneaking another cheeky glance back at the mystery parcel.
"I sure hope it's not a puppy you've got back there for me because there are no air holes in that box."
Dimitri laughed. "It's not a puppy."
"Well, then I don't want it. Take it back." She made a big show of turning away from the box once and for all and shifted her focus to the truck's radio.
"In spite of it not being filled with baby animals, I think you'll be happy with it."
Dimitri spent the bulk of his morning going to different stores and restaurants to compile a picnic feast of all of Rose's favorite things to eat. His mother even woke up early to make a special batch of sour cherry dumplings with herbed farmers' cheese just for her. There was bread from her favorite bakery and spare ribs from her favorite Chinese spot. He even braved being sexually propositioned once more by Mary Angela Giordano in order to obtain the famed chicken parm sandwich from the deli counter at Giordano's. It had been a minute since he'd seen her, and she was still as horny for him as she ever was. He barely made it out of his old place of work with his clothes intact. That box was stacked fat with goodies, and Rose was going to plotz when she opened it.
"Yeah, says you." She snipped.
He sighed and brought her hand to his lips, kissing each of her knuckles as she used her other one to flip through the radio stations. His kisses quickly turned into sniffs, followed by the tiniest bit of licking.
"Your hand smells like Russian dressing." He observed before licking her pinky finger. "Tastes like it too." Rose giggled and turned to see Dimitri taking another strong whiff. He must have found the smell on her wrist peculiarly alluring because he couldn't seem to stop himself from running his nose and lips over it. "I think I like this combination - Rose and paprika… Did you do this just for me?" He asked.
"You caught me red-handed. I honeyed the trap. Somehow, I just knew slathering myself down with condiments would drive you wild with desire. It's got nothing to do with the fact that I serve about a million Reuben sandwiches per week."
"It really worked. A little too well. I think I'm going to have to eat your arm." He growled.
"Knock yourself out." She laughed and turned back to the radio. "I've got two of 'em." He nibbled at her forearm until her giggles turned to squeals. "Ahhhh! That tickles! Okay, okay, stop! I'm doing important work over here. We require tunes!"
"This is important too." Dimitri insisted with a mouthful of arm.
"Agree to disagree."
Rose turned the dial on the radio one more time, and suddenly everything was perfect in the world. The secret surprise box was forgotten for the time being as the sound of Elton John's The Bitch Is Back filled the extended cab of Dimitri's truck.
"YES! They're playing MY song! Give me back my arm!"
She cranked it up.
For the next twenty miles or so, Dimitri alternated between holding Rose's hand and rubbing her thigh while he listened to her sing off-key and dance to Elton John, Paul McCartney and Wings, Linda Ronstadt, and Stevie Wonder. The sun was shining, the autumn leaves were a riot of color, he was driving down the highway in his brand spankin' new truck, and he was with his girl.
"I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch, oh, the bitch is back / Stone-cold sober, as a matter of fact / I can bitch, I can bitch 'cause I'm better than you / It's the way that I move, the things that I do, oh-oh-oh"
He was in heaven.
"I'm not really in the habit of kidnapping women. No matter what you've heard through the grapevine."
"So that must be why this car ride is lasting so long then?" Rose complained. "I'm the only girl you'll ever get to kidnap, so you're taking your sweet time and really enjoying it. Where are we going?! I want my food and I want your snuggles. I gotsta have 'em now."
Dimitri held out for fifteen whole minutes before he was forced to tell Rose what was in the mystery box - which was still a record. The smell of food became too strong for the individual containers to conceal. She scented marinara sauce in the air, and nearly caused an accident with the force of her 'Aha!'
"How long have you lived in this state, and you still can't figure out where I'm taking you?" Dimitri asked, only a little exasperated by her impatience. They'd been heading east on the I-280 for a little less than an hour and were now completely surrounded by the glory of nature.
"I have absolutely no sense of direction. You know this. I have to go somewhere ten times before I remember how to get there without a map. Please just tell me!"
"I don't have to tell you because we're here."
Rose was so busy griping that she hadn't noticed Dimitri take an exit from the interstate, and turn onto a long winding rural backroad. Soon a large wooden sign came into view. "Buttermilk Falls...? This is the place you were talking about on our first date, isn't it!?" She bounced in her seat. She knew this was one of his special spots.
He was sharing a lot of himself with her today. They hadn't been together for very long, but even so, Dimitri was slow to reveal background information about himself to her. He wasn't withholding per se, but he was definitely cautious. It hurt her feelings a little at first, his reluctance to open up and let it all out. She liked him so much right from the beginning and often worried her gregarious nature might overwhelm him, that her temper and too-loud laugh would send him packing. Then he introduced her to his family. They took a shine to her immediately and reassured her Dimitri was like that with everybody, including them sometimes. They were actually impressed by how much ground she'd already gained with him and told her as much. As for this afternoon, the presents were all well and good, but every glimpse she got behind Dimitri's protective curtain was the best gift she could receive.
If there also happened to be food lurking behind that curtain, well then who was she to question her good fortune?
Dimitri brought the truck to a stop in a marked parking space near the top of the stone steps that would take them down to the rocky pond area at the bottom of the falls. It was the off-season for tourists, and he hoped at least one of the few grassy areas he'd seen down there on his previous visits would be available for their picnic. He took the key out of the ignition and smiled at Rose. For a moment during all her complaining he thought it possible she wouldn't remember him mentioning this place. It was a stupid thought to have. Rose couldn't find her way out of a wet paper bag facing due North, but she never forgot a single thing he ever told her about himself. If she was surprised to be there today, it wasn't because she'd forgotten he said he loved this place, it was because she didn't expect him to bring her there. She wasn't accustomed to having nice things done for her just because she was Rose. Grand gestures were entirely out of her wheelhouse. Her parents never spoiled her a day in her life, and until he came along, her previous boyfriends were all a bunch of fumbling boys who were far more concerned with trying to get past second base than they were with endeavoring to deserve her.
He wanted to deserve her. He was getting there.
"Uh-huh. I told you I'd bring you here one day, and here we are."
As turned out, they had the entire place to themselves that afternoon. They climbed down to the base of the falls and laid out their impressive spread of food over one of Yeva Belikova's older, more worn-out quilts. Just as Dimitri had predicted, Rose went absolutely crazy over all the food he'd procured for her. She moaned and cheered with every new item lifted from the box. They both stuffed themselves to bursting, gazing up at the white water cascading spectacularly down the ninety-foot-high red shale face of the ridge towering above them.
Rose napped for a few minutes here and there with her head on Dimitri's chest, lulled by the sound of the water and the steady beat of his heart under her ear.
He watched her doze and played with the tendrils of her hair. She was so damned beautiful, and he was so damned whipped. There he was, laying on the ground in front of one of nature's more wondrous displays, and he couldn't bring himself to stop looking at her as she snored and burrowed further into his shirt like a drunk kitten.
One of his buttons made an indent on her cheek.
Eventually, he managed to fish out one of his paperbacks from the box using his foot and free hand. Rose didn't stir during the extraction process, but she magically snapped awake the second he found the spot where he left off last on page two hundred and thirty.
She was hungry.
They ate more. They made out pretty hot and heavy for a while, too. Rose told him about a customer she had that morning who told her he was an artist and left her a doodle on his napkin instead of an actual tip. Dimitri recounted his experience haggling with the salesperson at the car dealership, bragging about how he managed to save nearly $2,000 by leaning heavily into his Russian accent and pretending not to understand what the word "warranty" meant.
They spent some time exploring the terrain. It had rained a lot recently, so everything around them was still dewy and green while everything up above them had begun to turn orange and red. The air smelled of chlorophyll and musty wet rocks. As Rose quickly discovered, everything was also very slippery. She nearly took a header off a moss-covered log, and probably would have taken Dimitri down with her if she hadn't managed to grab onto a nearby branch at the last possible second before the disaster. He laughed when she spoke directly to the log and said, "You used to be cool, man."
"How do you know it's a man?" He asked.
"I meant man in a universal way. Like how a beatnik would say man." She explained. "Though I do suppose there is something at least a little phallic about a giant mossy log. I doubt I'd call an orchid man if I tripped over it."
Neither of them wanted to leave their tiny early October paradise, but the sun was starting to sink in the sky and Rose's mother turned into the mother of all crazy bitches when her daughter came home later than expected. She grumbled her way back up the stone steps, trailing behind Dimitri by about five stairs for the whole stretch even though his climbing was somewhat hindered by the large box full of the remnants of their meal he was carrying in his arms.
"I'm so full right now. I think by the time we make it back to your truck they will have to change the name of this spot from Buttermilk Falls to Rose Hathaway Barfed Here Falls." She announced.
Dimitri continued stepping and replied over his shoulder. "Doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Although, if that was the new name, we would probably be the only ones here again the next time we came."
"What do you mean next time?" She asked. "I can't go on any further. This is where I live now. Right here on these stairs. Just leave the box. I can make a shelter out of the cardboard and quilt, and I'll live off the extra baguette until springtime. Or I'll use it as a tentpole since I'm probably full enough to just hibernate. I'll figure out the bathroom situation later."
He laughed. A loaf of bread wouldn't last Rose two hours let alone sustain her through an entire New Jersey winter. Nor would it make a good tentpole.
"We're almost to the top. You'll make it. Just visualize a win."
"You can't win at taking the stairs. You either get to the top of them or you die. I think I'm gonna die." At this point, she was basically yanking herself up the stairs by the metal handrail.
"Usually you would be running up these stairs ahead of me, and calling me an old man or a rotten egg. And no dying on our three-month anniversary date. It would really put a damper on all my careful planning."
"On our what?!" Rose asked.
He could hear that she'd stopped stepping.
Yet again, he didn't turn around when he spoke. Her response instantly made him second-guess himself. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything. "Ahhh, well, we went on our first date exactly three months ago today. That's why I brought you out here…to celebrate."
"Oh." That shut her up real quick. No more complaining about the stairs; she just took them one slow labored step at a time.
He was clearly waiting for her to speak. Rose was the person in their relationship who spoke.
She wasn't sure how to address this new development without saying something that would hurt his feelings. But a three-month anniversary?
Dimitri reached the top first. He set the box down next to the truck and waited for her to catch up. The look on her face was tricky to read. She didn't appear to be on the verge of being sick anymore, which was good, but she also didn't look happy. That could be bad.
"What's the matter? You look upset." He asked, prepared for puking or maybe shouting.
"Nothing. I just - I was just thinking." She answered slowly.
"About?"
"I was thinking about the fact that walking up all those stairs made me hungry again…?"
An evasion.
Dimitri crossed his arms over his chest, looked at her for a moment, then shifted his eyes down to the ground a few feet in front of him. Clearly, he'd made a misstep somewhere, and he wasn't letting her into the vehicle until he got to the bottom of it.
"You're giving me the look? Really? Who am I, Mickey?" Rose demanded.
She'd seen him give Mickey this ground glare on multiple occasions. She knew what it meant. Especially when his lips pressed together in a thin line like they were doing right now, and his eyebrows were both raised like they were now.
The look remained.
"It's not a big deal! Oh, for Christ's sake, really? Fine. I just got thrown off for a second, okay? I never really thought of myself as a three-month anniversary type. Today was so perfect, and you are so wonderful for putting all of this together for us. Really, from the second you rolled up next to me on the street it's been a dream day. Even with those godforsaken stairs. I just…well we really have to be together for a year to have an anniversary, right? It's in the word - anniversary. Three months… is kinda not a thing. If we stay together for a full year, we would have an anniversary, maybe, and that date will void this one out entirely. I personally think all anniversaries are sorta dumb. I always have. But three months is more…not real than it is dumb. I just don't want us to be that couple. I would honestly forget every single month if we were that couple. I'm also not big on Valentine's day while we're at it."
"I did feel a little embarrassed saying it just now. In my head it was all really romantic, but when I actually said the words… they sounded like the words of a fifteen-year-old girl." Dimitri admitted sheepishly.
"So you're not mad at me?"
Dimitri shook his head "You're not less attracted to me for being a fifteen-year-old girl?
Rose shook her head. "Nope." Then a thought occurred to her. "Okay, how about we decide this date is NOT our three-month anniversary anymore - as we both are in agreement that it's not a real thing in the first place - and instead, this is your truck's birthday party."
"My truck's birthday?"
"Yep! It came into your life today, it was born into your world, and today it shall be given a name!" Rose's finger shot into the air emphatically. She was almost excited enough about this idea to forget she was hungry again.
"I have to pick a name for my truck today?" He wasn't convinced.
"Uhhh, no," Rose replied as if he'd just said the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. "I get to pick the name for your truck today. We've already set a precedent of me naming your trucks. Betty was an excellent name, and I'm sure this truck will be just as pleased with my choice."
This conversation had taken such an abrupt turn, short questions were all Dimitri could string together. "Do I at least have veto power?"
"No. This is not a democratic process. If it were up to you, that truck's name would be Dimitri Belikov's Truck."
He grumbled.
"But if we break up, you can rename the truck whatever you want!" She offered.
He grumbled again. This was the second time today he was haggling over this truck, but this time he could only walk away with the upper hand if he broke up with his girlfriend - something he never wanted to do. "I'm not satisfied with your terms, but I'll allow it because I'm too in love with you to say no to anything you want this badly."
"You WHAT!?"
They both froze, eyes wide. Caught in the same headlights.
He just said it. The words slipped out of his mouth, and now they were out there floating around them like an accidental fart.
Love.
Dimitri's face crumpled, and he ran his palm over the five o'clock shadow that was forming on his chin and throat. He'd planned on telling Rose he loved her for the first time today. This was technically part of the itinerary, but he really saw it going a different way. The fifteen-year-old girl part of his brain wanted to say it at sunset. He thought maybe they would pull over somewhere, he would kill the engine, turn to her, gaze adoringly into her eyes, and say, "Rose, I love you, darlin'."
Because in his fifteen-year-old girl brain he was also Elvis Presley.
Elvis Presley on a three-month anniversary date.
What the fuck was he thinking?
He needed a new plan - fast. Rose was standing in front of him looking confused and excited, her beautiful brown eyes shining with tears that were just about to spill and her bottom lip quivering. She was obviously waiting for him to follow up his botched declaration with an explanation or an elaboration. Or with words of any kind. Any fucking words. Well, not any words. For a second he almost opened back up with, "Webster's dictionary defines love as -" Which was the verbal equivalent of a love abortion in all polite society.
What the fuck was wrong with his stupid brain every time he was around this woman!?
Why did she have the power to turn him into such a blathering fool?
Rose cleared her throat, and the sound drew his attention back outward to where she still stood right in front of him. Waiting. A little less patiently than before.
There wasn't time for a plan.
He took a deep breath, deciding his only choice was to fire away and fall back. "I said I love you, Rose. I'm in love with you." He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I love you…and it's my truck's birthday."
Silence.
"I LOVE YOU TOO!" Rose hurled herself at him. Scaling him like a tree, she wrapped her legs around his hips and gripped his shoulders for dear life. She kissed his mouth then both his cheeks, and she said "I love you" twice more before their lips met again, this time locking together. They tasted of marinara sauce and sour cherries, and the sun really was beginning to set behind them.
All according to plan.
Dimitri was certain at that moment, with Rose's tongue jammed halfway down his throat and her breasts pressing into his clavicle, to hell with the entire rest of the world and everything else in it that wasn't Rose Hathaway and their passionate, funky-tasting kiss. He was Elvis Presley, she was his bosomy brunette Ann Margaret, and life could be good sometimes - really fucking good.
On the ride back to town, Rose looked over at Dimitri behind the wheel. He was concentrating more closely on his driving now the light was fading. His face was a little pink, and there was a soft smile on his lips. "We didn't get to do the naming ceremony for your truck. We spent too much time kissing and saying 'I love you." She joked, turning his smile wry. They also got well on their way to fucking in the backseat of said truck, but were interrupted by a Park Ranger who was making his rounds on foot right by where they were parked. The fogged-up windows and obvious rocking were a dead giveaway.
"That's okay. You don't strike me as a woman who puts much stock in ceremony, anyway. You're a rebel, remember?"
Rose had explained to him earlier that naming a boat usually involved smashing a bottle of champagne against the bow, or so she was led to believe by various episodes of television. He wasn't partial to the idea for a number of reasons, chief amongst them being his desire to uphold the structural integrity of his vehicle, also it would undoubtedly stir up some pretty terrible memories for him involving beautiful girls and shattered glass. He took a deep breath and shook his head, willing his checkered past not to invade his nearly perfect here and now, and focused instead on problem-solving. They didn't have any champagne with them, but they did have a few bottles of beer left in the six-pack he brought. He promptly hid them under Yeva's quilt while Rose was still busy recounting the plot of a particularly funny gag from Get Smart - which ended up having nothing to do with boats or the naming of them, Rose just really liked Get Smart. She liked shoe telephones of any kind.
Not having anything to smash upset her for a moment, but then she decided that hitting the hood of his truck with their extra baguette would work just the same. That baguette was apparently an all-purpose miracle tool in Rose's book. Dimitri was honestly a little sorry to have missed out on seeing that - Rose dubbing the truck "Sir" or "Lady Something" with a loaf of bread like she was King Arthur.
"There are many facets to my personality. I'll have you know -"
"Besides, I already picked a name for my truck." He interjected.
"Hey! I'm the truck namer around here." She dropped the hand she'd just been holding and tossed both of hers in the air indignantly. "I'm the only one with bonafide credentials."
"What are your credentials?" He demanded. "And where can you be accredited for something like that?"
"Umm, let me see…I've done it before, and I'm pretty. Those are my credentials." She counted on two fingers.
"You're more than pretty," Dimitri was quick to correct, "but I'm the truck owner around here. As such, I'll hold no truck with your naming services." He cocked his brow, and couldn't stop himself from smirking.
"...Nice one." She rolled her eyes. "Well, what name did you choose?"
"Roza."
Tonight
"Yeah. That sounds right. Rose. I take it by the fucking apoplectic look on the Russian's face that you know this girl?"
Mickey poured himself a drink, and tossed it back before he'd even set the bottle back down.
"You could say that."
"You'll have to excuse me." Dimitri's voice sounded hollow even to his own ears.
At the moment, all he could hear was the sound of his own voice and a distinct high-pitched ringing. He knew Mickey was speaking to him because they were now sitting directly across from one another at the table, and his mouth kept slowly forming the word "Dimitri" over and over again.
D-I-M-I-T-R-I, D-I-M-I-T-R-I, D-I-M-I-T-R-I…
He didn't hear his name, though.
Mia Rinaldi was sitting in the booth next to Mickey with a concerned look on her face. Her mouth wasn't moving aside from when she took the occasional drag from her mother-of-pearl cigarette holder and then blew the smoke up toward the pendant lamp that dangled over their heads. He couldn't hear the strong whoosh of her exhaling, but he felt it on his face.
There wasn't any music playing, which was strange because he felt the intense "thump-thump-thump" of base tones vibrating around him, and when he looked to his right, he saw the dance floor packed with sweaty bodies all moving in time to the same rhythmic beat.
He wiped his hand across his forehead. Then he did it again, harder and slower.
He was deaf and he was overheating.
"I'm going to step outside for a -" His voice was still hollow, his ears were still ringing, and hecut himself off because something in the back of his mind told him 'fuck these words'.
Mickey watched Dimitri pry himself from the opposite side of the booth as though he was extracting himself from quicksand, not vinyl and velvet. Once freed, he turned and headed straight for the exit.
Dimitri was large in stature, tall and broad through the shoulder, but he always carried himself with a marked grace that seemed uncanny for a man of his size. That was not the case right now; he was bumping into everyone and everything along the way. This was unprecedented behavior, and it was fucking weird.
Mickey tried to be polite. "Mia, it was really nice meeting you, but I should -"
She cut him off. "Oh shut the fuck up and go after him already. I know it's nice to meet me. I've met me, remember?"
"I'm on it." Mickey scooted out of the booth as quickly as he could. The vinyl made horrible noises all along the way, but he was far too worried about Dimitri to be embarrassed. They'd already established that Mia was not the blushing type.
He made to run but stopped short and turned back to the table.
"You are one classy fucking dame, Mia Rinaldi." He grinned.
Mia set down her cigarette holder and leaned her body over the table onto her elbows, giving Mickey a better view of her ever-lowering bustline. "Keep your pecker up, Mickey Tanner. Life's a lot more fun when you do. Now, kick rocks. That man is likely to bust any moment and I'd lay odds it's going to be a real humdinger when he does."
Mickey offered her a slight bow before gunning it the fuck out of there like it was the last thing he'd ever do.
Which way did he go?
SOUNDTRACK
Never On a Sunday - Connie Francis (Olena ruins Bonanza!)
The Bitch is Back - Elton John (Rose's JAM)
Let Me Roll It - Paul McCartney and Wings (Dimitri's Truck Radio)
When Will I Be Loved - Linda Ronstadt (Dimitri's Truck Radio)
Living For the City - Stevie Wonder (Dimitri's Truck Radio)
Perfect Day - Lou Reed (Dimitri's Truck Radio / Dimitri in a daze at the club)
NOTES:
Sorry for the slow update. I went out of town for my birthday, and it set me back a bit.
The next chapter will take place entirely at the club, and we will finally meet Adrian!
I promise this story is going somewhere. I do have an endgame for it, and it involves more action.
If you are reading this story and enjoying it, please leave a review or add it to your follows / favorites. I've been feeling a little disheartened lately by the lack of response I'm getting.