The Guest Room(16)

He ran one of his hands through his hair. “Got it.”

“Life’s not an Xbox game.”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”

“Besides: those two girls are a lot better off if we find them first.”

“First?”

“Before their—and please hear the sarcasm in my voice—managers. Bosses. I don’t know who those two dudes on ice are. Their wallets are gone. I’m sure the IDs in those wallets would have been false anyway. Completely made up.”

“Couldn’t you figure out who they are by their DNA?”

“You’ve watched too many cop dramas on TV. CODIS only helps if we have their DNA on file. Unless they have criminal records, there’s no reason to believe we would.”

“Same with the two girls?”

“That’s right. Which is too bad for them. Because those two corpses the M.E. will autopsy in the morning? They weren’t working alone. And even if they were pretty low on the food chain, there are still going to be some seriously pissed-off people out there who want those girls back: either they’ll want to put them back to work because they are just so incredibly lucrative or they’ll want to kill them. And if I were a betting woman, I would bet the latter. They’ll want to make sure their other girls don’t think for one second they can get away with this sort of…disobedience. Let’s face it: as lucrative as those girls might have been, they’re still just a commodity. They’re just not all that hard to replace.”

He finished the last of his water and stood up. He took a step and stumbled, nearly falling into the credenza. He held up his hands for Patricia. “Not drunk,” he said. “At least not…anymore.”

“Just clumsy?”

“I am clumsy. I really am. You would not believe the ridiculous things I’ve done in my life,” he said, recalling the Audi as it rolled backward down his driveway. “But just now? That was just me being…”

“Shaken?”

“Yeah. Shaken.” He knew he had to call Kristin and tell her to remain at her mother’s. Tell her that he’d join her there. He had to tell her that she couldn’t come home. And in a few hours—he would wait until eight-thirty as a courtesy, but not a second later—he would call his lawyer, Bill O’Connell. The very idea that he needed Bill for something like this caused his stomach once more to lurch, and he made a mental note to try and recall every single thing he had said at the police station. God, how drunk had he been that he hadn’t called Bill right away?

“One more thing,” the detective said.

“Yes?”

She tilted her head toward the top of the breakfront. “You will need to take your cat with you.”

He glanced up at Cassandra. Sure enough, she was still watching them.

“Okay. Sure. Of course.”

“But take nothing else. The rest of your life? Has to stay right here.”

He saw the world was starting to lighten outside the eastern window, a thin, quavering band of bleached sky. He realized he was dreading the sunrise: it would illuminate just how much his world had changed since yesterday—and how damaged was the little bark that carried his soul, how far it was from the shore, and how menacing were the waves in between. No one, he knew, was ever going to look at him quite the same way again.





Alexandra


The day after my mother died, Vasily appeared at our apartment, this time with bouquets of flowers. And jars of honey for my grandmother. And traditional pomegranate wine. And less traditional but more modern Armenian red wine. And a necklace for me. And a Bible. And, surrounding him like marble columns and carrying all these presents, two hulking Russian dudes in black suits and shaved heads. You know the look. Gangster. Vasily called them his security. I had seen these guys or guys like them around him before. Vasily owned that brandy factory in Yerevan and another one in Volgograd. He was very big deal. Or at least he thought he was very big deal. Looking back, why would a brandy factory executive need security? I thought it was just vanity. I thought he just wanted to feel like even bigger shot than he was. Nope. It was because of his other businesses—mostly businesses involving girls like me—that he wanted thugs all around him. You probably don’t need bashers if all you do is make brandy.

My grandmother and I were both in shock those days. Those weeks. Those months. Neither of us was at our best or thinking straight. Maybe if my mother had not just died, we would have seen through Vasily’s bullshit.

He claimed that he knew people in the Moscow Ballet. He said they were important people. He told my grandmother this in a hushed voice, as if the truth was so great it could only be spoken in whispers. He added that he would tell my dance teacher this, too.

But maybe I would never have seen through his lies. Remember, I was a kid who loved ballerinas. It was just a few years earlier I had been playing with dolls.

…

My dance teacher was named Seta Nazarian and she had the most beautiful curly hair. Her eyes always were smiling. Her heart was big. But she was tough on her dancers, and I think she missed how orderly the world was when it was communist. Sometimes I worry she would have been in difficult position if she and Vasily had ever spoken. Looking back, I’m honestly not sure she believed I was so good it would have been worth a trip to Moscow for me to audition. Maybe she would have thought so. But maybe not. Would she have guessed what Vasily had in mind and protected me? Again, I’ll never know. But I don’t think she would have figured it out. She probably would have decided I was long shot for the company. But I was a good student and a good dancer. I really was the best in her class. I think she would have liked what it said about her if I had wound up in the ballet in Moscow. The old communist inside her would have been proud. So I had to try. I think she would have let me.