Cornered

by Rhoda Belleza

  But I didn’t say that. I said: “This is what you define as working hard enough to get you out of the Yards? Slumming around a gross living room in Russian Vodkas, dragging me to some sleazy drug deal? Are you trying to make a point?”

  “Hey!” said Peter Piyotr.

  “What?” I said to him. “Am I very wrong, or are Vadim and I here for a drug deal?”

  Peter Piyotr started to argue, then changed his mind. “Nah, you’re right,” he shrugged. “It’s a drug deal.”

  “You see?” I said to Vadim. “You’re going to fry the brains of some innocent little kid and damn them to a life of prostitution. . . .”

  “My mom does that, and she’s not even on drugs,” some guy from the kitchen called. The two in front of the TV laughed. How many people were in this house right now?

  I turned to them. “Do you guys all live here?”

  They ignored the question. “You know what is so great about this place?” asked one of them. “It is so quiet. Very desirable. No one ever comes here. No cops, no nobody. From inside these houses, you can hear nothing.”

  “Oh, Jupiter knows all about that,” Peter Piyotr said, moving closer. He stood inches away from me when he spoke, almost into my ear. Under different circumstances, it might have tickled. “Our Jupiter, he lives in a warehouse. It is even bigger and more isolated. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” I ventured. With him this close, there was nothing to do but agree.

  “I bet he has room to store shit there. Lots of shit. And at good cool temperatures, too. I’ll bet Jupiter would do that for us for free. I bet he would do anything we say.”

  “I bet he would.” Vadim smiled wickedly. Wickedly. Is this why he’d brought me here?

  “Are—are you serious?” I asked. Usually I only spoke Russian to my parents and having to use it now made me feel violated on every level of my brain.

  They started laughing. For real, now. Peter Piyotr, the guys on the floor, even Vadim. Vadim laughed hardest of all—toothily, scarily. His laugh filled the room. It was like a stench of a million farts at once. You couldn’t tune it out. It pressed against me on all sides.

  “Blyad, Jupiter, I don’t even know why I brought you,” Vadim said after he caught his breath. He sounded more whiny than angry. “Just please grow up a little?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Just stop talking to me. I’m out of here. I’m out of your whole life. Just say the word.”

  “You want a word? Here is the word: sick. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of your little social games. You can’t keep getting off the phone with me to talk to Devin Murray just because she has boobs and I don’t. Or Crash Goldberg. Or Bates, who God knows what his appeal is, but he is for sure not cooler than me—not with all those spikes and chains. Or maybe you’re into that now?”

  “Fine Vadim. Just stop insulting me.”

  “What? Did I hurt your pretty little ego? What could some unpopular nobody like me say to bother someone like you?” Vadim’s eyes danced wildly. He was playing with me.

  “Okay, that’s it,” I said, moving toward the door. “I’m leaving.”

  “No, don’t,” says Peter Piyotr. “Really, keep fighting. This shit is great.”

  Of all the things that piss me off about Peter Piyotr Khazarimovsky, this is the biggest: he isn’t even Jewish.

  Not to sound prejudiced. Most of my friends aren’t Jewish either. To be honest, there isn’t much that actually makes me Jewish, except that people would tease me about it back in Zvrackova, and the government kept records on us along with the rest of the Jews. But Peter was such an asshat about it. When he borrowed ten dollars from Vadim and never gave it back, he’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry . . . it must be my Jewish side.” His parents, Vadim’s stepuncle and his wife, had lied to the Jewish Federation and told them their family was Jewish, filled out all the necessary forms and got a free ride all the way to America. It wasn’t that simple, but it basically was. Peter was always bragging about it, how easy it was to rip off the rich American Jews.

  It was wrong of me to think, but his house, his parents’ jobs, even his respected (if dubious) social status—all of this could have been mine. If we’d gotten here a little earlier. If I’d gotten to live in Russian Vodkas instead of some run-down factory. If this really was the land of equal rights, instead of the country of take-what-you-can-get.

  A cell rang. Russian disco. A bleeping, tinny, cheesy melody that nobody in the rest of the world would think was cool after 1977. Please, I thought, shoot me now.

  Peter Piyotr reached into his pocket and picked up.

  “Da. Da? Da.”

  Three quick staccato sounds. Then he hung up.

  “Joe is here now. You,” he said motioning to one of the guys in front of the TV. “Go outside and help him bring the goods inside.”

  • • •

  Joe was the archetype of the rock star, if by “rock star” you think of someone from the ’80s. A number of fat gold chains hung around his neck, and his eyes were shielded by a pair of sunglasses that looked like they had their own backup generator. Over his shoulders was draped a studded leather jacket. He moved fast, brisk, and dangerously, as though any movement of his hand could land at the base of my throat.

  “Here is loot,” Joe said. He and other guy held bulging brown paper bags and overturned them, spilling its contents all over the table.

  Out fell hundreds, literally hundreds of tubes of Wint-O-Green Life Savers.

  The cascade ran dry eventually, and Joe and Peter Piyotr stared at Vadim with an air of expectation. “Is good?” asked Joe.

  “This is perfect,” said Vadim, running his fingers through the stash. “I’ll take them up to the lab I set up and pulverize them for you, right?”

  He watched Joe when he spoke. So did everyone else. It was painfully clear to the entire room that Joe was the one in control. Now, Joe nodded with approval. “Is good,” he proclaimed once again, this time a statement.

  Everyone was nonchalant. I was the only mental slowpoke in the room. “Uh . . .,” I stumbled. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Grind them into powder,” Vadim replied. “And probably remove those stupid-as-hell sparkles. They make it look like impure product.”

  “Impure . . .?” I said. “But what are you going to do with that? What do you use it for?”

  “We sell,” said Peter Piyotr. “The kids, they like to snort. Also use when going down on the girlies—it turn into fire sparks.”

  His upper lip curled into a jurassic smile. Clearly, he was amused by my ignorance.

  “We go upstairs,” said Joe. “Follow.”

  In a spare bedroom, Vadim had set up a virtual manufacturing plant. Glass beakers, metal boxes with dials attached to their sides, aluminum rods suspended at weird angles.

  Immediately, Joe and Peter Piyotr got to work peeling open packages of the Life Savers. So did the other guys. Vadim was busy on the controls. I took advantage of my outsider status and stood next to him, observing quietly, hoping my inaction would be mistaken for actively helping.

  The truth was, I was no stranger to heavy machinery. I worked and lived in a factory. I was usually able to tell what machines did from their shape, size, and maybe even the awkward parts that stuck out. But here, I was totally mystified.

  I had to hand it to Vadim. He’d made himself a functioning laboratory that kicked any high school chem lab’s ass. Not only that, but it was paid for and housed by the kids least likely to think that science was cool. Somehow Vadim—Vadim!—had made himself into the kind of person that the kids who beat us up respected.

  I fingered a fine powder that lay piled next to one particularly twisted plastic tube.

  “You use all this stuff just to smash up Life Savers?”

  “Well, no,” said Vadim matter-of-factly. “The rest of it is for purifying the crystal meth.”

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “Are you making drugs?”

  Peter Piyotr cracked that crooke
d grin even wider. The final Life Savers were dropped into the pinball arrangement of machines. Vadim hit the switch. Peter Piyotr and Joe watched approvingly—feet parted wide like cowboys, mouths just short of drooling—as their candy was pulverized.

  “You want a free sample?” He slipped his long, sinewy fingers in between curls of my hair, gripped hard, and gave my body a yank.

  It wasn’t just that I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t know what to do with drugs. When my nose bled, I couldn’t even take drops because I couldn’t figure out how to stop breathing long enough to use them.

  Peter Piyotr lowered my face into the table. He got down on his knees and leaned closer. “We don’t like the people who say, ‘We are better than you,’” he snarled in my ear. “Only one thing we hate more than that. The people who come here and want free stuff. And we hate the giving stuff away, yes, Andrei?”

  “Yes, this is right.” One of the TV guys, who had switched from slowly passing out in the living room to passing out on this floor, gave a sadistic giggle.

  “But you, you are special. You are friend of Vadim. You apparently like us here so much that you care to watch everything we do, yes?”

  “No!” I cried out, feeling my hair pulled even harder. “I wasn’t watching anything! I was barely looking at you!”

  “I do not think so. Perhaps you are narc, sent to us from cops. Yes?”

  “No!” He was bearing down on me, now, pushing me down to my knees. Seeing the table come desperately close to my face, I began to think fast. By which I mean, I didn’t think at all. I began to hyperventilate. “You never made Vadim do this, did you?”

  Peter Piyotr laughed. Flecks of spit shot in my ear. “Vadim must be kept straight. He must measure the stuff, you see.” He stood the straw up vertically. It was almost in my nose. I tried to pull away. “You should say thank you for this, man.”

  I stopped breathing. I tried not to inadvertently inhale. If a few flecks up my nose, who knew what would happen?

  On the floor, Andrei and the other guy peeled with wheezy laughter. Their eyes were half closed.

  “Jesus,” said Peter Piyotr in disgust. Finally, I thought, he shows his true religion. “You act like we torture you. You know how much this shit cost?”

  He dipped his own head down, brought his nose to the tip of the candy-striped straw, and breathed deep. He paused before coughing, twice, from someplace deep in his lungs. His body keeled back.

  I shook. I shook so hard I thought I’d lost control of my own body. His hand, which a moment ago had been on my collar, slumped down onto my back. The rest of his body lay in the inch-deep shag carpet. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open. Drool was puddling. His chest rose and fell peacefully, reminding me oddly of a baby.

  The other guys scrambled to their feet, instantly sober. They pulled themselves to their feet, jaws loose, limbs flailing. In seconds they were gone.

  “Fucking slowpoke,” Joe grumbled. He bent down over Peter Piyotr’s body and started to fish through his jacket.

  Vadim and I watched as he pillaged the rest of Peter Piyotr’s pockets. He pulled out several plastic envelopes of powdery white stuff and a fat wad of cash, rolled up like I’d only ever seen in movies. I glanced at Vadim. Vadim was staring at Peter Piytor’s body in horror.

  Joe rose. In his jacket pocket, I spied the glint of a long silvery knife. He looked at us dead on. There were no questions about what we’d seen or hadn’t seen. We’d seen it all.

  “Is easy this time,” he said, by way of explanation. “Did not even have to ask.” His laugh made it clear that ask was a euphemism for something much, much less pleasant.

  He moved to the door. “Is no problem. Peter he sniff-sniff too fast. Will . . . wake up, few hours maybe.”

  “You—you’re not going to rob us, too?” Vadim said. His voice was so high it cracked.

  Joe’s laugh got bigger. “Why? You got any money?”

  “I don’t have anything. I—I was supposed to get paid,” Vadim apologized, shaking his head.

  Joe smirked, peeled a bill off the wad, and chucked it in Vadim’s direction. It landed on the floor between them.

  “Here you go,” said Joe. “No tip.”

  He ducked through the doorway, which was barely big enough to hold his massive body. When he was finally gone and we heard the door slam and looked at each other in utter disbelief.

  “Come on.” Vadim grabbed my hand and threaded his fingers in my own. If anyone saw us they’d laugh or chasing us, maybe both. But nobody did.

  We waited just as long as it took for the roar of his engine to die out, then stepped onto the porch overlooking the streets of Russian Vodkas. The road was wet like it’d just rained, as if a flash flood had come through and we’d completely missed it. The sidewalks were completely empty. There was no one left in the world but the two of us.

  Vadim pulled me off that porch. I pulled him out of that place. We ran. Together, we ran.

  Inside the Inside

  BY MAYRA LAZARA DOLE

  SHE DIDN’T DO IT. I know she didn’t do it.

  I walk past The Last Bookstore in a daze and pluck my cell out of my jean pocket to read more of the news feed.

  blyss gordon was last person seen w gustavo olivera . . .

  gus’s swollen, discolored body found floating under south beach pier . . .

  cops hunting down blyss & likely accomplice, mik Donaldson . . .

  My hands shake. I never thought I’d make the news this way. I’ve got to find Blyss, but she’s not responding to my texts.

  I pass Frugal Café and notice a boy in goggles, sipping blood-red pomegranate juice. He’s got disheveled hair and looks like a sci-fi kid from a dystopian novel. His marble eyes—a swirling mix of violet, apricot, and lime—drill into me.

  “She’s over there,” he juts his chin across the street toward Arte Gallery, “inside the inside. Just keep going up and up until you reach the apex.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Whatever you do,” he ignores me, “don’t look back until you get there.”

  “What makes you think I’m looking for someone?”

  “Don’t waste time asking me questions. She’s waiting for you.” His stare pierces my marrow, and I speed up my pace. Maybe I’ll find her safe, hiding somewhere, in a vault or crawl space. She must be terrified.

  I used to be nothing before Blyss. Her electricity fired me up and melted me down, awakening me to a new world of feelings and temptations. She’s my savior, and now it’s my turn to rescue her. I won’t let those crazy lies come between us.

  I cross the street, remembering my first conversation with Blyss in French class. She had her head in a novel, and I plopped down on a chair next to hers.

  “Whoa,” my eyes widen, “you read entire novels in French?”

  “It’s no big deal.” She shuts the book and her eyes meet mine. “I’m sure you have some secret talent too.”

  “I guess. My parents have forced me to play classical piano since I was four, but I hate it.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll help you break a finger and you’ll be all set.”

  Blyss has a crazy sense of humor that’s misunderstood. She’s caring, witty, and captivating. Sure, she might have hated Gus, but she wasn’t capable of murdering him.

  I enter the gallery and a pungent smell of raspberries explodes in my face. My feet feel leaden as I walk past rows of watercolors searching for my girlfriend. A massive painting taking up half a wall titled Desert iLand: Inside the Inside catches my attention. My eyes dart everywhere, seeking an entrance around it. I catch a glimpse of the slightly peach, almost translucent colored water that appears so real I can’t veer my focus from it.

  I press a finger into the canvas and dunk it in. When I pull it out, it’s dripping wet.

  “What the hell?” I say aloud as I stumble backward. My mind reels, trying to make sense of everything. This isn’t possible. She can’t be in there. I inch forward, taking in every detail of
the painting. Tall, swaying palms line the left side of a long path. A vast ocean stretches along on its right, and a dense, chilling fog hovers over the open sea. Far in the distance, there’s a dot of an island.

  A flashing sign on top of the painting averts my attention: TAKE SIX STEPS FORWARD AND STEP INSIDE THE INSIDE.

  I know I need to enter, but apprehension seeps into me when I hear crashing waves. This is insane. Just as I’m about to turn around and leave, I hear Blyss’s voice filled with fear, calling to me through the canvas—at least I think that’s where it’s coming from:

  “Come in and find me, Mik . . .”

  “Blyss?” I peer into the artwork.

  “Where are you?” she responds in a sharp tone.

  I take one step. Two. Three. They get lighter and lighter as I float toward the painting. Gusting wind and sea spray batters against my body, flapping open my jacket and oversized shirt. A deep pull yanks me, spins me around and hurls me inside. I land on my feet, but just barely. I reach out to touch a palm and realize it’s made of origami.

  This can’t be. My mind struggles to grasp reality, but there’s no anchor.

  Hissing noises, like creatures closing in, mock me from behind. I think of the guy in the café, his voice deep and steady, telling me: keep going up and up . . . and don’t look back. So I do. I take off running with screeching, growling sounds chasing me, spurring me on.

  I sprint on the trail, uphill, toward the summit. Every second that passes under the harsh, blinding sun takes an enormous effort. The footpath becomes steeper and my heart thumps harder in my chest. Stinging sweat drips into my eyes. I shake my long hair, spraying droplets everywhere. My feet ache and my lungs are about to burst as I pound up this endless, impossible hill. I stop to catch my breath, doubled over with eyes shut.

  Keep going. For Blyss.

  My leg muscles spasm as I battle to continue pushing forward. This damn jacket is dragging me down. I tear it off and throw it behind me, panting as I dash straight up to the apex. Out of breath, I look up at a cobalt blue sun, shooting vibrant rays into the ocean. I drop my head and scrutinize the waters. They’re teeming with multicolored fish turning into white winged butterflies flattening into horizontal sheets. Twirling into whirlwinds, they spit out pink starfish-like creatures with antennas that whip back and forth.