Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two)

by Rachel Dunning

  He taps the odometer. “Not when they have over a hundred thousand miles on them and were built in 2001. But, I confess, I dug into a little of what mom and pops handed down to me to get it.”

  “You have access to it?”

  “Oh yeah, when I turned eighteen. My folks are cool. They’re not unreasonable. They just don’t, well, like this”—he twirls a finger near the snake on his neck—“too much. I think I broke their hearts when I got it done. So, where to?”

  “Williamsburg, south side.”

  He flips on Dr. Dre on his radio and starts driving.

  “G-Funk fan?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “G-Funk—gangsta funk. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Warren G.”

  “Is that what it’s called?”

  “Yeah, hypnotic grooves, deep bass, background female vocals. It’s West Coast stuff. Came about in the nineties. Good to mix with, ’cause of House’s own hypnotic grooves. East Coast rap doesn’t mix so well with the stuff I like doing. Jay-Z is great to listen to, but crap to mix into a house beat.”

  “No shit. You a fan? I mean, of this.” He points at the radio.

  “Not more than any other music.”

  “You just happen to know all that shit?”

  “Something like that.”

  -10-

  We arrive at Café Supercore and Viktoriya Golovkina is sitting outside in large fly-shades and a massive gray and brown faux-fur coat. Thick black leggings extend down from a tiny skirt, which is attached to an equally revealing deep V-neck dress. Never mind that it’s about thirty degrees out. Her lipstick, of course, is vividly red, just like her dress. She smiles widely when she sees me in the car, but when I look more closely, I see she’s also smiling at Skate.

  I turn to look at Skate, and the dude’s jaw is at his leg. I slap him on the chest. “Skate, toughen up, bro. Something tells me this chick likes a confident man.”

  He closes his mouth, swallows. “Sh—shit. She’s hot!”

  “Yeah, and I think she knows it.”

  His eyes still locked on hers through the window, he stretches his arm behind the back of his seat; pulls out a sketchpad and some Derwent drawing pencils.

  “What’s that?”

  “In case I get bored. Which I probably will, seeing as I’m spending the afternoon with two girls, neither of which I’m sleeping with.” He moves his eyes away from Viktoriya, finally, and gives me a warm smile.

  “I really appreciate it.”

  “And I’m really happy to do it. You’re part of the family now, Blaze Kablowsky.”

  I smack him hard on the shoulder. “You guys! It’s Kieliszewski!”

  “Hey, what’s the point of a little sister when you can’t tease her?”

  Little sister? Yeah, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy and mawkish inside. So I open the damn door and get out fast just in case I shed a freaking tear or something!

  -11-

  Viktoriya shakes my hand delicately, but her eyes stay on Skate. And her smirk doesn’t disappear.

  “Blaze, is good to see you again.” Goot to see you ahggenn.

  “You too, Viktoriya.”

  “Oh, please, you can call me Vikki. And dis gentleman is?”

  “Uhm, this is Sebast”—he suffers a brief moment of visible shock—“excuse me. Skate. This is Skate.”

  “Is pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She extends a hand out, lets her fingers dangle gracefully, waiting for him to grab it, and I swear it almost looks like he’s about to kiss it. “Blaze, I was only joking when I ask you to bring boy.”

  “I’m the bodyguard.”

  “Bodyguard?” Bawdyguarrrd. Vikki has an uncanny Brooklyn-Russian accent.

  “Uhm, yeah, it’s...a little complicated,” I say.

  Her smile widens. “Oh, dear, I ssink you and me are going to be very good friends. Now, Mr. Skate, I am sorry to do dis to you, but girls need private time to talk.”

  “I have to...watch Blaze. Sorry, Vikki—”

  “Is Viktoriya.” He seems a little confused, but I get she’s just playing a little hard to get with him. “Come wiss me.” She wraps an arm around my shoulder and gestures me inside. She turns to a small round table on the left. On it, sits a dude the size of half a sumo wrestler, dressed in a suit, and looking very Russian indeed. He was at Slambam the night she played, kicking speakers around and looking all Secret-Service-Like. She says something in Russian to him. He smiles, looks at Skate, gestures for Skate to sit.

  Skate does so. Then Viktoriya says, “Dis is Vlad. Vlad, Skate.”

  Vlad puts his hand out to Skate and they shake.

  “Vlad is my bodyguard. Happy?” She does that throat-clearing, phlegm-spewing H sound when she says “happy.”

  Skate smiles, looks at me, her, then at Vlad. A chuckle escapes him. “Very.”

  Before we go deeper into the café (which has lots of abstract-style paintings inside), she speaks to Vlad again in Russian. He laughs while looking at Skate, then nods. We turn and go into the back.

  “What did you say to him that made him laugh?” I ask.

  “I tell him I want the skinhead snake-neck’s telephone number before he leave wiss you.”

  -12-

  I find out that Vikki moved to Brighton Beach when she was seven, which is why she still has some of her accent. I notice it goes in and out, like most “accented” people I know. She’s twenty five now. We talk about music—a lot! And before I know it, she’s pouring Imperial vodka from a flask inside her coat, into my cappuccinos. I look over at Skate, and he’s buried in his sketch pad, oblivious to the world and everyone in it. Monster Guy in a Suit (“Vlad”) simply stares out the window, although I get the feeling he’s got owl-eyes, and is actually looking straight at Vikki in some way.

  By now, I confess, I’m a little tipsy.

  “Great cappuccino!” I wink and give a thumbs-up. Vikki cracks up laughing. “So, Vikki, what’s up with Terminator there? Why do you have a bodyguard?”

  She waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, is papah! Bft! He is paranoid. Think somebody is going to kill his daughter or something.”

  “No shit.”

  “No shit.” She stretches her neck out, looks over the counter at the barista. When she sees he’s looking away, she pulls out the silver flask and drops another shot in my cup.

  “Hey!” I snap my hand over it and some of the booze lands over it, then onto the table.

  Of course, we both find this hilariously funny.

  Finally, she settles back. She’s taken her coat off, and her skin is white as porcelain. “So, Blaze, you said on Wednesday you want to mix my music into your sounds?”

  “Uhm, yes.” I explain what I do, that I like working with indie artists. That I can’t offer any royalties in return, but that it always gets artists’ names out when I play. I tell her about House Market, Sacrament, all that shit. Her face is stoic, and I feel a little distant from her suddenly, like the friendship we’d just felt is indeed from the booze, and not because she’s a really easygoing Russian chick with a bodyguard.

  But, when I’m done, she sets my mind at ease by saying, “Blaze, is no problem. I would have told you that is OK over the phone. But I wanted to have coffee wiss you. And, I confess, I did little research on you.”

  “Oh.”

  “No need to panic! I googled your name, and I saw all the good news on the Bushwick and DJ forums about your set on Saturday. And I wanted to meet you, to see if I like you. Which I do.”

  “Oh.”

  Her lip starts twitching. “Blaze, I am not lesbian girl!”

  “Oh!” At this, we crack up...again.

  “I am talking friendship. Let us say, I am little different to the people I grew up with. A little bit...black sheep. And, well, is hard to find people to drink spiked cappuccino wiss sometimes.”

  “Well, I love spiked cappuccino.” She pulls out the flask, and I quickly protest! “Within reason!”

  “But there is one more reason I want to me
et wiss you.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  She scratches her cheek. “I saw you wiss Tolek Tomas on Wednesday.”

  The booze-high disappears faster than I can blink. “Tolek Two-Face.”

  “Ah. Good name. Yes, him.”

  “You know him?”

  She sighs. “Unfortunately, yes. We used to date once upon a time.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m not sure if he came to visit you at Slambam and got lucky seeing me, or vice versa.”

  “Huh?”

  She says, “He came back after you left, called me outside and asked to talk to me. What started out as a chat quickly led to big fight with his hands on my shoulders, shaking me. And then...” She looks away...

  “Vlad,” I say.

  “He went crazy on Tolek’s ass. They know him, of course. But I convinced them to let me speak to him alone. Well, I don’t know how I feel about them beating him up. I don’t love or like Tolek, sure. He’s asshole. But he didn’t hit me. I don’t want to be treated like some weak girl who can’t take care of herself. But Vlad reacted straight away. He gave me no time to tell him I was actually fine. Tolek had shit kicked out of him.”

  “Oh. How bad?”

  “A few bruised ribs. Maybe a broken nose.”

  “Wow.”

  “Tell me about it. So, anyway, now he’s on my bodyguard shitlist. Doesn’t matter what I say now, daddy-dearest won’t want him anywhere near me.”

  “But that’s a good thing, right?”

  “Not if word gets around. Imagine how many guys would want to date me if they found out my father would break their ribs.”

  “Break their ribs if they hurt you. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  She raises her shoulders, lets them fall.

  I tell her what Tolek said about wanting to congratulate me. Her eyebrows lift indignantly. “When I started to have some success with Red Lipstikk band, he always wanted to be around me. Is as if he like to fuck the socially important.”

  “We never...uhm...had sex.”

  “Lucky you. I promise you did not miss much.” I prrohhmiss.

  “He was a little... How can I word it?”

  “Unromantic?” she offers.

  “You are being polite.” This brings out further bales of laughter from us. Tears of relief are filling my eyes it’s so hilarious how she pinpointed it.

  I tell her about Savva, a little bit, and how she knew from the start that there was no “spark” between me and Tolek. As the words roll out, I find myself telling her more and more about my best friend, then about Xavier. I tell her about the fire, Deck...

  Oh, my, do we get onto talking about Deck! I tell her how much I love him (“And, Blaze, he is also fucking hot and sexy man on top of it!”), how my life seems to have come apart at the seams since I met him—in a good way. I tell her how my priorities have changed, how he’s given me hope.

  I just unload, months and months of withheld communication just pours out of me, each bit feeling like another ton being lifted off me. Every time I look over at Skate, he’s hunched down, sketching away, like I am when I’m with my music—in his own artistic world. I call him a few times, and he barely registers that I speak. I ask him if he’s cool, and he says he is, showing me the sketch pad. “Don’t worry about me, Blaze. I do this every day of my life. You take as long as you need.”

  I look up at Vikki, her bronze eyes intent with interest at what I have to say. “I feel like I could talk for a week with you,” I tell her.

  “You want to talk over more vodka? We can go to my place. Vlad will not be far behind. You can tell your boyfriend that you will be safe with me. Maybe you can even spend night?”

  It’s different, you know, unloading to a fellow girl. With Deck, it’s all hot and passionate, crazy roller-coaster, intense physical release. But I need something else right now. I’ve needed something else ever since Savva left me. And right here, it finally hits me, what I’ve been missing ever since she took herself so violently out of my life:

  I’d lost my best friend. My girlfriend. And I need one of those as much as I need a boyfriend. Maybe even more so. The logic for that is easy to understand if you’re female. And if you’re not, you just gotta trust me.

  As a joke, I say, “Vikki, wanna be my girlfriend?”

  She smiles all the way up to her eyes. Then, overly seductively: “Blaze, I was hoping you’d say that. That is really why I called you!” She pouts her lips exaggeratedly, like she wants to kiss me.

  We stand and share a hug—a long and meaningful one. When I let go of her, her mascara is smudged. Something tells me she also needs to unload on someone. A lot.

  And now I’m really looking forward to the vodka. Two girls getting drunk and talking all the shit they wanna talk about without fear of being judged.

  A taste of innocence in a non-innocent world.

  Damn, I’ve needed that. I’ve needed that so badly.

  -13-

  Skate stands instantly when I approach him. I realize he’s been “in his own world” but not at the expense of his responsibilities to me—or his promise to his friend. His hand fumbles to find the cover of the sketch pad, and he closes it.

  I explain what’s happening. I call Deck and tell him not to worry. Skate confirms with Deck that “this Viktoriya chick’s bodyguard looks like Secret Service, dude. Secret Service on Human Growth Hormone.”

  I tell Deck I’ll spend the night at her place “because...I just need it.”

  “I understand. You be with your girl. I’ll hang out with the boys tonight. I totally get it.”

  “I love you so much, Deck. You’re so incredible.”

  “You too, Blaze. Wanna grab breakfast tomorrow?”

  “Honestly, I think I’ll be hungover as shit in the morning.”

  “Ok. Let’s do the nighttime gig, then. You let us know the place. We’ll be there.”

  “Will do.”

  We tell each other we love each other a few more times, then finally put down the phone. Vikki’s all moon-eyed when I look at her. She gets it, I think.

  “Thanks, Skate. I really appreciate it.” I shake his hand, he rubs my shoulder like the caring big brother he now is to me.

  “No sweat.” He grabs the sketch-pad. “Uhm, Vik—Viktoriya, your, uhm, bodyguard dude here said you wanted my number?”

  She plays it cool. “Y—yes. Did you leave it wiss him?” I’m beginning to wonder if her accent isn’t bullshit, and if she doesn’t lay it on thick when talking around boys, just to add a certain exoticness to her aura; that whole La Femme Nikita thing.

  He opens the sketchpad, rips out his sketch, then hands it to her, smooth-cool grin on his face.

  I still haven’t seen the thing. But Vikki’s mouth has dropped to the floor and her hand’s going up to cover it.

  “Blaze, see ya.” Skate gives me a hug, then walks out. Oh so smooth. His Dodge Ram booms to a start, and he drives off.

  I turn to Vikki. “Vik?”

  She turns, dangles the sketch between index and thumb, still looking at it, then turns it so I can see it.

  My jaw also drops to the ground. And my hand also covers my mouth.

  Vikki’s milky skin goes red and flushed. She fans herself, raises her eyebrows, and whistles.

  -14-

  Firstly, you gotta understand that the sketch is utterly realistic. No abstract shit here:

  It’s a man making love to a woman. The woman is clearly Vikki—she has the same ragged blonde curls and the same face. She also has torn stockings (Vikki’s stockings were torn and shredded on Wednesday night while she sang at Slambam). On top of her spread legs is a dude with ripped muscles and a shaved head, a tattoo of a dragon spanning his entire back.

  And a snake tattoo around his neck.

  Below it all, is Skate’s telephone number.

  -15-

  “Vikki, you’re blushing. A lot.”

  “I would tell you it’s the vodka. But it’s not.”
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  “Wanna reschedule?”

  “Uhm”—she fans herself—“no, not at all. But, I might need to make quick bathroom break when we get to my place.”

  Oh, my, I’ve missed having this kind of friend. Really missed it.

  TWENTY-THREE

  TATIANA, GINA, AND CLARISSA.

  ANY OTHERS, MR. COCKS?

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  We’ve been looking for Dino for hours. And nothing. No sign of him anywhere. Not at the old haunts, not at the park. Nowhere.

  “You think he’s gone to Jersey?” Trev asks. “Gina had family there, didn’t she?”

  “Some aunts and uncles. Maybe he’s done that. Damn it, Trev. I gotta put a stop to this. I can’t let this shit spill over into Blaze’s world. That shit was crazy yesterday, homes.” I park the car in the nearest spot, just to think a bit.

  “Look, Deck, I know you get all hot-headed and stuff. And I go along with it because I know you got your process you need to go through. I mean, when you get something in your head, there’s nothing stopping you. But now that you’ve chilled out, I have to get in my two cents.”

  “Shoot.”

  “This is a motherfucking bad idea, bro!”

  As if caught with a hand in the cookie jar, I look over at him. I say nothing, because, of course, he’s right. I run a tired hand through my hair. “It’s so crazy, Trev. Since I met this girl, my world’s gone upside down. It’s like I’m experiencing the best and the worst of everything all at once. Before, everything was mediocre. The boat never rocked. Hell, now the boat can’t stop capsizing.”

  “So, what you wanna do?”

  “Let’s go over to Tom’s. Clarissa told me Gina wasn’t ‘doing well.’ Maybe she knows something about Dino.”

  We head on over to Tom’s in Prospect Heights. I call Skate and he meets us there. After the usual “You guy’s decided to go pro yet?” talk with Mr. De Luca behind the counter (who, contrary to popular belief, is not the eponymous “Tom”), we pick a booth and wait for Clarissa. Gum in mouth as always, she comes by and gives us our free coffee (we really love Tom’s) and we order meals. Just before she leaves, I grab her by the arm and say, “Hey, uhm, after we eat, could I see you about Gina?”