The Altar Girl: A Prequel

by Orest Stelmach

  I zipped down the parkway, took the first exit, looped around to the north side, and gunned the engine.

  Fear, prudence, and Donnie Angel be damned.

  I was headed back to Hartford.

  CHAPTER 26

  NADIA’S FATHER KEPT his palm on her forehead and studied her eyes. It would have been hot a couple of hours ago, she guessed, but thanks to Mrs. Chimchak’s aspirin it probably wasn’t that hot. She didn’t feel as though she was burning up inside anymore.

  Marko stood beside him. The flames from the torch burning in his hand prevented Nadia from seeing his eyes. She wished the torch had died.

  “Not that bad,” her father said. “A bit hot. Light fever. Not heavy fever. Not that bad. Is it, Nadia?”

  Nadia shook her head right away. “Uh-uh. Not that bad. Not that bad at all.”

  Her father patted her on the head. “That’s my girl.”

  Marko cleared his throat. “Um, I’m not so sure about that. Looks pretty bad to me.”

  Their father ripped Marko a new one with a single glance. “What do you know about the human body, slacker? Except how to abuse it with drugs and alcohol.”

  An excruciating cramp wracked Nadia’s stomach. She hated it when her family didn’t get along. Hated it more than anything in the whole world. More than all the girls who picked on her at school and camp put together and multiplied by a hundred.

  Her father turned back to her and smiled. “So do you want to stay here through the night and earn your merit badge, or do you want to go home?”

  “I want to stay,” Nadia said, knowing this was what her father wanted to hear.

  “Good girl,” he said, beaming at her.

  Nadia was so happy he smiled at her she was prepared to stay in her lean-to alone for as many nights as necessary, even if it killed her.

  Nadia’s father told her he was proud of her. He told her they’d be back to get her at 8:00 a.m., and until then, in accordance with survival test rules, she was on her own.

  As they turned to leave, Nadia tried to make eye contact with her brother but it was impossible. She could tell he was looking at her, probably trying to encourage her somehow, but she couldn’t make out his face. Then he turned and followed their father into the woods, and for the first time in her life Nadia felt truly alone.

  She crawled back into her sleeping bag and counted bobcats to fall asleep. By one hundred seventeen, a light rain started to fall. By two hundred ten, she drifted asleep. An hour later, she woke up covered in sweat. She felt delirious so she took two aspirin and washed them down with a fresh can of pineapple juice. She ate some Ritz Crackers, too. Ritz Crackers were some of the finest food known to mankind. They never failed to give her a boost and make her happy. But this time she couldn’t taste them. No matter how hard she focused, she couldn’t taste that sugar and salt combo she loved so much. She closed her eyes and counted imaginary bobcats again. They were cute, like kitties but with an extra edge. Her kind of edge . . .

  The two aspirin did the trick. Nadia fell into a deep sleep. So complete was her slumber, she didn’t feel the rain when it fell in sheets from the sky and pelted her sleeping bag. Nor did she hear the crash of thunder, its echo among the trees, or hours later, the sound of unfamiliar footsteps approaching her camp.

  CHAPTER 27

  BRASILIA’S PARKING LOT overflowed with vehicles, from an ancient Chevy pickup to a late-model Maserati sedan. A stretch limo in the shape of a Hummer idled by the side entrance. Six college-aged men bounded toward the front door joking with one another, faces bursting with anticipation.

  The building pulsated to the beat of some old heavy-metal song, a raspy voice begging someone to pour some sugar on him. I approached the bouncer at the door, a thirty-something beast with a pleated and puckered face, dressed impeccably in a navy suit that might have been sewn from the fabric of three of Brooks Brothers’ finest.

  He sized me up the way an auctioneer might have done in centuries past and flashed me a smile boasting four gold teeth. I was already fired up for my encounter with Marko, and I wasn’t going to swallow any insults from some misogynistic thug. I sharpened my tongue.

  “Are you here for a job application, ma’am?” he said.

  I hesitated, uncertain if I’d heard him correctly. His eyebrows remained raised, his expression earnest. He wasn’t patronizing me, I realized. He was being serious. Sometimes I had to remind myself I’d lost all that weight and wasn’t entirely hard on the eyes.

  “And what if I am?” I said.

  “The boss does interviews in the afternoon on account of it gets busy at night. You want to leave your name and come back tomorrow?” There wasn’t a hint of facetiousness about him.

  I knew there’d come a moment when I’d be rewarded for staying out of the Two Little Red Hens Bakery on the Upper East Side, and curbing my addiction to their Brooklyn blackout cupcakes. And here it was, at a time when I least expected it. In fact, I was so happy, I wished I had one of their cupcakes in my car so I could celebrate.

  “If you read minds by any chance,” I said, “please forgive me.”

  He looked confused. “Excuse me?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “No matter what you may have heard me think, the truth is you’re a kind man with impeccable taste. I’m going to have a look inside, okay? My name is Nadia. My brother, Marko, he owns the joint.”

  I blew past him and walked inside.

  The place smelled of coconut, not disinfectant as before. The refugee from Woodstock had been replaced by six nubile young beauties. Two of them actually looked Brazilian, with bronzed bubble butts so big you could have gotten loans to build condos on them in the days of zero percent financing. The seedy stragglers had been replaced by one hundred or more men, from newbies to geriatrics, some with dirt on their Wranglers, others with pinstripes on their Armani suits.

  I found Marko with his back to me behind the bar mashing lime and sugar in a muddler beside a long bottle of Brazilian cachaca. Four suits were laughing at the counter opposite him. I spied a grin on his face and deduced he’d just told them a joke. If there was one thing I was certain my brother knew how to do, it was empty a man’s pockets.

  When he turned around and saw me, he froze. Shock and anger spread across his face. Without saying a word, he had told me that I was the last person on Earth he expected or wanted to see. He quickly served the caipirinhas, made his way around the bar and motioned for me to follow him to his office. He didn’t do so with a casual and friendly wave. Instead he pointed a finger, first at me and then at the office, like an angry trooper motioning to a speeding driver to pull her ass over.

  We went into his office. I felt as though I were following the headsman to the town square to receive my just punishment. I counted five open bottles of Mickey’s Big Mouth in the room. Marko didn’t sit down this time. We stood in front of his desk facing each other. His expression was one of contained fury.

  “I thought you left town,” he said.

  How could Marko have known what I’d revealed to only my mother? “Did Mama call you?”

  “No. I called her.”

  “When?”

  “When I didn’t show up for the blessing of the Easter baskets. I called to apologize. Answer the question.”

  “What question?”

  “Mama said you went back to New York with steam coming out of your ass. That something important had come up. But instead you’re here.” He spat the last word out as though he’d chewed on something bitter.

  I could sense my self-confidence waning. This is the problem with guilt. More than any other human emotion, it weakens the knees. “Mama misunderstood. The something that came up has nothing to do with my job.”

  “How could it when you don’t have a job anymore?”

  My face flushed. I feared it would burst before I figured out what to say. “Who .
. . who told you I lost my job?”

  “You did.”

  “What?”

  “You just told me you lost your job.”

  I understood what he was telling me, but I couldn’t believe it. He’d bluffed me into revealing myself. That was a result I, the forensic securities analyst, usually secured when I interviewed people. Not the other way around. Yet it had just happened. Guilt did more than weaken your knees, I thought. It blinded you.

  “Why did you ask?” I said, as I regained my senses enough to sustain a logical train of thought. “What made you suspect I’d been let go?”

  “There’s smarts, and then there’s street smarts. One might get you a job in New York City. The other one might let you know when someone’s lost one.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re around here all the time. Not in New York where your job was. Real rocket science, huh?”

  “I could have been on vacation.”

  “Sure. Hartford just passed Bora Bora on the top ten list of vacation hot spots for the hoity-toity. Though you should be asking yourself why you’re here even if you lost your job. Why aren’t you in New York looking for a new one?”

  “Because I want to find out what happened to my godfather.”

  Lines sprang to Marko’s face. “Why?”

  I still didn’t have an answer to that one, nor did I try to think of one. All I could think of was how hot it was in the room and how desperately I needed to reverse the trajectory of the conversation. I was the one with an agenda. I needed to ask the question. I had to impose my will on him. It’s what I did for a living, or at least what I used to do for money.

  “Why couldn’t you make it for the blessing of the Easter baskets?” I said.

  “Something came up.”

  “Something related to my godfather’s business?”

  “No. Something related to my business. We have a special guest. She flew in from LA. I had to pick her up at Bradley. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “When did you tell my godfather to leave Mama alone?”

  Marko rolled his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake . . . You’re back to that again? Who cares?”

  “Humor me.”

  “A year ago. No, maybe less. More like nine months.”

  That was after my godfather’s trip to Crimea and the profitable turn in his business. “Did you agree to do that job for him—when you rode with him to Avon for protection—after you told him to leave Mama alone, or before?”

  He circled around behind his desk, sat down, and drank from one of the open bottles. When he answered my question he looked straight at the wall to my side, not in my eyes.

  “It was right after that. He came by a week later.”

  “And it was a one-time thing. You never did a job with him again?”

  Marko drank from the bottle again, puffed his cheeks out, and stared at the wall.

  “Why won’t you answer me?”

  He shook his head. “You’re embarrassing yourself. You’re making a complete fool of yourself in the community and you don’t see it. The guy was a stinking drunk. He fell down the stairs going to get a bottle of wine. Everyone knows it.”

  “You’re still not answering my question.”

  He grunted. “I don’t have to answer your question. You don’t mean nothing to me.”

  I ordered myself to ignore those words. That’s all they were, I told myself. Words. He didn’t mean it. I was his little sister. I was his little sister and he loved me unconditionally.

  “Why were you at my godfather’s house on the day he died?”

  Marko glanced at me. The quick turn of his neck and the burst of light in his eyes told me I’d surprised him. The shift in his Adam’s apple and the hesitation that followed suggested he was about to lie.

  “Who told you that?”

  “You did,” I said. “Just now.”

  There was no need for him to know Mrs. Chimchak had seen him. The less I told him, the more power I gained in the room. He let his eyes slide off mine slowly. I could sense his resentment that I’d returned the favor and used my experience to get the better of him. I savored a quick adrenaline rush. Just as quickly, however, an overwhelming sense of foreboding gripped me. The next question was obvious. It needed to be asked almost as badly as I needed to make amends for the past.

  “Did you kill him, Marko?”

  He let out a snort, something between a laugh and a dismissal. Then his face began to turn the color of eggplant. I turned to make sure I knew the precise way to the exit. When I looked back at Marko, I realized I’d looked for the door out of fear that he was going to stand up and hit me. Clearly the question had insulted him. Relief washed over me. He looked angry, not guilty. He hadn’t killed my godfather. It was cause for minor celebration.

  Then I saw something previously unthinkable. Tears welled in my brother’s eyes. The anger, machismo, and bravado completely evaporated from his face and carriage. For the first time in my life, my brother looked vulnerable. I wondered if I’d erred in my deduction that he hadn’t killed my godfather. Whatever the reason for his tears, the sight of him showing emotion rendered me incapable of further thought. I had survived my childhood because I’d drawn strength from my brother. Without it, without him, I would not be alive. The sight of him on the verge of tears paralyzed me.

  His voice crackled with emotion as he spoke the words I’d been dreading to hear.

  “You hit me,” he said.

  I knew what he was talking about right away. I knew it as soon as I heard the uncharacteristic quiver in his tone, before the words left his lips.

  The thud of my knuckles connecting with the side of his head reverberated around my memory banks and rendered me speechless. I kept my eyes on his out of pride, but didn’t say a thing. What could I say?

  “You—hit—me,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, shit happens,” I said. “You were stealing from our mother.”

  He was barely audible. “Yeah, but you hit me.”

  Six years ago, in one of those spurts of good will, Marko and I had organized a birthday party for our mother at her house. A few of her friends brought food, others brought beer and scotch. People drank and reminisced, and as the evening wore on, Marko began drinking. By the end of the evening, he was the drunken fool of the party. After the guests left, our mother told him he was a no-good bum that would never amount to anything, and that she regretted bringing him into the world. I never forgot his answer to her after he took another swig of Rolling Rock.

  “That makes two of us,” he’d said.

  Under other circumstances, I would have been sympathetic to him. After all, we suffered from the same depression and anxiety from all the trauma we’d endured as kids. But that night we’d agreed to sacrifice ourselves for our mother, and I was livid he couldn’t restrain himself for one evening. After walking our mother to bed, I returned to find my inebriated brother pulling the rubies and emeralds out of our mother’s precious jewelry box, her one priceless possession.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I said.

  “Being the bum she says I am,” Marko said.

  And then I hit him. Closed fist, full force, I stepped into the punch and pummelled, with all my might, the only person who’d ever shown unconditional love for me when I was a child. His head hit the carpeted floor with such force I feared I might have killed him.

  Now, as I stood before him in his office, it was as though a stranger had lifted her hand to him. It simply could not have been my fist that had hit him. I prided myself on being the exact opposite type of person. I hated violence and strived to be forgiving in all things. I’d comforted myself through the years by believing that we are all capable of regrettable actions under the wrong set of circumstances. And yet, that offered me no solace today.

  The thought of apol
ogizing occurred to me now, as it had for the last six years. To understand my inability to do so, one would have had to be a witness to my upbringing. My father never apologized for berating, hitting, or humiliating us. My mother never apologized for at least partially creating the circumstances that resulted in my husband’s death. Every family had its own culture. In ours, words were for weaklings. People were defined by their actions. Apologies meant nothing.

  Still, I tried. I stood looking at him through bleary eyes desperately trying to summon the words. But the harder I tried, the more futile was my attempt. It was so awkward as to be incomprehensible. I didn’t say another word to my brother. I stormed out of the office and slammed the door so hard a mirror with the Michelob beer insignia fell off a wall. It smashed into pieces, scattering shards of glass in every direction on the floor.

  In the absence of grace, a woman may resort to anger or cruelty to suppress her guilt. The only benefit of such actions is to inform her that she has hit rock bottom.

  I had hit rock bottom.

  CHAPTER 28

  I NOTICED A poster hanging on the wall on my way out. It was a blown-up image of the one I’d seen on a pile of leaflets inside Marko’s office promoting the appearance of some XXX film star. The actress’s boobs looked like genetically enhanced cantaloupes stuffed in a bra, so it was impossible not to notice the poster. Once it caught my attention, however, my eyes drifted to the date. The woman was appearing for one night and one night only next Saturday. Not tonight, I noted. Next Saturday.

  Outside, twelve people stood in line waiting to pay cover, among them two middle-aged women. After the two men in front paid, I darted ahead of the next couple and put my hand on the bouncer’s shoulder. He lifted his eyebrows. I leaned in so only he could hear me. Not because I was going to ask anything sensitive, but because I was too embarrassed for anyone in line to think I cared about the answer for entertainment reasons.