“Huh?”
“Ketchup?”
“No thanks,” she answered. And those were the first words that David Belov said to Marina Duranichev, the young lady who would eventually become his wife.
At least Marina was a good sport about it. They chatted about inconsequential subjects on the way back home. David may have bent the truth a little when it came to his hobbies, because he didn’t really have any. He presumed that his true interest, computer programming, would horrify her. But after a run-through of their favorite movies and best places for funnel cakes on Coney Island, a funny thing started to happen. The whole group started talking, just a little bit. It began with baby steps—laughs across the aisle. But they had all spent the day saying nothing and only glancing at one another, so this was an improvement. Marina quickly realized that David was their leader. She found out that David had located the robot, convinced their school to buy it, and was in charge. It was easy to recognize that the rest of the robot club revered David. The bus eventually stopped at Lafayette, and the girls departed. As Marina was getting off the bus, David made his last valiant attempt.
“Do you want to hang out again?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said while walking down the aisle of the bus.
“Can I have your number?”
“I don’t have a phone,” she said.
“Your house?”
“That won’t work. Here.”
He looked down. Marina had passed him a folded note.
“Bye, David,” she said.
After she had stepped off the bus, David opened the note. It was a cartoon drawing of a sheep and a lion—holding hands. Marina had written both of their names at the top of the page. Hers was positioned above the lion, David’s over the sheep. A conversation bubble emerged from the lion’s head.
“I work at the ice cream parlor. Surf Ave. Every weekend. Come see me?” the lion said.
“Your wish is my command,” the sheep responded.
■
Promptly the next weekend, David told Veronika that he had a meeting at school with his college counselor. He jumped on the subway and headed down to Coney Island. He found Marina at the ice cream shop on Surf Avenue, just as she had instructed. Unfortunately she wasn’t at the cash register when he ordered his cookies and cream. He could see her through a door to the back kitchen. He didn’t say anything. He sat down outside and tried his best to lick slowly, instead of snarfing the treat down. He lasted about twenty-seven minutes in the hot sun before his ice cream turned into sludge and he was forced to ingest it all or lose it forever.
David sauntered back into the shop and felt his heartbeat rise when he saw her again. This time she was at the register. He stood in line. Unfortunately, a woman in front of him started complaining about her bill, and Marina motioned for her to step aside. As Marina dealt with the wretched lady, a pimpled teenage boy popped into David’s view. This was not going according to plan. David was forced to ask Marina’s pimpled co-worker for a water. He grabbed the water and walked back outside. He paced up and down the boardwalk for a few minutes before deciding to check out the back of the building. He found an alley behind the ice cream shop, with a gate on the other side that led towards the Gravesend train lot. As he was staring through the fence at the trains, he heard a voice behind him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He turned. Marina. He lost all his words right then and there. Actually, he thought he emoted something, but no words actually came out.
“Did you come to see me?”
“Uh . . .” he replied.
“You’re not doing a great job of it. You can just say ‘Hello’ you know,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I am. I, uh, was . . . Uh . . . Do you have to work?”
“I took my break.”
“How come?”
“So we could hang out. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
David’s face broke into a huge smile. “That’s exactly right. Can I buy you an ice cream?” She frowned, and he realized that was the wrong question to ask. “You have enough ice cream. Right. A funnel cake and soda?”
“Sure.” She smiled. “That sounds nice.”
They walked along the Coney boardwalk towards Brighton Beach. At the end of the wood-paneled boardwalk, David bought her a funnel cake and soda as promised. They turned back and headed towards the parlor. Once she was done with the cake, she started pulling off pieces of it with her fingers and throwing them towards the packs of seagulls and crows that crowded the beach.
“Is that good for them?” David asked.
“Maybe it’s not as natural as God intended. But they like it. And we’re part of the ecosystem, aren’t we?” she said. “Everyone needs a little leeway in life.”
“Right. I agree,” David concluded.
At the end of the walk, they found themselves standing in the alley by the back door. David tried to keep chatting her up, but he knew that precious time was ticking away. He was grasping at straws.
“What’s up there?” David asked her, pointing to a fire escape leading up to the roof of the boardwalk buildings.
“The roof, silly.”
“Have you been up?”
“No . . .”
“Do you want to?” David asked.
“Maybe next time,” she said as she glanced at her watch, and then rotated nervously. “My break’s over.”
“Thanks for hanging out with me,” David said. He leaned in. He was thinking about the kiss, but he wasn’t committing. She didn’t seem particularly receptive. He chickened out, turning his face into her shoulder for a hug.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
“You know . . .”
“I don’t.”
“Then that’s your own fault,” she said. Her face turned slightly sour as she stepped back through the door.
“Wait!” David practically yelled. She turned. He raced towards her in the portico. He reached for her face and he kissed her right then and there. It was David’s first date and his first kiss. He would never kiss another woman again.
■
Their relationship grew slowly. Neither David nor Marina was particularly good at communicating feelings, and they were both young grasshoppers. To them, what they felt was difficult to recognize. But they persevered throughout the summer and into senior year. David eventually concluded that he didn’t have to visit the ice cream shop every time he wanted to talk to her. He could chat with her using instant messaging. Her father was very patriarchal and refused to allow Marina to date, but he’d permitted her to have a computer in her room to do homework. So David gave Marina a program called ICQ, with a plugin that allowed them to speak to each other using their computer’s microphones. They spoke every day. They also started to meet up surreptitiously.
After six months, and in parallel to a dedicated campaign by Marina’s mother, David was finally allowed to call the house phone. He displayed enough etiquette and poise to jump over the barrier that was Marina’s father, and they brought their relationship into the public eye. Marina found herself increasingly interested in David’s quiet intensity and his obvious intellect. She was smart herself, planning on becoming a veterinarian when she grew up, and she admired David’s work ethic. Unlike most of the boys she knew, he was driven to make something of himself outside the bubble.
Once David and Marina officially pronounced themselves boyfriend and girlfriend, the first problem developed. It wasn’t either of their faults—it was Abe. Abe Newman was also a senior at Lafayette, and he’d held a long-burning torch for her. Abe became hopping mad when he heard word of their relationship, but David knew nothing about it. Marina had hid the other boy’s affections from David because she didn’t care about Abe. But he was obsessed, and truth be known, she’d committed one small mistake—Marina had made out with Abe at a dance a few weeks before she met David. What was David’s first kiss wasn’t hers. It was actually her third.
■
One morning David woke up to the sound of his mother screaming like a banshee. He ran down the stairs to find Veronika standing in her robe on their front porch, mouth agape, staring back up at the house. David followed and realized that his mother’s car, all her plants, and the entire front of their house had been splattered with orange paintballs. They spelled out a sinister romantic message in terrible grammar: “STAY AWAY MARINA!”
The warning freaked David out. Marina begged him to just forget about it, but he couldn’t. Even if he wanted to, Abe was calling his house and hanging up a few times every evening. David knew exactly who the anonymous caller was, because he had reverse dialed the number and a woman whom he later learned was Abe’s mom had answered. David pretended to be a representative of the water company. He inquired as to whether she’d received her last bill. She had. She confirmed her last name—Newman. David was destined to be an engineer, but he would forever remember the significant power of social engineering. After David discovered that Abe was indeed behind the recent intimidation, he wasn’t sure exactly what to do about it. But he definitely had a friend who could help.
■
David located Vlad a few days later, walking along the sidewalk to the gym.
“Hey, my peach,” Vlad greeted David.
“Hey, buddy.”
“How you doing?”
“Honestly? Not so good,” David revealed to Vlad. The floodgates opened. David told him everything. He wasn’t sure where Vlad’s opinion would fall. Vlad could be very black and white. Maybe he would think that David needed to man up. But to David’s relief, Vlad flew into a parallel rage directed at Abe. No one was going to fuck with David if Vlad had anything to say about it. They devised a plan. Vlad knew a third party at Lafayette—a boy named Konstantin who was a recent émigré and had been spending most of his time at the gym. Konstantin was willing to leave a message for Abe on David’s behalf, indicating that David was ready to settle this once and for all, just the two of them, at the southwest corner of the Washington Cemetery on Twentieth Avenue. Konstantin delivered the message, and Abe confirmed his participation.
■
On the day of the fight, David appeared at the correct time and place. But Abe wasn’t there. David sauntered around, watching as yellow school buses from the nearby high school passed. Just when he was about to leave, Abe appeared at the other end of Twentieth Avenue. He had six bruisers from the Lafayette wrestling team with him, flexing their muscles and pounding tight fists into their palms. David screamed down the street, “That’s not fair! Not what we agreed to!”
“Life ain’t fair, you puss,” Abe retorted. David knew Abe had a point. The lesson would be relentless. Abe and his boys charged David with no abandon. When they were about twenty feet from David, about to beset upon him with juvenile testosterone and all the violence and lack of mental foresight it provides, Vlad popped out from behind the cemetery walls. He was holding a massive pipe and twirling it like a whirling dervish. Then Baranowski and Konstantin stood up from behind a grave, and Roschin and Petrov from another. Unlike Abe’s crew, they were armed with all manner of blunt objects and knives. They’d been waiting.
Vlad and his crew turned that street into mincemeat. They showed no mercy. One of Abe’s crew had to be picked up by an ambulance after being discovered unconscious down the block later that night. Abe and the captain of the wrestling team both ended up in the hospital with multiple stab wounds. When the police pressed Abe for what had happened, he told them nothing.
If Vlad’s reputation had been in the foundational stage before the fight, it was cemented after it. Abe would never mess with Vlad or, by extension, David ever again. And neither would anyone else who heard about what had happened, which was practically everyone who called shots in the entire borough.
■
A few months later, David, Marina, and Vlad graduated. The whole community came together for the ceremony, making banners and showing up in their most festive outfits. Veronika was dressed to the nines, wearing her one set of pearls and incredibly proud of her salutatorian son. After exchanging pleasantries, taking photographs, and going out to an early supper with their respective parents, the party started.
David brought Marina. Vlad brought the vodka and taught David how to play quarters for the first time. One of David’s classmates who considered himself a disc jockey, and who would later spend years humping around the Meatpacking in search of fame, pumped techno music mixed with hip-hop. The crowd got crazy, groovy, and weird. It was high school in the heart of Brooklyn, and the vibe of their culture pulsed through the night. The party was aggressive—full of Goldschläger shots and strobes and maybe even a spliff or two. David let go and actually enjoyed himself. Vlad caught David dancing with Marina out of the corner of his eye and gave him a thumbs up, but he quickly turned back to the girl in front of him who had been eyeing him lasciviously and grinding all over his body. Vlad was in heaven. David was happy. The party was incredible.
The graduation party changed Vlad. His night started out on top and ended at the bottom. He made out with four girls in a row, each one happy to be next, and the last two at the same time. And then around one in the morning, Vlad received a phone call from the hospital. He learned that his father had been admitted. Arseni had been helping Vlad train for an upcoming fight in Connecticut, Vlad’s first professional match on the IBF tour after turning nineteen years old. In the weeks leading up to graduation, Vlad had started to notice his dad coughing. Arseni had visited the doctor, come back with antibiotics, and seemed to be on the mend. But then the hacking had returned in earnest. It was two weeks from the graduation party to the day that Arseni passed away from lung cancer. And even though Vlad had a few amateur wins under his belt, his first major fight to compete in, and a whole chunk of momentum behind him, nothing would ever fill the hole that Arseni’s death created.
The party was momentous for one more reason—David had rented a room at the Holiday Inn in Brighton for the evening. Both David and Marina had engaged in the time-honored tradition of telling their parents that they were staying with friends for the night. Whether Veronika believed David or not, it didn’t matter. She’d never been able to control her men anyways and David was clearly becoming one. David and Marina left the graduation party early. They walked hand in hand to the hotel. They fell into the bed together and had the best night of their young adult lives.
SEVENTEEN
JAKE RIVETT RIPPED HIS Ducati down the quiet and boutiqued-out streets of SOHO. The rain had finally stopped when he departed Chinatown, but a shroud of low fog remained on the island. This type of night made the city feel like an oil painting. Dying light flowed serenely over the cobblestones. Gotham was always precise and becoming more so, but nights like this reminded Jake that it also remained mysterious. The storefronts were turned down, their bare bulbs low, casting lovely shades across the grey, purple, and black planes of the environment. There were no people in sight. Jake loved the city at times like these.
He’d always loved it. Well before he’d witnessed Manhattan, he’d heard about it. To the rest of the world, New York represented freedom. It was the same for Jake but on a truly personal level. He’d been able to finally escape from his restrained childhood to the Oz-like metropolis. The city had always been the beacon that he’d been actively aiming for since he was old enough to know he should. But his feelings were about more than what the city provided him. His feelings were about now. He loved the spirit of the place. The city was an animal. Jake knew that he could never rule this urban landscape, but at least he could wrestle with it. Just like mankind, just like Jake himself, the creature was both stunningly sublime and exceedingly rough at the same time. Its perfect marble façades, luxurious fountains, and floor-to-ceiling luxury glass boxes were all evenly matched by its aggressive elements. No matter how far one’s wealth allowed for themselves to be removed from the streets, one was never fully removed from the
steam vents and the trash heaps, the pure volume of cars with their gaseous fumes, the pedestrians going in every direction, and the serpentine tunnels sharply carved out of previously undisturbed bedrock. Just as humans shape the environment around them, the environment shaped the humans. The city made men and women in its own image. Their lives were geometric, refined, and tailored. But often if you dug down through the spreadsheets and formality to the core of what they were doing, their essences were as elemental and primitive as the building blocks of the place itself. They were selling—they were buying. They were stealing and loving and fucking and conniving and crying. Jake happened to know this—not only because he could sense it, but also because it was literally his job. He parked his bike next to a small recording studio and walked into the entrance.
■
A loud, cacophonic wail crashed through the space. Jake was on the microphone in the studio, his eyes closed. He was swaying back and forth as he screamed. Or was that singing?
No. It was screaming. Everyone has his or her own personal anxiety release valve. Some choose the drink, others go harder or stranger. There are people who choose to relax by throwing themselves off the top of mountains with parachutes on their backs. Jake’s therapy was screaming. There was something about a long, sustained yell that succeeded in taking him far away from reality.
Flash Crash Page 13
