by Zhanna Slor
More importantly, if she really is dating either guy, and they are both here, then where is Anna?
“You need to take your petty grievances with you and leave,” Tristan tells Liam. But Liam has no intention of fleeing. While we are standing there staring at each other, out of the corner of my eye, I see Liam shift, the glean of the knife reflected by the moon; then, even faster, Tristan moves past him, until the two of them are suddenly wrestling on the ground. A second later, Tristan is sitting on top of Liam and has taken the knife out of his hand.
“Not cool, bro,” Tristan says, standing up, sliding the knife into a pocket of his pants. He gazes up at me with a look I can only describe as tiredness. Tired is the last thing I am feeling. My heart is beating so fast and so loud it’s like a drum. This would never happen in Israel, I think, yet again. When you fall, there are too many people there to catch you. Here, when you fall, there are only people to pull you farther down; if there’s anyone at all. The nuclear family ideal has consequences.
I kneel down on the grass beside Liam, and take my bag off my shoulders. “Here,” I say, reaching into my bag. “You said he owes you 800 dollars? I’ll pay you back, okay? I have some money from my dad, and I can get more. It’s not a problem.”
Tristan looks at me, then at Liam, then at me again.
My heart is racing now. What if he decides to wrestle me to the ground too? But Tristan merely stands, flicking the dirt from his jeans onto the ground and wiping his brow of sweat.
“Tell Anna, if you find her…” he licks his lips, and stares at the ground. For a moment, I see the real version of him. The one underneath all the layers of bravado and indifference. “Tell her I’m sorry. And…tell her the money went where it was supposed to go, and she shouldn’t worry.”
“What money?” I ask. Did he mean the money they made stealing? The money I thought was used to get the hell out of dodge, possibly to Ukraine? I stand up, and extend a hand for Liam.
“She’ll know,” Tristan says.
I help Liam up, and buy the time I turn around again, Tristan is already out of sight. The fire is nothing but smoke. I am left there with nothing but the moon and a Liam trying to catch his breath. Well. Not only did I fail at finding my sister, Liam got beat up in the process. It’s really a good thing I’m not in law enforcement. I offer my old friend a pat on the back, even though part of me thinks he deserves it, pulling a knife on someone like he is in an action movie, when he is quite certainly high and has never taken one self-defense class.
“Did you really think that would work?” I ask him.
“I forgot the fucking guy was into Judo or Jiu Jitsu or whatever,” he says, standing up, rubbing his chest. “Fuck. He kneed me right in the chest.”
The whole thing probably took five minutes, but I know I’ll be unraveling it for weeks to come. I’ve definitely failed at retrieving Anna, but after talking to Tristan, a small part of me does understand why she would go, and why she might not want anyone to know where.
If we knew, we might stop her. Now I’m not so sure I want to stop her.
I remember how it feels to leave with nothing but a backpack strapped to your shoulders. We aren’t the type to sit in an office and click away on a keyboard for eight hours a day, like our parents, like that entire generation of Russian Jews who’d come here for a better life, always striving and striving and never being able to say this is enough. In Israel, nineteen-year-olds don’t have the luxury to disappear, because everyone has to join the army. In Ukraine, they are generally too hungry to do anything but find jobs. But Anna and I are lucky. In America, you can do pretty much anything. Wrong or right, we are able to choose our own paths, to make them up from scratch.
I hear the flick of a lighter behind me; Liam has a cigarette in his mouth, his eyes unmistakably dark. I stare at him, taken aback by his sadness. “You really liked her, didn’t you?” I ask. I finally realize it’s not his girlfriend Melanie he’s been mooning over since I saw him yesterday. It’s Anna. No wonder he looked so surprised when I mentioned her name.
Not that he will admit it. Instead he frowns at me and starts walking back towards where he parked. “I like everyone, Masha,” he says.
JANUARY 2008
ANNA
________________
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Turns out it doesn’t take all that much for me to consider stealing, once I run out of money and get used to the idea. It probably helped that I’d stolen before; if I thought I could get away with it, I’d walk right past a gas station register with a water bottle I’d already opened, or peanuts or a magazine from a booth at the airport. No one is ever paying attention at an airport. Because I am always broke, I like free stuff. But those were rare instances, small inexpensive things, small thrills. What Tristan does is different and takes more getting used to. Luckily for him, I get used to things quickly.
The first party he takes me to is in Shorewood, a cozy suburb just north of Milwaukee’s east side. It’s only a ten-minute bike ride from Riverwest, but it’s practically another state. Every house we pass is a different level of ostentatious, and there’s so much space between the houses you could fit another two or three buildings if you want to. I choose to marvel over this later, as it’s barely twenty degrees and we are chilled to the bone. Parking the bikes near the garage behind some bushes, we rush inside to warm ourselves with barely a glance at the exterior. Only once we’re inside do I notice how gigantic it is. It’s a three-level brick mansion with nearly a dozen windows, a portico, and a view of the lake. No one I know would live in a house like this, and I am dumbfounded how there’s a party with so many people my age until I notice the family photos hanging in the foyer. One of them shows a blonde, athletic-looking guy wearing a UWM shirt, flanked on both sides by a very well-dressed middle-aged couple. A minute or two later, I hear someone shout: “Dude, your parents should go to Greece more often!” Then I understand.
Now that I can feel my toes again, I grab Tristan’s hand and pull him into the living room, where I’m a little shell shocked by the vast amount of people and alcohol and bongs I’ve found myself facing. I don’t move when the door opens behind us, letting in a group of giggling girls drenched in various perfumes. Tristan pulls me to the side so that they can pass us.
“Did I mention I hate parties?” I ask Tristan, my eyes wide with horror.
“Only a hundred times,” Tristan laughs, giving my hand a squeeze. It calms me down, but only for a second. The place is full of people I might have gone to high school with—khaki pants with actual pockets in the sides, clean-shaven faces and hair with blonde highlights—and we stand out like sore thumbs. I try to swallow the dread that has been growing in my belly all day and meander through the crowd to get to the kitchen. A place like this has to have vast amounts of alcohol in the fridge. I’ll take any kind at this point, but my fingers are crossed for vodka or rum. Instead, I only find beer. In the far back, on the bottom shelf, behind the beer, Tristan grabs me a full bottle of wine with a twist-off cap. I open it and fill a plastic cup to the brim. Then I drink it all, and refill it again.
“You look like you’re gonna throw up,” Tristan tells me, his eyes narrowing in concern, but his mouth twisting into a smile, like he finds it a little bit amusing. I keep drinking and shake my head.
“I never throw up.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay, then you look like you’re gonna pass out,” he adjusts. I refill my cup.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell him, finishing that cup too.
“How about you just watch me first. Will that make you feel better?”
I nod. I don’t feel like explaining that my issue is more related to social anxiety than concern over stealing a wallet. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m once again in a high school cafeteria, surrounded by people who don’t notice I am there. I need time for the alcohol to work its magic, so I tell him, “Yes, actually.�
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Tristan gets straight to business. Not that watching does me any good. He’s so fast at grabbing the wallets out of men’s back pockets that I can only tell when he’s stolen something because his coat is wider. By the third or fourth wallet, I’ve finished more than half the bottle of wine and have learned absolutely zilch. My anxiety is spiking, having to stand in the kitchen alone, so I disappear out back to smoke a cigarette with a few others. In our puffy winter jackets it’s almost difficult to tell that we’ve come from such different worlds. It’s dark, and therefore hard to notice the holes in my clothes, which I suddenly feel self-conscious about. I sit on a patio bench and finish the cigarette far too quickly, then go back inside, where I realize I’ve also now lost Tristan. The place is crowded, wall to wall, with belligerent students. A beer pong table has been set up on the other side of the room, and a group of the drunkest students are playing against each other. Several people are making out, not even bothering to go into a room.
Suddenly, someone is touching me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I turn to find Tristan.
“There you are,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. I feel his arms wrapping around me from behind. I feel him slide the wallets from his hand into my bag. To the left of us, I watch a group of men yelling “Chug! Chug! Chug,” while a girl swallows beer from a plastic funnel.
“They won’t even feel it, losing fifty bucks. For us, that’s food. To them, it’s a manicure.”
My heart flutters with nerves. Now that the time has come to emulate him, I no longer feel so lighthearted about it. “I don’t think I can do this,” I whisper in his ear.
Tristan kisses me again. “You can do anything,” he says. No one has ever said this to me before and it makes me a little bit giddy. It makes me want to prove him right. That, combined with the stream of alcohol I’d just imbibed, sends a brief surge of temporary calm into my system. Maybe I really can do it. Tristan is right. These people will barely notice the absence of twenty, thirty dollars, and for me, that’s lunch for a week.
I finish the rest of my wine in one gulp. “Do you think they will know it was me?” I ask.
“Nah. You look like a college student. You look like one of them,” he says.
“Not to them I don’t.”
Tristan slaps my butt. “See? Use that anger. It’ll make you less nervous.”
“Who said I was angry?”
“Aren’t these the same fuckers who made you sit in a bathroom for lunch?”
“I really wish I hadn’t told you that.”
“I don’t. I want to know you.”
I almost smile, hearing him say that. He is really quite sweet for a criminal. Considering his upbringing, it demonstrates a lot about his nature. As an attempt to procrastinate, and pretend we are here as nothing but partygoers, I ask him, “Where did you eat lunch at school?”
“I didn’t.” Tristan leans against the granite countertop of the kitchen island and crosses his arms over his chest. “If I went to school, I was usually shooting up by lunch somewhere. In my car, likely.”
“Oh,” I say, sadly. “I keep forgetting you were so...into drugs.”
“You don’t have to worry,” he says, licking his lips. “Those days are behind me.”
“I know.” I expand my focus to the rest of the party again, and my glance lands on a bright yellow purse that’s been left on the floor. It’s sitting next to a six-pack and a stack of winter coats worth more than a year’s worth of rent. For a moment I try to imagine myself walking by and taking it, as casually as if it was my own. But this image is replaced by another one—being chased down the road by an angry mob of perfectly tousled blonde hair. I start to second-guess my ability to pull this off.
“I’ll be right here,” he says, and that’s all I need. Where is everyone else who promised the same? Nowhere to be found. Tristan means what he says, and he cares about me. Whenever I’m around him I feel like I can be myself, and I’ve never had that feeling before in my life. It feels like freedom. And sure, it comes with certain costs. But I like trying new things. Generally, going out of my comfort zone is more exciting than scary.
Plus, the people here are so drunk; it’s the perfect setting to make a first attempt at theft. If I get caught, I can claim it was an accident, that I mistook the purse for my own. I take a long breath. I let go of Tristan, then stride across the room. My heart is beating into my chest like I’ve just run a mile. When I reach the purse, I swallow the knee-jerk inclination I have to look around and make sure no one is watching. Instead, I try to be cool. I bend over like I’m tying the laces of my all-black converse shoes. Then, rather than take the entire purse, I reach into the bag and feel around for a wallet. Soon my fingers land on a smooth pleather pouch filled with coins, cash, and cards. I snap the pouch closed, slide it into my right coat pocket, and stand up. I’m not as fast as I would like, but I’m fast enough. No one seems to notice anything; I don’t feel anyone watching me or hear anyone screaming for me to stop. Immediately I cross the threshold back into the foyer and, seeing some stairs, practically run to the top of them.
Tristan is only a few seconds behind me. He pins me against the wall of the hallway, and starts kissing me.
“That was dope,” he says, smiling.
My heart is pounding so hard I feel it in my ears. But I’m also totally energized. Is this how Tristan feels when he’s doing drugs? I wonder. “Did anyone see me?” I ask him.
“No. You did great,” he says. He kisses me again. My body is full of adrenaline now, but also something else. Not guilt. Relief. Excitement. I’d actually gotten away with it. And possibly solved my money problems at the same time. At least, temporarily. I drag Tristan by the arm into a closed bedroom on the second floor and try to catch my breath. As happy as I am to have my freedom, I would like to continue to have it. All I want to do now is hide.
“Did we get enough stuff?” I ask. “Can we go?”
“We can go whenever you want,” Tristan explains, lying down on the bed. “Fuck this is comfortable. How much do you think this bed costs?”
“I’m really bad at that game.”
“More than a grand, I can tell you that much for sure.”
“Who pays more than a grand for a bed?” I ask, but of course, I know the answer to this question. Rich people. They spend money on expensive items just so other people can see they were able to afford it. Why else do all my aunts and uncles need three-bedroom homes in the suburbs when none of them have any children left in the house?
Out in the hall, I hear a duo of drunk girls trying to find the bathroom. One of them opens the door to see us standing there, mouths an O of surprise, then closes it with a giggle. I get up to lock the door and return to sit by Tristan, who is taking his shoes off and making himself comfortable.
“See? I told you it would be easy,” Tristan says triumphantly, running a finger up and down my arm. “No one would ever suspect you.”
“It’s only because they’re wasted.” I look down at my outfit; ripped black jeans, black t-shirt, thick black down coat. Even my hair is so dark it’s almost black. The girls who not two seconds ago saw us in there were half glitter and one hundred percent fake tan. “I don’t exactly blend in.”
“Have you ever gotten a compliment before in your entire life? Jesus, girl,” Tristan laughs. “You did a good job.”
He starts to pull off my coat, the inside nearly stuck to my arms from sweat from the heat of the house. It doesn’t seem like he is in any hurry to leave. Since no one is out there chasing us down, I figure it’s okay. I’m also weirdly turned on by the whole endeavor, my adrenaline still spiking and causing my entire body to buzz. I roll on top of him and we start to make out. Having spent the last few nights on an acquaintance’s couch, Tristan and I haven’t exactly had any alone time together. I’m hoping this little escapade will give us enough money to get a hotel, or a temporary sublease for a room. Or a ticket out of Milwaukee. Anything.
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“Do you think we got enough? Should we find a checkbook or something?” I ask Tristan, between kisses.
“We’re good.” He flips me around so that I’m under him in one seamless move. “You’re sexy when you talk like that.”
I let out a nervous giggle. “What was I before? Hideous?”
“No,” he says, taking off my pants. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”
It doesn’t take long for us to be fully undressed.
Afterward, we make a quick exit down the stairs. Sobering up from both the wine and the adrenaline, I can’t help but steal a glance at the purse I’d stolen from, and am relieved to find it hasn’t moved. That’s good. Whoever left it there, she won’t know yet that anything is gone. She probably won’t notice until morning, if she’s as drunk as everyone here looks. Because I’m feeling confident, I even grab one of the North Face coats on the table as I walk past so I won’t freeze on the way home. Now I focus on leaving. The kitchen is so packed with bodies the windows and glass patio doors are starting to steam. A boombox is playing a rap song I’ve never heard before. A large group of frat guys keep themselves busy tapping a keg in the middle of the room.
Tristan nods his head toward one of the guys near the keg, which I take to mean he’s going to swipe his wallet too, so I stop at the fridge and search inside for the rest of the wine bottle I’d started. I’ve only ever had boxed wine, so my standards may be low, but it’s the most amazing wine possibly ever made and I wouldn’t mind some more. Quickly, I grab the bottle and close the door. I’m in such a hurry I slam it too hard, and cause a note to fall from the fridge to the floor. I pick it up and try to put it back in place with a magnet. Then I notice the entire door is covered in sticky notes. In the middle of them all, there’s a big calendar of the month of December, with every Tuesday and Friday circled in red. The note beneath it says, “Don’t forget to feed Frida.” Below that, there’s a photo of a cat. And the numbers 1416.
