Page 71 of Chaos

Alexei sits up with a frown. His tousled hair falls over his eyes as he lets the bottle droop in his grip between his knees. “And if I don’t want to?”

Nikolai glares and throws a ball of tape from the packaging at him.

“Think of it as birth control. Get those built.” Nikolai’s thick finger points again.

Alexei grudgingly stands and wanders over to pick at the parts. “It says I need a screwdriver with the little X on it.” He turns in a circle and sits cross-legged. “I guess I’m off duty.” He takes another long pull from the vodka.

I have the tool he needs sitting next to me. “Here.” I toss it gently to him.

He catches the end in the palm of his hand, and it punctures the meat below his thumb. “Fuck!”

“Shit, man. My bad.” I didn’t think I threw it that hard.

He pulls the metal out of his flesh and caps his fingers over it. Standing, he pours a splash of alcohol over his oozing wound. “I’m bleeding!”

“You could have done that over the sink. Go clean up. Then your mess.” Nikolai doesn’t look up, but continues to assemble the jigsaw pieces of the crib.

Alexei throws up his hands. “When I was in Siberia, I fought a great bear! See this scar?” He points with the bottle to a thin white line on his upper arm. Turning, he saunters down the hall.

Nikolai turns to me. “That is a bicycle accident when he was ten.”

Alexei’s voice carries from the back of the house. “When I was in Moscow, I killed two men who were trying to mug me! I got a scar on my stomach from it!”

“He ran into a post when he was fifteen because he put a bucket on his head,” Nikolai whispers, a smile dancing over his lips.

Alexei arrives back in the living room with a cloth over his thumb and a towel. “But what will this scar be? What bragging rights do I have that I was stabbed while building a swing for an infant?”

I’m trying not to laugh. “Maybe it can be a rattlesnake from the deserts of Vegas?”

Alexei’s eyes light up. “Oh, yes. Perhaps you can skewer me again, right next to it?”

“I would volunteer if it stops you from whining.” Nikolai hands me the last piece for the crib.

Snapping it into place, I step back proudly. “Hell, yeah. Look what I built.”

Nikolai’s heavy hand lands on my shoulder. “Careful, or a snake might bite you in the ass for that one.” He waves another screwdriver in his hand menacingly.

“We. I meant ‘we’.” I busy myself with picking up the empty cardboard boxes.

Alexei laughs. “Nikolai doesn’t like to share the credit. Well, nothing.” He saunters over and hands the bottle to Nikolai. “Remember that one girl in Novosibirsk? She was begging for both of us? And you kicked me out of the room, you bastard.” Alexei’s silver tooth glimmers in the sun from the window as he grins.

Nikolai settles himself next to the swing and begins bolting the legs together. “She would have been asking you all night if it was in yet. I didn’t have patience for that.” He waves his hand in an idle gesture, then points to the cradle. “Be useful. Bring that here.”

Alexei nimbly avoids stepping on parts to pick up the seat. “It worked out. I found two women at the bar to come back with me.”

“Da. They both asked that same question all night. Did they get bored and finally just play with each other?” Nikolai gives the swing a test push and watches it rock back and forth.

His eyes unfocus, like he’s looking a long way from here.

“I remember doing this before Elena was born.” He shakes his head with a frown. “It was a better time.”

Standing, he towers over me to hand me my tools. “We have to go, since your ‘emergency’ is taken care of.”

“Yeah, I saw you have the Rover. You guys look like drug dealers in that thing.” I jerk my thumb towards the front of the house where they’re parked.

Alexei picks up Nikolai’s gun from the couch and hands it to the large Russian. “We are today. There’s sixty kilos of coke in the back that we took out from under the nose of a Reaper,” he giggles. “Like, he was doing a line when Niki stepped out. He looked like he saw a ghost.”

Nikolai walks towards the door and shrugs. “He got his fill when I shoved his face in it until he stopped breathing.”

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