Page 105 of Kingmakers, Year Four

I hadn’t seen that it was occupied, because the boy sitting in the booth was hunched over, speaking quietly into the receiver. He hangs up as I approach, turning and squinting at me through two heavily swollen eyes.

His face is so battered and bruised that I almost don’t recognize him. His two black eyes are little more than slits in a lumpy, misshapen face, his right cheek and lower lip puffed up like beestings. Even his shaved skull bears several ugly goose eggs.

“What do you want?” Estas asks, his voice coming out mushy through the puffy lips. I’m not sure how the person on the other end of the phone even understood him.

“I . . . I was just looking for a phone.”

Estas has been a constant annoyance at Kingmakers, stirring up the negative sentiment that swirls around me when anybody remembers my last name. I always felt his grudge was unjust, since my dad promised me he had nothing to do with Estas’ brother’s death. It seemed like Estas was just looking for somebody to blame and he latched onto me.

Still, the aftermath of Ares’ beating is hard to look at. It no longer seems like a proportionate response. I’m grateful that Ares defended me—but I feel guilty that this whole thing has spiraled so far.

“I’m sorry about last night,” I say.

Estas just looks at me, the whites of his eyes bloodied around his dark pupils.

“That was my mother on the phone,” he mumbles through those swollen lips. “She couldn’t hear a thing I was saying because she was bawling the whole time. My father’s been in prison all my life. You only get so many conjugal visits—she had my brother, and then me ten years later. No other kids.”

I don’t want to feel sympathy for Estas.

I don’t want to hear about his life.

And I definitely don’t want to argue about his brother again. But I’m rooted in place, maybe because for once, Estas isn’t trying to physically intimidate me. He’s still seated, his voice low and slurred, his shoulders slumped.

“My brother was killed on December eighteenth,” he says. “Have you ever seen New York in December? In the summer it stinks, and the winter’s cold and sleety. But when they put those Christmas lights up, and the display windows are like dioramas, and people are skating at Chelsea Piers . . . it feels like magic.”

Against my will, I picture it: the scent of cocoa and perfume gift sets . . . the bustle of shoppers . . . the sharp slice of skates over ice . ..

“Kyrylo said he’d take me to Rockefeller Center to see them light the giant tree. It’s kid stuff, I know, but I was only twelve so I guess I was a kid still. He told me to meet him at the marine terminal. That’s where he worked, in the port authority office. He and my uncles all worked there, it’s how they smuggled in shipments.

“Kyrylo was the one who made the deal with your father for the Soviet guns. My uncles said he shouldn’t do it. They said Marko was sure to fuck them, one way or another.

“But Kyrylo liked your dad. He thought the rumors were bullshit. And anyway, we were family. Whatever Marko might have done in Kyiv, he wouldn’t betray his own family.”

Estas’ lip has split open again from all the talking, but he doesn’t seem to notice, even as a thin line of blood runs down his chin.

“Marko was supposed to send twenty crates of AKs. They arrived on the sixteenth. I was there at the marina, waiting for my brother. I saw him open the crates. He broke the seals, used the crowbar to wedge out the nails. Threw off the lids.

“They were empty. He stood there, staring inside the crates. He even ran his hands through the sawdust, like the guns might be hiding underneath.

“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he said, ‘Nothing, wait here.’

“He went out back to the alley to make a call. I heard him talking for a long time, low at first, and then starting to shout. He came back thirty minutes later, pale, sweating.

“I said, ‘Can we still see the tree?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, of course, nothing could stop me.’

“He took me to Rockefeller. He wasn’t talking much, but I was too excited to notice.

“Two days later, my uncles found him in the warehouse, hanging above the dock, gutted like an animal. Cut from here to here.”

Estas traces a line from the divot of his sternum, straight down to his crotch.

“My brother was a big guy. You’d have to be pretty fucking strong to lift him up and hang him.”

Estas’ eyes are fixed on mine, red and unblinking. He told the story simply, with no hint of embellishment.

Through dry lips I say, “That was six years ago?”

“That’s right.” He gives one, slow nod.

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