Page 1 of Vasily the Nail

Day 1

Vasily

I am going to die in Flagstaff, the voices remind me. It’s inevitable. The clock just hasn’t started ticking yet.

Dima cuts me out a line of coke. He hasn’t used the stuff in years. Most of the Bratva hasn’t. There are too many headaches from the local methed-up biker gang and the opiate overdoses that get dumped on our land, not to mention the cholos breezing through from Mexico on four-day benders running all manner of nasties up from the border. Most days, it feels like we’re running a daycare filled with gun-wielding psychopaths.

Dima doesn’t question my drug use. He understands that I’m different. If anything, he supports me, chopping up a sliver of Xanax and mixing it into the coke to stave off the jitters. The only one who gives me shit for this is my brother, which is ironic as it’s his fault my usual cocktail isn’t enough to get me through this day.

My pupils vibrate from the mushrooms I ate an hour ago. I’m all too aware of my teeth, and I can’t stop staring at the pile of spaghetti on Dima’s head.

Nope, that’s hair. Fuck me in the goat ass. The psychedelics were a bad fucking call.

“You can do this,” Dima says for the hundredth time. He speaks in English, the words flowing from his mouth in purple, chewed-up grape gum.

“I don’t have a choice,” I reply in Russian, and in the peripheral, where my cheekbones blur, robin-egg mist rises.

“You’re not the bad guy,” Dima insists in grape. Insists not just that I’m not the bad guy but that I need to turn my brain over to the English side. But I hate the English side. I don’t care that I could speak it fluently with a perfect Standard American accent if I wanted. Flagstaff is my own personal hell.

“I’m going to scare the piss out of her,” flows from my mouth in that unnamed in-between of blue and purple, but pale. Kseniya has painted my nails this exact color before, so there must be a word for it, but it escapes me.

I think I’m leaking.

“Well, don’t tell Kostya if she pisses on you; he’ll jizz in his pants.” Red pulses over Dima’s shoulders. He hates Kostya, always has. I have no idea why. I mean, he tells me all the horrible things Kostya does, but they’re no worse than what the rest of us have done in this dead-end hellhole in Arizona. None of what he’s done compares to what I’m about to do.

That girl must be so scared. She probably doesn’t even know what’s going to happen, what deal her piece-of-shit brother just brokered to get out of a measly $150,000 plus interest. The fact that he’s second in line for his syndicate, same as I am in mine, and would rather sell his sister’s pussy than come up with 150K is madness. I’d cut off the dick of any man trying to buy even a touch of Kseniya for that kind of money. She’s a human being. She’s not for sale.

“Lay off Kostya,” I growl as I take the mirror from Dima. Kostya’s fucked up, but no worse than I am. We’ve both buried our fathers in this sun-bleached shithole. The only difference is when his father was murdered six months after we were uprooted from Russia, sentenced to life in Arizona, he was too young to be theavtorivetof our minuscule outpost. He escaped succession, pinning it squarely on my father’s lineage.

Artyom and I were already adults when our father was killed. Birth order gave me a stay of execution, but every late-night call I get, I expect it to be news of Artyom’s death. It’s been twelve years since Uncle Kostantin’s death, six years since Papa’s. It’s Artyom’s time.

And then mine. In godforsaken Flagstaff.

“Stop thinking so hard and take your medicine,” Dima says. We’re crammed in the office of our shitty strip club, the only thing making us money half the time, and it smells so strongly of ancient cigars, old ledgers, and spent cum that I can see it. Worms slithering through the foul carpet and phantom spiders skittering up the walls, roaches clinging to the ceiling.

I’m going to die in Flagstaff.

I jam the stub of a neon green straw into my nostril, lean down, and snort both lines down. The effect is immediate, a sharp burn from the Xanax followed by the thick drip of the coke sliding down my nasal passage and into my throat. I taste it on the roof of my mouth, although that’s just the process, not a hallucination. I can tell the difference, not that it makes any more difference than it does to identify the giant lizard as an alligator or a crocodile as it’s ripping your intestines out of your gut.

I’m going to die in Flagstaff.

Dima rolls his eyes. “Will you stop saying that?”

My eyes widen and then slit. “Get out of my brain.”

“Dude, you keep saying, ‘I’m going to die in Flagstaff.’ In English, I might add, so don’t act like you can’t speak it. You start babbling in Russian in there, that girl really is going to piss on you.” With a weary sigh, he sits back on the edge of the office desk. The whole thing trembles beneath his considerable weight, and his ass starts sinking into it. I’m not sure how much of that is hallucination. “Man, how fucked up are you? You gonna be able to get it up in there? You better not fuck this up with a limp dick.”

“Is fine,” I snap, the sounds rolling out in green. Broken English. I think. “But give. Just in case.”

I reach for the baggie of coke, but he snaps it away from me, instead meticulously cutting another snip of the neon green tube, pinching the end, and warming it with his lighter to seal it. He dumps the smallest fucking bump in the entire state of Arizona into the tube and seals the other end.

He ignores my glare as he tucks the tube into my breast pocket, knowing I’m going to be losing my pants soon. Probably the shirt, too, but I’m playing that by ear. I’m planning on checking out on this one and letting my body do whatever it’s feeling good about.

“You’ll get the rest of this when I’m back on Saturday.”

“You’re leaving?” I ask, ignoring the whine in my voice. I’m a grown-ass man. I’ve killed other grown-ass men. I’m considered the best sniper in the syndicate — not that it’s amajor accomplishment with how small our brigade is — and I’ll gleefully bare-knuckle the best of them. But Dima’s lived with me for years. He’s more of a brother to me than Artyom most days. I get nervous when he’s not around.

I scan for lumps in his pockets, trying to figure out where that xanny vanished to.

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