Page 37 of Vasily the Nail

Ana is passed out with her head on my lap. I had to wake her up three times during the movie she chose, a strange nineteenth century version of a Shakespearean play which I must have enjoyed more than she did. She said it was critical she watch it and thanked me every time I woke her, so I think I did the right thing, but the movie’s since ended, so I’m letting her sleep.

I want to go to bed, but it’s early. Regardless of the long days I’ve been having, I know my brain is going to resist. Worse, I feel that itch. It’ll be so easy for me to sneak a hit and drift off to paradise, and lying in bed will have me dwelling on it.

Just scrolling through the streaming services searching for something that will catch my interest is enough to have me craving. I shift in my seat, and Ana makes a soft grumbling sound and resettles herself. That’s enough of a reminder that I can’t do anything. I spent my whole day with her curbing every impulse to poke a fight for silly reasons even though her presence is enough to calm the worst of it. I feel like a woundedpet begging their human for help but attacking when they attempt to do what they need to.

I rub her arm lightly to ease my hackles as I give up on the TV and scroll through my phone. I cave and read the string of messages from Artyom, telling myself his threats of driving Ana home himself and then forcing me back into his house— I’m twenty-six years old; I am absolutely not moving back into my childhood bedroom— are all empty or he doesn’t have the power to do it.

He does. He’d put Dima in a bad situation since he can’t afford our apartment on his own, and I honestly do think returning Ana right now would make that situation worse, but he has that power. I just need to resist him until Tony quiets down or something else bigger pops up.

At 10:17, I receive the text, “We need you,” from him, and fuck that. He was the one who gave Dima permission to run off to Jacksonville without having someone ready to cover his responsibilities. I’ve been doing the work of two people all week. I’m taking the night off. Protection can be collected tomorrow.

The next text rolls in a minute later.

Artyom

I’m serious. There’s a body.

Fuck.

Three guns are pointed at me and Kostya when we arrive at the far end of a parking lot of a mostly abandoned strip mall. One of guns belongs to the Calaveras de Oro. The other two are IRA. The Calaveras boys have an IRA goon bound and gaggedin their midst, but there are only four of them, and the IRA, as light as their membership is here, has the Blazing Hell MC on their side and are currently numbering eight, counting the one who’s been captured. They’re squaring off, everyone’s got at least one gun pointing somewhere, and down at the opposite end are two of my boys. It’s like some fucked-up wedding and I’m the bride, but I don’t want anyone on either side of the aisle to be my family.

I don’t bother to put my hands up or whatever they expect me to do. In fact, I reach into my pocket deliberately as I walk down the divide between the rival groups to Vladimir and Alex, pull out my cigarettes, and light one up.

“You crazy fuck,” Alex chuckles as Vladimir gestures for me to share.

I hand him my lit cigarette and get a second going for myself as I kneel down at the corpse by their feet. A woman on her side, her cotton candy pink wig obscuring her face from me. From her clothes, I’d guess a sex worker. The glittery top is a bit too much to be a bra, the lime green band gathered at her waist not enough to be a full dress. No panties, so I pull out a small package from the duffel bag I’ve brought with me and unfurl a drop cloth. No one’s going to touch the body my brothers stand sentinel over, not yet, but she’s a human being. She deserves some dignity right now.

I kneel down to get a better look. Darker complexion than me, but it’s night and the nearest streetlamp is twenty yards away. I couldn’t guess at her race. From my bag, I pull out a flashlight and a pen to push her hair out of her face.

Young. About Ana’s age. They never would have been friends. Despite the predicament Ana’s currently in and the kindheart that she has, she would never understand that this girl is the opposite side of her coin, the only difference between them the way the men who own them peddle their sex and the way those men talk of their value. But in a different world, one not nearly as fucked up as this one we’ve all found ourselves in? Yeah, they could have been friends. Classmates, at least.

There’s blood leaking from the girl’s nose, a thin trail that’s stopped running but still glistens, leaking straight onto the asphalt. She hasn’t been moved. With my pen, I shift the synthetic hair around beneath her head and see a puddle forming, but not from her nose. Her skull. Lifting the cap of the wig, I find smooth, silky black hair pulled back taut. I still do my best not to move anything in case they do want the cops involved — we have an arrangement with the locals that as long as we keep things moving out of Flagstaff, they play fair with us, so it’s a courtesy that we don’t tamper with their crime scenes — but I need to see better what happened. The dark hair makes it hard to see blood, but she looks dry. No staining or holes in the wig cap until I get pretty far back. The bleeding isn’t from a gunshot, then. Either she hit her head landing hard on the asphalt or someone bludgeoned her and she happened to fall on the side she was hit on.

I’m no expert, but I’m leaning toward the former. She would have had to stay upright after getting hit in the skull hard enough to bust it open. Otherwise, she would have fallen the other way. Running the flashlight over her better, I see more evidence of this. She’s got abrasions all over her body. Most of them are simple scuffs, and they’re scattered randomly. Places that stick out just right. Her nose. Her hip. The top knuckle of her toes, unprotected by the shoes that were strapped on solidly enough that they stayed through whatever happened. I shine myflashlight around and notice fresh burnt rubber with a shimmer of random glitter and sequins leading to the body.

“I’ll tell you what happened, man!” Hector, one of the Hispanic men who I know to be higher ranking in the Calaveras, yells at me. I hold my hand up for silence. I want to figure it out for myself first.

I do one more exam of the body before making my decision and pointing my flashlight at the gagged boy. “His story.”

“He’s a fucking liar,” Hector yells again. He points his gun at their captive. “Imma waste him.”

“No. My fucking city, my goddamn car lot. Drop gag.”

Hector glowers at me, but the arrangements we have are as fragile as a spiderweb. If one strand is severed, the entire thing collapses.

“She attacked me, I swear!” the IRA boy says as soon as the gag is taken out of his mouth. “I hired her, and we were having a little fun in the back seat of my car, and then she tried to bite my dick off. I–I panicked and clocked her with my gun to get her off me, and then she had a seizure and died.”

“Happen here?” I ask, shining my light on the burnt rubber.

He nods quickly. “Yeah, man, I swear. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I just had to get her off me, and then I panicked.”

I shine my light on Hector. “You story.”

“He murdered my cousin!” Hector yells, his hand shaking. That kind of shaky hand is apt to pull a trigger, and I don’t know if he’s already cocked the gun or not. “She’s a good girl, man.She’s not–she’s not—” He waves the gun at the body now, which means he’s also waving it at Alex and Vladimir.

“Eyes on me, man,” I say, approaching slowly with my hands out just enough from my side that he can see I’m not carrying anything. I went ahead and crushed a Xanax into that smallest bump of coke in all of Flagstaff that Dima left me with to get my brain back in the right gear, and I’m thankful for that when Hector points not just his eyes but his gun at me.

It’s fine. Everything is copacetic. It’s all going to work out because this is not my day to die in Flagstaff. It’s not my time yet.

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