Page 67 of Vasily the Hammer

“So, you really think Dima did all of this?” Kostya asks as he inspects a cup he’s pulled from the cupboard. Apparently, it doesn’t pass inspection, because he sets it in the sink and pulls out another.

And another.

And another.

Finally, with a dejected sigh, he retrieves an ancient bottle of dish soap from under the sink and sets to work scrubbing the dust from a couple glasses with a desiccated sponge.

I don’t know what he expected. This apartment has lain fallow for years now. Dima supposedly stays here when he’s in Flagstaff, but he hasn’t been here in over a year— except for yesterday, of course. Yesterday, he dropped off a Blazing Hell MC member from San Antonio, and I cannot fathom why else he would have done it except to bring a war to Flagstaff. I’m glad it didn’t go past the pile of body bags we’ve filled in the last twenty-four hours, but it’s killing me that he’s turned on me like this.

“I can’t ignore what’s slapped me across the face a dozen times already,” I point out as I drop onto the sofa. The furniture is still arranged the way Ana set it up in her brief stay. We made love on this couch, in our own odd way, the night Ana asked me to show her how to handle my cock properly with all the piercings in it. I fell in love with her that night, just as I did every night she was here.

That memory is ruined by the reminder that we were interrupted by Dima then.

How did this go so wrong? How could I not have known my best friend turned on me?

“Do you think it’s because of you?”

Kostya turns back from the dishes, startled.

“That Dima’s done all this,” I clarify. “Do you think he was offended that I moved you to LA with me while I sent him on the road?”

“I don’t know,” Kostya says helplessly. “It’s crazy no matter what it was. You take care of us. You’re the best leader we’ve ever had. You took a bunch of thugs and made us into an empire. Your brother—”

“Ah, ah, ah,” I cut him off sharply. “My brother was a good man. He did his best.”

Kostya nods. “He did the best with what he had, yes, but after we lost him, I thought we were cooked. No offense.”

“None taken.” Truly, no one is as impressed as I am with what I was able to do with this. Dumb luck, a lot of it. But it’s also my masterpiece.

And it doesn’t matter if I don’t get Ana back. It doesn’t matter if I don’t survive whatever Dima’s planning next.

Kostya opens the cabinet next to the sink and curses. “No vodka.”

“It’s alright.”

“It’s not. I’ll go get us a bottle.”

I start to stand up. “We shouldn’t dawdle anyway. Dima’s still out there. Kseniya’s still missing. We have to keep going.”

“Absolutely not. You were the one who said we needed to rest or we were going to start screwing up. We’re going to bunk for acouple hours, start moving when we get more information from Janson.” He softens his tone and gives me a sympathetic look, the sort a man gives another when he sees the hurt and knows it’s the time to acknowledge that the still waters of emotion run deep. “I know you’re worried about Kseniya, okay? But you need to get some sleep. I’ll be back in a couple minutes. And here.”

He digs into the satchel he brought with him from LA and pulls out a small kit that contains one of my pre-filled syringes. “Here, it’s shot day.”

“Right, yeah. Thanks.”

Once he leaves, I grab the syringe and inject myself. I consider going to bed, like Kostya said, but I eye my bedroom door warily. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, not yet, not without that vodka or my pills to calm the worst of my nerves. There’s also the concern that this apartment is as much Dima’s as it is mine, and he could stroll in at any second whether on purpose or by utter coincidence.

Instead, I peek under the TV and smile when I see my old Xbox down there. It still fires up. The controller’s still charged. I settle myself on the sofa and, just for the sheer ridiculousness of it, load the old Sims game I used to play before everything went down with Ana the first time around.

The gibberish they start talking once the screen loads immediately lulls me. My brother made fun of me for this game. My sister did too. Dima. They’re all lost to me now in one way or the other. I don’t know if my sister is permanently lost, but I don’t know if I’ll find her either. But these random characters? With their funny language and their simple dreams and their easily achieved goals? Their cheat codes and their pause buttons? They’ll all go forever. I won’t lose them. Whenever I need them, they’ll be right here.

The best part is they keep going whether I tell them to or not. I can instruct them, but as I slump back onto the sofa, as exhaustion must overwhelm me because the controller becomes too heavy to hold, they sit down for dinner. They eat, they laugh, they argue. Their hunger bars go up as their bladder bars go down, they get second helpings.

Their strange language blurs together. Reverbs. Their voices blend together. The colors of their world brighten as their screen grows. They turn to me and invite me into their conversation. They wave for me to enter their world.

I sink into it. I hop right on a pool float and ride the river into the screen, sinking into ones and zeroes, learning to paint until I max out my skill and giving a pretty lady the same compliment over and over until she falls in love with me. I build my home one square at a time with a fridge that is never empty and a bookshelf that is always interesting and a single bathroom that is never enough.

A pool with no ladder I can dive into but never climb out of, only swim

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