Page 7 of Bad Teammate
I answered, but immediately jerked the phone away from my ear. Deafening techno music blared from my brother’s end. Late-night revelers shouted and screamed with glee. I’m sure it was a fun party to be at in person, but when all that loud music and wild noise was digitally compressed and transmitted over a cellular phone? All I could hear was harsh dissonance. Like a buzz saw screaming in a bus crash.
“????,” Sasha yelled in Russian, his speech slurred.Katya.
My heart sank. He was drinking.
“Where are you, Sasha?” I asked. “You’re drinking, aren’t you?”
“Can you hear me?” I could tell he was screaming, but he still sounded millions of miles away.
“Hardly,” I said.
I doubted if he could hear me at all. The thumping music in the background dominated the silence between us. Conversation was futile.
“I’m really busy right now, Sasha,” I said. “And you’re obviously partying. Call me when you get home if you want to chat, okay?”
“I can’t hear you,” he said. “But don’t hang up. I’ll move somewhere quiet. This is really, really important.”
I took a deep breath but held it in. “Okay. But please make it fast. I’m on a deadline and I’ve got a lot of work to do today.”
I paced the floor while I waited. I stopped at the window and watched Moscow’s hectic morning traffic stop-and-go on the streets below. Muffled noises told me Sasha was on the move. Soon, the raging party could no longer be heard.
“How about now?” Sasha asked, his voice clear. “I’m outside the club.”
“That’s much better,” I said. “Why are you out drinking so late, Sasha?”
“I’m not drinking,” he said.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re drunk. I can hear it in your voice. Don’t you remember your promise to Papa?”
His only reply was an indignant grunt.
“Don’t you have a game tomorrow, too?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said with his trademark bravado. “I’m always ready to play. I was born to play hockey.”
How lucky,I thought.
“I mean, yousawthe pair of goals I scored tonight, right?” he asked.
“No. I didn’t watch.”
“Katya!” he whined indignantly. “I won the game for my team!”
“Your games don’t air until 3 AM over here. I’m sorry, Sasha, but I’m too busy to wake up in the middle of the night to watch your games.”
Then there was another voice on Sasha’s end: an American girl with a big, brassy voice. “Who are you even talking to right now?” the American wondered aloud with a slight slur.
“??? ??????,” Sasha told her in our native tongue.My sister.
“What? I don’t know what you’re saying,” the girl replied. “I can’t speak Russian.”
Sasha repeated the phrase again and again, as if speaking slower would somehow help this girl understand Russian.
“Omigod, you’resomysterious and foreign,” she said. “I fucking love it. I loveyou,Aleksander.That betternot be your girlfriend, by the way, or I’m gonna have to cut a bitch tonight.”
“Katya, what is she saying?” my brother asked me.
“Nothing important.” I exhaled heavily. “Sasha, please. I have to go. I have so much work to do.”
