Cornered (24 page)

Today, Vadim and his invitation—
Come with me?
—felt dangerous. Vadim was never dangerous. It was Saturday, and you only got one Saturday a week. Did I want to give it to Vadim?

I did. I came.

• • •

As we walked, the houses grew incrementally bigger and more well-maintained. Vadim's cousins—not the Karla Bozulich cousins, his other side—lived in Rushing Waters, a cushy development that lay between the Yards and suburbia. Rushing Waters was its own self-contained community of immigrant families.

It just so happened that the opening of Rushing Waters coincided with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and several zillion Russian families immigrating to the United States. The Jewish Federation bought the entire development, and Rushing Waters was informally renamed Russian Vodkas. Each family got a free house, and they stuffed it to the gills. Friends and cousins back in Russia would get plane tickets for New York City, plan a two-week vacation, and never go back. You'd go to
someone's house and the door would be answered by any one of twenty-three identical cousins, each with the same Russian bowl-cut hairstyle. Everyone slept together, five kids to a cot, older cousins on the sofas.

The houses still smelled of fresh paint, with new sofas and refrigerators that made ice when you hit a button. There were definitely no soldering machines to wake you at 5:30 a.m. every morning. It was a lottery. Sometimes you got the jackpot, and sometimes you didn't get anything but a useless ticket and silver crap under your nails. For every family who
didn't
get placed in Russian Vodkas, they had to find somewhere else.

Vadim's family was given a freestanding house where—like most of these kids—he had his own attic bedroom. For my parents, they found a vacant factory. I lived in Secondary Processing and shared a bedroom with a conveyor belt. Sometimes I woke up with black soot on my face.

We had no say on how the Jewish Federation spent money on us; we just checked the mail and saw what new toys we had coming. That part was made even more incongruous for a family like us living in a factory. Out of nowhere they would send us brand-new water filters, or three full frozen chickens for Friday night dinner, or a really nice new Serta California King bed. The deliverymen were always confused. They weren't sure if we were really poor or really rich.

• • •

As Vadim and I descended the main drive, the one that led from
the main road into the valley of Russian Vodkas, I felt a palpable change, the America evaporating from the air as the Russia started to sink in. Goose bumps peppered my bare, T-shirted arms and crept stealthily up my spine. I could have lived here, I reminded myself. If we'd been one notch higher on the list of Poor Russian Aid Victims, my family could be here. My parents would have a house. I would have friends who understood my words and forgave my accent, because they would have one too.

“
Blyad,
” Vadim muttered. “I hate this ghetto. I'm so glad we got a house on our own.”

“What? Five minutes down the road can make that much difference?”

“All the difference in the world,” he said at once. “Could you imagine having the kind of computer setup I have if I lived here? Thirty people would be over every night, bugging me to let them check their stupid Hotmail accounts. If no one stole it from me, I mean. And could you
imagine
what kind of a security system I'd need to protect my comics?”

Actually, I could. Vadim had once exiled me from his house for two weeks after I breathed too heavily on his
New Avengers
#32, the one where Power Man's baby might be a shape-changing alien. I could see his point.

The street names—Maple Glen Road, Fairview Lane, Buttermilk Bend—were all cruel forgeries, promises of an Americana that we would never achieve. Not only because this neighborhood was in the dead zone between city and suburbs. Not only because we were Russian. But because everyone was
too stuck in their own lives to even
want
to try to get out.

We passed tons of people on the street. It seemed like everyone who lived there had chosen that moment to leave their house for the market, or to walk the dog, or just to see what was going on. It was like no one had day jobs.

They all stared at us. Not the way that people stared downtown, the normal people who fixed us with that vacant, angry
what-are-you-doing-here
stare. No, here they stared as though they knew exactly what we were doing here, even if we didn't know ourselves. In our thrift-store clothes and our dirty backpacks, they could tell we were trespassing.

“So, Vadim—uh, not to be dense, but why are we here?”

“You wanted to hang out with me? Well, this is what I have to do today. This is how we can hang out.”

He had answered me in straight Russian. That was how I knew things were about to change.

We stopped in front of a perfectly white door with tiny flecks of paint peeling from the outermost corners, red and white polka-dotted curtains hanging in the windows. Loud metal music blared from inside. My friend Bates had been teaching me to work out his favorite metal bands, to recognize them from the tenor of the lead singer's yells and the first few notes of each riff: Danzig, Deicide, Morbid Angel, Godflesh. This band was none of them. Their sound was less bleak, less deathlike and more pretending-to-be-deathlike. I felt a weird, secret power over whoever was playing this music, but at the same time, I was scared.

Vadim reached up and rang the doorbell. It was a normal electric doorbell noise. I don't know what I expected.

After a considerable time and what seemed like a struggle, or a conversation, someone came to the door. It was Peter Khazarimovsky, Vadim's cousin. I'd met him a few times before, but it was always with his or Vadim's parents around. I was more comfortable with it that way.

Peter (born Piyotr) was over six feet tall. He had thick hair that was cut short and yet still treated with hair gel, and both his ears were pierced on the bottom and top. On anyone else, it would've looked gay. But Peter Piyotr had this glint in his eye—you could feel it even when he was wearing his $500 Oakley sunglasses, which was pretty much always—that seemed to suggest he might very well have a switchblade in his back pocket.

He looked us up and down. Then he looked me up and down again. Finally, he nodded coolly. He offered his right hand to Vadim, positioned in the air opposite his considerably wide shoulders. They did a kind of combination handshaking/hug thing, and then he motioned for us to come inside.

I knew Peter Piyotr's parents lived there, but I had no idea how they managed to manifest their presence in the house. The shades were drawn, and bottles of wine and vodka lay strewn around the darkness. This wasn't even my father's kind of drinking, concentrated and private and starting at midday. This was balls-out, show-your-friends-what-you're-made-of, early-morning drinking. Two guys sat on the floor in front of the TV
and another lay on the couch. So did a fourth guy, although it took me a while to notice, because he was passed out and only half an arm was visible.

“Who is this?”

“I—” My mouth wanted to protest, but the words refused to come out. Peter Piyotr had met me at least twenty times. Our moms played Pachinko together. Where did he get to be all who-is-thissing me?

“This is Jupiter,” Vadim cut me off. “He's fine. He won't give us trouble.”

“I won't give you
trouble
?” I asked. “Vadim, who is Piyotr pretending to—”

“Sit down, Jupiter.” Vadim's voice was cold. Even and tighter than before, like a robot. I ducked into the living room. The sofa squeaked when I sat.

Vadim and Peter Piyotr spoke in whispered hisses for a minute. I heard him say that our parents were friends, and the words
from my synagogue
. Our parents?

“Fine. He can stay,” Peter Piyotr said to Vadim at last. To me he smiled indulgently and said, “Shalom.” I heaved a sigh.

Vadim walked over to the TV in the living room, where he high-fived two guys that I didn't recognize at all. “Vadim, what are we doing here?” I said quietly.

“Stop asking questions,” he hissed.

I bit my lip and reclined into the stiff boarded leather.

“Are you angry?” I said.

“You said you wanted to come,” Vadim said at a normal
volume. The TV guys looked over. Then—louder—he said, “You wanted to hang out with me, remember?”

“Because we're
friends,”
I said. “I wanted everything to be cool with us.”

“Which is, of course, something you and only you are able to do,” said Vadim. He smiled like he was joking, but his voice didn't sound at all like it was joking. “What's wrong, my droog? Scared? Is Jupiter out of his element?”

I looked at Vadim. Had I really known this person on two continents, torn my sandwich in half for him on the first day of school, confided in him my secret fantasies about Emma Frost and Psylocke? This was a completely different Vadim.

“Since when is this
your
element?”

“How would you even
know?
You never pay attention to anybody's life except your own.”

“Please. Do you even realize how much of an effort I make to pull you along with me?” I got in his face. “Other people, when they get popular, they ignore their old friends. I would never do that.”

“Of course not. You're so much better than that. Instead, you drag me along so there's someone around to look even more pathetic than you do.”

I pulled back, stunned. “Did you just say I look pathetic?”

“For all you think you understand people, Jupiter Glazer,” said Vadim, “you're more clueless than all the rest of us put together. You wear these falling-apart clothes that are supposed to look like the ones they charge hundreds of dollars for
downtown, but everyone knows they really are Salvation Army trash. You think just because you know Devin Murray, that automatically makes you rich by association—that your life will be easy and it'll take you far far away from the Yards. But that doesn't just happen, Jupiter. You need to
work
to get out of here.”

Vadim didn't know how far from the truth he was. I wore the least scabby, torn, thrift-store-looking shirts and jeans I could find. I had plenty of clothes that might have looked cooler, but they were also more dangerous, easier for someone to casually tease,
Hey, where'd you get that—the Salvation Army?
And Devin Murray didn't waste any more time talking to me than I cajoled her into spending. We occasionally said hello in the halls. It was the kind of friendship that was awkward and forced, and I felt guilty just being in it. If I didn't constantly keep watering it, it would evaporate.

But I didn't say that. I said: “This is what you define as working hard enough to get you out of the Yards? Slumming around a gross living room in Russian Vodkas, dragging me to some sleazy drug deal? Are you trying to make a point?”

“Hey!” said Peter Piyotr.

“What?” I said to him. “Am I very wrong, or are Vadim and I here for a drug deal?”

Peter Piyotr started to argue, then changed his mind. “Nah, you're right,” he shrugged. “It's a drug deal.”

“You see?” I said to Vadim. “You're going to fry the brains of some innocent little kid and damn them to a life of prostitution. . . .”

“My mom does that, and she's not even on drugs,” some guy from the kitchen called. The two in front of the TV laughed. How many people were in this house right now?

I turned to them. “Do you guys all live here?”

They ignored the question. “You know what is so great about this place?” asked one of them. “It is so quiet. Very desirable. No one ever comes here. No cops, no nobody. From inside these houses, you can hear nothing.”

“Oh, Jupiter knows all about that,” Peter Piyotr said, moving closer. He stood inches away from me when he spoke, almost into my ear. Under different circumstances, it might have tickled. “Our Jupiter, he lives in a warehouse. It is even bigger and more isolated. Isn't that right?”

“Yes,” I ventured. With him this close, there was nothing to do but agree.

“I bet he has room to store shit there. Lots of shit. And at good cool temperatures, too. I'll bet Jupiter would do that for us for free. I bet he would do anything we say.”

“I bet he would.” Vadim smiled wickedly.
Wickedly.
Is this why he'd brought me here?

“Are—are you serious?” I asked. Usually I only spoke Russian to my parents and having to use it now made me feel violated on every level of my brain.

They started laughing. For real, now. Peter Piyotr, the guys on the floor, even Vadim. Vadim laughed hardest of all—toothily, scarily. His laugh filled the room. It was like a stench of a million farts at once. You couldn't tune it out. It pressed
against me on all sides.

“
Blyad
, Jupiter, I don't even know why I brought you,” Vadim said after he caught his breath. He sounded more whiny than angry. “Just please grow up a little?”

“Fine,” I said. “Just stop talking to me. I'm out of here. I'm out of your whole life. Just say the word.”