Red Devil (Dangerous Spirits) (23 page)

“I’ll be damned,” she said. “Athos won the bet.”

“I have to go home and charge my phone,” he said. “Then I will look for another place to live.”

“For what it’s worth,” Meg said, “Sol feels bad about yelling at you.” Alexei didn’t know how to respond to that without telling her that he didn’t care, so he kept quiet. “Well,” Meg went on, “he feels bad now. After I yelled at him about it. He needs to get over his goddamn crush on that painting.”

“The painting,” Alexei said, and squeezed his eyes shut. “I should go pick it up.”

“Yeah,” Meg said. “Sol wanted to come and make sure you did, but I told him I would do it so you guys didn’t end up yelling at each other in the middle of the framing store.” She pushed herself up off the seat. “Also it’s good to see you standing, if barely.”

He gave a short laugh and shook his head. “I managed to work today. How is Athos?”

“He’s off at a shop that sells arcana or something. I had no idea there was anything like that here.” She waved a paw. “Which way is this framing store?”

They walked toward it together. When Alexei didn’t say anything, even to ask what “arcana” meant, Meg talked about Athos and how he was much more normal than she’d been expecting. She told Alexei that he’d slept on the floor in her room, emphasizing that detail, he thought, so it was clear they hadn’t slept together. He liked fish, like she did, but not garlic, though she thought that it was a real dislike of garlic and not just an affectation. “I won’t know for sure for a couple days though,” she said, which made Alexei wonder if she was planning to sneak garlic into his food, and he thought about that while she told him about Athos’s polite manner and earnestness about his occult fascination.

“He knows it’s not real, but he’s really interested in why people think it is,” she said, and laughed. “I said I wasn’t, but I mean, look at who I’m rooming with: two guys who dream about dead people. So maybe he has a point. I guess I never asked you guys why you wanted to believe so much, but if you talk to Athos, he might.”

Alexei could think of few conversations he would less like to have with anyone right at this moment. He held the door for Meg as they entered the store. “Is that his shirt?” he said, mostly to change the subject.

“Yeah. He said he wanted to see it on me, so I tried it on. Kind of like the look, except the color, you know? I like basic black.”

“It looks good on you,” Alexei said honestly.

They unwrapped the picture at the counter and showed him the unbroken glass. He and Meg inspected it for cracks or marks, which in Alexei’s case meant staring at the fox in the picture and wondering how he’d handled his father, if he’d run away at fourteen or eighteen, if he could possibly come to Alexei and help him.

“There’s a fingerprint on the glass,” Meg said, pointing. “It’s on the inside.”

“We could re-do it,” the skunk behind the counter said, leaning over to take a look. “It would take another four days.”

“Let’s bring it back to Sol.” Alexei shook himself free of his imaginings. “If he has to wait four more days…he won’t believe me.”

“I’ll be a witness,” Meg said, but she didn’t argue with him.

“He can decide if he wants it re-done,” Alexei said. “But I think he needs to see it.”

“What about you?” Meg said as they left the store. “I think you need to see a couple things yourself.”

Holding the large picture, Alexei shuddered. There were things he did not need to see again. As if she’d heard him thinking that, Meg said, “Have any dreams at the bus terminal?”

Slowly, he shook his head. The letters did not count, because he’d been awake. “Okay, then,” she said, “What the hell was going on with you last night? Sol said you just blew up.”

“He blew up at me,” Alexei said, gripping the picture more tightly.

Meg walked along with him for a few steps without saying anything. “It sounded like you were asking him about something, but he wouldn’t tell me what.” Alexei didn’t respond. “I’m guessing it has something to do with the dreams, and then he yelled at you because he wants his goddamn precious dreams back.”

“Sort of,” Alexei said cautiously.

“If I’d known those dreams were contagious, I never would have agreed to live with you two,” Meg said. “What is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Alexei said, more strongly.

“Are you all right?”

Her tone eased the words he wanted to say. “I am having these dreams and Sol wants to have them too, but they are not what he thinks they are and I cannot tell him that.”

He expected Meg to ask him how they were different or ask him more about them, but she only nodded and said, “Preachin’ to the choir. You can’t tell that woofer anything sometimes. He needs to get over that dream fox. In fact, I’m not at all sure we should be taking this picture back to him.”

Alexei paused. For a moment, he envisioned going back to Sol, telling him the store had lost the picture. Sol would be furious, yes, and…and he could not do that. He knew how much Niki meant to Sol, and it wouldn’t be right to take that away.

“I’m kidding,” Meg said before he could answer. “That’d be like…like taking weed away from my folks. Well, maybe not that bad. I’m pretty sure Sol could function without the picture. He’d just be sad.”

“He is writing a story,” Alexei said.

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s healthy either.” Meg shrugged. “But a lot of writers are a little bit nuts, so who knows? Maybe that’s his calling.”

“I am worried that he is seeing Kendall,” Alexei blurted out.

“Kendall,” Meg said as they reached the bus stop. “That’s the guy from your team? The goalie?” He nodded. “I thought Sol was going out with some bear or something.”

“Mitch,” Alexei said. “He sounds like a very nice guy.”

“There’s Athos,” Meg said, lifting her paw.

Across the street, the grey fox nodded toward them. He wore a grey t-shirt, dark slacks, and the black cape around his shoulders. He carried a small brown bag.

“Anyway,” Meg said. “You boys get all too worked up about dating. Isn’t it supposed to be easier for you? You all want the same thing, right?”

“I thought so,” Alexei said in a low voice as Athos came within listening distance.

“The stores here,” the grey fox said, “are curious. I would have thought there would be more
voudon
material there, but there was more of the standard things you find in these kinds of stores. Mostly fakeries and old things without any interest.”

Alexei wasn’t sure what “voo-don” was, and then he realized it was probably the word for what in Siberian was “vudu.” Black magic practiced in some states to the south and west, not so much around here. “What did you buy?” he asked, to be polite.

The fox laid his ears back and slumped down into the plastic seat. Meg, next to Alexei, kicked him in the leg. “Don’t drop that picture,” she said, when he stumbled.

He looked again at the brown paper bag and remembered Meg’s warning about Athos being “touchy” about his interests. He remembered, too, his plan to ask Athos how to dispel Konstantin. That desire felt dull now, remote. The ghost had been through last night with him, and he now placed more hope in hearing about Cat from Konstantin than from Rozalina.

He sat by himself on the bus on the way home, while Meg and Athos sat together two rows back. Since Athos was drawing strange looks in his black cape, Alexei was not terribly upset by this. He didn’t know where the grey fox was from, but wherever it was, it was a place where wearing black capes in public did not make one a target. Or else it was, and the fox just thought that since he was visiting here, he would wear his cape around and nobody would care. It annoyed Alexei slightly to think that, but then again, Meg did walk out with her fur dyed black, and once someone had yelled at her to wash her fur, and she’d flipped them off (that was what Sol called it), and there had nearly been a fight.

That had been back in Midland, though, not here in Vidalia. If Alexei looked out the window, he knew he would see lots of dyed fur. No capes, but at least dyed fur and piercings. He didn’t look, though. He held the wrapped picture in his lap, inhaling the woody smell of it and the wax of the crayon with which they’d written his name on the paper. The streets passed by outside, and as he drew closer to home, he tried to think about what he would say to Sol, but his mind refused to play the conversation beyond him giving the repaired picture to Sol. He had no idea whether Sol would apologize, whether he would be distracted by the painting and not even talk about the previous night, whether he would still be mad at Alexei for walking out.

Trying to imagine all the possibilities threatened to return the headache from the previous night. His head and ear were still a little sore, but not too bad, not at all. The physical pain was nothing to the worry about Cat, and Konstantin, and Sol, and Mike.

It had been nice of Meg to come get him, even if it had also been partly for Athos to explore his shops. He’d caught a snatch of conversation between them, Athos grumbling about the distance he’d had to walk, and Meg saying, “I showed you the bus routes.” Alexei inferred that they had stopped at his stop even though there was a closer bus stop to where Athos had wanted to go, and he felt warmly toward Meg for that. He would miss her when he moved out.

His fingers hurt from holding on to the frame. Behind him, the wolf slouched in the seat had his music turned up so loud that Alexei could hear it even over the bus noise. He smelled like dirt and other wolves. Two rows back, Meg and Athos talked in low tones that Alexei could hear, even if he couldn’t pick out words. But other people on the bus sat alone, absorbed in their own thoughts, their books, their music, far more than sat in couples. Perhaps all of them had ghosts as well, spirits that helped dictate the course of their lives. Yes, he thought. He would be all right on his own.

Sol was not home when they arrived. Alexei placed the painting carefully on the wolf’s bed and then stretched and sat on his own. The sensation of rest was so different from sitting down on the bus, or in the break room at work, or in the plastic seats at the bus terminal that he closed his eyes, curled his tail around his hips, and let his whole body sag back. Before he knew it, he was falling backwards, and then he was lying down on the bed, eyes closed, relaxing for the first time in over a day. Konstantin was not bothering him, he was not worried about Sol or Mike or anything right now, just letting go and drifting.

“Hey,” Meg said, “we’re going to make tuna casserole for dinner. You in?”

“Sure,” Alexei said without getting up.

He wasn’t aware of falling asleep, only of waking to the smell of cooking cheese and tuna oil. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. Konstantin had not appeared in his dreams; maybe he was still searching for Chichikov. Even the faint hope and fear that he was gone barely registered now.

Alexei rolled over and felt something hard in his pocket: his phone. He plugged it in, watched the light come on, and then walked out to the kitchen, but the oven timer showed that there were ten minutes left to go, and Meg and Athos were in her room with the door closed. Sol was still nowhere to be seen. He sighed, and just then, his phone beeped, so he hurried back into his room.

The voicemail listing showed Sol’s number yesterday evening, Mike’s late this morning, and in between, two Siberian numbers. Heart pounding, he sat on his bed and brought the phone to his ear.

“Hey,” Sol’s voice said, strained. “Sorry about tonight. Look, come back—don’t run off like an—like that. Come—”

He skipped the rest of it. The second message started with crackles and pops, so that for a moment he thought he’d skipped it by accident, and then he heard his sister’s voice.

“
Alexei! Where are you? Oh, it is so exciting, Bogdan has called again and said he will be coming to Samorodka tomorrow morning to pick me up. I need only meet him where the road comes into town, by the sign that says ‘Leaving Samorodka.’ He wanted me to come to Vdansk, but I said I did not know when I could go there. So he said he will come down to fetch me. Oh, Lexi, tomorrow I will be in Moskva! I asked Bogdan how long it would take to fill out the paperwork to send me to the States. He said it would depend on getting my records from the school, but that he has already entered my name into the program, so it should happen rather quickly. There are several programs for social work, and he says that with my grades and ideas, I should certainly gain admission to one of them. He is not sure it will be close to you, but he says that once I am in the States, it will be easy for us to travel to see each other.

“
The way he called was very clever. He told Papa he was from the National Siberian Achievements Board and that they had been sent my examination scores and wished to interview me for a possible award. Papa had been drinking a little, but he still asked many questions, and Bogdan answered them all well. He must be acquainted with the National Board. Perhaps he does work for them as well as being in the civil service. When he talked to me, he told me I must be very brave and also that the exchange program might cost fifty rubles in fees
.

“
This is what I wanted to ask you. I did not know that your program cost so much! Did you get it from the engineer? Or did someone else help you? I think Mama has that much in her room, and I should be able to get it, but I do not want to steal it if someone else is supposed to give it to me.

“
I will try to call you again once I am in Moskva. Dear brother, I hope to see you soon again once more and feel your arms around me. I must hurry back now and pack the things I wish to bring with me. It will be sad to say good-bye to this town, but I know I will return one day
.”

In his haste to hear the next message, his fingers fumbled, pausing it and then stabbing down to get it to play. Rozalina’s voice spoke in his ear:: “
Alexei, I called your parents, but they shouted at me and I was forced to hang up. I hope that no complaint will be filed. I am afraid all I learned was that your sister may already be gone.
”

There were two more clicks, and then silence.