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Authors: Gred Herren

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“We thought it was all settled,” Dad said. “But what we didn't know was that Maman was writing him too, and also sending him money.”
“And you had no idea this was going on?” I turned my attention to Sasha. Colin was squeezing my leg, and I shoved his hand away. I didn't want to be touched. I know he was just trying to be there for me, and be a comfort, but I just wasn't in the mood. “Your brother was soaking my mother and my grandmother and you had no idea?”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “Misha acting strange, but he never say anything to Pasha and me. And then Pasha start getting in trouble.”
“This just keeps getting better,” I moaned. My head was starting to hurt. I could feel another wave of the Ecstasy trying to take over, but I fought it off.
Deep breaths, Scotty, deep breaths. Hold it together; don't lose it.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Film company come to Moscow, look for actors. Easy money, Pasha say, but I not trust them. He want to meet them, so I go with him.” He made a face. “They make sex movies, want muscular Russian boys have sex with each other to sell to people. Not for us, I say. Pasha say if people want to pay for his body, that fine with him. Why else have big muscles if not make it pay, he say? I tell him no better than whoring. He say our mother just a whore, why not him? No different than being athlete for state, he say. It not for me—especially when they want Pasha and me have sex together.” He shuddered. “It
fine
with Pasha, he say. He out of control since we find out about who father really is, like he different person. He used to be such nice kid, but everything changed now. I beg Misha talk to him, but Misha want nothing to do with him.”
“That's disgusting.” Gorge rose in my throat, but I forced it back down.
“They pay us lot, Pasha say. I say no, but he make movies for them. They give him drugs. He start using drugs all time.” Sasha covered his face with his hands. “And then Viktor Kafelnikov notice him, like him.”
“Viktor Kafelnikov?” Colin sat bolt upright. “Not
the
Viktor Kafelnikov?”
“You know this guy?” I turned to Colin.
His face was grim. “Oh, yes. He's one of the head honchos of the Russian mob. An incredibly dangerous man.”
Better and better.
My head was really hurting now.
“He give Pasha money. Car. Furs. Jewels. And more drugs. Pasha get worse and worse. Pasha not seem to care what happen to him anymore. I beg Misha to help me with him, but Misha say he want nothing to do with Pasha—he not brother anymore.”
“Then Aunt Sylvia and Maman decided to go to Europe.” Mom sighed. “If I'd only known what she was up to, I would have stopped her. But she wanted to meet Misha, see for herself if he was really a Diderot. She and Sylvia cooked the whole thing up . . . the reason they were going to Europe was to help Sylvia get over Uncle George's death, but the real reason was so that Maman could meet Misha.”
“I don't know that I want to hear anymore,” I mumbled. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair.
“She was convinced once she laid eyes on him.” Mom sighed. “There's something about the eyes—” I glanced over at Sasha and realized, with a start, exactly what she meant.
Sasha had my grandfather's eyes.
“And to make matters worse, Sylvia fell for him.”
“Misha quite charming.” Sasha nodded. “Ever since teenager, able to get women to do what he want. I not even know he went to Germany to meet them. He not talking to either me or Pasha by now. We not brothers anymore, he say, when I try to talk to him. Then he brag about how he get rich American woman to marry him, and he leave Russia and have wonderful new life in America, leave Russia far behind and pretend like he never from there to begin with. I not know why he act this way, like Pasha and me he ashamed of.”
“So, just how exactly did you end up in New Orleans?” My head no longer hurt.
Shock,
I thought.
I am going into shock. That must be what this is. My mind is shutting down because I can't handle it. This is too much.
I shivered a bit, and Colin put his arm around me again. This time I didn't push him away. It felt warm, heavy, and comforting, and I leaned back into his bare chest.
“I find out about rich woman Misha marry.” He smiled smugly. “Misha not smart as he think. I find letters. I get addresses. Then we have to leave Russia.” His eyes filled with tears. “Pasha get bad, get worse. He no like Viktor anymore. Viktor make him do things he not like, then threaten him. Pasha tell him he going to leave, he want to get away from him, he want to have life back, but Viktor not let him go. He tell Pasha he kill him if Pasha try leave him—he kill me too. Pasha come to me, crying, scared. Viktor going to kill him, he say. He say Viktor make him do things—make him come on to men, then film them together and Viktor use movies to force them to do as he say. I did not know what to do.” He looked at my mother. “I turn to sister.”
“Sasha wrote to me,” Mom said. She reached for the bong again. “You can only imagine how I felt when I found out that there were
three
of them. And then Sylvia comes home from another trip to Europe
married
to one of them.” She exhaled. “Thank the Goddess for marijuana.”
“But what about—” I rubbed my forehead. This was really too much, even for me. I've sort of gotten used to my life being insane, but this? “How did Maman feel when her best friend married—I can't even say it; I can't even fucking
think
it.”
“Betrayed. She felt incredibly betrayed. I still can't believe Sylvia did it.” Mom walked into the kitchen and came back with another open bottle of red wine. “I thought she was going to have another breakdown. They haven't spoken since then, not that I can blame Maman, I'm absolutely furious with Sylvia myself. How could she do that to her so-called best friend?” She refilled her glass and shakily took a sip. “Then Pasha and Sasha arrived . . . and it's not like I could confront Papa with them yet. Maman was about to go off the deep end again, and now I was going to spring two more kids on her? That she didn't know about? Her reaction to one was bad enough. . . . It's been hell, Scotty, you have no idea.”
“Really.” My tone was very sarcastic. I knew I was acting like an ass, but I couldn't help myself. How could they have kept this from me?
She gave me a wounded look. “So, I went to Misha, and you can only imagine how he reacted when I told him that I knew about the others, and that he'd been lying to us all.” My mother got a grim look on her face. “I was ready to blow the lid off then—but I . . .” She stopped and started to cry—my incredibly capable, always together mother. I had never seen her cry before—and I stared at her, my mouth open. Dad walked over to her and put his arms around her and held her for a few moments until she got control of herself again. “I
couldn't
do it to Maman, so I made sure Misha put Sasha and Pasha up in the Burgundy house. I mean, Sylvia never used it anymore, and she'd never know . . . while we figured out what to do next.”
“Stop for just a minute.” I held up my hand. “Okay. I think I'm getting this.” I wasn't, really. My head had stopped trying to grasp everything a long time ago. “But how did you turn out to be my drug dealer?” Something else occurred to me. “And I met you a year ago.” I looked at my mother. “
Just how long has this been going on?
”
“We met accident.” Sasha shrugged. “One night in bar. I not looking for you, but when I see you I know who you are.” He pointed to my senior picture on the mantelpiece. “Recognize from picture. You come dance by me, and I think,
this my nephew,
so I friendly to you.” He gave me that damn shy smile again. “I wanted you like me.”
“Why didn't you ever say anything to me?” I glared at him. “I mean, we're family, and you never said anything. Ever. Not even a hint.”
“I asked him not to,” Mom said. Her voice was miserable. “Scotty, I know I handled this really badly, but I didn't really know what to do; you have to believe me.”
“Yeah, and I'm too
fragile
to handle the truth, right?” I snapped. I was starting to get really angry, and I struggled to keep it down, keep it under control. Losing it wasn't going to change anything. I took some deep breaths and looked back at Sasha. “And why were you dealing drugs anyway?”
Sasha drew himself up proudly, puffing out his big chest. “I
not
sell drugs. I gave you drugs, but
Pasha
sold drugs.”
“Like there's a difference?” I was starting to sound like Frank, but I was beyond caring. “So, when I was buying drugs, I was buying them from Pasha, but you were the one I met first? And why were you all calling yourselves Misha?”
“Um, that's another thing,” Mom said. “Sasha and Pasha aren't exactly in the country legally. They came in on tourist visas . . . and just kind of, well,
stayed.
” She sighed. “I had Misha get duplicates of his papers, so that Sasha and Pasha would have legal papers. If they were ever asked, they were supposed to say they were Misha.”
Okay, now I didn't want to hear any more. I stood up. “And I think that's about enough.” I held up my hands as my mother opened her mouth to say something. “I've heard enough for right now, okay? Let me just recap, make sure I'm up to speed, okay? Let's see. My grandfather had an affair with a Russian ballerina. He knocked her up with not just a baby, but triplets. My grandmother knows there's one child, but not three. One of them married her best friend. My grandfather doesn't know they exist at all. The other two are in the country illegally—and my mother has helped them defraud the INS. One of them is my drug dealer, and the other one was murdered last night by someone we don't know. Have I missed something?”
“Well, there's more,” Dad said, avoiding my glance.
“More.” My legs buckled and I sat back down on the couch, hard. “Of course there's more.” I buried my head in my hands.
“Viktor sent people after Pasha,” Sasha said softly. “He said he would never let Pasha go. I see strange men watching house the last week. And Pasha”—he closed his eyes—“Pasha, he
stole
from Viktor before we left Russia.”
“He stole from a Russian mobster.” I heard myself saying the words. “I can't fucking
believe
this. It was the goddamned Russian fucking mob, right? That's who killed Pasha last night, right? Russian hit men, hired by some psycho gangster back in Moscow.” I struggled to my feet. My legs were incredibly tired, and it took all of my strength to remain standing.” I gave a bitter laugh. “Thank the Goddess Frank is off tricking.” He would be
furious.
“Scotty”—Mom gasped—“are you all right, honey?”
“No, I'm not all right. How could you possibly think I'm all right?” But the words didn't sound right. They sounded slow, like when I used to play my parents' old records on a slower speed. The words sounded muted and slow and deeper than my usual voice sounded, and I could feel the darkness starting to form on the boundaries of my vision. The room was starting to spin around me, and the colors of the curtains and the walls seemed to begin to bleed into each other. I tried to grab hold of the arm of the couch to balance myself. I was dimly aware of my mother lunging for me; of Colin starting to get up; of a strange look on
Sasha's face; and of a crash as my dad knocked the coffee table out of the way, sending the wineglasses, the bong, and the wine bottle crashing to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the green bottle falling, the label side up, as reddish purple liquid came spewing out of the neck in slow motion. Everything was in slow motion, and I knew I was losing it, I knew I was blacking out, I was tired and my mind was overtired and overstressed, and I felt Colin's arm go around my waist just as my legs gave way, and then the room started spinning, and as though from a million miles away I could hear people saying my name, as I tried to keep my balance, before it became a lost cause and I knew I was going to fall, as my dead weight sagged against Colin's arm, and in the distance I could hear drunken shouts from the street, and horns, and music was playing, and I crazily tried to recognize the song for a moment, and I kept falling, and then I knew the song—the song was “If Ever I Cease to Love,” the Mardi Gras theme song—and I wondered if I was going to make it....
Then everything went dark.
CHAPTER TEN
King of Swords
a man with the power of life and death
 
 
 
I had just stuck my head under the shower jet when Colin said something I couldn't hear.
I pulled my head back, wiping water out of my eyes, and said, “Huh? Sorry, I didn't hear you.”
The hot water felt incredibly good as it streamed over my body. The water pressure was almost strong enough to knock me down, tired as I was, but he was standing right behind me. I leaned back into him for just a moment before balancing on my own feet again. The water pooling in the bottom of the tub was gold with flecks of glitter floating on the surface. Colin was scrubbing my back with a bar of soap. It felt really good.
“I said, it's really scary when you go into one of your trances,” he repeated, as he massaged soap into my butt cheeks. “I mean, you're not out for very long—thirty seconds, maybe, tops—but it scares the piss out of me still, you know? Your whole body twitches, your eyes roll back in your head, and you mutter a lot. It's almost like you're having an epileptic fit. I don't think I'll ever get used to it.”
“Really?” I hadn't given it much thought. Of course, I'd never witnessed one of my trances, just experienced it. It's been happening to me for almost ten years; I had the first one when I was nineteen. I was by myself when it happened, in my apartment in Nashville, when I was going to Vanderbilt. It
had
been scary for me; when I came out of it, I had no idea what was going on or what had caused it. I'd been reading the tarot cards for years, since a friend of my parents' had told me I was psychic and had sent me a deck, but that was the first time I'd ever had a direct communication of any kind with the Goddess. For a while, I'd been afraid that I might have one of the trances in a public place, but the Goddess was far kinder than that. She always managed to wait to talk to me until I was either alone or in the company of friends or family.
This time had been different, though. It was the first time I'd ever gone into a trance and come out of it not remembering anything—but I felt a lot calmer. “I don't foam at the mouth or anything, do I?” I asked. That would be all I needed.
This provoked a laugh. “No, you don't.” He turned me around so the water was rinsing the soap off my back. “But it always gives me a jolt—I mean, what if something was seriously wrong with you and we just assumed it was another trance? How would we know?”
I'd never thought about that and shivered, despite the hot water. “I don't know. . . . Everyone always says they last less than a minute, so if I'm ever out for longer than that, better get me to the emergency room.”
“Okay, you're paint free.” Colin stepped back and grinned at me. “My turn.”
I moved aside and let him step past me into the stream of water and brushed against his side as we switched places. He winked at me as he handed me the bar of soap and faced me. He leaned back and let his head go under the water. Streams of steamy water cascaded down his torso, leaving tracks in the gold paint I'd spent so much time putting on him. I soaped up my hands and started rubbing on his chest. The body paint washed off, exposing his olive skin, but I kept kneading his chest. Colin's body is thickly muscled, but he isn't ripped the way Frank is. When Colin flexes his muscles, the muscle cords become defined and the veins pop out, but when he's relaxed, his skin and muscles are smooth as silk. His muscles are hard and don't give when you push on them or squeeze them. It's like trying to squeeze a rock in your hands. I ran the soap over his smooth, flat stomach, and then down the legs. The soapsuds on my hands began to take on a golden, frothy hue, so I rinsed them off and started again. Colin moaned a little bit, and then I turned him around and started working on his back.
“Can you believe this?” I asked, as I slipped the soap into the crack between his cheeks and then out and down the back of his legs.
“That feels nice,” Colin said, half drowsily. “Believe what?”
“This whole crazy triplet thing. Isn't this insane?”
He turned around and looked me in the eyes, laughing. “I think there's never a dull moment with you or your family, is what I think.”
“I know. I cannot believe Papa Diderot—” I stopped myself.
“I think there's more to this than we think,” he interrupted me and pulled me close so that our bodies were pressed up together, the water splashing into my eyes. “But we're better off out of it. If it's the Russian mob we're dealing with, we're better off leaving it to the cops. You don't know what they would do.” He shuddered.
“How do you know what the Russian mob would do?” I reached around him and turned the water off.
We stepped out of the tub, and I handed him a towel. I started drying off my legs. “I've dealt with the Russians before.” Colin shrugged, wiping the towel across his chest. “They aren't—they aren't nice people, Scotty. They kill first and ask questions later. If they even think you've betrayed them, they kill you. Bim, bam, boom.” He rubbed the towel through his curly hair. “And I don't quite believe Sasha's story.”
“Join the club.” I pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and tied the drawstring. “If Mom hadn't had the DNA test done, I'd be willing to bet the farm every single word he said to us was a lie. I mean, it was a good story and all, but I don't know. . . .”
He has your grandfather's eyes, Scotty. You know he's family.
Colin put on his black sweatpants. “I don't trust him either. He knows more than he's letting on. Come on, let's go to bed.”
We'd decided to stay at Mom and Dad's and take a nap before heading home. I hated the thought of Frank out with someone else—but I just needed to get over that. We didn't own each other, after all.
Sasha was being put up in Rain's old room for the night. The sun was just starting to come up as we walked out of the bathroom into my old room. The rest of the apartment was dark and silent. I switched on the overhead light. Mom and Dad had kept my room exactly the way it was when I'd moved out, which always kind of creeped me out a little. It was like a Scotty shrine—which was just plain weird.
But whenever I had to sleep there, it was kind of comforting.
Well, Mom had cleaned it, so it wasn't
exactly
the same. It had
never
been tidy when I'd lived in it.
On one wall was a poster of Mark Wahlberg from his Marky Mark days, wearing just a pair of Calvin Klein briefs and a big inviting smile. Over my desk was a poster of Scott Madsen, the original Soloflex model. My high school wrestling trophies and medals were scattered over the top of the bookcase holding all the books I'd read as a kid—everything from the blue spines of the Hardy Boys to Patricia Nell Warren's
The Front Runner.
Sleeping in my room was like stepping back in time. I turned down the covers and slid underneath. “I can't believe Frank didn't have the decency to tell me he was leaving,” I said, pouting a little.
Grow up, Scotty!
Colin reached into his little shoulder bag and pulled out his cell phone. “You weren't there, Scotty. We looked for you, but we just couldn't find you, and Frank did tell me, you know. I never knew you were so jealous.”
“I'm not jealous!”
Liar.
He dialed a number and just gave me that infuriating grin. “Hmmm. He's not answering. Obviously, he's otherwise occupied.” He lay down next to me and put his arms around me. “Guess you'll just have to settle for me tonight.” He nuzzled my neck. “Am I not enough for you?”
I pushed him away. “That's not it; you know that. But I'm not in the mood, okay? This has been a really weird night.”
“Sure. Okay.” He shrugged.
“Colin—” I stopped, not really knowing how to say it.
He put his hands behind his head. “What?”
I hesitated, trying to think of the right way to say it, and then plunged ahead. “How do you . . . how do you
know
the things you do? I mean, you said you've dealt with the Russian mob before. You know how to fix engines, you can hack into the INS computer, you can . . .” My voice trailed off.
He gave me a sad smile. “I also speak five languages fluently: English, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and German.”
My jaw dropped. “How?” I grasped for words. “I mean, you never talk about your past, your family, anything.” It was true. When he'd moved into the apartment upstairs from mine, there was nothing really personal there. No pictures of family—Frank had plenty. You couldn't turn around up there without bumping into Frank memorabilia. Photos of his dead parents, his sister and her family, his graduation picture from Quantico—there was no escaping it. But Colin had nothing—no college diplomas, nothing of a personal nature, like high school yearbooks and photo albums or anything. It was like he'd never existed before he came to New Orleans. He'd just moved in with his clothes, some CDs, and some books, but other than that, nothing. I'd noticed it—Frank had even said something about it to me once—but we decided to let Colin open up to us about his past in his own time.
“I wondered when you were going to ask. With your curiosity, it must have been driving you crazy.”
“Actually, no.” I shrugged. “I figured you'd talk about your past whenever you were ready to. But I really want to know.”
He leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes, I do.” I sighed. “I mean, this whole thing with the triplets, I mean, I can't believe Mom and Dad kept this from me. I don't want
us
to have any secrets, okay?”
He sighed. “Okay. I was born in San Francisco. My parents were Jewish—Italian Jews whose families had gotten out of Italy before, well, before the war. I had an older sister and two younger brothers. When I was ten, my dad was killed in a car accident. My mom's brother had relocated with his family to Israel right before I was born, and my mother decided to move us there too after Dad died. She couldn't take all the memories in San Francisco, I guess.” He gave me a sad smile. “I was fifteen when they all died.”
“They died?” I felt a knot forming in the pit of my stomach.
“It was my brother Noah's birthday,” he went on, his voice an emotionless monotone. “I had a test the next day, so Mom made me stay home. I was furious. They were all going to a movie and then out for pizza after. I was so angry I yelled at her, but she wouldn't budge. School was the most important thing to her, you know? So I stayed home to study and off they went. When it was time for me to go to bed, they weren't home yet—which was odd. It was a school night, after all, and Mom was always adamant about making sure, you know, that we all got a good night's sleep before school. After a while, I started to get worried. I called the pizza place they were going to but couldn't get through. I turned on the television. There was a special news bulletin.” He closed his eyes. “A fourteen-year-old Palestinian girl had strapped explosives to her chest and detonated herself in the pizza place. And I
knew,
I just knew, they were all dead. A little while later, the police showed up and told me.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Anything I could say seemed so trite, so foolish. “I'm so sorry, Colin,” I finally said, patting his leg.
A single tear spilled out of his right eye and down his cheek. “She was flirting with Noah, witnesses said, at the counter, and then she came right over to their table and just . . . blew herself up.” He shuddered. “And I was angry, Scotty, so fucking angry. I hated them all—the Palestinians, the Arabs, all of them. And I wanted to make them pay. So I trained. I studied hard in school, worked out, studied self-defense and martial arts. After I got out of school I was in the army for two years. The Mossad saw something in me—I didn't care if I lived or died, and I was smart and I was skilled, so they recruited me as an agent. I went undercover, infiltrating their terrorist cells, killing when I had to. . . .”
“How could you go undercover?” The horror he was telling me—the only way I could handle it, digest it, was to keep my mind blank. I couldn't imagine how it must have felt . . . how I would have felt if Mom and Dad and Storm and Rain had been killed. “You don't look . . .”
“Arab?” He laughed a little bitterly. “I told you—I am fluent in Arabic. Yes, I have blue eyes, but contact lenses can change that. A little base make-up, grow out my facial hair a bit, and speaking the language . . . oh, yes, Scotty, it's very easy to pass. For seven years, I was the Mossad's best agent. I took the toughest assignments, the ones where the odds were so against my surviving, because I just didn't care whether I lived or died. I kept hoping that one day they'd find out and just kill me . . . so the pain and the hate would go away. But I was too fucking good at my job. I kept thinking,
‘If I succeed, I'll be saving Israeli lives.'
I was dead inside, not capable of feeling, and then one day I was caught—and I had to kill or be killed.” He closed his eyes again. “I was caught talking to my superiors on a cell phone. My cover was blown . . . by a fourteen-year-old boy . . . and I had to kill him. As I held my gun on him, all I could see was Noah's face . . . and the boy was so frightened . . . and I couldn't do it, Scotty. I just couldn't do it. All I could see was my brother's face. He was such a bright kid, so sweet and kind and loving, and to die the way he did . . .” He wiped at his eyes again. “I couldn't kill this kid. I couldn't. So, I just knocked him unconscious and got the hell out of there.”
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