“All this time I’ve been waiting for you inside.” Kevin looked at me. I could see the worry on his face. He hadn’t even noticed the jacket I was wearing. “How much did you pay?”
“Almost all our money. We’re running low on packages, Kevin.”
“Fuck… that’s not good.”
We were walking down the dark street in the middle of the night. Kevin’s imprisonment had changed everything. We were thinking about what we were going to do under the yellow streetlamps shining in our faces. A thousand different things were going through my mind. On the one hand I was angry with Kevin, on the other I was silent because I needed him.
“I didn’t go back to the street. I’ve been at home for four days waiting for things to calm down.”
“The number of policemen has increased considerably. We need to get help.”
We walked along the straight path to the iron bridge. We were walking next to the wires that separated the thin pedestrian path from the train tracks. I looked at Kevin. Who was he thinking of getting help from? There was no one to help us.
I asked anyway to find out what was on his mind. “Who’s on your mind?”
“Ivan, he’ll understand us. We need to talk to him.”
“Snap out of it, what good is talking to him?” Kevin stopped halfway across the bridge. I took a few steps and looked back at Kevin who was behind me. “What’s up?”
“Dude, you need to calm down. I know everything’s fucked up.” I couldn’t be calm. He was telling me in his own words the situation we were in, and he was telling me to be calm. I didn’t stand there anymore, and I turned around and started walking. “Hey… To where?”
I kept walking without making a sound. He was walking next to me as we reached the end of the bridge. I had unzipped the jacket halfway down when I saw a cigarette held out in front of me. Without looking at Kevin, I took the cigarette and lit it. As we neared the end of the bridge, I saw the light of a train coming towards us. We left the bridge as the freight train passed us by.
“What will we do?”
“So, you finally decided to talk.”
He was trying to light a new cigarette under the streetlamp. I was waiting for him to answer my question without responding to his last word.
He took his cigarette between two fingers and approached me. “Talking with Ivan can really help.”
“Didn’t we barely talk and arrange a meeting; how will that work?”
“Ivan was the only one who responded to us, considering the other names. He must care about us. Imagine if we’d been able to move the meeting up.” What Kevin said didn’t make sense to me, but I couldn’t see anything illogical. Ivan was the only one who was interested in us. “This seems to be the best way out of this shit.”
“We don’t know if he will accept it for sure.”
“Let’s hope he accepts.”
We left where we were and took the subway. We were on our way to Kevin’s house, leaving the dark streets behind us, approaching the city center. I was very quiet, just walking.
I have seen how problems ruin people’s lives, and most importantly I had lived it. I knew he was watching me from somewhere out there, and I let him watch because he could never interfere in my life anymore. The person I called father had ruined my life. Now, I wasn’t the same old me, I was just moving on.
After we left the subway, we started walking to Kevin’s house. I looked around the whole street. Not a soul in sight. When we walked a little further, a car passed quickly on the street. Its light was only on us for a few seconds. Kevin headed for the biggest apartment building on the second street. I was right behind him. As soon as we entered the apartment, we turned into the thin corridor to the left before we reached the stairs opposite.
We left the opposite doors behind us, moving into the next darkness under the dim light, turning on the next lamp. When we reached the end of the corridor, Kevin wasted no time and took out his key. He opened the door on the right and went in. When I walked in, I saw nothing different from the last time I had been there. His house was smaller than mine, but it was more crowded. I plopped myself down on the fluffy armchair by the door, next to it was a couch, a round coffee table in the center of the room and a television unit covering the opposite wall. Kevin went to his room while I was looking at the TV unit. There were more things on the TV unit than there should have been. By far my favorite thing was the gramophone. Kevin had a variety of records, which made the gramophone valuable.
“Do you have heroin with you?”
I looked at Kevin. He was standing at the head of the bedroom. “First, let’s call Ivan.”
“For after heroin, there is, isn’t there?”
After I nodded at his question, he moved out of the way of the bedroom. The half-messy bed caught my eye. Who knows how many girls he had brought here. Kevin walked past me into the kitchen at the end of the room. Meanwhile, I took off my jacket and threw it casually on the couch. Kevin took two beers out of the fridge. He came over to me. He handed me one and put the other on the edge of the coffee table. I expected him to sit down on the couch and call Ivan, but he moved to the TV unit. He was rummaging through the DVDs on the left side. I didn’t understand what he was trying to do. When the rattling from the DVDs stopped, he came back and sat on the sofa. I had a small piece of paper in my hand. He took his cell phone out of his pocket. I guessed there was a phone number on the paper. He was finally calling Ivan.
The phone kept ringing. Everything was silent except the phone; we were both waiting for it to pick up. It kept ringing for a long time, but no one answered. Finally, the phone stopped ringing. This was something I had expected. Ivan didn’t care about us. Without thinking, Kevin made Ivan ring again. The long wait began once again.
At the end of the third call, the phone picked up. Kevin stood up as soon as he put the phone to his ear. “Hey, Tony, how you are doing, man?”
Who’s Tony? I could vaguely hear a voice coming from the other side, it sounded like a small child with a thin voice. Kevin was walking around in front of the TV unit listening to Tony.
“Wait, wait, don’t hang up! I didn’t call you for anything. I wouldn’t bother you if I could. I need to see Ivan; can you help me? It’s important.” Kevin suddenly stopped and looked at me. He didn’t see me at that moment, he was just listening to Tony. “Come on, man. I’m only going to take a couple minutes of Ivan’s time.”
I was trying to guess from Kevin’s words how the conversation was going, and it didn’t seem to be going very well. Kevin was begging to talk to Ivan.
“…I need to talk to him. We’re out of money! Listen to me -” Kevin took the phone away from his ear. He was staring at the phone hanging up in his face. In a fit of anger, he raised the phone in the air and attempted to slam it on the floor. Then he put his hand down in exasperation. “Son of a bitch, I’ll fuck…”
Kevin and I weren’t making eye contact, both of us were aware of the situation but kept silent. Kevin headed for the couch with the same frustration. He threw the phone aside and slumped down on the other side. He grabbed his beer from the coffee table and drank it already. It was just him and me now. We had to get out of this situation.
“Do you have something else in mind?”
“No, fuck no. The son of a bitch said you can’t talk to Ivan. If he could just get him to talk…”
I couldn’t wait for Kevin to come up with a solution, he would just drag me deeper into shit. I had to think, I had to figure out how to get out of this situation. I opened the beer on my lap as Kevin continued to mutter to himself.
“We should ask the great Jhon you mentioned for help sometime?”
“He doesn’t help us; he only helps women.” He took a quick sip of his beer and looked at me. “He got caught up in them. I told him I’d do whatever he wanted. He said, “You’re not cute enough.”
“What about Boris’ second man, I forget his name.”
“Are you talking about Paul?”
“He can provide everything under the table, why don’t we try talking to him? It’ll be a bit expensive, but if we sell the goods, we can fix everything.” Kevin was quietly sipping his beer. The way he was looking at me was starting to drive me crazy. “I’m talking to you, Kevin.”
“Paul is under Boris’ control, he’s no help to us.”
I stopped saying anything to Kevin, this couldn’t go on. His behavior and lack of solutions, despite the solutions I offered, was getting on my nerves. There was great silence in the room. If Ivan hadn’t found a solution, there would have been nothing holding me here any longer. I took the last of the beer and stood up. The only way I could see was to leave. I put the beer on the coffee table, grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.
“I’m leaving, Kevin.”
I gave him a glimpse. It would be my last. I was going to walk out that door and never look back. The moment I lowered the doorknob, the phone broke the silence. Kevin and I turned our heads to the phone and it rang a few more times.
Kevin picked up the phone before it hung up and put it to his ear. “Hello To- Ivan?”
I opened my ears wide and gave Kevin my full attention. I had let go of the door handle, but I was ready to walk away at the end of the conversation.
“We’ve been trying to talk to you.” Kevin straightened his back and looked down. “We’re in a mess right now and I need your help- Is that him? Yeah, he’s with me, listening.”
Kevin looked at me. He was running his eyes over me. He knew I would leave as soon as I felt the conversation getting worse. It was very evident that he was tense. He turned his eyes back to the floor.
“I wanted to talk to you about whether we can bring our meeting forward. You’re the only one who can understand us.” Kevin suddenly jumped out of his seat. There was no trace of the man he had just been. His smiling face was looking at me. “Thank you for understanding. We’ll be there in two days.”
After he hung up the phone, he just looked at me with a big smile on his face. I was also surprised, had Kevin’s words come true? Ivan was going to help us.
“So, what, it’s done now?”
“And you didn’t believe me, what did I tell you? He postponed the meeting for two days; we’ll go and talk… and we’ll get what we deserve.” I still couldn’t believe it was happening. “Let’s celebrate now.”
With the card in my hand, I drew the white powder like a string on the table. I covered my left nose and inhaled it all in one breath. My nose itched nonstop. I looked at Kevin, my anger at him hadn’t subsided. He was the one who ruined everything and the reason we were in this situation. He’d gotten lucky against all odds. Now everything would be decided in two days…
What was I thinking just now? I couldn’t sort out the thoughts that were swirling around in my head. Kevin… Anger… I forced myself to try to remember what I was thinking… Two days later… Nothing made sense. During it all, I saw Kevin, and he was looking at me. We started laughing as we looked at each other.