for a year. Totally because of you. I did really shitty in it, actually. Never got good enough to read it, you know, to sit down with Eugene Onegin—you have to read it in Russian, they say, it doesn’t come through in translation. But—I thought of you so much! I used to remember little things you’d say—all sorts of things came back to me—oh, wow, listen, they’re playing ‘Comfy in Nautica,’ do you hear that? Panda Bear! I totally forgot that album. Anyway. I wrote a term paper on The Idiot for my Russian Literature class—Russian Literature in translation—I mean, the whole time I was reading it I thought about you, up in my bedroom smoking my dad’s cigarettes. It was so much easier to keep track of the names if I imagined you saying them in my head… actually, it was like I heard the whole book in your voice! Back in Vegas you were reading The Idiot for like six months, remember? In Russian. For a long time it was all you did. Remember how for a long time you couldn’t go downstairs because of Xandra, I had to bring you food, it was like Anne Frank? Anyway, I read it in English, The Idiot, but I wanted to get there too, to that point, you know, where my Russian was good enough. But I never did.”
“All that fucking school,” said Boris, plainly unimpressed. “If you want to speak Russian, come to Moscow with me. You will speak it in two months.”
“So, are you going to tell me what you do?”
“Like I told you. This and that. Just enough to get by.” Then, kicking me under the table: “You seem better now, eh?”
“Huh?” There were only two other people in the front room with us—beautiful people, unearthly pale, a man and a woman both with short dark hair, eyes locked, and the man had the woman’s hand across the table and was nibbling and chewing on the inside of her wrist. Pippa, I thought, with a pang of anguish. It was nearly lunchtime in London. What was she doing?
“When I ran into you, you looked on your way to jump in the river.”
“Sorry, it was a rough day.”
“Nice set up you’ve got there though,” Boris was saying. He couldn’t see the couple from where he was sitting. “So you guys are partners?”
“No! Not like that.”
“I didn’t say so!” Boris looked at me critically. “Jesus, Potter, don’t be so touchy! Anyhow that was his wife, the lady, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said restlessly, leaning back in my chair. “Well, sort of.” The relationship of Hobie and Mrs. DeFrees was still a deep mystery, as was her still-extant marriage to Mr. DeFrees. “I thought she was a widow for ages but she’s not. She—” I leaned forward, rubbed my nose—“see, she lives uptown and he lives downtown, but they’re together all the time… she has a house in Connecticut, sometimes they go out together for the weekend. She’s married—but. I never see her husband. I haven’t figured it out. To tell you the truth I think they are probably just good friends. Sorry I’m going on. I really don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“And he taught you your trade! He seems like nice fellow. Real gentleman.”
“Huh?”
“Your boss.”
“He’s not my boss! I’m his business partner.” The glitter of the drugs was wearing off; blood swishing in my ears, sharp high pitch like crickets singing. “As a matter of fact I run the whole sales end of things pretty much.”
“Sorry!” said Boris, holding up his hands. “No need to snap. Only I meant it when I asked you to come work with me.”
“And how am I supposed to answer that?”
“Look, I want to repay you. Let you share in all the good things that have happened to me. Because,” he said, interrupting me grandly, “I owe you everything. Everything good that has happened to me in life, Potter, has happened because of you.”
“What? I got you in the drug-dealing business? Wow, okay,” I said, lighting one of his cigarettes and pushing the pack across to him, “that’s good to know, that makes me feel really great about myself, thanks.”
“Drug dealing? Who said drug dealing? I want to make things up to you! For what I did. I’m telling you, it’s a great life. We would have a lot of fun together.”
“Are you running an escort service? Is that it?”
“Look, shall I tell you something?”
“Please.”
“I am really sorry about what I did