believe when he showed up. Was sleeping on the couch downstairs. At first I thought it was you.”
“What happened?”
“Ah,” said Boris, sighing extravagantly; he’d been smoking on the way to school, I could smell it on his breath. “He saw the beer bottles on the floor.”
“He hit you because you were drinking?”
“Because he was fucking plastered, is why. He was drunk as a log—I don’t think he knew it was me he was hitting. This morning—he saw my face, he cried and was sorry. Anyway, he won’t be back for a while.”
“Why not?”
“He’s got a lot going on out there, he said. Won’t be back for three weeks. The mine is close to one of those places where they have the state-run brothels, you know?”
“They aren’t state-run,” I said—and then found myself wondering if they were.
“Well, you know what I mean. One good thing though—he left me moneys.”
“How much?”
“Four thousand.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, no—” he slapped his forehead—“thinking in roubles, sorry! About two hundred dollars, but still. Should have asked for more but I didn’t have the nerve.”
We’d reached the juncture of the hallway where I had to turn for algebra and Boris had to turn for American Government: the bane of his existence. It was a required course—easy even by the desultory standards of our school—but trying to get Boris to understand about the Bill of Rights, and the enumerated versus implied powers of the U.S. Congress, reminded me of the time I’d tried to explain to Mrs. Barbour what an Internet server was.
“Well, see you after class,” said Boris. “Explain again, before I go, what’s the difference between Federal Bank and Federal Reserve?”
“Did you tell anybody?”
“Tell what?”
“You know.”
“What, you want to report me?” said Boris, laughing.
“Not you. Him.”
“And why? Why is that a good idea? Tell me. So I can get deported?”
“Right,” I said, after an uncomfortable pause.
“So—we should eat out tonight!” said Boris. “In a restaurant! Maybe the Mexican.” Boris, after initial suspicion and complaint, had grown to like Mexican food—unknown in Russia, he said, not bad when you got used to it, though if it was too spicy he wouldn’t touch it. “We can take the bus.”
“The Chinese is closer. And the food is better.”
“Yah, but—remember?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. The last time we’d eaten there we’d slipped out without paying. “Forget that.”
xvii.
BORIS LIKED XANDRA A lot better than I did: leaping forward to open doors for her, saying he liked her new haircut, offering to carry things. I’d teased him about her ever since I’d caught him looking down her top when she leaned to reach her cell phone on the kitchen counter.
“God, she’s hot,” said Boris, once we were up in my room. “Think your dad would mind?”
“Probably wouldn’t notice.”
“No, serious, what do you think your dad would do to me?”
“If what?”
“If me and Xandra.”
“I dunno, probably call the police.”
He snorted, derisively. “What for?”
“Not you. Her. Statutory rape.”
“I wish.”
“Go on and fuck her if you want,” I said. “I don’t care if she goes to jail.”
Boris rolled over on his stomach and looked at me slyly. “She takes cocaine, do you know that?”
“What?”
“Cocaine.” He mimed sniffing.
“You’re kidding,” I said, and then, when he smirked at me: “How can you tell?”
“I just know. From the way she talks. Also she’s grinding her teeth. Watch her sometime.”
I didn’t know what to watch for. But then one afternoon we came in when my dad wasn’t home and saw her straightening up from the coffee table with a sniff, holding her hair behind her neck with one hand. When she threw her head back, and her eyes landed on us, there was a moment where nobody said anything and then she turned away as if we weren’t there.
We kept walking, up the stairs to my room. Though I’d never seen anybody snorting drugs before, it was clear even to me what she was doing.
“God, sexy,” said Boris, after I shut the door. “Wonder where she keeps it?”
“Dunno,” I said, flopping down on my bed. Xandra was just leaving; I could hear her car in the driveway.
“Think she’ll give us some?”
“She might give you some.”
Boris sank down to sit on the floor by the bed, with his knee up and his back against the wall. “Do you think she’s selling it?”
“No way,” I said, after a slight, disbelieving pause. “You think?”
“Ha! Good for you, if she is.”
“How’s that?”
“Cash around the house!”
“Fat lot of good that does me.”
He swung his shrewd, appraising gaze over to me. “Who pays the bills here, Potter?”