Danil’s Mate(3)

His thoughts passed back to Dora Katsaros as he slid into the front seat of his car. She’d so obviously been playing Rickford. He wondered if she was currently sitting back in one of those interrogation rooms, or if Rickford had folded and she was wandering free on the streets of Spokane again. He supposed he didn’t have the time to think of any perps except for the ones he was personally charged with defending. His plate was full enough without pretty, little, dark-haired sex bombs.

Except, of course, socially.

He wouldn’t have minded meeting Dora Katsaros in a bar. Or a Starbucks. Or the public library. He had no doubt that a little spitfire like her could keep him very entertained. For a week or two.

As intense as Danil’s focus was for the law, his focus on women was admittedly a bit wandering. What could he say? He liked every flavor of ice cream. What was that Americanism? Variety was the salt of life? No, he corrected himself; he hated it when he messed up stuff like that. Variety was the spice of life. Spice.

He pulled his car into his parents’ driveway and bounded out of the car, sniffing at the air as he pulled open the front door. His mouth watered. His mother was a phenomenal cook.

“There better be some fucking babka left!” Danil hollered as he kicked off his shoes and tossed his briefcase into the closet. He untucked his shirt as he walked into the crowded dining room. His three brothers and mother and father were all around the table, eating and laughing.

“When you snooze is when you lose,” Emin, the second oldest of the Malashovik boys said in his thick Slavic accent. He hadn’t bothered with English for a long time after they’d immigrated from Belarus, so in many ways, he was still learning. Luckily for him, he was an artist, and his clients thought the limited English thing gave him an exotic flair.

“It’s ‘you snooze, you lose,’ Emin,” Danil corrected. His brothers all rolled their eyes, very used to Danil correcting their English at this point.

Danil inched around the table that filled the room almost to the walls, toward his mother and father. Both of them kissed their son square on the lips. Katya Malashovik, dark-haired and short, eyes like a quarter past midnight, slid a slice of babka off her own plate for her son.

“I saved that for you, Danishka,” she told him in Belarusian. His parents understood English, but didn’t often use it in the house, no matter how much Danil insisted they needed to practice.

“Ah, Maciaryszki,” Danil said, using the pet name for his mother. “My favorite parent.”

“Hey!” Ilya Malashovik, Danil’s father, barked, his shock of white hair falling messily into his eyes, his wiry frame puffing up with indignation. “Who birthed you and carried you for nine months before that?” He pounded his chest pridefully. “Oh, wait. That was your mother as well.”

The boys all laughed, as they were intended to do. It was impossible not to have a soft spot for the unstoppable swagger and silliness of Ilya Malashovik. They may not have been able to vocalize it, but all the Malashovik boys were striving to be half the man that their hard-working, soft-hearted father was.

Danil took the slice of babka and took his place in between Maxim, his jovial, oldest brother and Anton, the second youngest, closest in age to Danil. Maxim leaned over to kiss his brother heartily on the cheek, as he had since they were children. Anton, much more sullen and serious, merely smacked Danil on the back.

“Maxim, how is work?” Katya asked. And all her boys found another place to look. It wasn’t any secret that Katya hated that her oldest son was a firefighter.

“Ah, Maciaryszki,” Maxim said smoothly in that easy way of his. “You know I choose to spare you details. Much the way I spare you details of my women. There are some things mothers do not need to know.”

Her sons grinned into their dinners as she raised a skeptical eye.

“All these alleged women,” Katya said. “Yet no grandchildren.”

Four smirks slid from four faces all at once. Ilya hooted from one end of the table. “Not so smart now, are you, boys! You see, I’ve done my part. I’ve made your mother a very happy woman. First I made her very happy. And then I gave her four strapping boys.” Ilya waggled his eyebrows suggestively and had his sons groaning and grinning.

Emin swatted Danil’s hand away from the last roll of fresh bread with the arrogance of an older brother who’d been doing it for years. “After dinner,” he told his brothers, “we go running. I am too stuffy in this skin tonight.”

His brothers all grunted their agreement, knowing exactly what Emin was referring to. Particularly Anton, who scratched at the collar of his t-shirt as if it were a prison uniform. He loved his mother’s house, with its vases of flowers and little glass figurines. Her afghans and Emin’s artwork on every wall. But even here, too long inside and Anton felt as if he could burst through the walls with a hammer. He needed the air. The fresh night sky opening up into forever. Any wall felt like a cage to him. And he’d had enough of cages to last him a lifetime.