“Don't go wandering off now, Princess,” he cautions me. “You wouldn't want to get lost in this crowd.”
My eyebrows go up. “Oh really? How could I possibly be any safer than with you guys?”
I see Roman crack a half smile out of the corner of my eye. He does seem to like it when I point out how big and powerful he is, just like any man would.
“Yeah, that's a good point,” Alek agrees. “Still, not everybody here knows who you are just by sight. But you definitely don't look like a Russian girl. So just, you know… Stay close.”
He’s smiling, but I can see that he means it.
“All right, whatever you say,” I say in a clipped voice. I know how to keep my mouth shut, after all. I've been practicing my whole life.
With Roman and Alek on either side of me, I really do feel safe. Even as we walk through the crowd, I can sense people's eyes turning toward us. Not everybody, but the ones who look, look really hard. After a while, there seems to be a sort of weight following us around.
I know this feeling. This is the feeling I would get when Daddy would take me to see the big man, his boss. The Don's Don. It suddenly occurs to me that Roman and Alek might actually be a little bit more of a big deal than I had previously thought.
We stop, not suddenly or anything. We just come to a halt as though it's perfectly natural, but I can sense Roman’s tension. He's looking at a group of men in folding chairs gathered around a table. Just four guys playing dominoes, but I know it's never really just four guys playing dominoes.
“Yeah, I need you to meet someone,” Alek says distractedly. The brothers exchange a look that goes over my head, literally. My eyes scan the crowd, and I see another lady in inappropriate footwear smoking a long cigarette at the end of a picnic bench. She's wearing a bright yellow Louis Vuitton suit and balancing a snakeskin clutch across her lap. Grade schoolers roughhouse in front of her and she doesn't even notice, really, tapping out long bits of ash onto the trampled grass without even really looking to see if she’s going to put some little kid’s eye out or anything. So that's nice. I like her already.
“You need to meet Olga,” Alek says.
“Olga?” I say, already knowing he's talking about that blonde chick. She squints through gobs of heavy black eyeliner. Actually, come to think of it, there's about a dozen women here who really need to take a trip to the Lancome counter, like for real.
“In Russian, it's actually a very pretty name,” Alek informs me as he tugs me by the elbow. I pick my way carefully across the stubby grass and dirt until Alek gets me to the table.
“Olga, this is Marie. Marie… Olga,” he says, and then he turns around. That's it. I've just been handed off with no explanation, no nothing.
Honestly. My life!
She sucks her teeth loudly as her eyes slide up and down my outfit. With a sigh, I just drop my ass on the bench. If this is how the afternoon is going to go, then fine. Whatever.
“So, you're Marie?”
“Oh, you heard?”
A slow, sarcastic smile stretches across her too-red mouth. “Yes, just now. That's what Alek said, isn't it?”
And just like that, I can't stand her. She's got that sarcastic thing, where she thinks she's smarter than everybody and is dead set on a mission to prove it. Christ. Wasn’t there a kindly old grandma or somebody they could drop me off with? Maybe a kids’ table I could sit at?
“Yes he did. He sure did.”
At the dominoes table, the men have stopped playing and look up at Roman and Alek as they approach. Even though nobody is doing anything, I can see subtle signs that the meeting is not entirely friendly. Not entirely unfriendly either. More like cautious wolves sniffing each other before they make a decision.
“How do you know Alek and Roman?” I say, just making conversation.
Olga shrugs. “We’re cousins, I guess. Once removed, twice removed… Removed so many times we’re practically not cousins at all.”
“That explains the resemblance,” I snap. I don't know why, I just feel like snapping, I guess.
But actually, she seems to like this. She smiles for real, and I notice that she's got a little light dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose underneath about a pound of pancake makeup.
“You hungry?” she says to me. I know that this is the universal sign of tentative acceptance.
“Actually, I'm starved. Something smells amazing here!”
Olga snaps her fingers at one of the little boys who ignores her, so the next one who runs past she actually sticks out her foot and trips him. When he gets up, pouting and red-faced, she holds out a $20 bill between her purpleish fingernails and waves it at him. “Sasha, run and get us some pelmini. Golubsti too.”