A shard of glass crunched under his heel.
The streetlights had been out in the entire district, so Aspirin walked home in the company of stars.
He could have picked a long and reasonably safe route along the main street, but Aspirin was a strapping young man and had no fear of nocturnal thugs. And while the shortcut led him through foul-smelling alleys, Aspirin had developed a rather philosophical attitude toward the environment. In a matter of minutes the heavy iron door of his building would shut behind him, and all this would be closed out. Vasya the concierge knew that on Sundays Aspirin came back around one thirty—not three or four in the morning as usual—and there was even a chance Vasya would open the door for him.
Aspirin switched on a pocket flashlight before turning into a dark walkway; almost immediately he saw the girl and froze on the spot.
At first he thought the girl was drawn on the wall, so still and two-dimensional she appeared on the background of red, black, and blue graffiti. As soon as his flashlight fell on her face, though, she shut her eyes, put a hand up as a shield from the beam, and clutched her toy closer to her chest.
“What are you doing here?” Aspirin asked on impulse.
He moved his flashlight from side to side. The walkway was empty. He turned back to the girl and shifted the light away from her face and onto her arms that clutched the yet-unseen plush creature.
“What are you doing here?” he repeated, this time with more conviction.
The girl said nothing.
About ten years old, she certainly did not look like a tramp or a beggar, or an unhappy child forgotten by her drunken parents. She didn’t even seem scared. The way she held her toy showed reserve rather than fear. Yet that was perhaps even stranger, because self-assured young girls standing in darkened alleys after midnight wasn’t what most people would consider normal.
Aspirin definitely didn’t think it was normal.
“Did you have a fight with your folks?” he suggested, immediately feeling like a complete idiot, although he couldn’t place why. But as the girl remained silent, he felt that was certainly adding to his disquiet.
“Are you just going to stand here like this?” Aspirin was growing more annoyed by the minute. “Waiting for the boogeyman to come and stick a knife into your heart? Where are your parents?”
The girl looked surprised at that. It was unclear what had sparked her interest—the perspective of meeting a boogeyman, or Aspirin’s interest in her lineage. At least he had her attention.
“Fine, let’s go,” Aspirin said, stifling his impulse to smack the girl upside the head. “Let’s go—I’ll take you to the police station, let them deal with you and your folks. Idiots, can’t watch their own kids.”
Aspirin was afraid the girl would start crying, shifting the situation from ridiculous to critical. If that did happen, though, it would only be for a few moments, because in reality he was planning to hand the child to his concierge and be done with it. Vasya was a kind man who occupied his free time with finding homes for stray puppies and kittens; last winter he’d even found an arrangement for some street waif. He would be the perfect person to call the police.
The girl watched Aspirin with clear, intent—and perfectly adult—eyes.
“Are you frightened?” she asked finally.
“Me?”
He was initially incredulous, but at that very moment he realized the girl was right. He was frightened—perhaps of the responsibility that fell on him from out of nowhere, perhaps of something else. It may have been the girl’s shadow over the ugly graffiti.
“What are you doing here all alone?” he asked, his voice a touch calmer.
“I am not alone. I am here with Mishutka.” She finally loosened her grip and Aspirin saw a light brown teddy bear with plastic eyes.
“Well, if you are with Mishutka, that’s a totally different matter,” Aspirin allowed. “Where do you live?”
The girl shrugged.
“Children should not be out on the street at such a late hour.” The little girl looked at him skeptically, and he didn’t blame her. Even to himself, Aspirin sounded like an old bore. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Yes,” the girl agreed. “He’s looking for me. He came for me.”
“Who?”
The girl did not respond.
Aspirin quickly scrolled through a few possible scenarios. Parents in a fight, possibly divorced. Or the mother is an alcoholic, and the father got custody. Not a common situation, but it was a possibility. In any case, the father came for her, and she didn’t want to go with him. The usual scenario. Domestic squabbles. Preteen issues.
The reasons didn’t concern him.
“All right,” he said firmly. “Either you come with me, or . . . you can stay here. So, what’ll it be?”
The girl watched him silently, her eyes round and blue, like those of a child on a greeting card.
“I am going,” Aspirin said with relief. “Family problems are not my forte.”
He pointed his flashlight onto the cracked pavement and moved toward the street. Stars glimmered above his head. How wonderful that I don’t have children,Aspirin thought, looking up at the clear summer sky. How wonderful that I didn’t marry Lucy back then, he thought, turning into a courtyard. How wonderful that I—
His reverie was cut short. A group of teenagers, drunk or high—or both—sat underneath a dying linden tree in the corner of a playground. Of course it was a playground, a perfect place for them to congregate.
He actually wasn’t sure they were high. He wasn’t even sure they were teenagers. It was hard to see in the dark, hard to count the glowing ends of their cigarettes, hard to ask for their IDs.
It wasn’t hard to know he wanted nothing to do with them.
“Hey, you! Come here!”
It was a young voice, but insistent. It sounded like it was used to getting what it wanted, despite having nothing to back up that bravado. Aspirin moved his flashlight over the group. About half a dozen kids, one girl. And what’s worse, one pit bull.
“Drop your flashlight, shithead!”
Aspirin heard a low growl.
He switched off the flashlight and stepped back into the street. Couldn’t they just leave him alone?
No such luck. He was destined to be accosted by the young this evening.
“Come here! Better for you if you do!”
“What do you need, children?” Aspirin inquired in a businesslike tone. “I am DJ Aspirin.”
The group sniggered. Either these kids didn’t believe him, or they never listened to the radio.
“Aspirin, Oxycontin—got a light?” the only girl in the group asked cheerfully.
He took a few steps back, watching the dog. One of his buddies had a dog like that. That dog once bit off his owner’s finger.
“Keep your dog on the leash,” he suggested coolly.
They laughed, the girl louder than the rest. Such an unpleasant combination, Aspirin thought, that broad and her dog.
“Abel, get ’im! Get his balls!”
That was all he needed to hear.
Aspirin turned and ran. A stick, please, a metal bar, an iron one, or a shiv. There’s not enough time to find a brick, it’s too dark . . .
And as he sprinted away, he cursed the fact that the pepper spray he normally kept in his bag was now safely tucked away in the trunk of his car back in the garage.
A streetlight came to life by the entrance to the courtyard. Its dim glow was just enough for Aspirin to avoid crashing into a trash barrel. He sidestepped at the last moment and glanced back to see the pit bull that resembled a pale stuffed sausage fly across the courtyard, followed by eight legs stomping, eight arms flapping in the air, four mouths shrieking something unintelligible . . .
Only now did Aspirin think of the girl who was likely to still be standing there, in that very archway, clutching her teddy bear to her chest.
He picked up a broken brick and threw it at the dog, almost hitting it. The animal slowed down, but only for a brief moment.
“What are you doing, you asshole?” the broad screamed. “Abel, get him!”
Wasn’t he already trying to get me?
Aspirin dived into a concrete archway illuminated by the streetlight. Despite Aspirin’s hopes, the girl had not run away; she pressed herself against the wall, listening to the screaming, stomping, and growling.
Aspirin grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the courtyard. Considering that even without such ballast Aspirin ran more slowly than a short-legged dog, it was probably a mistake.
The archway ended. The girl pulled her hand out of Aspirin’s, turned around, and tossed her teddy bear back into the archway, toward the shadows dancing on the walls.
He cursed, thinking she’d ask him to go back for the bear, but instead she just stood there, waiting. He was going to ask her what her problem was when he heard the scream—nothing like the wild, raucous yells of teens having a lark. No, this was a shriek, a wail.
It sounded like the kind of scream that ripped apart someone’s vocal cords.
A second later he saw an enormous shadow growing on the concrete wall over the graffiti.
The dog groaned. There was a sound of flesh slapping the wall—a horrible, viscous noise—and then everything was quiet except for the sound of stomping feet, which died down in the distance.
Lights came on in the windows of the neighboring buildings.
“We’re leaving,” Aspirin said, not thinking clearly, led solely by instinct.
“One minute,” the girl said, “I need to get Mishutka.”
“We don’t have time—”
But she had already entered the archway, picked something off the pavement, patted it clean, and pressed it against her chest. Aspirin glanced over her head: the immediate courtyard was empty. However, in the opposite far corner of the courtyard, the dead body of the pit bull lay on the ground.
At least, one half.
“Let’s go,” the girl said.
“Yes . . . let’s. Um. Go.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her away, trying to stay in the shadows and avoid the eyes of the sleepy residents, whose heads were now popping up in the windows and balconies all over the street.
“Weird night tonight,” Vasya the concierge said when they got to his building. “Did you hear all these dogs barking like crazy? I heard someone shriek—scary stuff. Any trouble on your way home?”
“No trouble,” Aspirin lied. “But I met this—this kid here.”
The girl watched the concierge with polite interest.
“In the middle of the night?” Vasya marveled. “Were you all by yourself?”
“I was with Mishutka,” the girl clarified.
“Ah,” the man said, humoring the little girl.
Aspirin didn’t see how anything was funny about it.
The elevator arrived. Luckily, Aspirin caught a glimpse of Vasya’s face through the narrow gap in the shutting doors; he stepped forward, preventing the doors from closing.
“The child is lost,” he explained to Vasya. “Tomorrow morning I will call the police—need to find her parents. But I couldn’t leave her on the street, could I? Not with wild dogs and whatnot.”
The concierge’s eyes softened. “Yeah. These . . . these people leaving kids all over the place. If it were up to me, I’d execute people like that in the public square.”
Being reminded of executions in the streets, Aspirin took a deep breath, stepped back, and pressed 5. The girl said nothing; she simply gazed up at him, stroking her bear’s head.
The elevator made a grinding sound and stopped at the fifth floor. Aspirin had to take a few more deep breaths before his hands stopped shaking and the jumping key found its way into the keyhole.
“Come in.”
The lights switched on. The girl just stood in the middle of a spacious entrance hall, squinting—just like back in the courtyard. Aspirin shuddered.
Without taking off his shoes, he went to the kitchen, opened a drawer, and found a bottle of brandy. He poured a splash into a teacup and downed it. If he felt any better, the effect was marginal.
The girl remained standing in the middle of the hallway, but now her shoes were off. Aspirin was surprised by her perfectly clean socks, new, white with narrow red stripes.
“What is your name?” he asked, breaking the silence.
She gave him a reproachful look. “What is yours?”
“As—” he started, but then bit his tongue because “Aspirin” was not exactly an appropriate introduction. From what he’d gleaned of her attitude, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be impressed by his alter ego. “I’m Alexey.” He walked over to the hall closet, rummaged around, and pulled out something. “Here, put these on.”
She stuffed her feet into a pair of women’s slippers, about five sizes bigger than her own.
“Are you hungry?” he asked coolly and nearly howled from frustration with this situation. It was just so unnatural, so false—all this nonsense: slippers, kitchen, pelmeni, tea . . .
Where the hell did this girl come from?
And what was he supposed to do with her?
“I am not hungry, but Mishutka is,” the girl said solemnly. “Do you have any honey?”
“I guess . . .” The request—to feed her stuffed animal—seemed the most normal thing this little girl had done all night.
In the kitchen she sat on a stool, put her bear on the edge of the table, and folded her hands in her lap. Mishutka sat leaning to the side, staring ahead with button eyes, plush paws limp by his sides.
A shard of glass protruded from one of the paws.
Shuddering inside, Aspirin removed the glass with a napkin and tossed it into the trash.
“Mishutka says thank you very much. So how about that honey?” the girl asked.
“One moment. Should I put it into a saucer, or can he eat out of the jar?”
“Either way,” the girl said.
“Buckwheat, linden, or wildflower?” Aspirin inquired.
The girl glanced at her toy.
“Flower would be best. But it’s not crucial.”
“Of course,” he said hoarsely. “And does he need a spoon?”
The girl smirked. “Where did you see bears eating with a spoon? In cartoons?”
“Mmm,” Aspirin said noncommittally. He placed a jar of flower honey in front of the bear, struggling with the tight lid. Finally getting it open, he stepped over to the sink, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared, as if expecting the button eyes to blink, and the bear to reach for the jar with its overstuffed paw, scooping out honey and aiming it at the mouth embroidered on the plush face . . .
The toy remained still. Because of course it did. Aspirin needed to get some sleep.
The girl took the bear’s paw, sniffing and wrinkling her nose in delight. “Mishutka likes it a lot. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Aspirin sighed. “And now that he’s eaten . . .”
“What do you mean ‘now that he’s eaten’? He’s barely started.”
Aspirin looked at his watch. It was half past two. By the time they ran from the scene of the crime, by the time they made it home by back alleys, by the time Aspirin figured out what to do . . .
“Do you have a home phone number?” he asked without much hope.
“No,” the girl said, pretending to scoop out the honey with the bear’s paw, smacking her lips with pretend pleasure.
“Are you planning on returning home?”
The girl picked up a napkin and wiped the bear’s face clean. She had short pink nails and clean untanned arms. Her freshly washed T-shirt was adorned with two flying dragons and the words KRAKOW. LEARNING TO FLY.
“Have you ever been to Krakow?”
She didn’t respond.
Aspirin poured himself more brandy. His hands had almost ceased shaking.
“What was it, exactly?” he asked, staring at the girl’s striped socks.
“Where?”
“There, in the alley. What exactly happened last night?”
The girl sighed.
“He came for me. And I don’t want to go with him.”
“Who is he? Your father?”
“No, he’s not my father.”
“A stepfather?”
“It’s just Him.”
“‘Him’? Him who?”
The girl sighed again. It was unnerving seeing a young girl so exasperated. Especially one who was also so calm after the night’s events. Aspirin rubbed his palms together nervously.
“Who killed the dog?”
Without hesitation, the girl nodded in the direction of the toy bear. Aspirin thought of the pale pit bull torn in half.
“Actually,” the girl said thoughtfully, “they killed it. A while ago. When it chased you, it was already dead.”
That made no sense. None of this made sense. The dog looked like it had been blown apart. “But there was no explosion,” Aspirin mused. “Maybe . . . maybe they had something like . . . something fell in the dog’s path and blew up.” But again, he hadn’t heard anything.
Nothing but that incredible shriek.
“A mouse ran by and flicked its tail,” the girl said without a smile. “The egg fell down and exploded. Are you sleepy?”
More nonsense. And yet, it made the conversation seem more natural—as if they were talking about numerous different things at each other, and not with each other—and so he responded in kind. “I was just on air for six hours, telling jokes and other nonsense,” Aspirin admitted. “I talked to some idiots who called the station. I put on stupid songs they requested. Then a bunch of underage delinquents set their pit bull on me. And that pit bull goes ahead and dies. And not just dies, it explodes. So maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m just going crazy.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the girl said, her tone just a touch patronizing. “You can have another drink and go to bed.”
“And when I wake up, you won’t be here,” Aspirin suggested dreamingly, already reaching for the brandy.
“Don’t count on it,” the girl said and hugged her teddy.
Miracles don’t exist, so when Aspirin limped into the kitchen at nine in the morning, the girl was sitting on a stool in front of a perfectly clean table, legs crossed, staring out the window and humming softly to herself. Aspirin’s passport lay opened on a metal tray in front of her.
“What the . . . ?”
Incensed, Aspirin swore as no one should swear in front of children; he immediately felt guilty . . . and that angered him further.
The girl turned to face him. Her brown teddy bear sat in her lap, or rather between her crossed legs, watching Aspirin with its button eyes. An empty honey jar stood on the floor by the chair leg.
No wonder the girl is up, going through my things,he thought. She’s hopped up on all that sugar.
“So you’re Grimalsky, Alexey Igorevich, and you are thirty-four years old,” the girl said in the voice of a public prosecutor.
“Listen,” Aspirin managed through gritted teeth. “Take your bear and go. I don’t want you here, and I don’t want to see you ever again. I am counting to ten.”
“Or what?” the girl inquired. “What happens at ‘ten’?”
“That’s what I get for trying to be a good Samaritan,” Aspirin murmured bitterly. “For letting a lost child spend the night.”
His legs and back ached after last night’s chase. His mouth felt dry and gross. A miniature hammer banged slowly and triumphantly in his right temple, either from the situation, the brandy from last night, or a combination of the two.
“Or,” he said, passing his guest, picking up his passport, and feeling marginally more confident, “or I will call the police.”
“And what are you going to tell them about me spending the night at your apartment?”
Aspirin finally allowed his mushy knees to buckle, lowering himself onto a stool. The girl watched him with interest.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just curious—what does a grown man say to the police about letting little girls stay with him overnight?”
God . . .
“Listen,” Aspirin said thickly. “I don’t know who taught you this filth, but—there is such a thing as forensic evidence, medical expertise, you know? I don’t want any of this, but . . . everyone will know that you are nothing but a dirty little blackmailing shit, do you understand?”
The girl moved her bear from her lap to the table and folded his paws in a more relaxed manner.
“Then it’s true,” she said indifferently.
“What?” Aspirin tried not to shout, though he wasn’t quite sure why he had such restraint at the moment.
“He said . . . he always tells the truth.” The girl looked pensive, her blond eyebrows forming an unfinished sign for eternity.
“Listen, my dear,” he said with disgust, “why don’t you get the hell out of here. Otherwise, I promise not to conduct a single good deed in my entire life. I won’t even share a can of tuna with a hungry kitten.”
“Oh, I am terrified—you are soooo scary. As they say, don’t try to scare a porcupine with a naked ass, right?” she smirked. “You make it sound as if you’re the king of good deeds. A bona fide Santa Claus.”
Aspirin got up. He wanted to grab the little bitch by her ponytail and drag her over to the door and beyond. Instead, he waited a second—then burst out laughing.
Really, this was utterly comical. He was arguing with a preteen. Why would he need to worry about what an underage delinquent says?
Still giggling, he went back to his room and picked up his phone.
“I don’t get it,” Victor Somov, nicknamed Whiskas, asked Aspirin. “You brought an underage girl into your apartment?”
“She’s just a kid. I thought—”
“You brought her into your apartment?” Whiskas repeated.
“Well, yeah, kind of.”
A pause.
“I don’t get it,” Whiskas said again. “What for?”
“I wasn’t myself,” Aspirin admitted. “She was by herself after midnight. And then there was this pit bull coming at us, and then . . .”
He stopped, not sure how to tell the rational Whiskas about the irrational terror that overtook him in that courtyard.
“Were you sober?” Whiskas asked.
“Yes—I drove home. I don’t drink when I am behind the wheel.”
“Good for you,” Whiskas commended him with mock sincerity. “Did you enter your home alarm code in front of the girl?”
“I didn’t set the alarm yesterday.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I forgot.”
“Pure genius,” Whiskas said, his voice full of wonder at the idiots born on this earth. “Aspirin, one of these days I am going to send a couple of thugs over just to teach you a lesson.”
“Please don’t,” Aspirin said, then cocked an ear—in the living room the nasty child had opened the piano and was now hitting random keys. “Listen. I think she’s crazy.”
“Not as crazy as you,” Whiskas assured him testily. “See if there is anything missing in your apartment. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Sounds good,” Aspirin said with relief.
In the living room the girl continued to press random piano keys like someone who’d never seen a piano before. Aspirin glanced at his watch wondering whether twenty minutes was enough time for the strange little creature to destroy the instrument. He hoped Whiskas would hurry.
Victor Somov managed the security detail at the nightclub Kuklabuck where Aspirin lit up the crowd on Tuesdays and Fridays. Victor had once helped Aspirin out of a sticky situation that involved the accidentally crushed bumper of a fancy car. Whiskas was considered an intellectual—he forced every bouncer on his team to read Murakami—but that was not what Aspirin valued the most about him. Victor Somov was a good friend because he was the perfect listener. He was attentive and a little slow, with an air of deliberateness that felt like attentiveness. He also had an aura of confidence and serenity, and that was exactly what Aspirin usually needed after his long, stress-filled days.
Or crazy, dog-and-girl-and-bear-filled nights.
Enlisting a professional to help with a child was overkill. Aspirin was showing weakness, and he knew it; he felt awkward now about calling Somov. But he also had no choice. If the girl refused to leave on her own, he would have to—what, grab her arms? Shoulders? Grab her by the throat or hair? He would have to seize her and drag her out, and she would most certainly scream, and the neighbors would hear her screaming and then he’d probably be screaming his way to prison. And that wasn’t in his plans. No, in a few years Aspirin was going to make some decent dough, buy a house in the country, erect a tall fence, and get a dog. Just not a pit bull. A German shepherd. He would live without a telephone, without a television set; a stereo and a laptop would be enough.
And he wasn’t going to let an act of charity turn his dream into a nightmare.
He listened again: a melody replaced the erratic sounds in the next room. An uninitiated listener would think that the girl continued to press random keys, but Aspirin heard a ragged, unschooled, strangely captivating song emerging from the instrument. A few measures—stop—repeated now, with more conviction.
A new measure . . .
He peeked into the living room. The girl stood in front of the instrument, finding the melody by ear, but not in the usual way of children trying to pick out a song. She didn’t hit the keys with one finger; instead, she passed her left hand over the octaves, while the right barely touched the keys, like a blind person reading Braille.
Her teddy bear sat on the piano between an antique clock and a china doll Aspirin had brought from Germany, seemingly watching her and keeping a glass eye on him at the same time.
“Right,” the girl murmured to herself. She placed both hands on the keys now. Her left hand played a chord, the right hand led a melody, and for a second Aspirin felt dizzy. He saw his future, and it was so serene and so joyful, as if he were a schoolboy at the start of an endless vacation. He took a step toward the piano, about to embrace and kiss this marvelous girl who came to teach him how to live his life for real, without depression and fear, without small upsets, without Mishutkas, to live and listen to music, to live and rejoice in living. He placed his hands on her shoulders and at that moment the china doll, securely attached to its stand, ...
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