Mr. Smith shoved the note in her face. “You write this?”

  “No, I—”

  He backhanded her with the butt of the revolver, sending a spray of blood across the marble floor.

  “Hey!” I pushed myself up.

  Zig-Zag grabbed my arm and held me back. “This ain’t none of your concern.”

  I tore away from him and charged the man who was hitting Jessica. I plowed into his midsection, knocking him backward as he squeezed the revolver’s trigger. Zig-Zag dropped to the floor.

  Mr. Smith pressed the hot muzzle against my forehead, burning a circle into my skin. “You want to be a dead hero?”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Your friend over there didn’t have a choice.”

  I side-eyed Zig-Zag. Half his face was missing, and he wasn’t moving. My knees grew weak and I started to shake.

  Mr. Smith lowered his revolver. “Take them downstairs, Tony, and then come back and help me clean up this mess.”

  Tony had his own revolver and, with it prodding my kidney, I followed Jessica across the foyer to a door beneath the grand staircase that opened to stairs leading into the basement. Tony’s gun continued prodding me until Jessica and I were forced into a windowless room not much bigger than the bathroom in Zig-Zag’s apartment. He locked the door behind us, leaving only a sliver of light along the bottom of the door.

  Then the light went out.

  After a moment of silence, Jessica asked, “You are police?”

  When I told her I wasn’t, the hopeful sound disappeared from her voice.

  “Then we are dead like your friend.”

  “No,” I told her. “There’s a way out of this.”

  “You should not have come—”

  She hesitated so I told her my name.

  “You should not have come, Wilson. You do not know these people. They bring the girls down here who do not cooperate. One day. Two days. Who knows? But when they return, they do whatever the boss tells them. Or they do not return.”

  “Why did you put that note in the Salvation Army kettle?” I asked. “What did you expect to happen?”

  “I—I do not know, but I hoped someone would come, someone who would—” She stopped herself. “Now the other girls—without me, they—they—”

  Jessica began to cry. I located her in the dark, gathered her into my arms, and let her tears soak my chest until her tear ducts ran dry.

  Later—how much later I had no idea—she told me about the half-dozen girls that were kept in bedrooms upstairs. “I am the—how do you say it?—the den mother. They take me to the mall to buy the makeup and the clothing and the things women need that men do not understand. They tell me if I try to leave or I make a mistake when I am out, they will hurt the others. And now I have done that—but I had to try—I think the Salvation Army, they will save us. They will save us.” Jessica stopped to consider what she had just said and then asked, “You are with the Salvation Army?”

  I didn’t want to, but I told her how Zig-Zag and I had stolen the Salvation Army Red Kettle and found her note among all the change.

  “You stole from the poor?” Jessica asked as she pulled away. “You are no better than they are.”

  We sat in silence, and I felt myself crashing from the perpetual caffeine high that usually sustained me throughout the day. I must have fallen asleep because I did not hear the door open several hours later.

  My first realization that we had company was the toe of a cowboy boot, prodding my ribcage. I opened my eyes and looked up at the silhouette of a fridge-sized man.

  “Get up,” Mr. Smith said. “It’s time to go.”

  “Go where?”

  He zip-tied my wrists together and did the same to Jessica. Then he marched us up the stairs and out the back door, where dusk had covered the neighborhood. Zig-Zag’s SUV waited in the driveway and, as we approached, Tony loaded into the back a tarp-wrapped bundle that was the size and shape of Zig-Zag.

  Mr. Smith put us in the rear seat, Jessica on the driver’s side and me beside her on the passenger side. He climbed behind the wheel, and Tony settled into the passenger seat in front of me. As the car eased around the house to the street, I realized that someone had turned on the Christmas lights Zig-Zag and I had installed that morning, and the Tudor looked just as festive as the other decorated homes in the cul-de-sac.

  I did not know where they were taking us, and I certainly didn’t want to ask, but I realized we weren’t headed into the city when Mr. Smith exited the subdivision and drove north. We traveled along the old state highway, a two-lane road that had long ago been replaced by the multilane interstate highway eight miles east, and far ahead of us I could see the neon sign advertising the biker bar where my ex and her brother worked.

  Charlene had just arrived to start her shift and was getting out of her car—the car I had pawned her engagement ring to repair—when Zig-Zag’s SUV passed the Iron Horse. Our gazes locked for a moment and then she started screaming. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I recognized the look of anger on her face, and I twisted around to watch her running toward the bar.

  Soon, half a dozen motorcycles roared out of the Iron Horse’s parking lot and were strung out along the highway behind us. Mr. Smith glanced in the rearview mirror. As the bikers closed the gap between us, Mr. Smith accelerated. I watched the speedometer needle climb well above the posted speed limit.

  The bikers dropped back when a state highway patrol cruiser roared onto the highway behind us, lights flashing and siren blaring. Mr. Smith swore as he slowed the SUV and eased it onto the side of the road.

  “One word and Tony blows your head off.”

  Two highway patrol officers exited the cruiser. One approached on the driver’s side, his hand resting on the butt of his sidearm, while the second approached on the passenger side.

  “Sir,” said the first officer, “please put your hands on the steering wheel. We have reports that your vehicle was involved in a robbery—”

  “He has a gun!” I shouted from the rear seat.

  Before the officer could react, Mr. Smith shot him twice.

  The officer on the passenger side couldn’t draw his weapon fast enough, and Mr. Smith shifted into drive and stomped on the accelerator. The second officer fired at us, his shots shattering the rear window as I pushed Jessica to the floor and covered her with my body. Tony twisted around and began firing through the broken rear window.

  After four shots, he said, “He’s down.”

  “You think they called it in?”

  Mr. Smith hazarded a glance over his shoulder and saw me on top of Jessica. “This car is hot. We need to dump it and these bodies right away!”

  Because I was still on the floor, covering Jessica, I couldn’t see what was happening outside the car, but I heard the distinctive potato-potato-potato sounds of Harley-Davidsons rapidly approaching. Then something smashed the rear driver’s-side window, showering Jessica and me with safety glass, and the SUV swung wildly left and then right.

  Tony fired his revolver twice before the hammer snapped down on spent shells. Mr. Smith tried to hand Tony his revolver, but something smashed the windshield and Tony’s head erupted, spraying me with his last thoughts. Mr. Smith lost his grip on his revolver as he lost control of the SUV. I grabbed the gun as the SUV swung left again, bounced over a curb, crashed through something, and came to an abrupt halt when it hit something solid. The airbags exploded, but they didn’t do us any good on the floor.

  I climbed off of Jessica, opened the door, and fell out of the SUV onto a plastic baby Jesus. It didn’t register right away that the SUV had plowed through the nativity scene in front of a church and pinned two of the three plastic Wise Men against the church wall.

  I helped Jessica out of the car and pointed the revolver at Mr. Smith. He wasn’t moving. Neither was Tony.

  “Charlene wants her ring, Wilson,” my ex’s brother shouted over the sound of the motorcycles.

  Before I could respond, approaching police sirens interrupted us and Mick led the other bikers away from the church. Three patrol cars slid to a halt and Jessica and I found ourselves surrounded by armed cops with itchy trigger fingers, who shouted confusing instructions at us.

  I dropped the revolver and thrust my still zip-tied hands into the air. So did Jessica.

  That was a few days ago. Since then, Jessica and the six other women held in the faux Tudor have been freed; my best friend has been buried by his family; my ex is pissed because the pawn ticket is still in my wallet, which is being held as evidence; I didn’t get paid for putting up the Christmas lights; I have a circle burned into my forehead; and I’m sitting in a cell on Christmas Eve with two drunken Santas and an elf who exposed his candy cane to some elderly shoppers—all because I can’t make bail while I’m awaiting trial for stealing one of the Salvation Army’s Red Kettles.

  I can’t wait to see what fresh hell Christmas Day brings.

  Back to TOC

  Confessions on a Train from Kyiv

  Hugh Lessig

  The compartments are spacious, almost the size of my son’s old dorm room. Passengers can walk up front and get a rolled-up mattress that includes bedding. Then they can make up a berth and go to sleep. The train sways and doesn’t go very fast. Strangers get thrown together in the same compartments, but you can walk around and see what others are doing. That’s how I found Myron, sleeping alone in an upper berth, and smothered him with a thin Ukrainian pillow that was still crusty with bleach.

  It can take minutes for someone to die because they have no air, according to YouTube. He’d fallen asleep with an empty bottle of vodka, so it didn’t take much to get the upper hand. But I kept up the pressure once he went limp, fearing he’d wake up with permanent brain damage and smile blissfully for the rest of his life, not caring that he had killed my son.

  “Myron, Myron,” I whisper. “It’s a shame you didn’t know it was me.”

  The compartment has four padded benches. I’m calling them benches, but each one is couch-size. Two lower and two upper, so four can sleep comfortably. An unending snowscape passes by the single window. Clapboard houses lean into the wind, plastic flapping around the windows. Back home, the office drones in IT are no doubt complaining about the Christmas party. They’ll have to rub shoulders with the senior partners and pretend to enjoy their jokes.

  Their jokes…

  My body begins to tremble with laughter. This train can’t be moving faster than forty miles an hour and I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but it doesn’t matter. All the things that once gave me heartburn—getting sub-tweeted by Gloria in HR, getting dragged into an email chain with corporate—it all seems sad and pathetic. I gaze into Myron’s half-lidded eyes. Neither of us is worrying about the small things.

  Then someone jiggles the door.

  “You still in there, Myron?”

  Myron’s mouth hangs half-open, as if ready to answer the question. I flip him toward the wall and bundle blankets around his chin. Something is mushy down there. I think he wet the bed. Jumping down from the upper berth, I unlock the door. A bear of a man looks down at me, his smile big enough to swallow my head.

  “Ola, comrade.” He claps me hard on the shoulder. “Don’t mind me. You a Ukrainian? Because I know like two words of your fucking language.”

  I recognize Myron’s boss from the news release. Donny or Denny or something. He looks at the upper berth and shakes his head. “My buddy is out like a light, huh? Christ, he stinks, too. We gotta get showers later. My compartment is four doors down, but no one’s there and I need some company. Thought I heard him talking. He’s probably dreaming about girls again.”

  He shuts the door and sits below his dead friend, swiping at his phone with thick fingers. “I had a signal at the Holiday Inn in Kyiv and now it’s kaput. But I got this golf game. My people think I’m always busy, but half the time I’m fucking around on my phone and don’t know what I’m doing.”

  My son knew what you were doing.

  “I’m not a world traveler,” Donny or Denny says. “I like sleeping in my own bed at night, but this trip is mandatory. I got relatives in—what’s the name of their shit town?—Putvyl. It’s to the north. I got other relatives even farther north, this border village. The kids play soccer and if they kick the ball too far, it rolls into Russia. You know what they do? They get another fucking ball.”

  He laughs and waves a hand. “What am I saying? You don’t understand a word of English. You’re a stupid piss-ant. You probably ain’t got no dick. You dress up in baby clothes every night and let your wife spank you and watch while the neighbor nails her six ways to Sunday.”

  I nod politely.

  “That’s what I thought.” He looks me over again. “Christ, I could have used a dozen of you back home. You got a trusting face. When you’re in a business like mine, you learn how to read faces. It helps with chicks, too. Myron up there, he’s got a schlong halfway to his knees. Girls can’t get enough of it. That’s where his brains are, too. He knows two words of Ukrainian: da means yes and dobre means good or okay or very well. Something like that.”

  I had flown from Newport News in Virginia to Atlanta, then to Frankfurt, then to Kyiv. I got to the train station and watched for Myron, my son’s voice echoing in my head. “It won’t go sideways, dad, but if it ever does, we’re all heading to Ukraine, where the organizers are. We go to Kyiv and take this train north to some bumfuck town. Stop begging me to come home. I’ve got this.”

  The guy at the ticket booth spoke broken English and said this train goes around the country. He drew a circle in the air. I got the most expensive ticket he had, so maybe I’ll end up at that soccer field near Russia or somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains. Donny or Denny shuffles his feet. I hadn’t been looking for him. Only Myron.

  “My Myron is a decent guy, a little rough around the edges. But who isn’t? At some point, everyone does something they regret. My Myron. I call him that because he’s like a son. Misbehaving, sure, but his heart’s in a good place.”

  The police had found my son in a fetal position under a bridge. He’d been shot in the stomach and left to die in the cold. Twenty-five years old. Nothing I said could separate him from a life of quick, dirty money. You work in an IT department and solve problems that Ivy League-trained lawyers are helpless to understand. You throw around so many five-dollar words it sounds like a different language, and you silently rejoice in their confusion. But you can’t persuade your own son to see what’s ahead. I pray he understood in the end. The patrolman who found his body noticed two tear tracks on his face, dried to salt. Maybe he was thinking of me.

  “In some ways, Myron just needs boundaries. He has—what do you call it—a hair-trigger temper. One minute he’s laughing, then he’s busting on someone. You can’t predict it.” He frowns at his phone. “I wish I could get online here. Curious about what’s happening back home.”

  What’s happening back home is my son’s funeral, you piece of shit. He’s being buried in the hard, cold ground at a veteran’s cemetery in Hampton with no one to say words over him. I missed my son’s funeral to find Myron and now I’m listening to you.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  I had brought an ice pick just in case. Found it in a kitchen drawer next to the meat thermometer and turkey baster and other stuff I no longer use since my wife died. I bend forward as if stretching my lower back and pull the ice pick from my boot. I stand up and smile, making him recoil.

  “You want to suck my dick? Because I’m not like that.”

  The door slides open and a young woman steps inside, cradling a baby. Our eyes connect. She is big-boned with straw-colored hair and a heavy face that some men would call handsome in a backhanded way. But her soft blue eyes speak to an inner beauty. That sounds stupid coming from a guy with an ice pick up his sleeve, but her gaze hits me hard and fast. I gather my bedding and vault to the upper berth, as if to say, you take the lower. I can kill this guy later.

  “Thank you,” she says. “That was very nice.”

  “Hey, you speak English,” says Donny or Denny. “That’s great.”

  I’m sure she speaks Ukrainian, too. And she’ll want to talk to me, her fellow countryman.

  I lay down and face the wall. As the train sways around a curve, the smell of fried food fills the cabin. Great, she brought dinner. Maybe that will mask the scent of dead Myron. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn toward her. She offers what appears to be a slice of pizza crust. I smile and roll my eyes to mimic being tired. The baby makes a few noises, and I’m hoping it doesn’t scream. I don’t want everyone figuring why Myron isn’t waking up. Donny or Denny asks what the woman does for a living.

  “Well, I’m a mother,” she says. “This is my son. But I work as an assistant in the Euro-Ukraine Fellowship Enterprise. We promote understanding with the European Union and have exchanges. Speakers and the like. We don’t do politics. It’s more of a cultural effort.”

  “So you’re like a secretary?”

  She makes a dismissive noise. “More like a, uh, administrator assistant.”

  “Like an office manager. Making copies and shit.”

  “Sure. You want coffee? It’s so cold in here.”

  The smell of coffee fills the cabin. I wonder when a body starts to stink of decomposition. Maybe I’ll get out at this Putvyl place and follow Donny or Denny. I could slip the ice pick into the base of his neck and let him die in the snow like my son. Wait, what am I thinking? He’ll try to wake up Myron before getting off the train. I have to kill him in here.

  “Nothing wrong with being an office manager,” he says. “Me, I’m a private investigator. I look into cases for people.”

  Are you kidding me?

  “Like in the movies,” she says. “What sorts of things do you work on? Do you find lost children and the like?”

  Papers rustle. “You can read it right here. I’m tracking these guys. You can read English, right?”

 

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