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She looks around at the strip of shops lining both sides of us, glancing at the people eating at outdoor cafes and admiring their meal choices. “Um, I’m not really sure. I’m not hungry enough to eat a whole meal, and I don’t want to carry around leftovers if we don’t have a place to stay yet.”
Embarrassing as it is, I’m not familiar enough with Japanese food to give her any suggestions despite how many times I’ve been to Japan. I’ve always had someone else available to curate meal plans for me when I’m here on business.
“There’s a kakigori shop down there, that should be a good in-between,” she says, pointing over to a little blue storefront with pink kanji lettering on the banner.
“What’s that?” I ask, feeling particularly enamored by her knowledge of Japanese language and culture. It’s not often I meet an American who is conscious that other countries even exist much less know how to pronounce a name they’ve never heard. Even Russian names are too complex for Americans. Faye is a breath of fresh air.
“It’s like Italian ice except it’s made with sweetened milk. It’s not reallyfoodper se, but it’ll keep my stomach occupied for a little while. And besides, I’ve always wanted to try authentic kakigori. The only kind I’ve ever been able to have was at a food truck near my job that went out of business,” she replies.
“Alright, I guess that’s what we’re going to do,” I reply, shrugging as I begin to walk in the direction of the shop.
There’s a line of maybe five people who all stare at us as we walk in, but I realize that we must look extremely out of place in here. Faye, in particular, stands out as a pale redhead amidst a room full of jet black, straight hair. She doesn’t seem self-conscious about it at all, which makes me admire her even more. Maybe she just knows that she’s worth admiring, but whatever the reason is, it’s refreshing to see someone own their place in the world.
She orders her kakigori, and it’s exactly what I would have pictured as a Russian who has been exposed to tons of Japanese media in the US. It’s a bowl of light pink topped with berries and a bit of whipped cream. It’s cute and delicate, and seeing Faye eating it activates something in me that feels the need to protect her at all costs.
We decide to find a local park and walk around for a bit before we settle on a place to stay for the night. The park nearest to us lines a river dotted with cherry trees in full bloom. It feels like a dream, and I can’t imagine such a dream feeling more perfect with anyone else other than Faye. Even though I thought the sex we had was a demonstration of my dominance, I’m beginning to feel much softer towards Faye. All the little quirks and facts I’ve learned about her have given her so much more depth, and I’m a little ashamed of the depraved thoughts I had about her the first time I saw her in the casino.
“So, we’ve been surviving together for a week now, but I still feel like I know basically nothing about you. I want to get to know you more, to understand you a little better,” she says, taking a bite of her kakigori and smiling with satisfaction and simplistic joy.
“What is it that you want to know?” I ask, feeling both excited that she’s curious to know more and nervous that she’ll be completely repulsed by me if she learns anything else. It’s already bad enough that I’m in the bratva. My upbringing wouldn’t make that information any easier to swallow.
“I mean, whatever you’re willing to tell me I guess. I don’t meet a whole lot of people who seem like they have had a very interesting life, but I’ve been so curious about you,” she replies, her voice tentative and shy.
I think for a moment, wondering to myself if I even want to tell her anything worth knowing. I’m beginning to feel somewhat strongly for her, and I don’t want to scare her away from me even just for the limited time we have together. She’d run in a heartbeat if she knew the kind of person my father was. Wouldn’t that reflect poorly on me too in theory?
“I guess I could just give the basics to start. I was born in Chechnya, first born of seven siblings. My parents were good to me until my father started to dabble with opioids after he got into a crash and needed a plate put into his head. My mother worked as a nurse, so she wasn’t home a lot, and I was the one who had to take care of my siblings because of it,” I reply.
That has to be enough to gauge her reaction at the very least. It’s enough to give the background without being too difficult for her to process.
“Oh wow, I’m so sorry. How old were you when that happened?” she asks, her eyes wide with empathy.
“I was nine, so some of my siblings weren’t even born yet. My parents had three more kids after he was caught doing heroin, so I blame my mother for making that choice. Either way, I needed to start earning money to feed the kids,” I continue.
She pauses, eating another bite of her ice cream. “What did you do for money? Is that when you joined the gangs?”
“No, I was still a good little catholic boy at the time, so I wanted to do something that would be purposeful and not morally gray. I started out by collecting cans and selling them, but that didn’t earn enough for that many people. I didn’t want to share what little we had with my father, but he was bigger than me, so he took whatever he wanted.”
“Oh wow, I’m so sorry Aleksander. Why didn’t your mother feed you? Didn’t she make money from her nursing job?” she asks, tempted to take my hand or rub my arm as a maternal demonstration of support.
“She did, but most of the money went toward bailing my father out of jail. She acted like we couldn’t survive one night with him gone, so she would spend hundreds to get him out. We could have had groceries for two weeks at a time if she would just leave him in once a month,” I reply, feeling the resentment beginning to grow again before I force myself to push it down.
“So, when did you join the gang? Did that happen in Russia?” she asks, deviating from the path a bit to find a bench to sit on. I follow her over, watching the deep copper waterfall of her hair sway over her shoulders in the sun as she walks.
I’m transfixed temporarily by her, and it takes me a moment to gather myself again before I speak.
“I tried a couple of other ways to make money before resorting to the bratva, but I eventually did join when I was fifteen. It was a long couple of years, but I was finally big enough to do a man’s work. My father didn’t like that, but I was also big enough to subdue him when he tried to attack me or my siblings.”
She actually does take my hand this time, placing her ice cream next to her temporarily. Her hands are cold from holding it, but I still feel a rush of warmth that I can’t place. It’s not pure lust, not like it usually would be, but it grabs onto me and sinks itself into my chest.
“That’s terrible, I can’t even imagine growing up like that. My family wasn’t awful for the most part, but my sister did give us some issues when I was a teen. It was nothing like your father, but she’s really mentally ill and refused to let my parents help her,” she replies, turning her whole body towards me. I’m sure she would be sitting on my lap if she felt at all comfortable doing so.
“What kind of mentally ill? One of my brothers is bipolar, but he kept most of his issues to himself. We didn’t even really know anything was wrong until he got older and started running away,” I say.
She straightens her back and clears her throat. “She would always threaten to kill herself, she’d steal prescriptions from our parents, she’d skip school and even went to truancy court a few times. She was just a mess of a person and she never took any responsibility, so I had to take over and be the good kid when I didn’t want to be.”
Now my interest is piqued.
“Who would you have been if your sister wasn’t the way she was?” I ask, trying to imagine Faye as a rebel in any capacity and finding myself unable to do so.
