36, Connection
“You should’ve left your friend there until he was one inch from death, not save him right away. How else does he learn lesson?” The man’s Russian accent was thick and unapologetic. He tossed back his fourteenth shot of vodka in less than an hour and pushed the empty glass away.
“My friend was completely naked in there. I have no idea how he got naked that fast.” Special agent Dale O’Connor drank his own shot of vodka and did the same as his new friend with his empty glass.
“I know person like this.” The Russian hiccuped. “He is asshole.”
“Let me guess, he’s your best friend,” O’Connor said indifferently.
“Yes. And if he was naked in big freedge, I leave him.”
The two men were alone except for an indifferent bartender in a seedy little Moscow bar. The lights were blue and dim with some of the bulbs buzzing occasionally, as if they were about to burn out. A low fidelity AM radio on top of a cooler played shitty two decade old Russian popular music that filled the small bar with an oddly pleasant white noise.
O’Connor’s com watch lit up. “Apparently the race is on between my driver and yours.”
The Russian man groaned. “My driver has beeg ego. I weel never hear end of story.” He grabbed his smart phone and responded to his friends who were in the vehicle with Team Vodka to leave him the fuck alone.
At the exact same moment, O’Connor sent a message to McVandalay, “text me if Porter kills you. I want to drink.”
Seconds later, the message “how can I text you that we’re dead if I’m dead?” filled O’Connor’s watch screen. He replied, “if anyone can figure out a way, it’s you. I’ll be drinking if you need me.”
With that, their com devices went silent and they were left alone by their respective teams. Both men were demolitions experts, and they each loved to drink heavily in the peace and quiet.
Together, this was a match made in heaven.
“I’m serious, that walk in fridge was as big as a garage. It was big enough to hang carcasses in there, but those snooty meth dealer were vegans. Rich people spend money on fucked up things.” O’Connor looked over at his drinking buddy to really look at his face for the first time. “He said he had twenty bucks he owed me, and I didn’t have any drinking money. You’d bust him out, wouldn’t you?”
“Niet! Thees man owes me money! He best friend! I teach lesson! Freeze asshole, freeze.” The man’s Russian accent was so thick that the language coming out of his mouth was barely recognizable as English.
“I was in a pickle. He had my beer money but he needed a time out.” O’Connor realized he was using American slang. “We discipline children back in the States with something we call, a time out.”
The Russian man snorted. “We discipline Russian children with beatings.”
“This explains so much about why Russian adults are so fucked up.”
The Russian man shrugged. “Vodka helps.”
He lifted a finger towards the ceiling. The bartender materialized from nowhere, smoking a half gone cigarette that dangled off of his haggard, old man chapped lips. As he filled the shot glasses with another round, O’Connor watched a flit of ash fall onto the top of the closest shot glass. The bartender didn’t notice, nor would he have cared if he did. Like so many old Russians, he was simply going through motions of Russian life, just waiting to die.
The shot with the ashes was pushed towards the Russian man while the clean shot went to O’Connor.
The Russian man lifted the shot to his face and noticed the ash. He grimaced as if he were very angry, then his eyebrows went up, as if he’d realized he was overreacting. A second later he looked at his American drinking buddy and said, “to the ones who broke our hearts.” Without hesitating, the Russian man tossed back the vodka, cigarette ash and all.
Twenty Nine year old United States military special agent Dale O’Connor held the pain of his youth around his chest like a vice. He raised his shot and mumbled under his breath to himself privately, “to Harvey, I’ll never forget.”
The Russian was in his own little world. He shook his head violently for half a second, as if to help the booze slip down to his belly easier. He dropped his head in prayer, and said only loud enough for his own ears to hear, “For Yakva, I’ll never forget.”
The Russian raised his head, and then raised his finger to the sky to summon another round. To ease any possible protest from the bartender, he blurted out in Russian, “I assure you, you’ll get no trouble from us, brother.” In the same movement, he pulled out a stack of Russian currency and set it on the bar. “My American friend and I humbly request to drink in private, like gentlemen.”
The man pushed a small stack of brightly colored bills towards the back of the bar as a tip. The bartender nodded in understanding, swopped up the stack without looking at it and pocketed it. He disappeared to a back stock room and returned with four fresh two liter bottles for his only two patrons. He set the eight liters of rocket fuel in front of the men and pulled the tops off the bottles. He examined the set up without ever acknowledging his patrons and nodded to himself in approval.
With that, the bartender swooped up his pack of cigarettes and walked out from behind the bar to exit leisurely out the front door. He paused briefly in the open front doorway as his head dropped to light another cigarette. He looked off into the distance with a good Russian grimace, as if to ponder what misery might be waiting for him, then he walked off having said nothing the entire night.
O’Connor also said nothing that entire time, but he noted to himself how lucky he was to witness such a fucking gangster move.
The two drinking buddies simply grabbed the bottles, clinked them against each other, and raised them up. “To the best bartender of all time.” They each took a big pull right from the beast’s breast.
With that, the two men’s date with drinking buddy destiny had begun.
“I love Russians, but I hate Russia. Do you hear that a lot?” O’Connor asked.
“Soviets were garbage. Old people miss stability, but Soviets were bad idea. Terrible. Young people want freedom. Russians are good people.” He wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. “For me, I like Americans good, but never go to America yet.” It wasn’t the drinking. This man could drink vodka like most people could drink coffee. His English simply wasn’t good.
“It’s a place to drink, I guess,” O’Connor shrugged. The men lifted the bottles to the sky and took swigs. “So far, America has been my favorite place I’ve been. I like Ireland for obvious reasons.” He nodded at the bottle, as if it to imply that drinking alcohol was the only reason to go anywhere.
The Russian man nodded, as if he understood every unspoken word.
O’Connor stared straight ahead at the shelves of liquor behind the bar. “I’m sorry that my government is always fucking with yours.”
The Russian man snorted. “Ha! I don’t like my government, I don’t like your government. I only like my people.” Another imaginary toast followed by a swig went unceremoniously by.
“No, I mean, I like my job. I like it a lot. I get to destroy bad things that will hurt good people, and when I’m lucky, I get to blow up bad people along with the bad things.”
The Russian man spoke shitty English, but he understood every word. “I love to make theengs go boom. In my country, I blow up the theengs that make kids seek at skool. The drugs, and crystals, and powders.”
“Me too.” He smiled and looked at his drinking buddy in the eyes. “My favorite smell is that first whiff of hydrocarbons burning at seven hundred degrees celsius, when you know the fire is roaring over the drugs.” O’Connor deliriously dropped his head back and smiled widely, as if reliving a spiritual experience.
“Ah, yes, I like this too.” The Russian man nodded in appreciation. “I like when fire burns sheepment but not burns whole docks, you know this? Boat ees good, docks eez good, but sheepment ees burned.”
O’Connor grinned. “We’ve seen your work, and honestly, being in the profession myself, you are the best I’ve ever seen. I gotta hand it to you.”
The Russian man could tell the compliment was sincere, but he did not expect the brutal honesty from an American. “This is nice thing you say to me. Thank you.”
“I mean it!” O’Connor insisted. “I know how to blow shit up better than anyone I’ve ever met, but seeing you work,” he paused and contemplated, “it makes me think I should quit drinking and take my job seriously.”
The Russian man snapped his head and looked O’Connor in the eyes with concern. When he realized O’Connor was joking, he grinned an uneasy grin. “No drinking? This eez no way to live.”
O’Connor looked seriously at his friend. “Your work is amazing.”
For centuries, Russia had been a playground for marauding militaries to ravage from time to time. In the past century alone, more than fifty million souls had been brutally lost to government malfeasance and treachery through war, starvation and labor camps. The Russian people have evolved a social immunity to small talk and insincere words. In a world filled with constant tragedy, there’s no time for formalities. Russians get right to the point.
“I am the best. I know this.” This statement wasn’t bragging. It was a simple acknowledgement of the truth.
“Yup. And I’m totally cool with that.” O’Connor spoke flatly without emotion, but he didn’t slur his words in the slightest, despite the fact that he’d consumed enough hooch to put a large elk to death with blood poisoning. “But you know what? There’s a gal on our team who’s already better than me, she just doesn’t know it yet. When she hears about you and some of the demolition perfection we’ve seen you do, just on this trip? Well…” O’Connor shrugged, as if to give up hope of giving his new friend anything but bad news. “She’ll be coming for you.”
“Ah, zees woman ees like my mother.” The Russian man laughed to himself. “Always must be the best, or will die and fall in grave.”
“Yes, and she has the potential to be as good as you, but she won’t get any better until she feels it. You can’t learn it. You have to feel it.”
“Thees eez yes. When you make bomb, you close eyes, you can see if place explodes too big, but you must see with eyes closed first, yes?”
His English was terrible, but his honesty was refreshing and invigorated a part of O’Connor’s soul that he didn’t know had been asleep. He liked this Russian a lot. They both loved to blow shit up but only if fucked with bad guys. “And there it is. How do you teach someone with incredible talent that it’s all about feel?”
“Team member is woman.” The Russian exhaled through his lips, as if he were choosing his words carefully. “Smart women, always have big hate for themself when make small mistakes, yes?”
The Russian man clearly held many women in high esteem. O’Connor liked this guy more by the minute.
“Smart women are always hardest on themselves, and I hate it. There’s nothing I can do to show them what they won’t let themselves see. It drives me to drink.” He raised his bottle in a mental toast to his friend Alexi Blacktide, and whispered a small “here’s to you, darlin, wherever you are in the universe” into the empty barroom air.
“She will become warrior or not. Choice is hers.” He looked at his American drinking buddy and added, “with you as friend and teacher, if she is truly smart woman, she will become great.” He toasted this imaginary female demolitions student and swigged hard.
Three hours and four liters of vodka later, both men were slurring their words and singing songs together, arm in arm. The melodies were strange, the laugher was joyous, the sorrow and anger flowed like a river in a spring rain. The drunken friendship was soaring as both of their com devices lit up.
The Russian man laughed a big, hearty Russian laugh. It was ominous and filled up the bar like thunder. “My driver lost race!” He doubled over in laughter and was crying. “He is crying like baby! Wants to keel heemself after losing to woman! Ah ha ha ha ha!”
O’Connor couldn’t help but smile and be in a good mood from the laughter. “Apparently my driver is crying too. My guy won’t tell me why.”
The demolitions experts were drunk, happy, and glad to be together, but like all heavy drinkers know, the night always must come to a close. “I have apartment close to here. You have ride from crying driver, yes?”
As if on cue, O’Connor heard a van pull up outside the bar. “My ride is here. Thanks for a great night of drinking.”
“You too, my American friend. We do this again soon, yes?”
“Damn straight.” With that, O’Connor stumbled out the front door and climbed into the van. He looked at his friends and saw that they were all a fucking mess. With a big drunken smile and said, “hey gang, I’m drunk.”
Porter was crying, sergeant Schuman was smiling from ear to ear as if she were high on some sort of happy drug, Von Stryker didn’t even look up from her phone and Bradley McVandalay’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “You’re drunk?” he asked with real curiosity. “For real?”
“Yup. I need to go to bed.” With that, O’Connor passed out on his seat and started snoring loudly.
In the distance, a Russian demolitions expert staggered drunkenly to his shitty Moscow apartment while laughing into his phone as he listened to the sobs of sadness emanate from the broken ego of a driver who had never known defeat in a race until tonight.
