Nadia swigged the rest of her Coke. ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ she said.
Nadia always made it seem like the world was going to come down around us, as if everything was just about to go dark. While Nadia was getting my drink, I could see that girl head-on. Her face was as high as a moon off her neck. She had black ink eyeliner painted beyond her eyes. Her hair was bone-blond like Nadia’s, but pulled tight in a bun. I knew that Nadia had to help girls from Russia before, when we were younger especially, and I’d always thought it was about learning how to speak English, not some kind of exotic visa thing. I felt stupid right then.
Nadia clipped back with my rum and Coke. ‘I need to do something about that bitch.’
‘Whatever. My god, Nadia, she seems harmless to me.’
Then the girl yawned, loudly. It was like she was showing us the inside of her mouth on purpose. It was gleaming brown and slimy. I couldn’t see any of her teeth.
‘Mira, she’s an evil horse-fed whore from my hometown and I’m supposed to teach her how to be a Canadian or something?’
‘Why doesn’t your father do it? Why do you have always do things for him?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mira, you don’t understand. You need to get out in the world and grow up. Get a fucking job.’
‘Shut up! I am getting a fucking job!’
The Volgograd whore made a choking sound and started spitting on the bar.
‘Oh my fucking Christ, do you see what I have to deal with? That girl just spit up on my bar.’
‘Sorry.’
I watched Nadia rush to the other side of the bar with a spray bottle and a cloth. The girl started talking to Nad
ia in Russian. She was flinging her hands around, these bony hands, and her whole body started moving.
When Nadia came back to my side, she was on the verge of tears. ‘She’s, like, telling me her fucking sob stories about being oppressed. Can you believe that that girl Adi is a fucking mother? She works at the titty club at the end of the road. I feel sorry for her.’
I passed Nadia my empty glass.
‘I’ll get you another. Jesus, I’m so fucking stressed.’
As Nadia worked I tried not to keep looking across the bar, which was impossible. There’s no way that person was a mother! She looked twenty years old, twenty-five at the most. She was wearing one of those shirts with only one arm – it was white and it had a fabric flower on the shoulder. She also had two cigarettes sticking out of her mouth. She tried to hold both cigarettes with her lip muscles and smoke them at the same time with no hands. It was really funny. She was banging the bar with both fists.
‘Daddy says you take care of me! Daddy, come!’ she yelled in English.
It was witchy. She was witchy. I felt witchy too.
Nadia opened another can of Coke. ‘I can’t fucking take this tonight, Mira, not tonight. Holy mother of Jesus. Can you help shut Adi up? I just really can’t take it tonight. I just need her to shut up. She’s been here for hours.’
‘Okay.’
‘Oh God, thank you, Mir. You’re a good girl. Always.’
I jumped off the bar stool. I don’t even know if I walked or ran. But now I was standing before Adi’s long and tightly crossed thighs.
She handed me one of the cigarettes, which was now half-done. ‘Smoke,’ she said.
I took it and started smoking. I felt Nadia watching me closely, stressed. I wanted to chop off her bunny head. It’s, like, You asked me to do this, now leave me alone!
Right away, up close, I knew Adi was something special. I mean she was hard like Nadia but blond-Russian-sexual times ten.
‘You know about this titty bar?’ Adi asked.
‘You mean the one down the street?’
Adi was looking me up and down, thinking.