Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) Read online

  Alex shambled to the lobby, where the security guard was more than happy to call a cab for him in expectation of a tip. Whatever. Alex tossed him a twenty. He might as well start unloading some of the millions coming to him for something he couldn’t do anymore.

  He directed the cab driver to The Den, though why the fuck he’d revisit the first place in Seattle he and Stephanie had kissed was anyone’s guess. Closet masochist. Glutton for punishment.

  Despite the loud music, a noticeable hush fell over the place when he hobbled in. His first public appearance since drinks with Jacob a month earlier. Three more months of bed rest was going to drive him right out of his goddamned mind, though it was already preferable to being under the microscope again.

  The bartender saw him immediately. Not hard; Alex dwarfed most men by a good four or five inches even on crutches. “On the house, Aleksandr. Anything you want. It’s good to see you back.”

  “Thanks. Your best vodka, straight up.” He’d graduated from morphine to Tylenol with codeine a month ago, but his liver could explode for all he cared. He sat on a stool cleared for him in a display of brownnosing and propped his crutches against the bar. Once settled, he raised the glass to his lips, savored the burn slipping its warm fingers down his throat and into his stomach.

  A man he didn’t recognize slinked up to him and held out his hand. He sported the barrel chest of a former athlete and the beer gut to confirm his glory days were a good decade in the rearview mirror. “Nice to finally meet you, Aleksandr.”

  As much as he hated being called “mister,” he hated more the people who assumed they were on a first-name basis with him due to his celebrity.

  “My name is Shawn Nichols. I write for King County Today.”

  Something about the guy’s name struck a negative chord. Something Stephanie had said. Alex offered an unenthusiastic shake. The crutches’ constant pressure had bruised his armpits, and he just wanted a fucking drink.

  Then it clicked. “You’re the asshole who kept harassing Stephanie Hartwell.”

  Nichols’s eyes blazed. “She’s the one who compromised her ethics.”

  “And how do you know, exactly? I’m guessing she didn’t tell you a fucking thing. So here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth: I gave her the story before I had sex with her.” A technicality but true. Giving her piz′da a few licks and fucking her weren’t even in the same ballpark. “Are you mad because she wouldn’t go out with you or something?”

  Nichols let it roll off him, but his face was straining to maintain its calm. “I’d like to get a follow-up story with you. Talk about your future.”

  “No.” Alex pushed his glass forward and signaled for another. “Fuck you and everybody at the magazine. Fuck this city.”

  “Come on, man.” Nichols offered a convivial bros-before-hos chuckle, revealing a cringe-worthy gap between his front teeth. “You’ve had plenty of pussy—”

  Alex spun around, heedless of the pain spiking through his foot. “She is not ‘pussy.’ You refer to her as anything other than ‘Stephanie,’ and I will kick your ass so hard you’ll be chewing on your fucking intestines. Do we understand each other?”

  Nichols opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and skulked away. Even in his current state, Alex could have laid the mudak out.

  The bartender shook his head. “That guy’s the biggest scumbag in Seattle media. Is that why Hartwell left? The story she wrote about you was amazing.”

  Alex shrugged. He hoped it appeared nonchalant, but the more people said her name, the harder it was to pretend he wasn’t falling apart. “She’s better off. Now she can cover a real team.”

  “Ouch. How’s the foot?”

  “I may or may not walk again. Three months and I still can’t put weight on it. The prognosis isn’t good right now.”

  “Sorry to hear that, man. We were all hoping for a comeback.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” It’s my new talent. “Hey, open a tab, would you? I’m gonna be here a while.”

  “You got it.”

  Alex pushed his credit card across the bar, and the bartender rewarded him with another glass of vodka.

  ***

  “Hi there.”

  Jesus, what the fuck now? Alex, having drunk enough that his facial muscles were slacking, swiveled around. A redhead helped herself to the stool beside him. Short and shading toward plumpness, she bore no resemblance to Stephanie whatsoever. A small mercy.

  He hung his head and stared at his drink. Stephanie. Her absence had become his personal phantom haunting both his dreams and his waking hours. A crow pecking at his brain, where it had built a comfortable nest. A vampire hovering outside his window. His personal Hell, the space between them a shapeless, cold gray where once there had been so much light. So much love.

  “What’s wrong, Sasha?”

  He grunted something intended to be a question: “How do you know me?” The better question was why she felt comfortable enough to call him by his nickname.

  “I watch all your games. I’m sorry about what happened.”

  Great. A fucking puck bunny.

  Her voluptuous red lips smeared lipstick around the edge of her glass. “Need help getting home?”

  “I’m fine,” he slurred.

  “You don’t look fine. Well, that’s not entirely true.” She twirled a lock of her auburn hair around her finger. “Come on. Let me help.”

  “Fine, whatever.” Alex half-hopped, half-slid off the stool and grabbed his crutches. Outside, the woman—he didn’t know her name—hailed a cab. They piled into the backseat, and she gave the driver an address Alex didn’t recognize. “You got a name or what?”

  “Megan.”

  Of course, it would be something cutesy. Fucking puck bunnies.

  He wished it would for one second plug the gaping hole in his heart.

  ***

  Alex awoke with a headache cracking his skull in two and red lipstick streaked on his dick. A vague recollection of her riding him at some point, then blowing him again, tainted his brain. She had reapplied her lipstick in between.

  He sat up, inched his legs over the side of the bed, and cradled his head in his hands.

  “Good morning, sunshine.” A hand on his arm. Nails that matched her lips. Stephanie never painted her nails. He liked them better natural, the same way he liked her hair short, because having nothing to hide behind gave her a confidence most women feigned. He hadn’t shared enough things like that with her. That he loved her exactly how she was.

  “Get the fuck off me.”

  “So grouchy.”

  Alex dressed, then retrieved his crutches. “Poka.”

  “Do you think she knows what you’re doing to yourself? Cares? She thinks you’re doing what everyone thinks you’re doing. So why put yourself through this?”

  “Because I want to be a better man. Thanks for helping me fuck that up.”

  “God. A martyr complex. Go before you kill my good mood.”

  Alex limped out of the house, into the rainy morning, and caught a cab.

  In the condo, he hobbled to the bathroom and swallowed four ibuprofen. He stripped off his clothes and showered to get the woman’s residue off him, then dried, squirmed into a pair of Earthquakes lounge pants, and hopped into the kitchen to start a pot of tea.

  While the small teapot brewed Russian Caravan, he crossed the living room and gazed at the soggy city. Fog shrouded the mountains. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, his eyes, as his shoulders shook. He was an unparalleled, unmitigated catastrophe. He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. And the pain whose cure had fled over two thousand miles to escape him was clawing him apart from the inside.

  Take responsibility for your own pain.

  He had designed this labyrinth, had set all its traps, and now he was lost in its black heart. Condemned to hell for loving too much.

  ***

  Alex flicked through his extensive contact list. The advantage of having so many a
cquaintances eager to get into a young millionaire’s good graces was the ability to obtain whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. He pressed the Call button beside an entry for a bouncer who worked at a local strip club. Not Teasers—fuck that place—but the upscale club downtown with friendly, hot girls who knew how to dance.

  Alcohol had been dragging him further into his abyss. Time for a stronger medicine now he had stopped giving a fuck. It wasn’t as if Stephanie would find out or care if she did. She was too smart, had too much going for her, to spare her disaster of an ex-boyfriend another thought.

  His face appeared on TV, extolling the virtues of a local car dealership whose lot he would otherwise never set foot on. Danny insisted he needed to appeal to the common people, the ones who spent money on tickets, who paid his salary and bought the products he endorsed and had made him wealthy, especially when so many had questioned their investment after his disciplinary issues. All well and good, but he wouldn’t be caught dead in an American car regardless. Disgusted, he clicked it off as Johnny bellowed, “What’s up?” into the phone.

  “Hey, it’s Sasha. Get me an eight-ball. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Damn right you will.”

  “Whatever. See you soon.”

  She will never in a thousand lifetimes have anything to do with you again. He had already resigned himself to that sad fact. He could take no path through this world that wasn’t wrong somehow, that wouldn’t be cut apart and criticized. He might as well enjoy the journey.

  Johnny arrived an hour later. Alex paid him seventy bucks for the eight-ball and another hundred for his trouble.

  “Pleasure doing business with you.” Johnny shook his hand. Alex’s gaze fell upon the inverted L shape beneath his jacket. A handgun. “You need me to hook you up with anything else, you let me know.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  He stared at the little plastic bag. “Sorry, devochka,” he whispered. He grabbed a book he’d left on the breakfast bar plus a twenty and a credit card from his wallet, poured a fraction of the bag’s contents onto the book, and divided it into lines. Alex rolled the twenty and, leaning over the book, pressed a fingertip to his right nostril. He placed the bill at his left nostril and held it at the head of the first line. And snorted.

  The lines vanished within seconds. He sniffed, threw his head back so the drip would slide down his throat, and ran his hand over his nose, leaving a red smear on his skin. His heart pounded.

  “Blya!” He slapped his hands on the counter. He’d already forgotten what had precluded him from partaking sooner.

  He hurled the crutches into the living room, where they clattered across the walnut floor. He could do anything. What he most aspired to do, to amplify the orgasmic euphoria of being high, was to fuck. Alex snatched his phone again. Everything was so bright, and boundless in its possibilities. He called one of the dancers from the same club who, he recalled, lived nearby. She’d chosen a stage name inspired by a spice or something. Ginger? Jasmine? Honey?

  She arrived within minutes, and he fucked her for an hour—on his back, reverse cowgirl, until he came down. He did not remember her face, but he’d remember that apple-shaped ass and her complete acquiescence to his insistence he put his dick in it. He gave her money for her trouble too. He’d meant it as a gift, though some part of his subconscious acknowledged it as the prostitution it was. But he had become too busy hobbling back and forth in a cripple’s approximation of pacing, glancing out the windows for signs of the police, to care. She slipped out. He did not say good-bye.

  Alone again. In the cold, harsh mindfulness between highs, he contemplated how he had given up on himself, on the possibility of playing again, and on reuniting with Stephanie, in whom he had placed all hope. Whom he had believed with an idiot’s conviction was his to keep, though the few feathers she’d left behind now shone no brighter than ashes. His Sirin, for whom he’d have abandoned the world to follow even to his end. Whose song he could no longer hear because she sang only for the happy. Whom he could no longer see because she was as elusive, as evanescent, as joy itself.

  Alex wiped his damp cheeks and hopped back into the kitchen to cut another set of lines. He did not wish to be better, because he was incapable of it. Somewhere in her heart, Stephanie had known. She’d jumped out of the elevator while she had the chance, leaving him trapped and freefalling.

  Jacob was wrong. She wouldn’t have left if she hadn’t given up on him too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He could not pinpoint the day it happened, because they had all begun to meld together in an amorphous gray ooze, like a child’s crayons left to melt in the sun, punctuated by PT appointments and meaningless workouts, but something in him shattered. He’d always felt so much, good or bad; both a blessing and a curse, he could rely on his emotions, be it love or determination or pride, or deep and persistent sadness. So much sadness these past few months, an uncontrollable despondency that left him in tears without warning. But on this morning, Alex awoke to a featureless, desolate nothing that had engulfed his soul’s landscape like an advancing desert, and the sweet euphoria of cocaine did nothing but abandon him to a crash that magnified his absentee emotions. Feelings once breaking against him in waves, now a still and stagnant pond breeding indifference.

  For too many minutes, he stood at the mirror and forced a smile, only to find his contortions resembled those a psychopath might make in the horror movies Stephanie loved so much. The capacity to form a genuine smile had escaped him, the muscles too heavy to lift. He did not have a career anymore. He did not have a girlfriend anymore. He did not even have his sadness anymore, and if he’d at least had that, then maybe he could remember happiness. He practiced because he would have to interact with other people at some point, but it was like watching an alien try on a human face. He could not make the facial muscles correspond to the expression he was attempting to create. He tested a frown. A clown’s face, grotesque and exaggerated.

  “I hate you,” he said, his voice lifeless, and put his fist through the glass. His split knuckles dribbled blood onto the porcelain tile floor. He wiped them on his boxer-briefs and flexed his fingers. It no longer mattered if he broke his hands; they were of no use to anyone now. Nor was he.

  He did not bother to dress. He drifted into the living room, a ghost haunting his own home. He slid open the balcony’s glass doors, stepped out, and gazed down twenty-two stories at the parking lot. An early spring wind scoured his face, his bare chest and arms. He imagined it flaying his skin and carrying pieces of him away, though pieces had already vanished and he did not know where they had gone, or how, or why. The gray sky became black, and in the black an even deeper darkness, a hairline fissure separating the misery of life from its coldest truth: that salvation, however bitter, lay in his hands.

  In defiance of every living thing’s innate survival instinct, he wished he would stop being alive. Without topography to guide him back through the wasteland into which he’d wandered, he would keep plodding in circles until, exhausted, he granted himself the mercy of nonexistence. He would shatter most of his bones, split open his skull. A horrible mess, but it would be over. There would be a closed casket to hide his smashed body. What a sad way to go, people would say. He was so handsome. So rich. So young. As though any of those things guaranteed him perpetual happiness, or any happiness whatsoever.

  He left the balcony and wandered into the kitchen. If he owned a gun, he would have put a bullet through his brain by now. If he hadn’t run out of coke, he’d have snorted it all and chased it with booze. He studied the set of kitchen knives, selected one labeled “paring knife.” Pressed the blade to his left forearm, testing his will. He carved a line through his flesh, but the pain reminded him too much of another cut and he stopped. Pain was a sensation, not an emotion, for those had fled him as anything logical had.

  A more pleasant method, at least for everyone else, shimmered in the bottles lining his bar. Combined with the painkill
ers, he could go to sleep and not wake again. He considered writing her a note, but then everyone would think it was her fault. And it wasn’t, not at all. He wished to die because he could not muster one iota of feeling for anything, not even for who he had loved more than anything in this wretched world.

  Alex flopped into his armchair and turned on the TV. Nothing held his attention. Words, colors, and shapes without significance. He had fucked all week while on coke, and some of the girls had brought more of it. Seven days of debauchery, the stuff of legend. Snorting it off fake tits and plump asses and fucking those asses and those tits, chasing the dopamine high with blow the way he’d chased it with the love to which he was no longer entitled. But that too had failed him in the end, for it had not halted the advancing oblivion.

  He tried to masturbate, but his leaden apathy prevented him from getting it up. He stared at his flaccid cock, and despite all the women who had sucked it, who had let him fuck them, despite his uncut teammates in the pros, he fixated on the way his junior-year teammates had teased him in the locker room. Most American men were circumcised. Most Russian men were not. They had called him “pig in a blanket.” Stephanie had told him they were jealous. Their dry, shriveled-up little heads couldn’t compare to the glossy pink of his. That when he fucked her, it felt like velvet. But she’d been his girlfriend, and she was obligated to say nice things.

  He didn’t bother showering. His dry cleaning hung in the hallway because putting it away was too great an expenditure of effort. He melted into the chair, hoping it would absorb him and leave nothing behind. Killing himself now seemed so overwhelming an endeavor that he stared at the TV and wished for death. A heart attack. A stroke. Spontaneous combustion. The one benefit of a life without hope was that fear took its leave too, and he hadn’t the energy to fear death anyway.

  He remained tethered to the world enough for a vague awareness of time passing, of light filling the room and then fading away. It may have happened several times, but he was no longer keeping track. He got up to piss and to get a drink and grabbed the painkillers on his way out of the bathroom. Then he sat in darkness and watched the moonrise through the windows. He contemplated why anyone would continue with life when every day was the same. In a few months, he wouldn’t have PT appointments anymore. And then, a ceaseless vacuum of days blurring together in an existence devoid of all meaning. A song stuck on repeat. An endless flight over featureless plains where nothing was memorable because nothing mattered.