Page 5 of Break For Me
He died in Baltimore. This thing in the mirror is just the ghost.
I dry my hands with a linen towel and button my cuffs. The hallway is quiet, the thick carpet swallowing the sound of my shoes. A man in a black suit sits by the rear exit. He doesn't look at me. He has a Makarov tucked into a holster under his jacket and a face that looks like it was carved from a cinder block.
He is a silent reminder that every door in this building opens and closes at the discretion of the Volkov family. I am an asset. I am a piece of equipment that requires maintenance and security.
My office is at the end of the hall. The window overlooks a Japanese maple in a courtyard I’m never allowed to enter. The tree is losing its leaves, the red fading to a dull brown. I sit at my desk and begin the surgical notes.
Entry wound, left anterior abdomen... approximately three centimeters inferior to the umbilicus...
The door opens. No knock.
Dmitri Volkov fills the frame. He has the compact build of a wrestler and eyes the color of a winter sky in a country where the sun never shines. He rolls a wooden toothpick between his molars, the tip splintering.
"Doctor."
He says it like he’s identifying a specific make of car.
"The procedure was successful," I say. I don't look up from the chart. I keep the pen moving, the ink scratching acrossthe paper. "He will recover if Yuri keeps him hydrated and the infection doesn't set in."
"Good." Dmitri doesn't move. He lets the silence grow heavy in the room, the kind of silence that precedes a blow. "Kazimir sends his regards. He was very impressed with how you handled the mess last week."
I keep writing. Kazimir Volkov’s regards are a death sentence in a velvet sleeve. I don't want them. I don't want to be noticed.
"He wants to remind you," Dmitri says, leaning against the doorframe, "that the lease on your sister’s apartment in Brookline is up for renewal. Her tuition at Berklee, too. Those city rents are quite high, Adrian. Inflation is a beast."
My pen stops. The ink bleeds into the paper, a dark, jagged blotch spreading like a hematoma. I can feel the heat rising in my neck, the familiar surge of a panic that I have to fight down.
"She is a talented girl," Dmitri continues. He examines his nails, flicking a bit of dirt away. "Piano, yes? It would be a tragedy if her circumstances changed. If she had to... find work. The world is not a kind place for a girl with soft hands."
"My sister is not part of this. We had an agreement."
"She is the only reason you are still breathing, Adrian. You are here because she is there. Safe. Funded. Oblivious." His voice is soft. Almost gentle. "You cut for us. She plays her little songs. Everyone is happy. Don't make Kazimir unhappy."
He smiles. His teeth are small and even, like a row of white stones. He leaves, and the click of the door sounds like a lock turning in my skull.
The smell of the bergamot soap on my hands suddenly makes me want to retch. It smells like the clinic. It smells like the cage.
I sit and listen to my own heart. It’s too fast. Tachycardia. I use the breathing technique I learned in my second year of residency. Four counts in. Hold for four. Four counts out. Itregulates the CO2 in my blood. It does nothing for the weight in my chest.
I finish the notes. I file the chart. I clean my desk, aligning the pens so they are perfectly parallel. It’s the only order I have left.
I put on my coat. It’s charcoal, fitted, expensive. It makes me look like I belong on the Upper East Side, a successful man heading home to a successful life. It’s a disguise for a man who is constantly fleeing from a shadow.
The evening air is cold. I stop on the sidewalk and look up. The sky is the color of a fading bruise—purple and yellow and grey.
The city hums around me. Taxis. The rhythmic click of heels on concrete. The hydraulic sigh of a bus pulling from a stop on the corner. It’s the noise of a world I no longer inhabit, a world where people make plans for the weekend and worry about the weather.
I turn on 72nd and walk.
My stride is measured. I don't rush. Rushing is an admission of fear, and the men in the black suits are always watching. I walk because the alternative is standing still, and standing still in a cage is how you start to believe the cage is a room.
The skin between my shoulder blades tenses. A sensation I’ve learned to catalogue—the autonomic nervous system responding to a perceived threat. My body’s surveillance equipment is firing. I don't turn around. If you look over your shoulder, you admit you’re prey.
A dark sedan has been parked across from the clinic for two days. Different drivers, same plate. I catalogued it the way I catalogue everything—automatically, without conscious decision. The Russians don't surveil with subtlety. They surveil with certainty.
I turn on Lexington and disappear into the crowd. My apartment is nine blocks south. I walk the entire distancebecause the subway feels too much like a grave, the air down there recycled and smelling of ozone and despair.
The apartment is on East 63rd. Pre-war. High ceilings. Hardwood floors that creak in specific places I’ve memorized.
