Barracuda

Dmitri was the only flicker of color in a drab Russian office. He wore dress shirts in paisleys and florals, once a riotous Hawaiian print. Buttons were occasionally, endearingly, one off. His blazers––I only ever counted four––never fit quite right, were never pressed. His physique suggested a blend of natural athleticism and the slapdash self-discipline of a bon vivant. Triangular torso, strong jaw. His hair was a swath of sunlight-blond, eyes an outlandish peacock blue. He dressed in deep greens, golds, scarlets. All else––desks, walls, folders––were variations on the same theme of drained macaroni. On my first day, Dmitri sprang into the office, damask-print shirt beneath slick blue blazer, looking as though he were delighted and surprised to have successfully arrived. He set down his leather messenger bag and glanced around. When his eyes met mine, he smiled.

“Svezhaya krov,” he said. His voice was a lilting baritone, silk on top but with something rougher underneath. One could imagine it in a growl.

“She’s American,” Liam said in a brogue corrupted by two decades of helming the Moscow office. He leaned against Michael’s desk, thumbing a cigarette from its pack. “Speak English, eh?”

“My apologies,” Dmitri said, placing a hand theatrically to his heart. Then, with a kind of tenderness: “New girl.”

From the third of the three desks in the cramped main room––mine, Dmitri’s, and Michael’s, the last of these bedecked with a tidy row of Star Trek nesting dolls––Michael piped up: “That’s not what you said.”

“Christ, Michael,” Dmitri laughed. “You’re a professional translator, ponyal, we get it.” The dynamics were, even to my first-day-of-work, jetlag-addled brain, immediately clear: Liam ran the show. Michael was a diligent nerd. Dmitri, one imagined, got away with murder.

“Come with me,” Liam said to Dmitri, cocking a head toward his office, just beyond the main room. “If the new edition footnotes aren’t done by EOD, Berlitz’ll have my balls.”

Dmitri nodded, pulling a notepad and cigarette from his bag. He tucked the cigarette behind his ear, leaving the notebook in the grip of his left hand. He took two steps toward me, then angled his chin, barely dimpled, blond-scruffed. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Delilah,” I said.

His lips curled in a cool smirk. “Delilah,” he repeated, and the way his mouth lingered on the I, a flourish of the Russian tongue, I felt as though I’d been given a gift. Nearly a new syllable, but also a timbre I’d never considered. The promising, glamorous plaything of a different self. “From the Bible,” Dmitri said. He tilted his head, thoughtfully, then squinted, as though deciding what to say next. His gaze darted toward Michael, then back to me. “Beautiful name,” he said.

“Spasiba,” I said.

He laughed and smacked the corner of Michael’s desk; the nestling dolls rattled. “See, Michael? Devushka prekrasno ponimayet.”

Dmitri held out his hand, lightly upturned. Less like a handshake than a gesture of assistance, as though I were about to be lifted into a carriage. I took it. His fingers were long, lithe, like a pianist’s. I hoped my hand wasn’t too cold, my grip too limp.

“Welcome,” he said. He let go and turned, taking the cigarette from behind his ear, lighting it as he strode toward Liam’s office. Through the interior window overlooking the main room, the office was already a flurry of smoke. The room had the look, from the outside, of a sauna.

When Michael and I were alone in the main room, I asked, “What did he say?”

Michael notched his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Just now? ‘The girl understands.’”

“No, earlier. At the beginning. Sve…kr…something.”

“Svezhaya krov.”

“What does it mean?”

Michael frowned and adjusted the second nesting doll, an eggish Spock who’d been knocked akilter. “Fresh blood.”

 

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