Once Upon a Grind Read online

He’d already agreed to my rules about speaking with Red. (No leaving our coffeehouse. No touching. And he had to let me hover like a mother hen, close enough to witness their conversation.) Given those parameters, even Quinn would have agreed it was worth the risk.

  “I’ll ask Matt to come down,” I promised.

  “Clock is ticking,” Red warned then turned on her sharp heels and clicked toward the back of the room.

  I pulled out my cell, speed-dialed Matt, and got his voice mail.

  “Okay, you’re on—” I began when the rest of my sentence was drowned out by the deafening sound of electronic feedback.

  I knew something was happening behind me on stage, but I was more concerned with getting my ex down here, so I switched to text messaging. And that’s when I heard Esther’s agonizing groan.

  Glancing up from my typing, I was alarmed to see the shock and horror crossing my barista’s face.

  “Esther, what’s wrong?”

  A second later, I knew, as the familiar male voice boomed out of our speakers—

  I am Man with a Purpose, as you will soon see

  And tonight you will all stand Witness for me—

  Esther’s boyfriend, Boris, part-time recording artist and full-time baker had finally shown up, which meant the moment Esther was dreading had come.

  My life has been up and it has been down.

  Just like a window, pain is all around . . .

  In alarmed disbelief, Esther pointed at the stage. “He’s doing it, boss. He’s actually doing it! Boris is turning the end of our relationship into performance art!”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  AS the audience cheered, I faced the stage and saw the reason for the excitement.

  Boris had gelled his short blond hair into its usual defiant spikes, but the wiry Russian émigré had exchanged his typical baggy jeans, backward baseball cap, and Eminem T-shirt for a tight black evening jacket and leg-hugging pants that ended, Buddy Holly–style, above his ankles. His open-necked shirt was starched white, but not as bright as his close-set gray eyes, now shining with the electricity of an energized performer.

  He’d even thrown some sharp new dance moves into his usual hip-hop strut, including a few Michael Jackson–inspired spins and moonwalks. What surprised me more than his choreography was the reason for this transformation—

  You said let’s live together

  And you offered your hand.

  But I don’t want to roll

  with a temporary plan.

  Our love is deep, our passion strong.

  And the two of us actually get along!

  With a love like that, you don’t just play.

  So my sweet czarina, please make my day . . .

  Skidding to the end of the low stage, Boris dropped to his knees, coming face-to-face with a slack-jawed Esther.

  The audience members jumped to their feet as Boris pulled something from his back pocket. Esther gasped at the sight of the tiny jewel box. Boris flipped it open with his thumb. Inside a diamond engagement ring was cradled on a bed of red velvet.

  Offering Esther the ring with one hand, he touched his chest with the other.

  My pumping heart awaits your reply

  Please say yes or I think I’ll die.

  Marry me, Esther, and share my life

  And we will live together as man and wife.

  I was so overjoyed by Boris’s proposal that I cheered and applauded along with everyone else. Esther thought her life with him was over. Instead, to paraphrase the popular wedding song refrain, It’s only just begun. (Not that Karen Carpenter’s tune had a snowball’s chance of turning up on Esther and Boris’s nuptial playlist.)

  I couldn’t wait to hug Esther and congratulate them both. Of course, Esther had to answer Boris first. I assumed she would rap it. Then he would surely hand her up on stage, where they would embrace and live happily ever after.

  Dozens of camera phones were poised to capture the anticipated, once-in-a-lifetime scene.

  But it never came.

  For a surreal minute, the pair remained frozen: Esther staring at Boris, eyes wider than an anime Bambi in a Hummer’s headlights; and Boris waiting on his knees, hand to heart, holding out his ring.

  Finally, the cheers died down and everyone leaned forward to hear the bride’s reply.

  Well, she gave one.

  In a fair imitation of Edvard Munch’s most famous painting, Esther Best covered her ears, and let out a bloodcurdling scream. Then she jumped up, pushed through the crowd, and headed for the exit.

  At the back of the room, near the spiral staircase, Red was still waiting for Matt’s arrival. Esther saw her and shouted—

  “Get me out of here!”

  Grabbing Esther’s hand, Red pulled her onto the staircase. Halfway down, Esther stumbled, slowing them both, but like Alice’s White Rabbit, they kept going.

  “Esther, wait!” I called. “Please don’t go!”

  My words were drowned out by Boris’s amplified voice shouting the very same thing.

  I tried to elbow my way to the front of the mob, but the audience was madly waving camera phones, convinced this was contrived entertainment, and not a dreadfully conflicted moment in a young woman’s life.

  Then Boris shot off the low stage, and the sea of bodies finally parted.

  “Czarina! Come back!” he wailed.

  But Esther ignored her wannabe fiancé and hit the sidewalk with Red.

  I bolted down the staircase, hopping over the object Esther had left behind. Outside I heard a driver gun his engine, and watched a Lincoln Town Car speed away with Red and Esther huddled in the backseat. The man behind the wheel had long wavy hair topped by a bowler hat—it was the same driver who’d picked up Red the night before.

  I tried to get the plate number but the street was too busy and a van cut off my view. The only thing I glimpsed was a flash of that flag bumper sticker I’d seen last night.

  Hearing fast footsteps behind me, I spun to find a stricken Boris clutching something in his hands.

  In his black formalwear, he had the look of a dumbfounded Prince Charming grasping Cinderella’s slipper—only this shoe wasn’t glass. It was an unlaced combat boot. Esther had lost it on the stairs.

  “My czarina . . . where is she?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, Boris. She’s gone.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  STILL clinging to Esther’s boot, Boris sent his “czarina” a heartfelt text message. When she failed to reply, I led the distraught young man back inside, sat him down at my espresso bar, and began making him a comfort drink.

  Matt approached me behind the counter. “Where’s Red? And what was all that commotion about?”

  I filled in the details and asked him to oversee the exiting of the Poetry Slam audience. “After that, I’d like you to stick around.”

  “Why? Red’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but I may need your help looking for Esther.”

  “You sound worried.”

  I lowered my voice. “She’s with Red, and I don’t trust that girl.”

  Matt glanced at Boris and then back to me. “What are you planning?”

  “Boris knew Red pretty well,” I whispered. “If I can talk him out of this funk, maybe he’ll tell me more about the girl. Either way, I’m hoping he and I can track down Esther tonight.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “When you need me, call me . . .” And on that Diana Ross note, my ex-husband headed up to our second-floor lounge.

  I finished Boris’s drink and slid the brimming latte glass across the counter.

  “Nyet,” he said, pushing it away. “Coffee will make me jittery.”

  “This is our special Dream Steamer. No espresso. Just steamed milk and our homemade orange, vanilla, and caramel cream syrups. Drink up. It’ll calm
your nerves.”

  He sampled it. “Is very good . . . spasibo.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  While Boris sipped and sulked, I moved to the pantry area to phone Esther myself—and heard a muffled ringtone in the staff closet. That’s where I found her coat hanging, along with her purse and her smartphone still inside it.

  Boris nearly lost his mind when I brought the items up front. I wasn’t thrilled with the discovery, either. The phone was locked. I couldn’t see her contacts or get Red’s number. And since Esther had no landline in her apartment, I suggested we take a ride over to her East Village building ASAP.

  “Maybe Red gave her a ride home,” I said with crossed fingers. “The only snag might come at her front door. What if she refuses to answer?”

  “I have key,” Boris said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  * * *

  THE yellow cab dropped us at Avenue C, a tar-patched thoroughfare in Alphabet City, which was not, in fact, an invention of Sesame Street (as my youngest barista once thought), but a residential neighborhood located between the East Village and the East River.

  In the late nineteenth century, this area had been a densely populated tenement ghetto where immigrants lived short, hard lives. By the mid-twentieth century, an influx of Puerto Ricans gave birth to the “Nuyorican” Art Movement, and struggling artists and musicians began flocking to the neighborhood for its low rents as much as its Bohemian atmosphere.

  As Mike Quinn often noted, this time period brought high levels of crime and illegal drug activity, but it also spawned the world’s first break dancing, rappers, and DJs. And in 1988, the city’s very first poetry slam was held at the Nuyorican Poets Café—an avant-garde enclave only a few blocks from Esther’s address.

  We now stood before the battered entry door of her six-story walk-up, a former tenement building that once had no running water. These days, most of the East Village had gone through gentrification. Trendy restaurants, bars, and clothing boutiques occupied many of the storefronts, and old apartment houses had undergone multimillion-dollar renovations. But this one, not so much.

  We rang the bell several times. No one answered, so Boris used his key. Actually, three keys: first the street door, then the front door, and finally the dead bolt.

  Bolt was the word of the day because inside there was no sign of Esther.

  I’d never been to her place. The one-bedroom flat was small yet cozy. We entered into a brightly lit kitchen with potted plants on the fire escape. Her roommate had occupied the sitting area to the right, which Japanese screens had turned into a private room. The space was emptied of personal items—the roomie had already moved out.

  Esther’s bedroom was on the other side of the kitchen, through a proper door, which stood half open.

  I moved inside for a look around. Framed photos from her life covered one wall, and not one of them was a perfect, posed shot. Like Esther herself, the pictures were offbeat and honest: her Poetry Slam kids horsing around; her fellow baristas doing a kick line; her married sister in Westchester, struggling to wash the dog with her kids; Boris wearing a milk mustache in front of a half-eaten birthday cake; even Matt and me at the Village Blend counter, sticking our tongues out at the camera.

  Her ceiling had been wallpapered with the night sky, and the rest of her walls were a fascinating collage of images and words. But the most interesting thing in the room hung above her cluttered desk—a large black magnetic board filled with movable white letters.

  “Looks like she never came back here at all,” I said, and read with interest the last words she’d put together on her poetry board. “Like otiose vacillating enemies stuck together in krappy situations.”

  I frowned. “What does that mean? And why did she spell crap with a K?”

  Boris stared at the board and groaned.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Is acrostic,” he said.

  “Is that Russian?”

  “Acrostic is word play. Like code—” He pointed at the board. “Read words down, first letters only . . .”

  Like

  Stuck

  Otiose

  Together

  Vacillating

  In

  Enemies

  Neverending

  Krappy

  Situations

  I cringed when I read it, and was truly sorry I’d asked.

  Boris sank to her mattress as the meaning of her coded poem sank in—

  “Love Stinks.”

  FORTY-NINE

  “TELL me, Clare Cosi. Am I cursed?”

  With his spiked blond hair, tight-fitting tux, and crushed expression, Boris looked like a hopeful young recording artist who’d been passed over at the Grammys. Feeling his pain, I sank down next to him.

  “Try to understand. Your girlfriend convinced herself that you no longer loved her.”

  “But how could she think this? We were happy! Our love does not stink!”

  “Yes, but when Esther asked you to move in with her, you took so long to answer her offer that you . . . how do I put this? You opened up a void, a black space in her mind without answers. And to someone like Esther, a void is a dangerous thing. She automatically fills it with worst-case scenarios.”

  Boris shook his head. “You know the difference between a half truth and a whole truth?”

  “What?”

  “All the difference in the world.” He pointed at the night sky wallpaper on Esther’s ceiling. “When we look at space, we see black, so much black. But that is not the whole of it. There are bright points of light—so many!—between the dark places. This is what’s important. This is where life is.”

  “Do you have a whole truth, Boris? One that Esther needs to hear?”

  With a sigh, he hung his head and slowly nodded. “When my czarina asked to me to live with her, I was flattered, but it did trouble me. That much is true. And then it troubled me that I was troubled. After all, I love her. She loves me. I thought and thought and finally the reason was clear: I do not want to be Esther’s roommate. I want to be Esther’s husband. So excited I was by this discovery that I planned surprise proposal.”

  “But, Boris, you said it yourself—you ‘thought and thought’—you had time to think through your feelings. Until Esther heard you propose on stage, she thought you were going to break up with her. Now she’s very confused.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  “She may not be ready for marriage. And that may be something she never resolves, but she does love you. Give her time and she’ll come around—” (I hoped she would, anyway.) “Unfortunately, that’s not what truly worries me tonight. And if you knew the whole truth, I’m sure you’d feel the same.”

  “What whole truth?”

  “About Red—the young woman Esther ran off with . . .”

  Boris hadn’t yet heard what happened to Red’s friend, Anya, so I explained everything I knew, ending with a simple conclusion—

  “I think Anya and Red got themselves involved with the wrong people. One of those people put Anya in a coma. Red knows more about this crime than she’s telling. That’s why I want to see Esther back here, safe.”

  “Is that all you know?”

  “I’m afraid so. Red ranted more of the story to me in Russian, but I only remember one phrase. She used it over and over.”

  “What was it?”

  “Ya budu ryadom! Ya budu ryadom!”

  At those words, Boris’s pale skin went ghostly white.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t waste time explaining. Instead, he jumped up, moved to the kitchen ta
ble, and began making phone calls.

  While he spoke to a dozen people—all in Russian—I found Esther’s French press and made us coffee. This time Boris didn’t push it away.

  “Another pot, please,” he said after quickly downing two cups.

  I stood to make it. “Before you place another call, will you please tell me what you’re doing?”

  “I am contacting my friends in Brighton Beach. They say Roz moved out of neighborhood months ago. No one knows where she lives now. I sent text messages to my contacts.”

  “You called her Roz?” Esther had used that name, too. “What’s her real name?”

  “Rozalina Krasny.”

  “Will you please tell me all you know about her?”

  Boris shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it on his chair. “She came to America as young girl, never knew her father. Her mother died in Russian prison.”

  “So her mother was a criminal?”

  “Russian government called her that. You would call her ‘political prisoner.’”

  “What did she do?”

  “She joined radical group. Was like Voina. You know Voina, da?”

  “No.”

  He studied the ceiling. “You know Pussy Riot?”

  “Sorry.”

  “These are artists and performers who demand freedom of expression.”

  “Wait. I have heard of Pussy Riot . . .” They’d been in the news—a group of Russian women outspoken about repressive restrictions and antigay laws imposed under Vladimir Putin.

  “You must understand,” Boris said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Here in America, poets can go to neighborhood café and rap about president, government, laws that they do not like. Nothing will happen to them. But twenty-five years ago, Russia was in chaos. Freedom was new idea. Not everyone was comfortable with it. The old guard, the nomenklatura, they hated the new way.”

  “And Red’s mother?”

  “She was watched because she was outspoken. They convicted her of vandalism against the state when she took part in demonstration where others set fire to police van in Moscow. Punishment for artists and radicals is harsh. Red’s mother could not take strain of this. She died of influenza in prison.”