“So,” he said, slightly out of breath as he slumped down opposite Danny. “How is life of dancing rat?”
“Complicated,” said Danny, trying not to laugh when Ivan wiped his brow and left a streak of flour across his forehead.
“How is complicated? You dress like embarrassment, you dance, you stop the dance, you dress like normal person again. Simple.”
“Did you know that a group of pandas is actually called an embarrassment? I just learned that today. An embarrassment of pandas.”
“Not group,” said Ivan. He pointed at Danny. “Just one. A group is worse than embarrassment. Is tragedy. Is like Chernobyl of pandas.”
“Thanks for the support. And to answer your question, it’s Will. He won’t stop talking to me.”
“So why you look sad? This is good, no?”
“No,” said Danny. “It’s not.”
“Wait,” said Ivan. “First you complain that Will, he never talk. Now you complain he talk too much. I am thinking you like to complain.”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. Look, remember when I told you about that time I saved him from those bullies? Well, now he keeps coming to the park to talk to me, but it’s not me he’s talking to. It’s the panda.”
“But you and panda are same person.”
“Yes, but Will doesn’t know that,” said Danny.
“So tell him.”
“It’s not that simple. He’s been talking about me. And about Liz. Stuff he’d never tell me if he knew that I was, well, me. And on the one hand it’s incredible. I’m learning things about him that I never knew before. And he’s talking, Ivan. He’s finally talking! But if he knows it’s me, then he’ll never talk to me again.” Danny sighed. “I don’t know what to do. What would you do? Actually, don’t answer that. What should I do?”
Ivan narrowed his eyes in the way he sometimes did when he was pretending not to understand English.
“I have an idea,” he said after some clearly strenuous thinking. He leaned forward as if about to impart something highly confidential. “If you make Will want to talk to you—to Danny, I mean, not to panda—then maybe he will stop wanting to talk to panda.”
“Ivan, if I knew how to make Will talk to me, then I wouldn’t be in this mess, would I?” he said.
“This is true,” Ivan said.
“Actually,” said Danny, chewing his lip, “maybe you’re onto something.”
“I am?” Ivan sounded surprised.
“Do you think Alf would let me have some of that scrap wood from the site?”
“I already ask,” said Ivan, shaking his head. “I wanted to build the shelves for Ivana, but Alf, he say no.” He pointed to three shelves cluttered with framed black-and-white family photographs that looked as if they’d been taken during a nineteenth-century blizzard.
Danny frowned. “Those shelves?” he said, pointing.
Ivan nodded.
“Those exact shelves?”
“Those exact shelves,” repeated Ivan.
“I thought Alf said you couldn’t take the wood?”
“He did. I take it anyway.”
“How?”
“I go at night. Is easy. I show you.”
“You sure? Ivana would never forgive me if you went back to prison.” The words came out before Danny even realized what he’d said.
“Prison? What prison?”
“Nothing,” said Danny, eager to move on, but Ivan stared at him in a way that suggested neither of them would be moving anywhere until he explained. “Wherever you got those,” he said, pointing at Ivan’s tattoos.
Ivan looked at his arms and frowned before a rare burst of laughter shot out of him so suddenly that Danny gripped the chair.
“You think these are prison tattoos?” he said.
“They’re not?” said Danny, surprised by the disappointment in his voice.
“I am family man, Danny, not criminal man. These are from Yuri, not prison.”
“You let your son tattoo you?”
“No, I let man at tattoo shop tattoo me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look,” said Ivan, rolling up his sleeves and placing his inked-up forearms on the table, “one day after work, I am very tired and so I fall asleep in chair. When I wake I see Yuri has pen and is making art all over me. On my arms, even my face. He was very young, five or six maybe, and he is having so much fun that I do not want to stop him, so I pretend to sleep until he is finished. When I open my eyes, I see what he has made. It is most beautiful thing I ever see. I love it so much I go to tattoo man that same day and ask him to make it forever.”
“Absolutely no disrespect, because that is, quite possibly, the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard, but, well… couldn’t you have just taken a photograph?”
“For what? To keep on telephone? To sit in picture frame? A telephone you can lose. A photograph you can lose. But these?” he said, tapping his arms. “You cannot lose arms.”
“That’s not technically true—”
“Of course is true! How do I lose arm? I cannot drop arm down back of couch. I cannot leave arm in supermarket trolley. I cannot forget arm in back of taxi. Is impossible.”
“You’re right,” said Danny. Now didn’t seem the right time to talk about the ins and outs of dismemberment.
“These,” said Ivan, smiling as he gently traced one of Yuri’s illegible scrawls with his finger, “are with me forever.”
“I feel a bit bad now,” said Danny. “I always assumed you’d just, you know, murdered someone.”
“I said the tattoos came from Yuri,” said Ivan. “I never said I have not murdered anybody.” He winked at Danny in a way that left him none the wiser as to whether his friend was telling the truth or not.
“We should probably go,” said Danny, sliding from his seat and shuffling towards the door.
“One minute. I just need to do something in kitchen. For Ivana.”
“Anything I can help with?” said Danny, already knowing the answer but wanting to see his friend’s reaction.
“No!” said Ivan, his voice uncharacteristically high. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I mean, no. Is fine.” He opened the door just wide enough to fit through, which was pretty much all the way.
“Ivan?” said Danny. Ivan turned to face him. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
“Just… thanks,” said Danny.
Ivan frowned and shook his head. “You’re being embarrassment,” he said before disappearing into the kitchen.
* * *
The building site was encircled by a tall fence of wire mesh. The only way in or out was through two large iron gates that blocked the entrance, next to which sat a small hut with two guards playing cards inside. Powerful floodlights shone down from all four corners of the perimeter, their beams converging in the middle where most of the prefab offices were located. The areas directly beneath the lights saw very little illumination, and nobody saw Danny and Ivan lurking in the shadows.