Vaslav let the door slam shut at that comment. He didn’t ease up on the fucking swing when it closed just to make the point on how he felt crystal clear. He needed to pretend like he didn’t hear Kiril’s muffled laughter on the other side of the door.
Fucking kid.
Frankly, he had better things to do, which included soon having his wife alone. Once her little friend went home. After he rolled a blunt as thick as his thumb and smoked until he was numb, his day and evening could only go up from there.
At the back of the house, Marrow’s constant, sharp bark, alerting to their guest he had yet to see because he was stuck in the rear porch attached to the den yet again, quieted at Vaslav’s booming shout.
“Hannah! Your ride’s here!”
*
Vaslav’s plans to spend the rest of his day and evening didn’t quite go as he intended. His own fault, really. He’d left the small tray he used to keep his cannabis supplies all in one spot in his den, and decided to roll the blunt downstairs instead of carrying the whole kit up to the bathroom and risking spilling it if he had a fucking episode.
He never could predict when that was about to happen, but it always signaled the same thing—the worst parts of what would be a raging migraine wasn’t far behind.
Nonetheless, after rolling what he considered to be a satisfactory blunt with a vanilla flavored cigarillo, Vaslav found the bathroom with the best exhaust fan in the house had already been put to use. Technically.
Mira barely glanced over her shoulder at him as she sat her plastic carton of supplies she liked to clean on the counter next to the sink when he walked into the room. The lighter in one hand, and blunt hanging out of his mouth told the story of his intentions without him needing to say anything, but the cock of Mira’s left eyebrow said a lot, too.
It wasn’t often that she made her way into their private spaces to clean—Vera did most of that, including stripping their sheets regularly, and scrubbing down their bathroom. Her tidy nature wouldn’t let her sit still, and if she wanted to claim all but a few rooms in the very large home to clean, so be it.
It was hers now, after all.
Mira understood, it seemed, but she still made her rounds once or twice a week to change out towels, add to whatever they might need, or otherwise. Vaslav wasn’t long swinging around to head out of the bathroom at the sight of Mira doing her work. Better if he didn’t bother her, honestly. Besides, she had a time every night—one she stuck to—where she liked to head to her rooms upstairs, and be alone.
Given how much she did for him, Vaslav tried not to interfere in Mira’s personal time more than he usually did.
The half-bath down the hall attached to the guest bedroom was a poor second choice for a good room with decent ventilation in the house, but Vaslav had no interest in going back downstairs to smoke outside. That was his last resort in the middle of winter.
He loved the weed; it helped. It also had its short list of cons that he easily managed.
Including the smell. He didn’t like that. Not when it stuck to everything, lingering and clinging to fabrics, surfaces, and everything in between. A hot shower after a blunt was his new favorite hobby, and he planned to get Vera to join him for exactly that once he was done doing his business.
Mira should be finished cleaning by then, and his wife would certainly be done with her goodbyes. He couldn’t see Kiril standing out in the cold for any longer than he had to while Hannah and Vera dragged their departure on, although he wouldn’t put it past his wife to catch up with Kiril, either, considering how long it had been since the two last saw one another.
Vaslav had lots of time to smoke—he didn’t rush it, never did. Every inhale, once he’d lit the blunt while he used the closed commode as a stool, came in slow, and he held it deep before releasing the thick, dank cloud of grey heaven up to the ceiling where the fan waited to weakly suck it away. He’d have the small space hotboxed in no time at all. His chest burned with the exertion of his lungs to hold in the heady smoke—he did have a personal best, but he would keep that secret to himself—until his throat choked to let it out.
He despised the smoke, but given he’d been out of anything to use to settle his nerves, ease his stomach, and help his sleep—the cannabis did it all—for over a day, Vaslav was due. He made no apologies for the fact that he would suffer later when the head high wore off, and he was left with the lingering smell of smoking in a bathroom that he shouldn’t have used.
Shit.
He hadn’t even covered the crack in the door.
Distracted, and pleased, with his current state, Vaslav didn’t realize how long the ash on the end of his blunt had become until his hand cut through the air a little too fast, and the tip fell. The bit of cherry red coal in the ash hit his pants, and he swatted it away to the floor.
Making a bigger mess.
Just his luck.
While his wife didn’t mind his new vice to manage his pain and lack of sleep—mostly because she was all too happy to partake with him—the other lady in the house couldn’t say the same. Mira, that was.
She hated everything about cannabis from the smell to the time it took Vaslav to finish a blunt. Not that she complained too much, but it was enough for Vaslav to at least consider Mira’s feelings.
The quickly diminishing coals wouldn’t do any damage to the tiled floor, but he still reached for the clean pile of washcloths that should be waiting in the basket behind the toilet. A damp one would wipe the ashes up easily, but he found the basket was empty. Not unusual as Hannah had been using the space during her stay, and Mira probably hadn’t gotten to it yet to clean and replace what was needed.
He went looking for the next best thing—paper towel—or whatever was under the sink’s closed cabinets. All he discovered there was a white plastic bag stuffed next to a pile of towels.
Vaslav shouldn’t have opened the bag.
It ruined his whole fucking day.
12.
“Vera!”
It took Vera no time at all in their new marriage to become accustomed to random shouts of her name from another part of the house. So, even the second time Vaslav yelled her name from down the hall outside the master suites, she didn’t even glance up from the leatherbound album in her hands.
She had no reason to rush and put it down. If what Vaslav wanted was her, then he would make his way to where she was one way or another.
While flipping to the next page in the album full of memories, Vera called back to her husband, “I’m in our room, Vas!”
She could have added for him to relax considering how fast his footsteps pounded down the hall, but she opted to keep her mouth shut. Besides, the photo album was more than enough to hold her attention while Vaslav pitched a fit about whatever.
Mira had managed to keep quite a few photographs of and newspaper clippings about Natalia Pashkova over the years. The album was almost entirely full. A lot were from when the woman was a young girl with the later, adult years focusing more on what Mira had been able to cut out of the papers.
One, near the middle of the album, was one Vera considered asking for. Not a clipping from a newspaper, the photograph that had been folded in the middle one too many times had also been scribbled on in the corner.
With a date and names.