Viktor
“How do you take your coffee?” I ask Millie as she sleepily sits
down at the countertop
“I don’t usually drink coffee, never felt the need to,” she replies, squinting at the sun as it pours through the window.
Today is the first day that Millie has had off since she moved in with me, and I realize instantly how foreign it must be to be seeing me at this hour. It feels weird having her home, but it’s a good kind of weird.
“How the hell do you not drink coffee? You wake up at like two in the morning,” I ask, genuinely in shock at the idea of someone like her not being beholden to a vice like caffeine.
“I just never developed a taste for it, so I never developed a dependence on it either,” she replies, shrugging.
“You know that ninety-nine percent of modern humans can’t even go to their office jobs without drinking coffee? And here you are, running a bakery completely sober like an insane person,” I reply as I make a cup for myself.
“I don’t know. I’ve always been an early riser. I was the one who took care of my siblings a lot when I was a kid, so getting extra sleep was never a huge priority for me,” she says, her voice resigned and far away as she recalls the memory.
Now she’s piqued my interest. “You took care of your siblings?” I ask, starting the coffee machine and turning towards her, prepared to listen intently.
“Yeah, my dad wasn’t around, and my mom worked a lot. I have four siblings, three brothers, and a sister,” she replies, perking up at my interest in her past.
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“Um, mostly jail. Some of them are first-timers, but my little brother Jamison has been in and out of juvie since he was like, eight or something. He’s kind of a pyromaniac,” she replies, absent-mindedly swiping her hand across the smooth marble countertop.
“Jesus, I had no idea. I thought that you were just kind of a normal girl who came from the suburbs,” I reply, astonished at how much I’m learning about her. I’d probably know more if we weren’t having sex all the time.
“How often do those girls become strippers right out of high school?” she asks, laughing a bit but with a note of seriousness behind her tone.
“I guess I just thought that maybe you had gone through a phase or something. Like, you grew up sheltered and safe, so you wanted a taste of the dark side,” I reply, feeling like an idiot for using the term dark side even ironically.
Millie laughs. “No, I was definitely not that kind of person. My mom wasn’t around a lot, so we didn’t have a lot of supervision basically ever. I was the only ‘adult’ of the house, so we did whatever we wanted,” she replies.
“Sounds a lot like my family, in a way. I mean, my father was in the bratva when I was growing up. That’s how he met Stepan. So that added a lot of complication to my life,” I reply, feeling myself becoming cold at the thought of my own unfortunate childhood.
“Really? Can I ask what that was like?” she asks hesitantly. It’s clear to me that she wants desperately to know, to understand the tragic backstory of the lost little gangster boy.
I pause for a moment, trying to navigate my own feelings about telling her. She already must have a suspicion that the work I do isn’t legal or even necessarily safe, but do I want her to know how deep this life runs in my veins?
“Do you really want to know?” I ask her.
She pulls back a bit, maybe reconsidering whether or not she truly wants to understand the depths of depravity and suffering I’ve come from. Perhaps she’s afraid of the way this knowledge will impact her perception of me, as am I.
“I mean, I want to get to know you better, even if it’s things you think might scare me off. Especially those things, honestly,” she replies, her eyes questioning and cautious.
“Okay, I guess I’ll just give you the rundown. My father was a real oldschool Russian gangster. We lived in St. Petersburg, and he owned a pawn shop as a cover for the fact that he was selling weapons under the table. He kept us fed, at least during the good months. During the bad months, we had to go into hiding,” I say.
This is only just the beginning, but I’m not sure how much more I can say.
“What do you mean? Where did you hide?” she asks, her eyes wide with a maternal concern that I only see when a woman is worried about the welfare of a stray puppy.
“We would stay with my babushka, and sometimes we wouldn’t see him for months at a time while he was hiding in Vladivostok. That’s where his father was from, so he gravitated there. My babushka was good to us, but she was very old-school and would beat us if we provoked her at all,” I continue, trying to shove off the cold memories of those times.
“Where was your mother?” Millie asks, and I can hear a sort of righteous anger growing in her voice the longer I speak on my experience.
“She got addicted to drugs and died right after she gave birth to my youngest brother,” I say flatly. “I didn’t really know her that well since we’re all so close in age, and she wasn’t around much, to begin with. I can’t imagine that, just giving birth to a child and abandoning them. Multiple times, too,” I continue.
Millie’s jaw drops. “Oh my god, I had no idea. You’re very well-adjusted for someone who came from a place like that. It sounds awful,” she says, reaching out her hands to grab mine across from her on the counter.
“It’s all in the past. I try not to think about it too much, but you’re right about how we should know each other better,” I say. “Now, it’s your turn.
Tell me more about your family.”
Millie pauses. “Well, my father left after I was born, and my mom had a few more kids with random guys she was dating while I was growing up. She did the best she could with what she was given, but she never really got to grow up. She kind of stayed a teenager mentally, even to this day,” she says, resting her head on her hand. It’s almost as if she’s exhausted just by thinking about her mother.
“Damn, that sucks. I had a friend whose mom was like that growing up. When we were teens it was cool because she would let us get away with anything, but now as an adult, it just makes me sad,” I reply, breaking away from her hands to pour myself a cup of coffee.
As soon as I return, she reaches out and grasps my free hand.
“It wasn’t really like that with my mom. She wanted to be the star in her own movie. She was the main character of the universe, and that made it really hard to get through to her about important shit like paying the water bill on time or taking my sister to the hospital when she had a fever,” she continues.
I could have never imagined that Millie’s life was anything like this. She’s so well-educated and articulate for somebody who probably never had time to study for anything in school. However she pulled it off, she succeeded admirably. It sucks that her siblings weren’t able to pull themselves out of it.
“What about your brothers and sister? What were they like?” I ask, growing increasingly more curious about this mysterious little woman.
“I don’t really know how to describe them. Two of my brothers are angry, spiteful people who blame everybody else for their problems. They really dislike me because I made something of myself and proved to them that you can make a life for yourself if you take responsibility for it,” she says.
“My sister is a nice person, but she doesn’t have the right skills to navigate basic life events, and I blame myself for that,” she continues, taking my coffee from my other hand and cautiously taking a sip. She hands it back gingerly, making a face.
“What do you mean by that?” I ask.
“I guess I just feel like I should have been more of a role model to her.
Maybe I could have taught her more about dating and boys. Shit like that. She’s pregnant again and doesn’t know who the father is,” she replies, sighing heavily.
“Carrying on the family legacy?” I ask.
“Unfortunately, yes,” she replies solemnly.
Even though our circumstances were dramatically different, I feel as if sharing these experiences has strengthened the bond that Millie and I have. I feel closer than ever to her, maybe closer to her than I’ve ever felt to anybody.
“What’s on your mind?” she asks, warming her cold fingers around my forearms.
“I’m just thinking about how crazy it is that we’re here right now,” I reply, smiling at her as she looks at me with confusion.
“It’s just so weird how life works, you know? I came all the way from Russia to be here in this kitchen having coffee with you,” I continue, drinking the rest of my coffee and pouring myself another cup.
“Yeah, I guess I never thought of it like that,” she says.
She slips off the barstool and wanders around the counter until she’s resting herself against me, and I can smell the sweet smell of her hair and laundry detergent comingling into her own unique scent. It’s become one of my favorite things in the entire world, and it’s so specific to her. I’d hate to never smell her again.
“Well, here we are anyway,” she continues, standing on her toes to give me a kiss.