Russ grilled steak on the back patio while Ines, Ivan, and Marco gathered in the kitchen, laughing over one, two, then three beers. Marco had visited Ivan weekly, delivering books like Machiavelli’s The Prince and Leopoldo Zea’s The Latin-American Mind. Marco had studied hard and taken out loans, and now he was in school to become a physician’s assistant.
By the time the steak had browned at the edges, all three were drunk and arguing happily in machine-gun Spanish. Russ dumped his beer in a potted tomato plant. Through the window, Ines glowed in the light of her brother, home at last.
When the food was ready, they gathered around the linen-set table, and Russ held Ivan’s hand for grace.
You’re all great dinner company compared to the inmates, Ivan said, as he cut a civilized bite of steak. Though, I will say, I had a lot of time to think. I learned a lot from the other inmates, bad company as they were. I learned a lot about evil.
Russ swallowed.
I learned that evil does not exist, Ivan continued. There are only different ways people try to be good. Very few people in this world do things with evil as the intention.
So, Russ said to Ivan, you’re saying you dealt narcotics in an effort to be good?
The words just came out, in the voice of the men he’d worked with for years, that hypermasculine tone Russ could adopt without trying or thinking. Ines’s back straightened. She and Marco exchanged a look. A hideous pause.
I didn’t mean it like that, Russ tried, but Ivan had pushed his plate away.
Ivan lifted his beer to his lips and downed it in one chug, a trickle running down his chin. This was the last drink Russ would ever see him touch.
Here is what I am saying, Ivan said. I don’t believe in evil, not the way you and your cop friends define it. You are an ignorant bunch of middle-class schoolboys, and it is terrifying that you exist in the hundreds, the thousands, all refusing to turn around and see the world for what it is. You’re so busy chasing us outsiders, you never stop to look behind you and realize that half the people you’re putting away are better people than you, with far less evil intentions. I don’t think you’re a bad man, Officer Russell Fletcher, and that’s what bothers me most about you. You’re just another one of the power-tripping minions, and somehow, I’ve let a fucking puppet like you marry my sister.
Ivan stood, and the table wobbled. The vase of flowers Ines had bought earlier toppled, and muckish green water leaked across the tablecloth.
We should go, Marco said. Thank you for dinner, Russ.
It wasn’t Ivan’s anger that scared Russ as Marco pulled a stumbling, drunken Ivan out the door by the wrist. Not even the hulking size of the man. It was those words, the ease and surety of Ivan’s proclamation: You are a puppet. You are everything that is wrong.
You’re not scared of him, are you? Ines asked, in bed that night. She’d cried in the shower, and Russ had pretended not to hear. Her eucalyptus hair spread wet across Russ’s chest as Ines drew circles on his shoulder with her pointer finger.
No, I’m not, Russ said, and he pulled her close.
Ivan never apologized, though he has not tasted a single drink since. Despite this reformation, Russ knows that Ivan is dangerous—who could be unafraid of a man who does not believe in evil?
Now, at the bar, Ivan’s arms stretch the length of the pool cue, his starchy shirt tight. He bites his lip in concentration.
Russ slaps a twenty on the table and stands. He sways. Steps forward.
Finally coming over to say hello? Ivan says. Too polite. The heat of him on Russ’s mouth: Warm breath. Gold tooth.
Tell me what you did, Russ says.
I told your friends and I’ll tell you again, Ivan says. I don’t know anything about that poor girl.
I asked you a question, Russ says. What the fuck did you do?
The words slur as they leave Russ’s mouth. Ivan smiles in a pitying way. Russ could hit him.
Russ, Ivan says. Come on, my brother. Take a look at yourself.
Russ deflates. Looks at himself: a very small man. The entire room spins, a playground carousel.
Now, late at night. Ines is passed out in the guest room, a paper cup of microwaveable noodles topped on the nightstand. She sleeps with her hands clasped below her cheekbone. Above her is the one photograph Russ bought from the drugstore, a landscape, a feeble attempt to make the room look more alive for when his parents stopped by. The mountains look very small on the wall, Ines a slumbering giant beneath.
She stirs only when Russ moves to shut the door.
Russ? she whispers, a little girl waking in the night.
Her makeup has dried beneath her eyes. The television in the corner is playing the news.
The detective came by, Ines says. He asked me questions. He was with the lieutenant. I hoped you would be here. I answered all of their questions and I sent them away.
I’m sorry, Russ says, whiskey-full and dizzy. I had to run an errand. Did they ask about me?
No, Ines says. But they asked about my tutoring with Lucinda. And about Ivan. How could you think my brother killed her? Russ, how?
I don’t know what I think, Russ says as the alcohol creeps back up his throat.
Ivan is good, Ines says, and she starts to cry. My brother is good.
Ines sits up, hair flattened on one side from the pillow. She rubs her face. Adjusts the strap of her tank top, which has fallen down her arm. She pulls her knees to her chest and stares past Russ, even though there is nothing behind him but the chilly upstairs hallway. The linen has left a crease across Ines’s cheek.
Once, Russ stopped by after school. He stood outside the room where Ines tutored and watched her through the rectangular window. Ines and Lucinda bent over a textbook. When Ines laughed, she looked so full and round—this turned Russ on. He imagined another man standing here, another man watching his wife through the window and wishing he could have her. Lee. Yeah, Lee. Russ went into the men’s restroom, where someone had carved a swastika into the stall door with a pen, and jacked off into the toilet.
Standing in the guest room, Russ becomes aware of his own stench, the slow, sludgy fade of his drunk. He smells like Ivan’s cologne, the kind you buy from the back of a pickup truck in a department-store parking lot.
Come to bed, Russ says.
When he goes to rouse Ines, she flinches, her doughy arm tense at his touch. Russ leaves her there, cursing his job and how old and how dumb he’s gotten.
As Russ brushes his teeth, he watches himself in the mirror. His skin doubles at the chin. Small, watery eyes. He has worn his moustache the same way for sixteen years, since someone told him it made him look intimidating. Tonight, the moustache feels like an affront to his face. Intrusive. Everything sags. He sucks the water from the plastic bristles of his toothbrush and shuts off the lights.
Cameron
Cameron had one real friend in the whole world—Ronnie didn’t count. No, his only true friend was the night janitor at the elementary school.