It was only after a few days that I learned Nadia had killed someone. As forceful as that sentence is, believe it or not, it is not as bad as it seems. One day she had been driving, surprisingly sober, and had been cut off by a teenage motorcyclist.
Now I know these daredevils. Teens from the countryside taking risks with their live on big highway roads. Teens which had the misfortune of being born in a country with lax safety regulations, even though they shared their sophomoric recklessness with all of their worldwide ilk.
I could picture him in my head: a handsome curly-haired kid, equipped with enough bellicose confidence to command attention and dance requests at a village party held in a field surrounded by barbed wire fencing and halogen floodlights lighting up a tropical night. The kind of kid who might make risqué jokes in front of his teenage crew, but duly obeyed his parents at home to tuck his three little sisters into the one bed they all shared in their single bedroom house. He had probably milked the family cow that morning, bits of dried manure sticking to the pedals of his rusty motorbike as he took it out for a joyride before lunch, riding barefoot just as he had woken up that morning.
Speeding down at 90 mph, feeling the wind blowing past his helmet-less head, his colorful yet faded, American-donated clothes luffing with trapped air, he had made his fateful decision. As his veins coursed with the amphetamine-like immature bravado of the inchoate masculine nervous system, he decided to show off his motorcycle prowess. No one was around to impress, yet he felt as if the world’s eyes were on him, swooning over his virtuosic skill.
That’s when he cut right in front of Nadia. Yet he had come too close to her car, and though she braked, the brushguard of her Montero jeep nicked the back of his bike, sending him for a tailspin. Everything happened so fast, it was hard to pinpoint the first instant that he was maimed.
The killer truck on the Guatemalan border
Who knows what he felt besides pain? Surely utter terror, and probably nothing else. Based on her description, terror was the only thing that Nadia felt. All that is for certain is that, once she steadied her nerves enough to open her door, his bloodied head was right under the running board.
Clearly this would be a traumatic experience for anyone, and it certainly explained Nadia’s behavior: the drinking, the pills, the everything. It also explained Blackie.
Blackie was Nadia’s pet cat, and for all intents and purposes, Blackie was her comfort animal. Most people can savor looking out over a beautiful landscape, or smile ever so slightly as they curl their fingers around a glass of red wine. Not Nadia. I know because I experienced many things with her. No, the only time the storm cloud above her head relented from pouring acid rain all over her mood was when Blackie was in her arms.
Besides that, Blackie was just cool. When we would drive long distances, he would bounce around the car like he had just picked up some product from the catnip dispensary. When the days were too foggy, he would slide under the taught covers on Nadia’s bed, forming a distinct lump as he slept. And when Vlad and Nadia would have their daily, knock down, drag out verbal wars, Blackie would look at me with his sedated, chill, half-closed eyes as if to say, “Fuck this shit. You wanna smoke a bowl?”
The Blackie lump
One day, Nadia was doing too much. She was a half of a fifth of rum and at least 4 pills of something in, and running her mouth like a spoiled teenager. I was used to her behavior, but shit was getting ridiculous, and I could see Vlad was about to crack. This was the worst it had ever been.
It was like watching a strategically placed 2×4 holding up the Brooklyn Bridge. Slowly you watch as the wood starts to buckle, then splinter ever so slowly, then burst with a blast of confetti-like wood mulch particles, just like when a cannonball goes through the mainmast during a pirate movie. Vlad snapped spectacularly, yet you could only tell if you were watching the minute movements of his eyebrows.
Vlad was outer demeanor was a heroic soldier, diving onto a grenade with his helmet, his stoicism somehow containing his internal blast. Except in this case, given the furious eyebrows, it had been a hydrogen bomb. Vlad jumped to his feet, and with a voice that was only incrementally raised he said, “I want you to leave! Just leave!!!”
Are you placing bets? Did you guess she changed her tune and begged to stay? FUCK no she didn’t! Clearly you haven’t been paying attention. Within 10 minutes, she had a hastily-packed suitcase with shirt sleeves and pants’ legs still sticking out, Blackie’s lower section dangling below her forearm as she clutched him hard enough to squeeze out all the air in his lungs, all the while cussing up a storm as she left the house obliterated with her downpour of foul-ass language.
Blackie getting snatched up
Before we knew it, she was turning the engine over, igniting the pistons of the truck that doubled as a lethal weapon, about to depress the gas pedal with an iron sole in an attempt to get Vlad out of her sight as soon as possible. Vlad doubled down, following her outside, challenging her to leave faster. All I could see was the excessively tanned skin on the back of her neck connecting to the bleached blonde tufts of her pixie cut as she reversed, Blackie shooting me a last petrified look before the glare of the sun on the window obscured his poor, terrified face.
Shit just hit the fan.
Once that instantaneous tempest had subsided as quickly as it had come, pangs of spasmodic fear struck at the base of my skull like the intermittent ringing of a 5-ton cathedral bell. These painful, electric sensations were the sounding of an alarm, the siren warning of the inevitable: that she was about to kill another motorist.
By now, Vlad had lit a cigarette, and had hunkered down to pout. I really didn’t want to disturb him, but the sirens in my head were unbearable. “Vlad….” I said meekly, like a blind mouse asking the butcher with the carving knife for a morsel of cheese, “you need to call the cops.” He looked at me crazily. Immediately all his stories of abuse by corrupt police in his native land came flooding back. Vlad did not simply call the police.
I looked at him square in the eye, knowing that I had to convince him. I said, calmly and quietly, “She has already killed someone once. We need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. A small punishment is better than a murder charge.” He chewed it over for an eternity, like a camel with a stick of its favorite bubble gum, and he finally spit out the words, “Alright, pass me the goddamn phone”.
My mouth dropped open in astonishment as soon as he started speaking to the police. Vlad’s speech was an effusive Tchaikovsky symphony, his words musically explaining the situation, yet simultaneously minimizing the seriousness to the police, coaxing them into giving her a slap on the wrist if they found her.
Here and there his Eastern accent would disappear into sing-songy Belizean Creole, surely proving to the officers that, wherever he had come from, he was one of them. This was Vlad’s forte. He was a cultural chameleon, having adapted to Nadia’s culture, and now to Belize. His charm was, without question, masterful. Any time I might get in trouble in the future, if Vlad would like to litigate, I would turn down a high-priced lawyer for him instead. Later, I found out that he had acted as Nadia’s lawyer at her trial…..and won. Not a day of law school under that man’s belt, but I wasn’t surprised.
The next day, we heard the gate opening. Nadia was coming back. Vlad let her in, and we all had a fairly quiet breakfast together. It seems that she had only driven to a hotel about a mile away. Thank God!
Only after an hour did I notice why I felt like something was wrong. “Wait! Nadia!” I interrupted her over a Russian romance novel and a freshly-cracked beer, lounging in a hammock. I couldn’t believe she was drinking again. “Where’s Blackie?!” She said, “He ran from the hotel room last night. I cried for hours. He is gone.”
What the fuck. I slumped in my chair, imagining all the animals out in the jungle that could have been eating him right then and there. RIP Little Dude…..you got caught in the crossfire of some bullshit, and you were innocent.
The last known picture of Blackie
Tip: Don’t let drunk people around animals. If a jaguar eats your pet because of your childish BS, you are a horrible person.
–Jaden (32), Weston, MA, mourning a feline friend in Belize