Ryan looked at the tiny scrap of paper. He couldn't read the letters. At first he thought his eyesight might be going screwy, then he realized that it was written in cyrillic.
"FUCK!"
The last visiting day before Christmas.
"You've got a lot of fucking nerve asking me for anything, Ryan," Shannon hissed as she dropped into the seat across from him.
"Yeah, fuck you too, Shannon," Ryan said. "You got the first half of the money already, didn't you?"
"It's the only reason I'm here," Shannon muttered.
She shoved the parcel across the table to him.
"I hope your newest victim appreciates it," she said, and smiled.
Shannon could smile in a way that let you know she was fantasizing about ripping your guts out and turning them into balloon animals.
It was one of the things that had attracted Ryan to her, back in the day.
"Yeah, yeah," Ryan said, already sounding bored. "You'll get the rest of the money tonight, okay?"
"Sure," Shannon said. "Hey, does she have big tits?"
Ryan just looked at her in total incomprehension.
"The girl you're trying to fuck?" she said. "The poor, dumb, deluded girl who's gonna get this for Christmas?"
"Get the fuck outta here," Ryan said, disgusted. "There is no fucking girl."
Shannon rolled her eyes. "Sure, Ryan, whatever you say."
Stanislovsky tore open the wrapping paper on his Secret Santa gift.
He sniffed.
"What?" Ryan demanded. He was sitting the next table over in Em City, pretending to play chess with Cyril. Cyril himself was busy pretending that the knight piece was a horsey, and making it gallop up and down the edge of the table.
"Is okay," Stanislovsky said, his face remaining impassive.
He casually tossed the package, still half-wrapped, on the table in front of him.
"What is it?" Cyril asked.
"Chocolate," Stanislovsky said, "Chocolate from Russia."
"Hey, that seems like a pretty good present," Ryan said.
Nikolai ignored him, and the package, instead reaching for his newspaper and turning to the puzzle page.
Ryan shuffled his chair over, ignoring Nikolai's warning glare, and leaned in to look at the half-open package.
"Hey, whoever got this would have had to send someone on the outside to get it, right? Probably had to go all the way out to Brighton Beach, go to one of those little Russian stores. Then bring it all the way back upstate to Oz. Seems pretty fuckin' considerate to me. You got a dedicated gift giver, Nikolai."
Nikolai gave him a bland look. Ryan just kept going.
"And hey, chocolate in Oz - it's like fuckin' currency. This is worth way more in here than it is out there."
Nikolai shrugged eloquently. "Try some chocolate if you want some, O'Reily," he said.
"Hey, it's your chocolate, man," Ryan said, "It would be pretty fuckin' rude of me to eat it without you. You want some? I mean, we better eat it quick, 'cause let me tell you, the fucks in here? They'll go nuts if they catch sight of this."
Nikolai sighed as if every word Ryan had said had personally aggrieved him. He pulled the bag of chocolate out of the shamrock-patterned wrapping paper and opened the bag, taking just one of the small, individually wrapped chocolate pieces. Then he went back to working on the crossword.
"Can I have some?" Cyril asked. Nikolai threw him a piece without even looking up from his newspaper.
"Hey, just the one piece, Cyril," Ryan warned him, "and you gotta brush your teeth later, okay?"
Cyril sighed too, but nodded.
They sat there together and ate in silence.
Ryan watched Nikolai intently, trying to see if there was any reaction.
After a moment, Nikolai stopped looking for 4 down and sat back, just enjoying the taste.
"It's good," he said abruptly, and Ryan smugly smiled.
Then:
"Better than inferior American chocolate," he added, grabbing another piece and popping it in his mouth.
Ryan tried to hide how furious he was.
"They should never have pulled down that fuckin' Berlin Wall," he told Cyril later, pacing
up and down in their pod.