Chapter 25 – The Next Generation
“How old are you, Slev?” Gwen said.
“I’m forty-four.”
“I’m forty,” said Gwen. “And Anna’s twenty-seven.”
“Do you know how old Catherine is? She’s sixty-seven. Sixty-seven and vibrant and energetic. And influential, right, Anna? You felt it. So we have three generations here in Charleston. Three generations of women with Deneuvian powers. That’s the new deal we have for you. You spend time with us as our friend, and you come out with something special. At least we think it’s special. We think it’s a good thing to have people like us wandering around. We’re not perfect, but still good for culture. After all, we’re thieves, but we do good things too.”
Slev said, “We say this is an offer of a new deal. It is. But that doesn’t mean the relationship would be all good for you. It would be good in a very important way. You would learn Deneuvian things. But it also may be bad for you, because we don’t think you grandfather is going to back off from us. So if you stay with us, you’re in the middle, and that’s a rough place to be. You have to decide if you want to be in the middle, and you have to decide if the trade-off is worth it to you. You would have to accommodate your grandfather, who we know you love, and who loves you, and you would have to accommodate us.” Slev looked at Anna with empathy.
“Anna, if you do this, and survive,” she said with a smile, “you will turn twenty-eight and you will be a bigger person. I guarantee that.”
Anna didn’t say anything, but looked out at the water.
Gwen let her think for a while, and then said, “What were you going to do in our house?”
Evidently, Anna had decided to accept the new deal, which ended the terms of the old deal, not to talk. She said, “I was going to brace you and Roger. Stick a gun in your faces and ask where the artifacts are. Simple.”
“What did you know about us? Didn’t you think maybe we could take care of ourselves?”
“Look, I knew you guys had stolen a ton of stuff in Saint Petersburg, and gotten it to Charleston. That’s very clever. No one’s ever done anything like that before. But that didn’t mean to me and my grandfather that we couldn’t get to you here. My grandfather thinks Americans are soft. He stereotypes people. He does that with Germans, too. After he found out about you, he decided to attack. Then I did what I did.”
“And you thought it would be easy to come into our house and brace us?”
“Yeah. I thought it would be easy.”
“And now what do you think?”
“I think you have a smart dog.”
Gwen looked at Slev. “Did you say anything about our dog to her?” she asked.
Slev said, “What did your dog do?”
Gwen said, “How did you know about the dog?”
Anna smiled and said nothing.
Gwen moved on. “And what else?”
“And you got me. You and your dog got me.”
“And….?”
“And Roger, I guess.”
“Oh my God, she’s misanthropic,” said Slev. “So why’s she wear $200 black Italian underwear? And perfume, out on a job, no less?”
Gwen smiled at all this. “We know why you want to be in this with your grandfather. That’s natural. We understand your feelings about him and we understand your feelings about your Russian heritage. We have those feelings too, about American heritage. And some about French heritage. That’s why we love French wine. It’s not just about drinking the wine, the taste of the wine, it’s about the pleasure of the wine, and knowing about the culture that has produced the wine. About the French people.”
Slev said, “Sometimes people do things they don’t have to do and, people aren’t always rational about things. My husband and I didn’t have to get involved in that caper. We didn’t do it for the money; we just did it. It’s our lives. The Junes did it for the money, but that’s not the only reason. They did it because it was a challenge, and they like challenges. Now you’re involved. And your grandfather. And neither of you is doing it for the money. Life and its motivations are tricky.”
Gwen said, “What else do you remember about the first night? About me and the dog?”
“I never actually saw the dog. I remember climbing the stairs, and I remember you hissing at me. That was new. It got my attention. And that was the first time anyone pointed a gun at me, and two guns was double the thrill. Then I remember seeing you and Roger standing at the top of the stairs, naked from the waist down. That was neat. I liked that. You stayed naked in the kitchen for quite some time. All that time you were taping me to the chair. And then I remember wishing I could have a really large cup of that $30-per-pound coffee. That smelled so good.”
Ya’ll were naked in the kitchen, the three of you?” asked Slev.
“They were half naked; I was in my underwear,” said Anna. “It wouldn’t have been bad, except for the duct tape pulling the hairs on my arms. And the Beretta and the Glock pointed at me.”
Both Slev and Gwen did some thinking. In the space of about a week, Anna had seen the following people fully naked or half naked: Roger, Gwen, Slev, Helstof, and Richard Adams. That was a record to be proud of. Sometime when Gwen wanted to stick it to her friend Jinny, which was often, she would remind him that he wasn’t in this lineup.
Gwen got back to business. “And you remember Catherine.”
“God yes, it was like sitting with someone my age. She’s forty years older than me, but I felt she was my friend. Within five minutes of her sitting next to me, she was my friend. It was so weird. How can someone be like a grandmother and a friend at the same time? And she was kind and stern at the same time. How can that be? And she listened and spoke at the same time. Didn’t she? You were there,” she said, looking at Gwen. “I felt like she was giving to me at the same time she was taking from me. She knew me first, and then asked questions. She gave and took, gave and took. I just went with the flow; she was the river, and I was the boat on the river. That was that. At the end, you asked me if I would try to hurt any of you again, and I said no. And here we are.”
Slev and Gwen leaned back in their chairs and looked out to the water, relaxed. They knew Anna would accept the new deal. They knew she wanted to be in the middle, between them and her grandfather. They knew she wanted to learn the Deneuvian stuff. They knew she was special.