Chapter Text
Richie hadn’t wanted to be in Poland. He didn't want to be dropped off by Marvin, his dad’s aide, at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. He also did not want to be underneath an impending snow storm. But there he was. The way his father had put it, if he was going to fuck around (and fail college), he was going to find out (that Poland has cold and unforgiving winters). He was also going to find out that the family dental practice Richie had pointedly ignored for most of his life was the tip of a very large and very criminal ice-berg.
Richie wasn’t a pussy, though, despite what his hometown high-school arch rivals might think. He wasn’t a flake either, and he told his dad he was up to the task, so he was about to do it. Thruthfully, he didn't even really think about it that much. His brain moved fast, and situations just sort of flowed in and out of his eye-line in the background. Nonetheless, this particular situation was beginning to snag on a few corners of his brain.
The crowbar in his hand was beginning to pinch at his skin as it froze to the surface of his fingertips. He scowled down at it, tearing the metal from his skin. He balled the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his other hand and gripped the bar tightly it. He liked breaking and entering as much as the next twenty-something time waster, but everyone has their limit.
He trudged over the last few paces of snow to the window of the farm-house. His tracks spread back across a lengthly field. He glanced over his shoulder. There were no street lights. The track he'd arrived on was a smudge of black hedges a quarter mile back.
Turning back to the window he decided to get on with it. He buried his travel-sized crowbar into the rotted wood of the windowsill.
He climbed down onto the kitchen counter from the window and pulled it closed after him. He rubbed his hands together furiously. The wooden soles of his shoes tapped on stone. It didn’t take long to move through the room and find the cabinet Marvin had described. It stood around the first corner out of the kitchen in a wide living room. He got right to it, crossing an orange and green rug as quietly as possible. He was almost certain no one was in the house. He handn't checked or anything. But the farmhouse was pitch dark as they approached. Plus, Richie and his father had their differences, but he did not (yet) believe his dad would send him into the path of genuinely murderous Polish rivals.
Now Richie was kneeling in front of the cabinet, which was squat, but heavy looking. It had thick, grated metal doors and a small, curved handle. He frowned down at a safety pin between his fingers, which he kept on a chain around his neck. He pulled it quickly over his head and pressed it into the tiny lock on the cabinet door.
He got close quickly, he could feel the give in the mechanism. Tiny pegs pressing against the point of the needle.
A snapping sound echoed off the stone walls. Richie frowned at the lock. The safety pin still pressed with stubborn pressure against his fingers. It took a moment for him to register that the sound hadn't come from the cabinet. Slowly, he turned.
Staring at him, behind the wide barrel of a shotgun, was a small, rugged man. Rugged in a contained sort of way. His hair was dark and unkempt, and his clothes were made of something Richie could only describe as sacking. Stylish, still, somehow. It was synched at his waist with a thin satin rope. His jaw was sharp and heavy, partially obscured by the earthy-toned steel of the barrel. His face was clean shaven, and the distant smell of Indian Cress drifted through the cool air. Richie didn’t know it was Indian Cress yet. He’d learn that later.
“Ah.” He dropped the pin and its chain onto the tasseled edge of the rug and raised his palms either side of his head. “Nuts.”
And if the stranger had decided to shoot him, Richie’s dazed last thoughts might have been something about how the firelight looked dancing across this stranger’s cheek.
“Eddie.” A distant voice, like a pitchy wheel muffled through the wall. A creak split through the room from above them and the man with the gun spun around, nose of the weapon dropping to graze the rug. Now Richie could see him in profile, it was a wonder he could hold the thing up. It reached his hip as its tip touched the ground.
The creaking came again, and then it kept coming until each noise merged into a set of thumps descending from the wall over the fireplace. The man- Eddie, Richie figured- pointed the gun squarely at him again, and gestured sharply with it.
“What?” Richie whispered.
The man muttered something in a language Richie didn’t know. Polish might have been a smart guess. Eddie let the gun fall to his side completely. He hurried towards Richie. Before Richie could flinch, he was being pushed by the shoulder towards the wall. Eddie gave his shoulder a final shove and pointed towards the wall. They were almost nose to nose. He had to shift completely to follow where Eddie was pointing. There was an alcove behind the cabinet door, carved into the wall and with a heavy looking sliding panel beside it. Eddie hissed something and nudged him sharply with the butt of the gun, shaking Richie from the worst of his shock.
“You want me to go decompose in there?” he whispered. “No fucking way, dude."
The thumps had been getting louder, and now they came to a stop. The man looked urgently over his shoulder and snapped his fingers. Richie, with no other option available to him, did as he was told. He crawled towards the alcove and positioned himself awkwardly inside. Before he could think of anything else, the man slid the door shut with a heavy scrape. Richie was plunged into darkness.
Richie's neck was crammed at a hard angle, chin pressed to his knees. He listened to the man’s footsteps pass back over the rug.
“Mama.” He heard, muffled.
A female voice responded. Richie couldn’t understand what she said, but the tone was harsh.
The man replied, and the next response, from the woman- his mother- was a shout. Her voice rose up from its deep growl into pitchy squeaks. It was loud enough for Richie to pick out the unfamiliar syllables. Consonants following one another harshly.
The man’s voice edged in from time to time, but he was steamrollered. Richie’s body was tense. His joints strained with the angles he’d forced them into. He had a desperate need to cough. There was a small silence. He took a breath.
And then there was the sharp smack of skin on skin. The woman’s voice growled low again, a final few sentences, and then two smacks in quick succession. Richie’s body recoiled at the sound. There was a clatter, metal on stone, and then, slowly, the thump of feet on stairs began again.
Richie stayed where he was for a long while. He couldn’t hear anything in the room. Then there was a shift. Footsteps padding on carpet, getting closer. A scrape and a click. Eddie appeared in Richie’s line of sight. He waved his free hand. Richie hesitated, but the man nodded. His face was in shadow. Richie began to move, and he drew back, letting him extract himself out onto the rug.
They looked at one another as Richie sat, limbs aching, beside the glass cabinet.
“You didn’t have to do that.” Richie whispered. He gathered that Eddie couldn’t understand him, but something seemed to slip into place. The man looked down at the floor, where the nose of his shotgun rested. Then, he turned and disappeared behind the wall housing the stairs. There were some gentle shuffling noises from the room beyond- one Richie hadn’t seen yet. Then he came back. He had a book in his hand. He put it down in front of Richie.
Richie picked it up.
“Polish-English dictionary. I think you might be over-estimating my ability to, uh, pick out phonetics.”
Eddie watched him silently.
“Okay.” Richie said. Because, after all, why not. “Class is in session, I guess.”
***
The dictionary worked okay for a little while. The two of them sat on the floor- the shotgun between them on the rug, a spiral of crudely engraved flowers winding up its barrel.
On a paper bag, they scrawled out sentences, and the other squinted in the dim firelight to translate. It was arduous to say the least.
Richie managed to explain in extremely crude terms that his presence in Eddie's house was a complicated mistake. He didn't mean any harm.
Eddie said, in so many words, that he didn't care what Richie's intentions were and that he could take care of himself. Richie laughed.
"I don't doubt that." he said aloud. Eddie watched him with the same considered expression as ever.
Richie reached for the pencil and flipped the paper bag over.
"I... will... leave... now." he said as he wrote. He paused, remembering the gaping gash he'd left in the window frame. He couldn't think of a condensed way to apologise so instead he wrote 'thank you for being cool' and tossed the paper in front of Eddie.
Eddie flipped carefully through the dictionary. He was faster than Richie, forcing him to wonder for an addled moment if he'd done this before. took a long moment to reply. A small crease appeared in Eddie's brow as Richie was mulling it over.
He took the paper and wrote three words which Richie translated to ‘Too dangerous. Stay.’
Eddie waited until he saw that Richie understood the message, and then gestured towards the kitchen windows. Snow fell in heavy flurries against the black sky.
Richie nodded slowly. He took the paper bag and pen, and took care to write his next two words clearly.
He then watched with muted glee as Eddie translated the term "weird motherfucker" and promptly threw the whole dictionary into the fire. Richie was about to laugh, but Eddie, a deep scowl on his face, held a finger to his lips. He was right. For a second Richie had forgotten where they were.
"All the more reason to dip". Richie whispered. He got to his feet.
Eddie stayed sitting. He shook his head, pointing to the window again.
“If we still had the dictionary I could say goodbye, fucking idiot.” Richie said softly as he dusted the grit from his pants. Eddie kept frowning.
“This has been fun,” Richie said. “and I get that you did me a favour but I’m not chilling here until your mom makes a reappearance. I fear if I see her with my own eyes I might fall deeply in love.”
Eddie shook his head again, following Richie to his feet. He stood a full head shorter than him, which made Richie grin. Later, he'd peg it down to the adrenaline which compelled him to reach out and ruffle Eddie's hair. Before he could run for the gun again, Richie bolted for the kitchen. He was on the countertop and vaulting through the window before he could even register the cold.
Richie looked behind him only as he made it to the dark track beyond the hedges. In the distance, Marvin's headlamps miraculously cast hazy yellow cones through the fog.
In the window of the farmhouse, Richie thought he could make out the shadowy shape of a man, quickly obscured by a new wave of falling snow.
***
Despite Richie's ardent argument that he'd exhibited unprecedented skill by escaping a deadly situation in Poland, Wentworth shipped him off to Florida all the same. Florida held the branch of the Tozier organisation which Went had always referred to as "pre-K".
This is how Richie found himself the manager of a decrepit public house called The Mariner beside an Airport motel. In Marvin's limo from the airport, Richie wondered what it might be like to have siblings to share this bullshit with. They pulled down off the freeway and into the parking lot of the pub. Richie was concluding it would probably be worse.
He walked into the building as Marvin's car disappeared back onto the fly-over. Though it said 'pub' on the hanging sign, it looked like any other shitty bar. Four broad men in dark shirts were positioned beside the door. Richie hung awkwardly by the back office. Then, after holding off for an impressive fifteen minutes, called his dad.
“What’s the problem, son?” Went said. “I’m on the jet in five.”
“Uh, It’s weird here.” Richie said.
“Weird how?” Went said, in the same voice he used when Richie used to ask where the pizza rolls were. ‘In the freezer, son. They’re always in the freezer’. Richie could hear someone in the background. He rolled his eyes and slipped into the back office behind the counter.
“There are these… guys-“
“Protection.” Went said, again, like this was the most obvious thing in the universe.
“Huh?”
“Rich,” Went said tiredly. “Did you think I was going to leave this kind of enterprise uncovered with a first time manager?”
“I don’t know-“
“This isn’t a joke. I have a hundred kids with very powerful parents and a thousand times more experience than you'll ever have; all of whom would do this job for half the pay I'm giving you.“
“Yeah, yeah.” Richie said. “I know, pops. Really doing wonders for the old self-confidence by the way-”
“Can you handle things down there or not?”
“Yeah. Yep.” Richie glanced through the glass panel in the office wall. One of the men by the entrance was moving a pistol from the table to a loop on his belt. “Ah, boy.” Richie muttered. “Yeah, dad.” He said, louder. “Got it.”
“Do you remember what I told you?”
“Let in Ham on Tuesdays and Thursdays for drop-offs.”
“And…”
“And leave Stan alone to take care of the books.”
“And…” Went said. The whirring engine of his jet began to swallow his voice.
“And run the bar the rest of the time. And mind my business.” Richie tacked on the final point grudgingly. He looked at his fingernails. He’d colored them with black sharpie that morning and it was already worn into faded greenish streaks between deep black rivets on his cuticles.
“Perfect. I’ll have Marvin check in soon.” Went said. “Now please get to work for once in your life.”
The line was dead before Richie could say anything else.
“Love you, dad.” He said to the empty office.
***
Richie learned very quickly that no one in his professional life was ever going to take him seriously.
Ham did come on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ham was a tall man. He came in with two briefcases, looked Richie up and down like he was a novel species of caterpillar, and then disappeared into the back for two hours. Richie pottered around cleaning glasses, and serving the rare customer who wandered in from the hotel across the street. Then Ham left with barely a nod, carrying his briefcases, which always seemed to weigh significantly less.
The Mariner had four waitresses. Richie tried fleetingly to bond with them in his first month at work, but they didn’t think much of him. They smiled awkwardly at his jokes, and then he heard them giggling whenever he walked away. Which… he wasn’t nine years old anymore, but it was not the best feeling ever. In all, he was kind of lonely. By month four, he was getting used to Miami's general stickiness- the sweat blooming across his back when he stepped outside. He adjusted to the thick grasses, the salty smell in the air, and the wide, low slump of the skyline.
His dad wired him three grand at the end of each week. The zeros gathered steadily in his checking account, but he didn’t have anything to spend it on. He lived in an apartment building arranged by Went (or more likely, by Marvin).
The block was not nice. It was a simple, rectangular slab of concrete reaching five stories high. Each floor’s front door was joined to the staircase by a thin balcony which became a slippery death trap whenever it rained- which was every day at noon. The back of the building looked out over the sprawling concrete top of a casino. Richie didn’t go back there if he could avoid it, but sometimes he needed a coffee at three in the morning, and he had to make the jog alongside the casino to the nearest 7-Eleven.
The days, with the repetitive fall of the rain, began to melt together. He woke up at eleven am, walked to The Mariner for midday, and counted the hours until he could go back to his block again and stare at the TV until he passed out.
That was his routine until one Tuesday in May. Richie went out back at the sound of the bell, fully expecting to be greeted by Ham’s wiry silhouette. Instead, he pulled the door open and his eyes skated out into the middle distance. He frowned, and then looked down a few inches, and there stood the Polish man from the farmhouse.
“Eddie.” Richie said dazedly. “Polish Eddie.”
When Eddie didn’t disappear, or begin to shift around like a mirage, Richie took a step back.
“Eddie?” He said again. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
***
"No, I've got it this time. It's like witness protection, right? Word got out I made it out of your place alive back in Polska, now all of Dad's enemies think you're on our side. Right?" Richie pointed a carrot stick at Eddie, who was sitting across the bar. "No English, still? That's ok. I like my story, so let's stick with it. Gonna sell the screenplay. I'll share the profits with you. How's a ninety-ten split?" Richie bit into his carrot stick.
Eddie had a scarcely-concealed look of contempt on his face as he glanced around the Mariner. Richie watched him. He knew that look. He'd felt it himself mere months ago when he stepped over the threshold.
"Sorry, buddy." Richie said. "Hope no one told you it would be luxury down here."
All things considered, it wasn't s surprise when Eddie followed Richie back to his apartment complex that evening and gave a wave as he disappeared onto the floor above. Nor was is surprising the next day when Richie walked across the Mariner's parking lot to find Eddie was waiting outside the locked front door.
With the entire night to think it over, Richie had deduced that his dad hadn't purely extracted Eddie from Poland out of the kindness of his heart. Eddie was about as locked-in working at the Mariner as Richie was, if not more.
In the back of Richie's mind there was also a sneaking suspicion Went was trying to force a friendship onto the both of them. Or at least a positive co-working relationship. He could hear it now. ‘He's around your age, son. Have a beer or two together’. It had happened enough times during his childhood. They'd be on the golf course and Went would give Richie a twenty to get one of the other kids an ice cream. Bribery, some might call it. Went called it Networking. Naturally.
He hadn't done it in a while. There had been a sharp drop-off in Went's interest in Richie's interpersonal affairs after Richie started showing maybe a little too much interests in the guys his dad forced him out to yacht parties, or into Race-course Suites with. Went stopped bringing friends around Richie at all after an incident in a bathroom at The W. In Richie's defence, he was on a lot of Ketamine at the time.
Escapades excluded, Went's plans rarely resulted in a lasting bond. And in this case, the involved parties did not even share a common tongue.
Richie unlocked the Mariner that morning and held the door for Eddie. They began brining chairs down from tables together in silence.
Over the next few weeks, Richie wouldn’t hear Eddie speak a word; Polish or otherwise. He did seem to do a lot of listening, though. He listened to customers in the bar. He'd be cleaning glasses, his eyes flicking up from time to time to watch a conversation take place across the room. He sat underneath the TV above the liquor shelf with his eyes closed. He had headphones in, listening to audio-books when Richie drove the two of them across town to the beach in the 2004 Camry Marvin dropped off a week after Eddie arrived.
The first time Richie heard Eddie speak English it was June. Richie was hanging around in the parking lot. He’d dropped Eddie off over an hour ago, and stayed down on the kerb for a cigarette. Richie was had a new pet theory that Eddie was a mole sent specifically to spy on him. He didn’t smoke on his own balcony in case he got ratted out. He was struggling with a bottle opener on a beer can he swiped from the bar, cigarette clamped between his lips. The sun had just set behind the row of bedraggled palm trees by the freeway and the night air was stiflingly warm. He tried to clip the thing onto the metal cap for a third time, and everything slipped. His cigarette tumbled to the ground, along with the bottle and three dark spots of blood from the fresh gash in his hand.
“Come.” He heard following a sharp intake of breath behind him. He turned, still in shock, to see Eddie holding a grocery bag in one hand and his keys in the other.
“Oh, hey, man.” Richie said. “I’m good, don't fuss about it…” He glanced back down at the pool of blood seeping into the soft ash of his cigarette. It made him feel a little queasy. Eddie was turning away. He gestured with his keys as if he was asking a dog to ‘heel’.
“Come.” He said again. Richie did, blood dripping in spots over the rough painted-concrete of the stairwell.
Upstairs, Eddie waited patiently for Richie to point out his keys in his pocket. He struggled for a moment, smearing blood onto the waistband of his shorts. Business-like, Eddie reached over. He moved Richie's hand aside with his knuckle, then didn't hesitate to reach into Richie’s pocket. The back of his hand pressed against Richie's thigh as they coaxed out his key chain. He unlocked the door and ushered Richie over to the faucet. Richie wondered, somewhat distractedly, whether the layouts of their apartments were the same.
Eddie thrust Richie’s hand under the running water.
“Wait.” He said briskly, leaving the tap running as he disappeared from the kitchen. Richie did as he was told. A few minutes later, Eddie was back with a small green first aid kit. Something unlatched in Richie’s chest as he began to unzip it on his counter. Vaguely, he felt embarrassed that all his dishes were still dirty in the sink- the water splashed unevenly from the top of a grease-encrusted pan. Eddie paid little notice, beside a small wrinkle of his nose as he turned off the faucet and took Richie’s wrist between his fingers.
Richie looked up at him, carefully drying Richie’s hand and ripping an alcohol swab with his teeth.
“Thanks.” Richie said quietly.