Grip - 8. Chapter 8

The Next Day Tsvetnoy Bul’var.

It was a cold day. The snow had long since given up any attempt at being a cheery white down and had retreated into the roads to form small mounds of City Snow. The kind that was almost black from being encrusted in week’s worth of city air. It looked like it would last well into the New Year. Nothing short of a dynamite would budge it.

Winter was in high gear. And Mrs. Cooper’s coat didn't prove much of a barrier to the wind. It seeped in through the wool from every angle, from the top and bottom, front and back.

People hurried by her in the traditional shoulders hunched posture of winter, keeping their eyes fixed on the pavement directly in front of their feet, fur hats pulled down to shield their ears from frostbite.

“Aren’t we a bit too old for candy, Mister Cooper?” Mrs. Cooper questioned, arching an eyebrow as the older man approached and stood next to her on the street outside of Pushkinskaya station. “Makes you look like a baby.”

“Well, I’ll be called baby then,” Mister Cooper replied coolly, twirling a small red lollipop in his hand. He tipped the striped grey fedora perched on his head as he leaned against the bus stop pole. “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

She shook her head with a displeased groan, adjusting her brown tinted sunglasses. “Don’t hint. I know you took it from that baby’s stroller over there.”

“Hey, it’s taking candy from a baby.” The older con man smirked at his ex-wife.

“Enough with the deliberate puns. You know what the expression is supposed to be. When they say it’s ‘like taking candy from a baby’--”

“Well, I get the point. Other point is, I don’t have any gum with me, and my mouth is dry as a cactus,” – here Mrs. Cooper grimaced in disgust very clearly at this expression – “so I might as well have a lollipop. Plus, the irresponsible ‘mother’ left its child to her side.” He shrugged. “The child was sleeping, it looks young enough to have no brain, and it already had two pieces, so why not have one?”

Mrs. Cooper looked at Mister Cooper coldly. “It’s a child. It knows nothing. It’s unfair. How can you pick on someone like that?”

“Stop your whining,” Mister Cooper sighed, pulling off his own sunglasses and placing them in his blazer pocket. He scowled. “As you said, it knows nothing. And I’m a con man. The pieces of the puzzle fit. So, what now, Mrs. Cooper?”

Mrs. Cooper plucked the round treat from Mister Cooper’s hand. She raised it in front of his eyes. “This...this is a sugary object made of sugar, more sugar, and other contents just to make it even sweeter and even more sugary,” she explained. “These are cheap. Now...”

She dropped that hand and raised the other hand, which contained a crisp bill. “This...this is a five hundred rouble bill. This can buy all the candy you want, plus, much more. Knowing you, money comes before food, right? Because one, it’s obviously better. Two, money can buy food.”

“Quit shoving your little lessons up my arse for once,” Mister Cooper grumbled, snatching the lollipop out of Mrs. Cooper’s hand. “Just let me be for once.”

“Fine. You win this time, for once,” Mrs. Cooper said with an eyeroll, causing her former husband to grin in absolute victory. “But I’m going to check if that baby was asleep just in case you’re bullshitting me.” With that, she walked across the street near a park bench, where a lady standing next to a blue stroller was arguing with a police officer about her parking position.

Mister Cooper shook his head with a scoff before he reached for the piece of plastic that would be protecting the lollipop, only to feel...

A rolled-up business card?

His head veered up instantly to see Mrs. Cooper walking back towards the bus stop, a genuine smile on the woman’s face. She stood next to her ex-husband again, who dug his hands in his left pocket, clearly upset and ready to yell something most likely very obscene, but decided against it and bit his tongue.

“Like taking candy from a baby,” Mrs. Cooper simply stated, breaking the silence as the bus finally arrived.

Mister Cooper said nothing and only forced a very wry smirk.

“How far away is my car?” Mrs. Cooper asked as she settled into the seat, feeling the bus jerk and pull away from the stop.

Mister Cooper stood with an arm around a pole, looking down at her. “Not far dear, but we should seriously talk about doing business…”

Mrs. Cooper eyed him again over the rims of her sunglasses, “no business, dear, just my car. Let’s get this over and done with and that way I don’t have to kill you while you’re sleeping.”

Across the aisle, a young tourist balked, obviously listening to their conversation. Mrs. Cooper flashed the nosey tourist a withering look that said she knew he was listening.

“Look,” Mister Cooper smiled at her. “We will go, get the car, you can do a little shopping and still have enough time for some post-retail therapy at one of those Spa’s you used to spend my money on all the time…”

Mrs. Cooper looked up, “t’was better than all my money you spent on those Missy-Massage-Ees in Saint Petersburg…” There was a bitter edge in her tone.

“I had to keep the mark happy,” Mister Cooper said as he leaned down to look out of the window, the bus still bouncing and rattling along.

“That would be fine, except you were the one getting happy,” Mrs. Cooper pointed out.

“Look,” Mister Cooper said. “We promised not to talk about the past, and here we are doing just that…”

“I just want my car back, and you out of my life,” Mrs. Cooper replied.

“You sleeping with Jae yet?” Mister Cooper inquired, out of the blue. At her look, he shrugged, “you don’t want to discuss the past, might as well talk about the here and now.”

Mrs. Cooper considered spinning a story of steamy oriental sex, incense and romance… but she knew that if she tried to lie, Mister Cooper would pick up on it. Instead she just shook her head, “Jae doesn’t sleep with anyone, you know that.”

“Ahh,” Mister Cooper purred, “I forgot all about the psycho ex-girlfriend… How many stories was the building she threw herself off of?”

Mrs. Cooper gaped up at the delight in her ex-husband’s eyes; he’d always harboured a jealous streak when it came to Jae, competitive men bucking to be Alfa male. But to revel in the defining disaster of a person’s life, which was a whole new side of her ex that chilled her to the core.

“So,” Mister Cooper said as he sat down in the seat the young tourist had vacated quickly once it became clear he wasn’t supposed to be eavesdropping. “What was the story behind that anyway? I heard bits and pieces…”

“What did you hear?” Mrs. Cooper asked, sceptical that Mister Cooper had, in fact, heard anything remotely close to factual information.

“Well… and correct me please,” Mister Cooper smiled and tilted back his fedora. “I heard that he was engaged… but,” he fished through his pocket and produced his cell phone, thumb dancing over the buttons. Satisfied he held it up.

On the screen Mrs. Cooper could clearly see a phone-corder video of a naked, and humiliated Jae standing on a bridge over a busy road, being taunted and teased by passers by.

“I keep this to remind myself about what pride comes before,” Mister Cooper slid the phone away into his pocket. “Girlfriend sees this, goes nuts and leaps off a very tall building… quite literally: the fall.”

“You’re sick,” Mrs. Cooper turned her head away. “And it wasn’t like that.”

“We have a good hour till we get there,” Mister Cooper coaxed. “Least you could do is tell me Jae’s side of the story. It would help get rid of the nasty rumours.”

“There are no nasty rumours,” Mrs. Cooper stated. “The only one that seems to want to dig up the past around here is you. Since I shut you down, you seem to think Jae’s fair game. You always liked getting under my skin, and you figure this is a good way to do it.”

“You used to enjoy like doing this,” Mister Cooper said.

“I married you, now that should tell you right off that I wasn’t in a right frame of mind. Luckily for me it was only a temporary insanity.”

“Now you have aroused my curiosity, the least you can do is tell me what went on.” Mister Cooper was pressing.

“Ahh, the fatal flaw again, insatiable curiosity,” Mrs. Cooper sighed.

“And your fatal flaw is that you never could say no to my charm.” Mister Cooper beamed.

She folded her arms across her denim jacket, scowled at him and began to explain. “It all started when Jae bought a new phone in Korea. Second hand…”

“He always was a cheap bastard,” Mister Cooper snipped.

“This from a man who steals toilet paper because he refuses to buy it,” Mrs. Cooper shook her head. “Well Jae noticed there was a video on it of two girls… you know…”

“Hey,” Mister Cooper purred again. “I like this story, remind me to tell you about the time I recreated the North and South Vietnamese invasion.” He glanced at Mrs. Cooper’s disgusted face. “What? I had no TV.”

“You’re a pig,” she observed. “Jae was pretty young, university, and so he had one of those Myspace things… published the video.”

“He popped a video of two chicks doing it up on the internet, how original of him,” Mister Cooper laughed.

“Well one of the ‘chicks’ tracked him down via his myspace profile, worked out who he was…”

“What, she wanted to kill him?”

“Worse, she seduced him,” Mrs. Cooper turned her eyes to watching the skyscrapers outside the bus window.

“So let me get this straight,” Mister Cooper curled forward and crossed his arms on the seat back in front of him. “He finds a Lesbian chick’s dirty home movie, puts it on the internet and then one of them tracks him down and sleeps with him? Okay, this doesn’t sound that bad to me…”

“You never did understand women,” Mrs. Cooper said evenly. “She started to get these calls, person on the phone threatening her. Always hanging up when Jae took the phone.”

“The Lesbian’s ex-lover,” Mister Cooper nodded. “Diabolical plots, revenge, this is a good story.”

“One day Jae gets a call, someone threatening to kill his girlfriend if he doesn’t do exactly what he was told to do.” Mrs. Cooper reached out and plucked Mister Cooper’s phone from his pocket. “You’re little hand-held porno that you like so much.”

“He did that just for a girl?” Mister Cooper was incredulous. “Jae’s dumber than I thought. Oh, and I know enough about women to know that Lesbian’s are grade-A bitches when you piss them off.”

“Jae’s all over the internet, people taking video of him in the buff, and so he gets a call from his girlfriend.” Mrs. Cooper shook her head. “She’s up on the roof of the building opposite, telling him she’s going to jump.”

“Right, that’s the bit I heard about, but makes you think about her,” Mister Cooper shook his head, “ungrateful…”

“No, because her Lesbian lover couldn’t stand the shame of being a Lesbian in an ultra-conservative country like Korea, she’d committed suicide in front of her.”

“What?” Mister Cooper choked. “Wasn’t she the one making the calls?”

“No, it was Jae’s girlfriend the entire time, she wanted him to know what it was like to be humiliated, and to loose someone he loved. And right there, in front of him she… jumped.”

Mister Cooper was ashen pale as he sat across the aisle digesting the story. “Jesus…”

“Yeah,” Mrs. Cooper twiddled his phone in her hand. “So next time you think it’s funny to look at this video, just remember where it came from… and what it means when a woman is out for revenge.”

The words hung between them, ice cold. Mrs. Cooper staring at the man who had betrayed her, and had been laughing about it only moments before.

“I’m making it right,” Mister Cooper insisted.

“I pray, for your sake, that you are,” Mrs. Cooper pushed her sunglasses up and turned her back to him.

“Well I just hope you brought your papers,” Mister Cooper mused. “Did I forget to mention, the car’s in the impound lot?”

She stared at him, a strained silence with pursed lips. “You son of a bitch,” she swore.

“Yeah,” he said, extending his hands smarmily. “I had an issue with an idiot traffic warden… but it’s worth it, I mean you get your car back, don’t you?”

Mrs. Cooper cursed at him again, glowering as she returned to staring out of the window of the bus. Wondering what other surprises he had in store for her.