Shrugging, I accepted a cigarette. She held forth a lighter and pushed the button that ignited the flame. I lit up. She slid a cigarette between her lips and lit up too. I didn’t smoke. Well, I did, but not regularly. I wasn’t addicted. During one of my binge nights out, I could burn through a pack by myself just for the hell of it. But I wouldn’t crave a cigarette the next day. In fact, I could go a week, or several weeks, until the fancy for one took me again.

Funny why that was, given I was addicted to almost every other vice.

I took a drag and turned my head to the left, so I didn’t blow the smoke in Elizaveta’s face. I couldn’t help but see the blood-smeared floor, the crimson splatter leading to the front door. My mind hit me with an image of Nitro, the way he looked at me when he’d stumbled into the room, scared, pleading, expressions so alien to him.

“I didn’t like him,” Elizaveta said, as if reading my thoughts.

“Nitro?”

“I didn’t like how he always teased you.”

“He was a prick,” I said. Then laughed. “But he was sort of funny.”

“Funny?”

“If we weren’t arch enemies I probably would have liked him.”

“That makes no sense, Jack.”

I took another drag. “You know what he told Pepper earlier, when we were looking for Rosa’s canoe? He told him to switch weather channels because the weather girl on his channel had a major hot front.”

“Yes, that was his humor. He was always telling Jesus sexist jokes except when—” She stopped abruptly.

“Except when what?”

Elizaveta shrugged, contemplated her cigarette. “Except when Pita was around.”

“Pita?”

“Yes. But anyway…”

I frowned. Did Elizaveta know something I didn’t?

Avoiding eye contact, she picked up the bottle of vodka and took a sip.

I said, “What’s up, Eliza?”

“Nothing is up, Jack.” She still wouldn’t look at me.

“Were Nitro and Pita…” I didn’t know how to articulate the question. “Was something going on between them?”

“I don’t know, Jack. I don’t know anything.”

She was lying. That was clear as day…and that meant…what? What did she know? Had Nitro and Pita fooled around? Had they fucked? Had they been fucking on an ongoing basis?

The girl I’m pounding right now, she’s vaginamite.

My heart sickened, and I felt suddenly nauseous, as if I’d inadvertently stepped on a baby bird. I was also angry—furious—though this almost immediately burned itself out. If Nitro were alive, I would have beat the living shit out of him. But he wasn’t. He was dead, and no matter what he did, I couldn’t be mad at a dead guy.