Tuesday Evening

Carie made a beeline across the hallway to the opposite apartment with a small cardboard box, a plume of annoyance trailing behind her. Pulsating thrash-techno music had been erupting from inside Apartment Seven for the past hour with the noise pummelling the door so hard that the hinges creaked. 

A sour frown angled her brow as she knocked.

Then she waited.

Then she knocked again, harder.

And waited again.

She thumped it with the side of her fist.  “Vasily!” she shouted. “Open the door!”

The music continued to blare and the door remained closed, taunting her.

She shoved against the door with her shoulder, lost her balance and dropped the box. “Shit!” she spat then turned towards the door and screamed, “VASILY! OPEN UP THE… “

The music suddenly stopped.

“... FUCKING…” she blurted, pausing too late. ‘Fucking’ ghosted through the empty hallway. She shook her head and took a deep breath, mentally counting to three. “Vasily, could you open the do- ”

The door opened. Vasily stood there almost filling the frame. He loomed over the petite Carie with the dull expression of a bored moose, barefoot, wearing a stretched tank top and track pants. 

“What?” he ribbited.

Carie took a moment to untwist her sour expression enough so she could speak. “Can I talk normally or should I shout? Because, obviously, your eardrums have blown out!”

With an unmoving anvil-jaw and dark stubble surrounding his pink lips, he muttered back through his heavy Eastern European drawl, “I am busy. I have visitor.”

Crossing her arms, she tilted her nose up and eyed him. “Really? Sorry to interrupt! And how is The Queen this evening? I can hear that the cello ensemble has been playing her favourite thrash metal sonata for the past hour.”

Vasily brick-walled her with nothing but an unblinking stare. Apparently, his ears had closed for business after she had said “sorry”. 

Just then, a man in a tie and sweater and carrying a leather portfolio stepped out from behind Vasily’s shadow. He smiled politely at Carie.

“Oh, hi,” she exclaimed as she blinked and cocked her head back, “Sorry, I didn't realize…”

“No problem! We were just finishing up our business!” he said rather loudly. He must have still been adjusting to the music having suddenly stopped.

“‘Our business’?" Carie muttered. She tilted her head slightly but promptly decided that he didn’t look like the illicit hacker type. She regarded Vasily with a sarcastic sneer and said, “Oh, I should have known, what with you dressed up in your business tank top and pyjama pants.” 

Both Vasily and the man eyed Carie up and down which reminded her that she wasn't exactly "dressed for the ball", either. Pantless, she was attired in only an oversized sweatshirt that dropped off her shoulders and barely hid her panties and nothing else down to her sock-covered feet. She gave the hem of her top a discrete tug.

“Vasily, a pleasure as usual,” the man said (Carie was pretty sure that was a lie). He shook his hand, “I’ll come by on the weekend and… urk!”

The man squirmed, his knees buckling and his face wincing. His hand --ensnared by Vasily’s paw-- appeared to be in duress with the tips of the fingers quickly turning purple.

“Bye, Wendel,” Vasily grunted his trademark farewell-slash-threat salutation. He gave him a firm shake, jerking Wendel’s shoulder downward, nearly yanking his arm out of the socket.

Carie rolled her eyes. Her neighbour had the delicate touch of a rhino wielding a jackhammer.  

“Bye,” Wendel squeaked. He nodded towards Carie, then quickly scurried down the hall, his arm hanging limp.  

“Funny, I never would picture you associating with a man named ‘Wendel’,” she remarked as she watched the person in question disappear around the corner. Then she turned her attention back to Vasily… who was already shutting his door on her face.

“Hey!” she snapped and stuck her foot out as it swung towards her, forgetting that she was only in socks. The base jammed hard against her toes. “Ow! Shit!”

She shoved the door open with her forearm, then she slapped her hand against Vasily’s solid left pec. 

“Ow! For fuck’s sake!” she exclaimed, exasperated by the constant self-infliction of pain. It was as if she had smacked a side of frozen beef. Her palm stung almost as badly as her toes.  

Vasily sighed through his sharp nose. His cool blue eyes frosted her face like a birthday cake with an icy glare.

Shaking out her hand, she pushed the cardboard box over to him on the floor with her other foot. “Here!”

“Why do I need box?” he asked, pronouncing “box” as if he had belched.

“It’ll fit over your block-head when you jerk off!” she spat. She kicked the box again. “I’m giving you back the stuff inside the box, dumbass!”

His bushy brows dipped as his eyes narrowed upon the box then back on Carie. “Why?”

Carie pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m moving. Remember?” 

“When?’ 

“Saturday.”

“How?”

“I hired a mover.”

“Where?”

“Oh, my fucking god! Eat a dictionary, Vasily!” she snapped, throwing her hands up, exasperated by his monosyllabic obtuseness. “I told you all of this so many times already!”

She had initially told him about a month ago that she was moving to her new condo apartment down by the lake area. She had bought it as a pre-build several years ago and was just waiting out its construction in the rental apartment. When she had shown Vasily the brochure and floor plans of the condo, he was his usual unimpressed self:

“Workmanship is crap,” he remarked.

Carie snatched back the papers. “It’s better than here.”

“I bet if you piss on walls they will break.”

She smirked. “Good thing I went that extra mile to have a toilet installed, then.”

Now Carie was finally moving and Vasily just shrugged as if deciding whether to have chips or pork rinds for dinner was more important than remembering his neighbour for the last few years was leaving.

Carie picked up the box and stuffed it against his abdomen, nudging it at him until he begrudgingly took it from her.

“What is all of this?” he asked peering suspiciously into the box.

“Crap you’ve left in my apartment,” she huffed as she continued to bend up and down, picking up stuff from the floor -- a t-shirt, socks, energy bars, DVDs -- and tossing them in. “This is what I found in the living room, so far.”

He pulled out a mason jar half-filled with a clear liquid. “What is this?” 

“Vodka,” Carie replied. “I asked you one time if you had some vodka I could use to make spiked Toblerone brownies. You told me to bring my own container because for some stupid reason you just wouldn’t lend me the whole bottle.”

It probably was smart on his part, to be honest. Carie, despite being almost half his weight, was possibly the only woman who could drink him under the table when motivated. She attributed her high tolerance to the sips of 46-proof báijiǔ alcohol she snuck at her family’s Chinese New Year celebrations as a kid and teen.

“I remember your brownies,” Vasily grumbled as he contemplated the jar. “They made good hockey pucks.”

She seethed quietly, zipping her lips and looking aside, hiding the sting of truth.

“So vodka is mine?”

“Yes, Vasily,” Carie sighed, rolling her eyes.

“Jar is yours?”

“Whatever. Just keep...- ”

Vasily immediately put down the box and opened the jar. Carie watched bemused as he downed the vodka, his prominent Adam’s Apple bobbing with each gulp. Once having disposed of the liquid vigour, he smacked his lips, put the lid on the jar and handed it back to her.

She sighed and shook her head.

“And this,” he said, stooping down and picking up another item from the box. He held it out to Carie. “This is not mine.”

“That’s a cock ring,” she declared bluntly as she eyed the bumpy loop of black silicon. “That’s definitely yours. It was bought with your gift certificate, remember?”

Vasily had once gone on a shopping spree at an Adults Only store using a gift certificate he had inadvertently won at a Sex Expo which he never attended for a draw he never personally entered. Carie had submitted his name in “absentia” (it was only one entry per name), and lo and behold, he won. 

“Why do you have my cock ring?” Vasily asked.

“You… We…” Carie stammered as she recollected how the innocuous sex tool came to be in her possession, “Um, you had it on in my apartment…” 

“You put it on me.”

She paused with a near-invisible twitch curling the edge of her lip. “Then you took it off...”

“Then we fucked.”

“Yes, Vasily. Then we fucked,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. She wasn’t sure why that would be a point of reference for him considering how frequently they had done the naughty together during their time as neighbours. It was all one orgasmic blur to her. “Then you just left it at my place. I found it in a planter. Something actually sprouted from the centre of it...”

“So,” he replied, mildly piqued for once as he examined the cock ring, “where is everything else?”

“What ‘everything else’?” she asked.

“I bought more things with certificate.”

“Yeah,” she replied, hesitantly, “but I thought you gave those things to me as presents.”

Carie prefered to refer to how she ended up in possession of the goods as presents given to her by Vasily. Actually, it was more like she manipulated the big lug into surrendering them to her via an inspired blow job, though --despite Vasily being endowed as if blessed by the virility of Zeus-- she never considered sucking his cock to be an undesirable chore.

“I loaned them like vodka.”

“You 'loaned'…?” she said. Arms crossed again she cocked her head back and asked indignantly, “You want the vibrators back? Gonna use the rubber dildoes as nunchucks? Should I pay interest with lubricant?”

Vasily shrugged and pressed the cock ring against her forehead. “Then you keep. Matching set.”

As she swatted away his fingers, she grabbed the ring. “What am I supposed to do with this? Wrap it around one napkin?”

Actually, it could probably wrap around a hand towel.

“Is this all?” Vasily asked, ignoring her question and stooping to pick up the box.

“It’s what I could find so far. That’s just from the living room.”

“Okay,” he replied and turned around.

As the door began to unceremoniously close on her face again, Carie jammed it with her arm. “Hey! Is that it?” 

He pouted his lower lip for a second, then peered down at her and said, “What else?” 

“You’re just brushing me off? That’s it? Just a cock ring for the road and buh-bye? You've got nothing else for me?”

For a couple of seconds, she may as well have been standing in front of a stone statue. Then Vasily finally turned aside and dumped the contents of the cardboard box onto the floor. 

“Here,” he rumbled, handing her the box. “Is yours.”

The door closed.  

Carie’s head tilted to one side, then to the other, her mouth agape and her brows pinched so hard that they almost fused together. She was speechless.  

“You’re leaving?” a soft, meek voice said to her from down the hall. It was her next-door neighbour, the middle-aged Mrs.Cooper, standing in the hallway in her aquamarine polyester nightgown and slippers.

“Yeah,” Carie said, still frowning.

“Oh, and I haven’t had the chance to have you over for coffee, yet.” Mrs.Cooper had often proposed having Carie over to her apartment for coffee. Four years later, they were still stuck in the invitation stage.  

“That’s okay, Mrs.Cooper,” Carie replied, feeling her chest suddenly deflate. She trudged over to the woman and handed her the cock ring. “Here. This is a going-away present for you.”

As she shuffled back to her own apartment, she heard her call out from behind, “Why thank you! It’s so black and shiny! What is it?”

Carie turned into her doorway. “A collar for your cat.”

“Ohh, I’m not sure if it’ll fit over Mister Poof’s head… rather small, isn’t it?” Mrs.Cooper said as Carie closed her door.

“I don’t know,” Carie said to no one once in her apartment, “I always thought it was kind of big.”

-0-

Wednesday

The next evening, Carie was back in front of Vasily's apartment door this time carrying a canvas bag. Fortunately, his apartment was quiet, the siege music from the day before on hiatus. Just as she was about to knock on the door, it suddenly swung open. Her knuckles swiped at empty air, and her momentum carried her forward on her toes.

"Oh!" she exclaimed and steadied herself, blinking.

Vasily was already filling the doorway like some Belarusian obelisk, just as solid and cold.

"What?" he asked.

"Were you just standing there waiting for me on the other side of your door?"

"I don't wait for you."

Carie rolled her eyes behind her closed lids and shook her head. No, of course, Vasily wouldn't have given her any thought at all.

“What?” he repeated, impatience the only thing to crack his stoic veneer.

“Here,” she said, shoving him the bag. After Vasily peered into it for a few seconds with little visible reaction, she added, “It’s more of your stuff I found left in my place. The kitchen cupboards.”

He reached in and pulled out a sizable, purple, wrinkled piece of vinyl. This was enough to drag a mild look of curiosity upon his otherwise frozen face. He grumbled, “What the fuck is this?”

Carie's clenched lips puffed out slightly as she stymied a chuckle. She knew she had finally managed to needle her neighbour successfully whenever he swore. “What do you think it is?”

“Looks like Thanos’ limp dick.”

“It’s your inflatable bat.”

Clearly, that registered with him like an ant tiptoeing upon the trunk of an oak tree.

“Your bat. It goes with these things." She reached into the bag and pulled out a Zorro-type mask and a baseball hat with a dick emblem on it. “You wore them that night you did the strip show at the Fawns Over Foxes club. Remember?”

Vasily bore the conflicted face of a man who remembered yet was also trying not to show that he remembered.

Carie’s curvy smirk also revealed that she remembered, but she made no bones about it. There were so many “victories” that night: the fact that she won a bet between them and made Vasily do the strip act in front of dozens of screaming women; the sheer entertainment of watching him grind his near-naked, oiled-up, mass of brawn in the most ridiculous yet provocative attempt at “dancing"; all of that over-stimulation and excitement culminating in oily after-show sex in his van in a back alley.

“Why would I want this droopy bat?” he asked, holding up the deflated toy. 

While his question should have been significantly down the priority ladder, several rungs below "Why the hell would you kept these particular items in your kitchen?", it didn't really matter. Feeling unexpectedly disheartened, Carie shrugged and sighed, “I don’t know, Vasily. Fond memories?”

He matched her shrug with one of his own. “Okay,” he said, clearly intending it as “whatever”. 

Again he reached into the bag and pulled out a straight razor. He unsheathed it and stared at it, his dark fuzzy brow hanging heavily over his blue eyes.

“What’s the matter? That’s yours,” Carie remarked.

He peered at it.

“You made me shave your face with that in my apartment,” she continued, frowning incredulously. She couldn’t believe he didn’t remember that day. It was one of the first times they had interacted after he had moved into Apartment Seven.

He still eyed the blade suspiciously.

Carie folded her arms and poked her chin at him, narrowing her slender eyes on his blank mug.  “Then we fucked. For the first time.” Indeed, it was their first time they had sex, just after she had sheared his face to a fine porcelain smoothness. It was glorious. “Does that ring a bell?”

“Why is so dull?” he muttered.

The shiny length of steel was very worn and blunted, so much so that even to the naked eye there were obvious notches and dents along the formerly razor-thin blade.  

Carie’s face contorted, the annoyance bubbling just beneath the surface of her skin as she noted how fixated he was on the blade’s condition. She sputtered, “I… it… who cares?  I mean, I used it to scrape paint off the wall once or twice, maybe… and chop lettuce, possibly… but seriously… why do you care if it’s dull at this point?! You left it at my place for over three years! It’s not like you ever needed it or asked for it back.”

“Why give it back?” he asked.

“Because I’m clearing out your crap from my place!”

“Why?”

“Because I’m moving!” 

“When?”

“On Saturda…a-ahh...” Carie caught herself, pointing an accusatory finger at him as she trailed off into a scream, “... A-AAHH!!!”

He was doing it to her again. He was fucking doing it to her again.

She dragged her fingers back through her hair and clutched her head. Her exasperated groan continued as she pivoted around in her socks and marched back into her apartment slamming the door behind her. As she fumed and stomped around her apartment still mussing her hair, she stopped short of imagining him slitting his throat with the blade, but pictured vividly Thanos’ big purple cock reaming his ass.

-0-

Thursday

Carie was already outside her front door, leaning against the frame as Vasily’s heavy boots stamped their way up the stairs of the apartment to their floor announcing his arrival home. Arms crossed, another bag dangling from her fingers, she narrowed her dark eyes into slits as he turned the corner and walked down the hallway towards her.  

He jangled his bull-nose ring of keys in his big hand as he looked for his apartment key. As he came upon Carie, he immediately turned his large back to her and stood in front of his door, preparing to open it.

Her lips slanted aside as she observed him ignoring her. She finally barked at him just as he was turning his doorknob. “Hey!”

Vasily momentarily paused before slowly turning around with his trademark unaffected expression.

She flung the bag at him, hitting him square in the gut.  

Before he had a chance to rummage through it, she said, “Those are from my bedroom where we fucked. Your underwear you dropped before we fucked, condoms we didn’t use when we fucked, and for some God-forsaken reason, floss you used after we fucked.”

Vasily blinked at her and then at the bag.

“I’m moving Saturday,” she said as she turned around and walked back into her apartment. “Fuck you, Boris.”

Then she shut her door. Standing just inside the doorway, she listened as Vasily opened his door, stepped into his apartment and closed it softly.

-0-

Saturday

Carie stood in the apartment service elevator looking at the floor. She wobbled slightly at the knees as the old lift lurched unsteadily, even dropping for a second at the start before continuing up.  

“Goddamn elevator. One more thing I won’t miss about this place,” Carie grumbled as she held her cellphone to her ear.  

The elevator suddenly jolted to a halt, stuck between floors.  

"Shit,” Carie spat, cursing the vindictive contraption.

“What?” her friend Mona asked on the other end of the line.

She pushed the floor button repeatedly. “The elevator is stuck.”

“Oh, shoot. Press the emergency button.”

“Give it a second. It’ll get going again. It’ll probably fly through the roof next.”

“Sounds like a fun ride.”

Carie continued to mutter into the phone and jam the button with her finger. Thank god it didn’t break down while the movers were carrying down her furniture earlier.

Mona asked, “But you’re telling me you’re not gonna miss that cool, tall, masculine glass of Russian Vodka living across the hall from you?” 

“Pfft. ‘Russian Vodka’. More like a mug of borscht,” Carie scoffed. 

“Whatever, Sweetie. I'd imbibe whatever his tap is offering, anytime,” her friend remarked. Carie could picture her with a salacious grin. “I still can’t believe you were able to resist taking him out for a spin at least once during the entire time you’ve lived across from him.”

“Must be will power. Or maybe I’ve had no interest in fucking a guy who looks and smells like a bear who’s been hibernating in his own toilet for the winter,” Carrie said, trying to articulate as much of a sarcastic tone as possible to cover her tracks. 

She rolled her eyes and sighed to herself. She knew how attractive Mona and all her friends found the Bolshevik beefcake to be. Of course, Carie had “taken him for a spin”… many, many, many… many times. She just never made it public knowledge amongst her friends, because aside from the sex --acrobatic, animalistic, traction-inducing fucking, to be clear-- nothing really translated into a significant, meaningful relationship. It was as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. And like the guilt-ridden feelings that overtook her after consuming said sugary confection in one go, she felt just as shameful to admit how shallow she was to continuously surrender to rigorously boffing Vasily despite herself.   

"You seem particularly peeved with him today," Mona noted.

"Not just today. He's been stupid with me all month," Carie fumed as she paced in circles within the elevator. 

“I thought he was always this way with you from what you’ve told me. You’re not used to it by now?”

“Uhg! I can’t describe it.” Carie clenched her fist and shook it. “I want to rip his furry brows off his face.”

"If he's been so annoying, why didn't you just give him all of his stuff at once? Why bother just giving him a few things every day? Heck, why even knock? Just leave it outside his door?"

Carie bit her lip, slanting her mouth aside as she paused and stared at the grungy wall. "I just… whenever I found something, I just decided to bring it over already," she said.

"Kinda like poking a non-Russian bear with a stick, ain't it?"

Carie wasn't sure what she was going to say, but as her mouth crept open, the elevator wheezed alive, then rattled and lurched upward, finally resuming its ascension. She decided to just drop it with a terse, "Whatever."

As she stepped out of the elevator, Carie thought for a moment how much it reminded her of her white elephant of a relationship --as well as the sex-- she had with Vasily: a raucous, rough, dirty, up and down, somewhat unpredictable affair that really just left a person in the same place they started. And sometimes you had to get off early and walk the rest of the way up.  

“So you’re all cleared out?” Mona asked. 

“Yeah. The moving van just left. All my belongings are locked, loaded, and on their way to the new digs, thank god,” she said with measured excitement and relief. “Just gotta lock things up and drop the key off with the landlord.”

“Meet you this afternoon at your place for the unpacking party, right?”

“Yeah, we start with the chardonnay and don’t stop unpacking."

As she approached her apartment, she paused and looked towards Vasily’s door. It was unusually silent from within. She hadn’t bothered to stop by to drop anything else off on Friday. For a moment, she considered knocking on his door.

Instead, she just went into her apartment.

“It’s so weird seeing this place so empty,” she remarked.

Mona scoffed, “You mean so clean?”

Carie rolled her eyes and smirked. “Yeah, that too.”

She walked to the middle of the living room. As she looked around, the wood floors squeaked beneath her feet. She bounced on her toes, the floor creaking like a wheezing frog.

"I never noticed how squeaky my floors were," she said.

"Probably it was the area rug and coffee table that muffled it," Mona noted. She giggled, "Sounds like someone doing the dirty in bed."

"Well, goodbye creaky floor," Carie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She looked around her apartment. "Goodbye murky window and ugly parking lot view. See ya later, broken down stove."

"How could it be broken down when you barely used it?" Mona asked. "Properly, I mean."

Carie continued turning around in the living room offering her farewell address to the fridge, the bedroom, the bathroom, and the ceiling lamp. She finally faced the apartment doorway, staring through the wood and across the hallway to Apartment Seven.

She sighed deeply then uttered some rare Mandarin, "Zaijan, Boris."

"Who's Boris?" Mona asked.

"I am not Boris," Vasily said, suddenly stepping out from behind the bedroom door.

"Holy shit!" Carie yelped eyes widening and jumping back, startled. "Vasily!"

He nodded once. "Tak."

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Carie demanded, pointing at him with her cell phone.

He shrugged. "Door was open."

"You can't just stroll your dumb ass into my apartment whenever you want!"

"Not your apartment anymore, I think," he quipped.

"Oh, haha. So glad you finally remembered I was moving. Worried I was going to leave without giving you your goodbye finger? Here you go." She flipped him the bird.

"I came to give you stuff," he said, turning back toward the bedroom.

Carie shook her head, taken aback. "What… what 'stuff'?"

He emerged carrying a cardboard box. "Stuff that is yours," he replied. 

"What the hell is this?"

Vasily placed the box on the floor at her feet then stepped back. As she continued to gawk and seethe at him, he motioned to it with his square chin. "Look. Yours."

Carie huffed, flabbergasted. Her brows were pinched so tight, it hurt the bridge of her nose. She slapped her phone onto the kitchen island and picked up the box, also tossing it aside on the counter before rifling through the contents.

She sifted past a few dirty shot glasses, a softball, a brush, and a pirated DVD set of “Friends” she had bought for a couple of bucks in Chinatown years ago and tried to force Vasily to watch with her for a few weeks. She removed a pair of rainbow-striped knee socks and set them aside. Then she took out a plastic bag and looked inside. Blinking, she asked, “Are these…”

“Panties.”

“My panties?” 

“They are not my panties,” Vasily replied dryly. 

There was actually a small collection of them in the bag. Carie asked, “Why do you have my panties in a bag?”

“You left them here every time we…”

“Yes, I can figure out why I left them here… ” Carie interrupted. She pulled one out --a silky, purple floral number-- and held it up to his face. “... because they’re all torn.”

Vasily had a penchant for ripping Carie’s panties off of her when they got caught up in the throes d’amour. It was his kind of his “thing”, a penchant for his hydraulic-like fingers to autonomously tear apart the delicate material like wet tissue. To be honest, she should have billed him the cost, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t find the crisp sound and brute sensation of her panties being snapped from her hips before coitus a guilty turn on.  

“I’m asking you why would you keep my torn panties?” Carie asked.

“They are cleaned,” he noted.

“Oh, really? Let me rephrase that then: Why would you clean and keep my torn panties?”

If his brain was churning for a reasonable answer, it was impossible to tell by looking at him.  Instead, he just offered cryptically, “How do I give them back if I did not keep them?”

“Vasily!” Carie spat, “Why the hell would I want torn panties?!”

After an obvious pause, he shrugged and replied, “Fond memories,” sounding like a slowed, warped version of Carie’s own words.

Her mouth already open, she managed to stop herself. She was sure she was standing on the precipice of a pit she had no interest in spelunking. Better to just imagine Vasily was a pervert who sniffed her panties nightly and let it go. 

She continued foraging. Next, she pulled out a bottle and frowned, noticing it was nearly empty.

"Massage oil," Vasily said.

Carie once had pressured Vasily into giving her a massage in his apartment. After a couple of misfires, he went all out and procured a massage table, a giant bottle of massage oil, and an essential oil infuser and transformed his place into a mini spa. 

With the help of some YouTube videos, it turned out that his griddle-sized, strong, warm hands were perfect implements of muscle manipulating bliss when applied upon Carie's peach-soft skin and petite body. Needless to say, after he kneaded and fingered out an unforgettably gushing orgasm from her, she reciprocated with a sexual tussle that tested the stress capacity of the massage table.

It was supposed to be the first of a series of massage treatments. Instead, like everything else between them, it was forgotten. 

"I can read the label," Carie remarked. “Isn’t this something you bought?”

“You used. You keep.”

Carie eyed the contents again. "I thought there was a lot more oil still left. You only massaged me once."

"You used rest of it,' Vasily replied.

"I did? When? How?"

"You came drunk at 3 a.m. Insisted to make fish and chips." 

"'Feeshy cheeps’?" 

"Fish and chips," he repeated, tamping down his thick accent.

She hesitated then spoke carefully, "You let me in to cook... fish and chips... at 3 a.m. ... with massage oil?"

Vasily nodded once.

"And you just watched me do this?" Carie asked.

"No… I went back to bed."

As Carie blinked and took a moment to ruminate over the events of her late-night fish fry, her jaw unconsciously shifted in a slow chewing motion. "What the hell did I use for fish?"

"I did not wear cup for hockey game next day."

Carie's face froze for five seconds to digest his words, then instantly struck a gag look. "Auhh! I ate your cup?!"

“You have had my cock in your mouth,” he noted, “why would cup be problem?”

“I can’t believe I ate your cup!”

"You tried to eat cup," he corrected, pulling the extra-large, fried oil-stained sports cup from the box. It had a few attempted chew marks along the edge. "Here. You can keep."

Carie glared impotently as he plopped her aborted dinner in her hand. She regarded it for a moment, then looked at the rest of the mishmash of things on the kitchen counter. 

"Why are you giving me this junk?" she asked.

He shrugged. 

"What made you think that I wanted this crap?" Her volume knob ratcheted up quickly. The numbness she had been mired in moments ago seemed to have just incubated her annoyance, and now it was cracking wide open.

Vasily glanced at the items then back towards her, unmoved. His broad chest visibly expanded with air and then he sighed heavily before beginning to turn away.

“Wait a minute!” yanking him back by the forearm to face her. “Now you’re just gonna stroll back to your apartment and shut the door? That’s it?”

His block jaw set like cement as he glared at her. “I gave you box.”

“Of crap!” she snapped. She plucked some of the items from the box and flung them at him one-by-one. “You gave me a box of fucking crap!”

Most of the items --even the softball-- bounced off Vasily’s chest like the brick wall it mimicked, although the panty she threw at his face managed to catch on his ear and one of her socks draped over his shoulder.

Vasily muttered through clenched teeth from the side of his mouth, “Why are you so angry?” 

“Why have you been such a fucking asshole for the past month?!” 

“I have not been fucking asshole,” he said, the volume in his voice rising rapidly. He pulled the panty from his ear and flung it to the floor.

“You have! Ever since I told you I was moving, you’ve been acting like a piece of shit to me.”

“You have been shit to me!” he snapped back, leaning into and over her and thumping his chest with his finger.

“First you ignore me, then you treat me like crap!” she spat.

“You treat me like crap and ignore me!”

“Stop just repeating everything I say! What the fuck are you? Some stupid, yapping Russian parrot?” Carie shot back.

“I… am… NOT... Russian!” he bellowed. “But you… you are like little squirrel! Non-stop Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi! Always grabbing nuts!” Vasily made with the chirping fingers motion.

“It’s ‘gathering’ nuts, dipshit, and fuck your red Commie ass anyway!” she shouted. "We’ve been neighbours for how many years now!  We’ve fucked god knows how many times! And all you can do is grunt like a dumbfuck neanderthal when I’m leaving? I mean, God knows I don’t expect some fucking TED Talk from you, but you can say more than ‘What? What? What?’”

“What?” he asked. Her rapid-fire speech was clearly leaving him behind.  

“Fuck you!”

Vasily’s face contorted. He shouted back, pointing at the door, “Go! Fuck you!”

“I’ll leave when I goddamn want to! Fuck you!” she hollered again before rattling off a litany of rapid-fire Mandarin curses, cutting through the air between them like a high-pitched buzzsaw.

Not to be outdone, Vasily thundered right back at her with a quagmire of vitriolic words in  Belarusian, Russian and possibly Swedish (influenced by some foreign language ‘medical’ films he had watched). 

For the next two minutes, the walls and floors of the empty apartment echoed and vibrated with their fiery exchange. Despite their height difference, their faces were just a few centimetres apart --Vasily leaning down and Carie on her tiptoes-- as they shouted at each other till their throats were raw and their faces as red as ripe apples. They drained the breath from their lungs till they were left gasping and panting at each other, eyes twitching as they burned their frustrations into each other in sudden seething silence.

After a long moment, Vasily leaned his face towards Carie, his hands reaching out to grab her shoulders, his lips shaping into a glossy pucker.

“Wait,” Carie said, quickly holding her hand up in his face.

He froze, his lips still in smooch-mode.

She closed her eyes and shook her head dismissively. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Vasily’s dark brows tugged towards one another as he frowned. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? Why are you flopping your stupid lips at me like that?” Carie leaned back and away, eyeing him, “I mean, what do you think you were… we were… going to do right now?”

Slowly he eased back upright, still fixing a wary eye on her.  

“Sorry, is this supposed to be the time when we have sex?” She checked her wrist for an imaginary watch. “It’s fuck o’clock, is it?”

“Fuck... oh… ?” Consternation twisted his face like a whirlygig.

“We argue then fuck out our frustrations and annoyances with each other? Is that it?”

Vasily punched out his lower lip as he looked aside. He wasn’t sure if that was a multiple-choice question.

“Because that pattern has grown really, really boring,” Carie continued. She sighed and shook her head. “Seriously, we’ve been doing this for years now. Argue. Fuck. Argue. Fuck. It doesn’t stop.”

The tension in Vasily’s hard facial features seemed to dissipate as she spoke. He fixed her with an attentive gaze as he listened, the line on his lips drawing taut. 

“We’ve gone nowhere for so long, Vasily,” Carie said, feeling a tiny swell in her raw throat, “and it’s time for me to leave. I need to move on.”

Vasily leaned away, a noticeable slump in his normally broad shoulders.

As she spoke, she realized just how drained she felt, how resigned she was. Her chest hurt and the muscles in her face ached. She looked down and away and shook her head. “I’m leaving,” she repeated, with a soft, incredulous chuckle.

Vasily stood silent.

She arched her brows upward as she looked and nodded at him with a clear resolve in her dark eyes. “It ends here, now, okay? This last chapter is done. Our story is finished. I’m leaving.”

His deep blue eyes blinked at her, then looked aside. Carie followed his gaze. The bright golden haze of a late morning sun breached the open window. The two stood quietly staring out, and they sighed simultaneously. 

Without another word, Carie turned towards the front door.

"I will miss you."

Carie paused, her eyes blinking wide. She tilted her ear up as she turned around slowly. It was as if she had heard the unrecognizable voice of a stranger. "What?"

Vasily was still looking through the window when she saw him, but he turned to face her. The hard features of his face had impossibly softened somewhat, the bear suddenly looking more like a lost cub. He cast his deep blue eyes down and aside and repeated, "I will miss you."

Though he spoke softly, he had such a natural baritone voice that the words were firm and clear and resounded deep within Carie.

She shook her head slowly. "No, you won't."

"I will."

“No. You won’t,” she insisted.

“I will.”

"Will you just st-… what are those?"

Carie suddenly noticed a clump of small yellow paper --post-it notes-- at Vasily's feet. He stooped to pick them up and hand them to her.

"These are...  " she paused as she leafed through the scraps of paper carefully adhered together. They were the short notes they had left on each other's doors over the years, many of them sly invitations to one another's apartments. It included Carie's very first note: a drunken scrawl offering to shave Vasily's scruffy face. "You kept all of them?"

He offered a partial nod and a shrug. 

She flipped through them again, unable to withhold an incredulous little grin from appearing on her lips. Part of her wanted to ask why, but she feared going down Vasily's conversational rabbit hole again. Besides, she had a good idea of why he kept them, though she could hardly believe it.

"Someone's sentimental," she teased with a sing-song lilt, eyeing him with a spiked brow.

Vasily pouted his lips and shrugged as he looked aside. "I am not sentimental," he declared but lacking his usual sharpness.

Carie chuckled and sighed, a refreshing breath flowing through her. She covered her eyes and shook her head, then she regarded him with a grin then beckoned him with a nod of her chin. "Come here."

Vasily's sceptical frown reappeared. "Why?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Will you just shut up, you big sissy, and get over here?"

A single stride of his long legs was enough to get him standing over her barely a couple of feet away. One hand on her hip, she curled a finger of the other at him. "Closer, Boris."

Hesitantly, Vasily bent his knees and leaned down. 

Carie then pointed to the side. "Look that way," she said. When he finally turned his head, she gave him a quick but tender kiss on his cheek. 

Vasily didn't move for a moment but then turned his head back. His face was a blank slate. "Is that it?"

Smirking, she placed her hands against the sides of his face and lifted herself to the balls of her feet. She planted a smooch on his forehead.  

"Better?" she asked.

Vasily rocked his head side to side while still in her hands. "Meh," he said, "Is okay if we were being neighbours a couple of months…"

Carie interrupted his flapping mouth with her soft lips, enveloping them first over his bottom lip, then over his top lip before kissing him with a full-on press.  When she pulled back from the kiss, his lips were still pursed.  

“Was that good?” she asked.

“Good,” he replied.

“Fucking good?”

A sly grin cracked his lips. “Fucking good.” 

Vasily always got a little extra kick of adrenalin when Carie affected a 'come hither' demeanour when she said the word 'fuck'.

"Let's get this over with, okay?" she giggled, stroking his cheek. "I still have to finish moving this afternoon."

Vasily eyed her. "You're moving?"

Before she could protest, he pushed his lips against hers. They inhaled deeply as they kissed long and hard. 

Carie felt his strong hands and arms gather her up and raise her from the floor. She kicked her heel back as he held her aloft as easily as if carrying a pillow. 

She melted her mouth over his, skirting the tip of her tongue along the front of his lips before slipping it through. It found a willing playmate and slowly their tongues entwined and slid around one another.

Vasily eased her down to the floor. As he did, he pulled her top over her head and cast it aside.  Carie teased up the bottom of his shirt as well and he quickly peeled it off. 

His large, rugged body was very familiar to her yet she had never grown tired exploring it. Leaning down, she traced the defined trenches of his abs, first with her fingertips then with her tongue, swirling it into his navel. At the same time, she eased apart the button of his jeans with a dainty twist of her fingers.

Before she had the chance to drop to her knees with the intent to tug down his pants and underwear along the way, Vasily held her up firmly by the arms. She looked up to see him cock his thick brow and give his chin a slight shake.

It was Vasily who steadily eased downward, stopping at each of Carie's erogenous floors to apply unexpectedly tender kisses and licks of sensual stimulation: her lips, her neck, her breasts and belly. All the while his warm, heavy hands caressed the curve of her waist.

Carie looked downward with Vasily kneeling before her, her lips parted as she breathed, curling locks of her long black hair behind her ear. She shifted her hips and legs as he slowly brought her pants down and off her feet.

Vasily stroked and circled his fingertips against the fine material along the front of her panties. Then he slipped his fingers under the thin straps along her hips, twisting them around. He looked up, grinning.

"Looking to add to your collection?" Carie teased.

Carefully, almost reverently, Vasily's big fingers eased her panties down her smooth legs. He shook his head. "I only keep torn ones."

Silently impressed by his surprising display of self-control, Carie barely hadn't a moment to respond as his lips descended on her soft, clean mound. She shuddered and cooed softly as he scoped her lips and moistened her petals with precise, slick licks and darts of his tongue.

"Oh my God, Vasily," she gasped, her eyes closing and her head listing back. She allowed him to guide one of her legs over his shoulder --further exposing her quivering quim to his meticulous pleasuring-- and felt his hands secure her lithe body with a firm grip upon her smooth, round bottom.

Vasily's long, wet tongue had always been a source of relentless delights, but his usual mode of operation was to whirl it around like an errant tornado, slathering it upon her flesh till she felt as if she'd just stepped out of a bath. This was a much, much more focused effort. His tip was zeroed in, meticulous, slow and deliberate as it probed along and within her.

Caught off guard by his pinpoint precision and patience, it didn't take long before Carie firmly grasped along his head and shoulder in order to steady herself. Seconds later his tongue sent her over the peak with an orgasmic rush. She ached a sultry breath as she came, “Oh, fuck…”

Vasily continued to massage his mouth against her, sopping up her wet offerings with his tongue. He held her steady as she shook and shuddered through the aftershock of her climax, then slowly he eased her leg off his shoulder.

Taking a moment to savour and recover, Carie massaged his tattoo-covered shoulders and back as she stood over him. "You Bolshevik dog," she said, “that was an interesting change of pace.” 

Vasily looked up, casually caressing his fingertips against her now damp pussy lips. “Making fond memory,” he said, grinning.

“Didn’t know you had it in you,” she purred, joining him on the floor as she knelt down. “Let’s see what else you got in you.”

Vasily leaned back with his hand flattened against the floor behind him, his entire body a hard plank of muscle exposed to Carie as she made her way down from his lips. His taut flesh barely flinched against her tongue as she flicked it against his chest, his nipples, and his belly. All the while she rubbed her small palm against the crotch of his jeans, feeling the tough denim tighten against the burgeoning pressure of something growing hard and long underneath.

Pushing apart his fly and releasing his generous cock from his pants and underwear, she quickly gathered it in her hand and stroked it steadily. Carie bit her lower lip as she looked up grinning and asked, “You know what I’ll miss most about you?”

“My personality?”

Carie chuckled, easing her hand up and down, “Yeah, that too.”

For the next few minutes, her mouth and tongue indulged in an intimate farewell with Vasily’s solid shaft. She shifted the broad head around in her mouth, pressing it against her palette and cheeks. With soft hums and measured gasps and slurps, she moved from his tip down the length of his shaft, kissing and licking the rippling flesh, easing it up to cup his soft sack in her mouth and give it an indulgent suck.

Low groans of satisfaction rumbled deep within Vasily’s barrel chest. Carie grinned to herself as she continued to stroke her mouth over him. She never tired of her ability to draw responses of satisfaction from the usually stoic big man.  

With the slow-moving glow of sunlight now casting them in a perfectly centred golden spotlight, Carie climbed onto his solid lap, spreading her soft thighs over him. Holding one another close, with their foreheads touching and their eyes locked, Vasily’s strong hands settled her gently down. She closed her eyes and shuddered through a satisfied grin, licking her lips as she felt his tip nuzzle into her followed by the steady length of his shaft. It felt like it took forever for her to fully take him in, yet she wanted it to last even longer.

She was really going to miss this.

Seemingly resolved to maintain this slow, steady pace they had set for themselves, their bodies rolled together in remarkable, beautiful unison. Carie swayed her lithe frame, grinding her crotch along Vasily's lap, deliberately, provocatively.  He reciprocated, tightening his abs as he raised and lowered his hips with the ease of an ocean wave.

"Oh, fuck, Vasily," Carie sighed, and swooned into his body, pressing her small breasts into his firm chest. They locked their mouths together, lips massaging, tongues slipping and sliding trading spit and passion.

Their rhythmic motions intensified steadily, slowly, marked by the increasingly noisy groaning and creaking of the wood floor beneath them. 

Carie dragged her fingernails down Vasily's rugged back, leaving trails of crimson along his tough, perspiration covered flesh. His large, throbbing cock churned within her with machine-like precision sending a thrilling pulse along her spine. 

All the while, Vasily continued to surprise her. Usually, they'd be thrashing about at this point, banging with abandon, swearing at each other with fervour in their mad rush to reach even higher sexual heights. Not this time. This time he was focused and attentive with his undulating motions, almost delicate. He gazed at her with a determination and longing that she felt as deep within her as his probing shaft. 

Vasily leaned back and shifted till he was lying prone on the floor. His hands clamped securely to her hips as she rode upon him. Carie looked down, her gaze soft but alert, taking in the appreciative look in his own eyes. She ran her fingers all over his chest and belly, memorizing his rugged body by touch, as she continued to rock her hips and massage her pelvis into him.

Their duet of moans and groans began to peak, filling the empty apartment with a haunting echo of their desires. 

"Vasily, uhh…" Carie swallowed and gasped, her head listing back so far her hair fell back and brushed against Vasily's legs. 

Vasily responded with thirsty gasps and guttural groans of his own. His hands reached up, groping her breasts tenderly before caressing her neck and cheek. His thumb brushed against her glossy lips and she took the opportunity to nibble and suck upon his digit.

Carie finally fell forward, his body accepting her full weight easily. She kissed him hard, locking his face in place with her hands and arms. Back and forth she pushed her hips, jamming his cock deeper and deeper, and he matched her fire with rolling thrusts of his hips. 

Feeling his hands clamped against her butt, his frisky fingers tickling and circling the bud of her tight anus, Carie groaned languidly into his mouth, flushing his throat with her hot breath. God, this brute still knew where and how to push her buttons. 

After a slow and patient start, they charged the finish line with a lurid rush of energy. The hazy sunlight lit their bodies both inside and out. Carie rolled her hips with rhythmic motions that would be the envy of a belly dancer while below her, Vasily drew on the strength of his hard muscles to buck his crotch up with deliriously potent thrusts. 

Carie called to him between lavish strokes of her tongue along his mouth, urging him for more. She swept back her damp hair, only for it to fall back over their faces, and yelped and giggled when he slapped her butt with his hand before digging his fingers into her pliant moon.

Raising her head and drilling him with a fiery gaze, she gasped, "Who are you going to miss?"

"You," he grunted without hesitancy. 

"Tell me again," she urged, pulsating her hips down against him

"I will miss you," he huffed. His face was red and dripping sweat.

"You'd fucking better," she breathed and wrapped her mouth over his one more time.

Only moments later, Vasily surged his swollen cock upwards with one last thrust almost throwing Carie off of him. Carie felt his massive body stiff under her, then captured his heavy groan in her mouth as he unloaded spurts of cum deep inside of her.

With the sensation of his lengthy shaft pulsating within, Carie announced her own climax with an extended, pitchy moan and a rush of wetness spilling from her puffed pussy lips. She continued rolling her hips, revelling in the intimate feel of his slippery, slicked cock, groaning and cooing with unhindered satisfaction. 

Carie dropped down onto Vasily, lying against his body, warm and sticky with perspiration. Her head on his chest, she smiled as she listened to his healthy heartbeat. It was also nice to feel the gentle rise and fall of his broad chest, and his fingers gently stroking the length of her black hair.

"I'm not taking your cup," she said, and then giggled when his body shook with laughter beneath her.

They kissed again, kindling a spark, but finally, Carie patted him on the chest and said, "I gotta go."

"Why?"

"Because my friend is going to be waiting for…" Carie hesitated, frowning.

"What?"

“Oh, shit.” She quickly got up from the floor, went to the kitchen counter and picked up her phone. For several seconds she held her breath, then uttered, "Mo…-?"

"Those are really weird sounding floors," Mona interrupted. 

Carie covered her eyes, feeling a renewed blush in her cheeks and neck.

"Would the wood happen to be from Russia cuz I swear it has an accent."

"Fuck."

"Exactly."

"Mona…"

"Yeah, you know what? I'm going on ahead to your new place. The wine will be poured and waiting for you. Then we can have a nice long chat about your… um… will power."

Mona hung up leaving Carie to grind her teeth behind a rigid grimace.

A few minutes later, as Carie and Vasily finished dressing, she nodded towards the box and said, "You can toss that stuff. I'll just keep the socks." 

"Maybe I sell as mystery box on eBay," Vasily said.

She eyed him. He looked serious. It was even odds that he was. Her neighbour for the last few years was so weird, she thought.

"So..." she said, standing in front of him and looking up. She wasn't sure how to follow up.

"Don't piss on walls," he said.

Carie blinked, then chuckled. With a sigh, she picked up a pen and one of the post-it notes and wrote on the back of it on the kitchen counter. She turned back towards Vasily holding the piece of paper at her chin as she regarded him for a moment. Finally, she handed it to him. “Here,” she said, “it’s my address. Suite 508.”

“I know,” he said.

“You do?”

“It was on floor plan you showed me.”

Carie looked down and laughed softly as she shook her head. 

“Well, Boris,” she said, “maybe drop by to say hello sometime, okay?”

Vasily nodded once, his lower lip protruding forward a touch. Suddenly his phone rang and he took it out of his pocket to answer. “Yes? Wendel. Yes.”

Carie regarded him for a moment. She could hear Wendel on the other end of the line announce something loudly like “Congratulations!”, but she shrugged it off.  Vasily probably won a side of pork or something. 

As he continued to talk to Wendel, Carie smiled and turned towards the door, brushing his forearm with her fingers as she walked past him.

“Wait,” Vasily said, suddenly taking her wrist. He continued to hold the phone at his ear.

Carie looked back and up still smiling. She folded her hands over his and slipped him the key to Apartment Eight. “Lock the door behind you and drop the key off with the landlord for me?”

Vasily looked at the worn, tarnished key and nodded. “Goodbye, Carie,” he said, and let her hand go.

“Bye, Vasily.”

Carie left him standing in the apartment and walked down the hall. She knocked on Mrs Cooper’s door as she passed by, but didn’t stop. As she made her way down the stairs one last time, a comforting warmth filled her chest and a smile eased onto her lips as left she left the building.

-0-

A month later...

It was about noon on a Sunday afternoon when Carie finally roused from luxurious slumber, and a half-hour later, she climbed out of her bed. After stretching like a spoiled cat, she slipped on a pink kimono-style mini robe and a pair of rainbow socks then strolled out of her bedroom. 

From the kitchen, with a coffee in hand, she made her way through her living room and out onto the balcony. It was a beautiful day by the lakefront, but she didn’t feel guilty about missing half of it. She turned to look back at her condo to admire it. It was a tiny place --she knew some friends’ garages which were bigger than her entire suite-- but it had a gorgeous view and it was all hers… and the bank’s… but almost mostly hers.

Her phone rang and she high-stepped back into her condo to answer.  

“Hello?”

“You’re not going to meet me for lunch, are you?” Mona asked on the other end.

Carie winced. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she rattled off. She could hear her friend’s eyes roll in their sockets. “Next lunch is on me.”

“I’m hoping you’re going to say you stood me up for a guy,” Mona said, “but I’m guessing you’re still in the honeymoon phase with your new place?”

“I just love my condo!” Carie announced with glee. “I want to stay inside here forever!”

Mona sighed audibly on the other end. “So have you met your neighbours, yet?” she asked.

“A few. Not many,” she conceded. She was one of the first to move into the new building.  Over the next few weeks, more and more residents arrived steadily.

“What about the person across the hall from you?”

Carie looked towards her door. “Not sure. I think they just moved in yesterday or the day before, but I didn’t see them.”

As she spoke and thought of the tenant in the suite across from hers, she felt a sudden and unexpected pang deep in her gut, an odd sense of emptiness and longing. She continued to stare at her door lost in thought when loud, raucous music suddenly blared at her from the other side.

“What the hell?” both she and Mona said in unison. A heavy techno beat threatened to rattle her door off of its hinges.

“Where is that coming from?” Mona asked.

"I think it's my new neighbour across the hall!" Carie shouted. "Hold on for a sec!" 

"Go over there and tell him to turn it down or you'll fuck him!"

"Oh, shut up!" she shot back and opened her door.

Indeed, the music was coming from Suite 507 directly across from her. Great.

A deep frown sharpened along her face as she tightened her fist and prepared to march over and pound on the door. Then she noticed something stuck to her door. She blinked at it curiously.  

It was a yellow post-it note. 

Eyes narrowed, she paused for a second, then peeled the note from the door. As she read the short message, the edges of her lips curled wider with every beat of her quickening heart.  

“Carie?” Mona asked, “You there?”

“Call you later,” she said. After hanging up, she ran back into her suite to get a bottle of vodka, two shot glasses, a razor and shaving cream. 

-0-

If you've followed along with the various Carie and Vasily stories over the years, I apologise for any inconsistencies in the characters, but I hope you enjoyed them for the romps that they are as much I enjoyed writing them. -L8lastnight