Flaws: Vedmykiv

[8] A Cornered Badger

IT WAS A RARE sunny day. Oxana and I strolled under the tall evergreens that inhabited a rather enchanting park next to a nearby body of water. It was a boulevard of sorts and it was different from any other area I had seen in my time in Vedmykiv. I had grown used to the working-class charcoal-tainted family neighborhood and while I entertained myself watching the neighbors, the merchants, the farmers at the bazaar, the women, and the few drunks that lived in relative peace thanks to the fact that their town barely showed on a map, I was pleasantly surprised we could still find romance under the winter sun. It helped that for about twenty miles in each direction, no armed contingent dared to move any closer. Vedmykiv was in what some began to call the buffer zone.

We found a playground, and I pushed Oxana on the swing set for a while. She wore aviators and a floral headband that stayed true to her rock and roll blues. It was going well. I even tried to cut a wild sunflower that grew on a patch of green, but it wouldn't come out, so I left the flower there, broken, torn, bent at the steam, still rooted to the ground it belonged and where it soon would die.

"Push me again!" Oxana shouted. "Push me, push me, push me!"

I concluded I wasn't being played. As I came up with the perfect plan to take a picture of that separatist leader surrounded by strippers, a plan Igor managed to orchestrate, one he was using me for, I still had a few days to play house with my loving mining town internet wife.

Oxana's mom had asked me if I was nervous before I left for Ukraine. I had been packing when the phone rang. Even though we didn't know each other, she had called to wish me good luck—and to check on what kind of weirdo would be sharing the bed with her twenty-two-year-old baby girl thousands of miles away. There had to be a reason why I liked Oxana. She was raised by a mamma duck who gave a fuck.

"I've never been so focused on one thing in my life, and that is to get to Ukraine, Mrs. Kolluchy," I lied. I was nervous only because I had to say goodbye to Lillian.

"And to meet my daughter," she responded. I could hear where Oxana got her wit.

"And to meet your daughter, ma'am, yes." And to protect her, take care of her, and love her, I wanted to add. But I didn't. I was not nervous about the trip. No. Oxana had called me the man of her dreams. It was a sure thing.

That same afternoon I met up with a friend at the usual spot where we had had countless chicken wings and pitchers full of drunken college years. "You and that girl, whatever her name is, I hope you both find happiness, but I am sorry for her."

"What do you mean?" I said, alarmed and disappointed. I was the brave one, the crazy one, the one daring enough, and valiant enough to pull something like this. Was I not?

"You are a shallow man, Joaquin. You think you are in love. You want to be in love. Your desire for an epic love story clouds what's in front of you, and I wish you could see it. You think of yourself so highly you forget to think about the rest. As soon as you get bored with her, you will dump her ass, and she will have to pick up the broken pieces."

"Bullshit," I had responded. Like an echo, it followed me into a shivering hellhole from where I was slowly crawling out. It had to be bullshit, had it not? But then, they say when one door closes, another one opens, so why was I caught in the middle? Was I in the hallway? Was I under the threshold? Was I doomed to stand forever in limbo? That uncertainty that turned into doubt kept me second-guessing my every move. It was exhausting. So I needed to get moving.

I had found something worth photographing, something that would give me my great story. All I had to do was to sneak into the heaviest guarded strip club in the world with my camera tucked under my huge balls and find the separatist wackadoodle with an underage-looking stripper sitting on his lap. I would make headlines. I would make big headlines. If I could press just a bit harder, all would be worth it. All the sacrifices would have been for something. I am not boring. I couldn't be. I was the man of her dreams.