'tis the damn season

Four: the last great american dynasty

"She had a marvellous time, ruining everything"

"You guys do realize the Russian language uses and entirely different alphabet than we do right?" I ask. "This is going to be far from easy."

Steve and Dustin both just turn to look at me, their eyes wide. I guess they didn't know.

We moved from sitting out in the store, to the back room of Scoops where there was a table and chairs for breaks I would assume, and a whole bunch of storage.

We each take a seat, Dustin putting his backpack on the table before pulling out the recorder and my Russian translation book.

"Alright let's hear it," Steve says.

Dustin played the tape, and once it was over it made me realize just how difficult this was going to be. We'd have to listen and sound out what was being said, write it down as best as we could, figure out what Russian letters make what sounds, and and then find a word in the book that sort of resembled the word we'd come up with. It'll take ages.

There were a couple words in the recording I recognized though. "Can you play it again?"

We listen again, and I hear it clearer this time. "Blue and yellow," I say. "I heard blue and yellow in there."

Steve looks at me almost shocked. "You can speak Russian?"

"Duh that's why she's here," Dustin states.

I shrug. "I can't speak it, I just know a few common words."

Dustin plays it again, and I could see a lightbulb go off above Steve's head.

"That music sounds familiar," he says after a second.

"The words Steve, we need to listen to the words," Dustin says, shaking his head.

"Can I help?" Robin asks, appearing in the room out of no where, looking between the three of us.

"Absolutely not," Dustin answers. "We can't risk compromising another person. What we're doing could already be dangerous."

I doubted what we were doing would be considered dangerous. I'm sure it was nothing. A little prank some kids thought would be funny to randomly send to peoples walkie talkies.

"I'm fluent in four languages you know, I could help," Robin adds.

"How do you know what we're—,"

Robin cuts Dustin off. "You speak very loudly. C'mon I know, Spanish and French and Italian and I've been in band for twelve years— my ears are tiny geniuses," she explains. "And I'm bored, Steve you've been on a break for the past hour it's your turn to scoop ice cream while I translate."

Steve looks unhappy with her trade.

"You are technically supposed to be working," I shrug, siding with Robin.

Honestly I was just looking for a reason to get him out of the room. It was weird sitting next to him as if everything was just perfectly fine.

Steve sighs, but reluctantly stands up. "Fine, you translate. You'll probably be more help than I would be anyways."

Robin smiles, taking his seat while Steve leaves the room to the front of the store.

"Alright, where do we start?" Robin asks, looking almost excited.

****

An hour went by and we were still pretty much in the same spot as we started. Robin and Dustin were both smart and we were able to figure out the Russian alphabet pretty easily; we were trying to figure out what each letter sounds like now, and trying to connect the sounds with what we were hearing in the recording. I was honestly getting pretty frustrated at this point. I couldn't tell you how many times we'd listened to the recording. It had to be hundreds.