Chapter 20 #2
“You, too,” Sasha mumbles, since he should probably use his words at some point instead of drooling.
Danny grins, then glances over Sasha’s shoulder. “Wanna introduce me to your mom?”
Sasha had almost forgotten she was there, and he has a moment of panic, replaying everything he and Danny just said and did over the last few seconds.
He doesn’t think they were being obvious, and it’s not like Alina would have understood them anyway…
but he’s still relieved when he turns around and sees her hanging further back, waiting for them to finish.
“Mama, eta Danny,” he says, bringing him over. “Danny, eta—ah, sorry. Uh, Danny, this is my mother, Alina Gavrilovna.”
He’s glad he’d warned her about the hug, because that’s exactly what Danny does, leaning over to embrace her like she’s his own mother. “Hi, Alina! It’s so nice to meet you!”
Visibly startled by Danny’s enthusiasm, Alina recovers enough to pat him on the back, offering a tentative “Hello, nice meet you” once he lets go.
“Strass-vitty!” Danny exclaims, beaming at her.
Alina looks to Sasha for a translation, but Sasha’s at a loss. “Sorry?”
“Strass-vidity!”
Sasha has no idea how he manages to keep a straight face when he realizes Danny’s trying to say “hello” in Russian. “Zdrahstvuytye,” he explains to Alina, watching as comprehension dawns and she, too, stifles a smile.
“Strass-vitty-yeah,” Danny repeats, glancing between them. “That’s what I said, right?”
Sasha doesn’t see the point in bursting his bubble, especially since “strass-vitty-yeah” is probably as close as they’re going to get, so he nods.
“Sweet,” Danny says in relief. “I had to practice that, like, so many times. Oh, Alina, can I take your suitcase? Also, are you guys still okay with seafood?”
They settle into the car, Sasha joining Danny up front, Alina surreptitiously wiping a few dog hairs off the backseat.
As they drive to Newport Beach, Danny tells them about the restaurant he picked out for lunch, how his family’s been going there ever since he was a kid and it has the “sickest” view of the bay and the calamari is “so good, like one time I choked on it and my dad had to give me the Heimlich and I almost died but, like, I kept eating it because it was that good, you know?”
Sasha feels stupidly happy, listening to Danny chatter again.
He wishes he could just sit there and enjoy it, but Danny’s pausing every other sentence so he can translate, making eye contact with Alina in the rearview mirror to include her in the conversation, asking her if she likes calamari, if she’s comfortable, if she wants the windows down or the AC up; and it crosses Sasha’s mind that maybe, behind his blinding white smile, Danny’s a little nervous, too.
The restaurant he takes them to is right on the water, overlooking a marina that might as well be a painting, with hundreds of boats dotting the azure blue bay.
They get a corner table between two windows that the hostess opens to let in a sea breeze, and Sasha smiles at how entranced his mother is by the whole thing, her eyes lighting up when she notices the boats.
“Okay, so, definitely the calamari,” Danny says, opening his menu. “Alina, do you like lobster rolls? They’re really good here. I mean, like, everything’s good here, like my mom always gets the mahi-mahi and my dad and I usually do the surf and turf—”
“I have to read for her,” Sasha interjects when Danny takes a breath, since he can’t actually translate two things at once.
“Oh, yeah.” Danny gives him a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”
After they place their orders, there’s a beat of silence; but just as Sasha’s starting to worry, wondering what the hell they’re going to talk about, Danny smiles and leans forward.
“Alina, what do you think of the US so far?”
Through Sasha, Alina replies that she likes the weather, San Francisco, and the peanut butter.
“The peanut butter?” Danny echoes, tilting his head.
“It is not so common in Russia,” Sasha explains. “We have now, but it is expensive and only okay. She says peanut butter here is very sweet, like dessert. It is her favorite American food.”
Then Danny wants to know what else they’ve tried, and the conversation quickly turns into a recap of the entire trip; but even though Danny’s already heard about most of the sightseeing from Sasha, he doesn’t look bored at all.
“So, how’d you get into Full House?” he asks Alina when they start talking about San Francisco. “I didn’t know that that was, like, a thing in Russia.”
“Oh, yes. And they did a horrible adaptation,” Alina tells Sasha. “But I used to watch the original when you were a toddler, after we moved back from Yerevan. It always came on during your naptime.”
After some hesitation, Sasha repeats this in English, and a slow smirk spreads across Danny’s face.
“I bet you were the quietest kid ever,” he says, nudging Sasha under the table—a fleeting brush of skin against skin, his leg hair giving Sasha goosebumps. “Wait, what’s Yer… Yerevan? Is that, like, another part of Russia?”
Not for the first time, Sasha wonders about the American education system. “Yerevan is capital of Armenia,” he explains, and Danny looks at him in surprise.
“Were you born in Armenia? I didn’t know that.”
Sasha shrugs. He wasn’t hiding it from Danny, but there’s nothing to talk about—he’s Russian, not Armenian, so what difference does it make? It’s not like he’s ever asked Danny where he was born.
Danny opens his mouth, but something in Sasha’s expression seems to make him reconsider, and he looks back at Alina instead. “So, uh, what else did you guys do in San Francisco? Sasha said there was a Russian church there?”
He carries the conversation over the calamari, which is in fact delicious, although Sasha can’t help watching him closely to make sure he doesn’t choke.
Once they’ve polished off the plate (without incident), Danny wraps up a story about getting kicked out of his friend Patty’s church—“they’re, like, really serious about being quiet”—and excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
In the sudden, almost deafening silence that follows, Sasha and Alina exchange glances, neither of them recovering the will to speak. Sasha’s brain feels like the squid they just ate: battered and fried, loops of Russian and English piled haphazardly on top of each other.
Eventually, Alina’s mouth twitches. “He’s… very charismatic.”
Sasha can’t tell if she means this as a compliment or a criticism. “Yeah,” he mutters, trying not to sound like he desperately wants her to elaborate. “You think?”
It seems to take Alina forever to reply; if he were five years old, he’d be throwing a tantrum right now, stretching a “Mom” into twice as many syllables.
“He reminds me of Kirill,” she finally says, and Sasha’s about to ask if she’s having a heatstroke when she adds, “On his YouTube.”
Sasha still has to suspend his disbelief from the restaurant’s vaulted ceilings, but he thinks he might know what she means—Kirill’s always putting on a smile for his viewers, welcoming them to his channel, asking them to like or subscribe or leave a comment.
It’s the same sportsman-showman act he does at every government reception, a mask he slips on and off like one of his leotards.
“Danny’s like that in real life,” Sasha explains.
There’s laughter across the room—Danny distracted on his way back to the table, chatting with their waitress by the credit card terminal.
“Yeah, you know how it is,” Sasha hears him say, and then the conversation dips to a lower volume, Danny gesturing and waving his hands, white teeth flashing like he’s catching up with an old classmate at a bar.
“Hm.” Alina’s watching Danny, too, but Sasha has no idea what she’s thinking. “Well, as long as… as long as he’s a good friend.”
She looks at Sasha then, and he squirms under her gaze, has just enough time to nod before Danny returns.
“What’d I miss?”