CHAPTER 16
Elena
◆
I check the cabinets in the suite galley before I shower.
Six. I touch each button on Stefan's spare Henley where it lies on the bed.
Four. The Henley smells of him at the seam — sandalwood and clean wool.
His stethoscope is on the nightstand where he set it last night.
I do not pick it up. The pediatric pin from my old St. Margaret's lanyard is in the writing-desk drawer; I have been keeping it without wearing it for a week.
The medallion is at my sternum. The hairline crack across the angel's wing is the same hairline crack it was a month ago. I touch it once. I do not touch it again.
I shower hot enough to redden my collarbones.
I rinse twice. I tie my hair wet, low, the yellow pencil through the knot at the nape.
I dress in the unripe-wheat cashmere cardigan over the soft heather shift Beatriz sent down last week with a note that said mija, the color is yours.
I do not put on shoes. The card-key Nikolai has not yet given me is the card-key I do not need today.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the windowless suite and I do not count.
I let the eight degrees colder sub-basement air settle on the backs of my arms. The wine I had last night with Stefan in his greenhouse is still in my body somewhere as a softness.
He told me about the foundation and the seven-month cycle and the fourteen-million a year that runs clean through grants that are not lies because the research is real.
He told me about the Naples man in the prison whose patience Gabriel learned. I did not flinch. The not-flinching is the only piece of me I trust anymore.
Kostya is coming at five-thirty. Kostya has every card-key in the city.
the room has me.
---
He pulls the charcoal kid gloves on at the curb before he opens the door. He does not look at me in the rearview on the FDR. The leather creaks at the steering wheel under his hands at every right-turn signal. I will hear that creak under everything tonight.
"Pakhan says you are to use the word any time," he says.
"Thank you, Kostya."
The Castellan loft is on Lispenard. The brass plate by the door is one letter.
The freight elevator is a brass-gate manual cage with a single mahogany ledge along the back wall.
The cage rises. Three floors. Slow. I track the cables through the gate — two, three, the third looped — and then I do not, because Gabriel meets the cage at the loft door with his hand on the gate latch.
"Elena."
"Gabriel."
He opens the gate. He steps back. He does not touch me. He has never been the man who touches me first.
The loft is twelve-foot pressed tin painted black, twelve-inch oak scrubbed unfinished, three casements open along the south wall with the October wind coming through in a long uneven stream.
The Persian rug from his mother is in the west corner.
The long oak table runs the spine of the room — fourteen feet, French-polished, one slab, the grain a wide pale-yellow band running east to west like the river I crossed to get here.
I press my palm flat to it as I pass. The polish is warm where my hand has been; cool where it has not.
Alexei is in the kitchen pouring wine. Stefan is at the south casement closing the latch a half-inch and opening it back. The kitchen island speaker is on; Nikolai's voice comes through it as low as the room can carry without losing him.
"Rossi."
"Nikolai."
A pause. The third strap of his Patek creaks against its third buckle and I can hear it through the line. "Krasivaya, you got here in one piece," Alexei says, not looking up. "Kostya did not break any laws and I am disappointed in him."
"Two," Kostya says from the door. "Pakhan will not hear about them."
"I will hear about them," Nikolai says. "Bring me a list tomorrow."
"Yes, Pakhan."
Kostya goes. The freight elevator drops. Gabriel slides the steel barn-track door closed and walks past me to the long oak table and sets the black silk strap, folded once, on the linen runner at the table's center. He does not unfold it.
"Sit, Elena," he says.
I sit. Stefan brings me my glass of wine and puts the back of his right knuckle — the scar — against my cheek for one beat. The braided leather cord at his left wrist drags a half-inch across my collarbone as he steps back, because he wanted it to.
"Doll," he says. "Eat first. We will not start until you have eaten."
"I will eat."
Alexei sits diagonal to me, his right thumb already at the knurled steel ring, his left jaw scar catching the casement light pale-silver. Gabriel sits at my left, one full chair-width away.
Three at the table. The fourth at the speaker. I mark them — one, two, three, four — and then I do not, because the wine arrives in my mouth.
Dinner is fish. White, simple, lemon. The bread is good.
The plates pass left to right. Stefan asks Alexei about a chest tube; Alexei answers in three words; Gabriel does not speak; Nikolai asks me through the speaker how I slept and I tell him I slept well and he says good.
The conversation is the room learning how to be a room with me at its center.
The men do not look at each other often.
When they do, they look across me — the way men look at each other when they are about to share something none of them has shared before.
I press my palm flat to the oak grain once more between the plate and the bread. The polish has the warmth of three weeks of being lived around. The wood is the room's spine and I have already begun to lean on it.
"Elena."
Gabriel. He has set his fork down.
"Yes."
"If you need the room to end, the word is still Hippocratic. Yes?"
"Yes."
"You can free your wrists from the strap in two seconds."
"Yes."
"Color now."
"Green."
He nods once. The room is breathing in fours.
Nikolai through the speaker: "Elena. State yes again before contact. Through the speaker. My absence does not alter the protocol. Acknowledge."
"I understand."
"That's it."
The line goes quiet but not off.
Stefan stands. He puts his hand on the small of my back and says, doll, come, and I rise.
The black-iron staircase rings under Gabriel's shoes as he climbs first. Twelve treads, no riser-backs, the ring a thin musical thing at every step. I climb after him. Stefan after me. Alexei last. The speaker stays on.
---
The mezzanine is twelve feet deep, the full width of the loft.
The bed is king, black linen, charcoal cashmere folded at the foot.
The headboard is reclaimed teak — six inches thick, drilled at the four corners for tie-downs we do not use tonight.
The strap is on the bedside table — two inches wide, eighteen inches long, hand-rolled hem.
The single floor lamp with the brass cone shade is on at its lowest setting.
The wind comes up the staircase from the open casements below and across the bed in a long even line.
I can hear the city through the south wall — one taxi on Canal, a far siren on the West Side, the half-noise of a Tuesday night settling.
The pressed-tin ceiling above us is the kind of black that absorbs the lamplight and gives none of it back.
Alexei sets the speaker on the second bedside table four inches from where my ear will be. Screen up. I will see when Nikolai breathes.
"Krasivaya," Alexei says, his hand on my hip not a question. "I am going to take off your cardigan."
"Yes."
He takes it off and folds it. The shift over my head, folded. Underwear at the side seam, folded. The medallion stays at my sternum.
Stefan sits at my right and lays the back of his right hand — the scar — at my breastbone. The cord at his left wrist comes down against my belly. He waits.
Gabriel picks up the strap. He unfolds it once. "Wrists, Elena."
I give him my wrists. He winds the silk around them once and ties the half-knot loose enough that the play of it sits against my pulse. He sets my bound wrists in my own lap. "Two seconds. Show me."
I pull. The silk slides. My wrists are free. I put them back. He reties. Loose.
"Good."
"Color, krasivaya," Alexei says.
"Green."
"You ready?"
"Yes."
Stefan lowers me back. Gabriel sits at the head of the bed, slides his hand beneath my nape, brings my face to his and kisses me. His mouth is the slowest mouth I have known. His thumb at my jaw is setting tempo. He does not put his other hand anywhere.
Alexei opens my thighs. He kneels between them. He puts his mouth on me once — once, his tongue at my clit, three counts and gone — and then his hands at my hips and the head of his cock at my entrance. I am slick already. I am slick from the kissing and the waiting and the cord at my throat.
"Color."
Gabriel lifts his head a quarter-inch.
"Green," I say.
"Krasivaya, you ready?"
"Yes."
Gabriel's mouth comes back. Alexei pushes in slow.
I am wet for him. I am wet because the room has been wet for an hour, because Gabriel has been kissing me, because Stefan's mouth has moved to my left nipple and his right palm is cupping the underside of my breast with the pressure that says I have your weight, doll, I have you.
I am wet because Nikolai is breathing through the speaker four inches from my ear.
I am wet because all four men in this room are routing through me.
Alexei seats himself. He stays still. "Krasivaya."
Six hands. I mark them — Alexei's two at my hips, Stefan's two at my breasts (the mouth counts, and the hand under, and the second hand steady at my belly), Gabriel's two at my face and the back of my neck.
Six. Then Nikolai's voice, which is not a hand.
Four men. Three on me. The fourth in the air.
Alexei moves. Slow. Then the tempo Gabriel's thumb is setting at my jaw. Stefan moves to the other nipple; he does not change pressure, only which side, and the change is the thing that makes me catch.
Nikolai through the speaker, soft: "Rossi. Stay. Look at me when you come."