CHAPTER 3
Sasha
As I walk to work the next morning, a spray of light summer rain mists my face, but the sky is dark gray with thunderclouds. A big summer storm has been forecasted, and it makes the whole world crackle around me with both urgency and surrender. It’s coming, and it’s coming fast, but I still have a few minutes before it arrives. I walk faster.
Since my eyes opened this morning, my mind has been full of last night—of poetry and Vivaldi and Vaughn, and the way it all makes me feel. How I feel is an evolving situation, in and out of focus, minute by minute. Infatuated. Attracted. Impressed. Beguiled. Anxious. No one word feels quite right. I’m trying to figure it out, I guess—trying to put this dreamy feeling on solid ground. Trying to figure out why today’s me feels so different from yesterday’s.
With each step I relive fragments of our time together, recollections of his gray eyes and sharp cheekbones, making tentative, unexpected smiles bloom on my lips, the soft, hopeful sound of his voice asking me if I like Marina Tsvetaeva, making gooseflesh rise on my arms.
“Are you Russian?” I asked him as the sun lowered over the Potomac. “Like, are your parents from Russia?”
“Why do you ask?”
I’d shrugged because I didn’t have a concrete reason. It was more of a feeling. “I guess because you choose to read Russian poetry. Poetry’s an unusual choice anyway. Russian poetry even more so.”
His eyes had glided over my face before sliding away to look at the river. “I don’t know what I am.”
“You mentioned that Dom and Lottie were your foster parents.”
“They were.”
“Do you know anything about your birth family?”
“No.” He’d shaken his head and cleared his throat. “Nothing.”
“You were given up at birth?”
In my head, I acknowledged that the question was intrusive, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know as much as possible about the shadowed man beside me.
“I don’t know.”
His jaw had tightened.
You’ve overstepped. Change the subject, Sasha .
Just as I was about to ask him how he felt about Tsvetaeva’s “An Attempt at Jealousy,” he started speaking again.
“I was given up at some point or another, that’s certain. I vaguely remember the first adults in my life. I know they took me to the zoo to see the lions, but I think they were foreign because I didn’t understand their language. It sounded like… gibberish …to me. Confusing. Scary.” He paused, still looking out at the river, and I held my breath, hoping there would be more. “I remember other foster parents. Chris and Chelsea. They left me in a hospital waiting room when I was around four.”
I’d gasped at this, my heart aching at the thought of a small, confused child being abandoned at a hospital. He shifted in his seat, dropping his gaze to his lap, where he clasped his hands together so tightly the knuckles turned white.
“I eventually wound up with Dom and Lottie when I was fourteen.”
I was about to observe he’d skipped over a decade of his life when he turned and fixed his eyes on mine, his dark expression halting any further questions or conversation on the subject.
“No more,” he’d said softly, reaching for the book beside him. “What did you think of ‘The Demon in Me’s Not Dead?’”
Later he’d walked me home, raising one hand in goodbye as I headed down through the black wrought-iron gate that led to my apartment. He didn’t try to hold my hand or kiss me. He didn’t try anything, which—I confess—left me wanting in the moment. I was itching to touch him, to kiss him, to taste him.
But maybe he didn’t like me like that. Or maybe I asked too many personal questions. Or maybe he sensed that I was more curious about him than interested in Russian poetry. A little later, as I poured myself a glass of wine, I realized there was a small part of me that was relieved he hadn’t kissed me, that we’d kept things friendly instead of venturing into the realm of romance.
I’m an apprentice in one of the finest ballet companies in the world. My focus should be on dancing and only dancing.
The rain picks up, plopping in fuller drops on my head and shoulders. It’s washing away that strange, dreamy, hungover feeling that’s been my company this morning. I pick up the pace. The theater’s close.
I think there must be a mountain of baggage that comes with caring for someone like Vaughn Cigno. What happens to the heart of a child abandoned by his mother? And what happened in that decade of time he skipped over? Ten years that still makes his knuckles clench white.
He is hurt. Damaged. Wounded.
Part of me—a large part—is pulled to that side of him. The nurturer in me clamors for a chance to know him and comfort him. But I am not a child. I know that wounded people have vulnerable hearts, and it’s my responsibility not to lead him on. I must be careful not to offer him more than I can give. I couldn’t bear it if I was added to the list of people who’d hurt him. And since this is my first year with a professional ballet company, the majority of my focus and energy should be concentrated on my career, not on a brooding janitor who loves Russian poetry.
As I approach the theater, the rain is coming down in sheets, and I am thinking clearly again. I am determined to pursue nothing more with Vaughn Cigno than friendship.
It’s good we didn’t kiss , I think pragmatically, opening the door to the theater lobby. It would have complicated something that’s better kept simple.
But all of my sensible thoughts are thrown into chaos the moment I arrive at my dressing room. A new book is waiting for me at my station—a brand-new, beautiful, leather-bound book called Russian Poems . I eagerly open the small volume, and inside, I find a note.
Next Monday? I will bring the halla. –V
My heart races with a rush of pure happiness as I hug the book to my chest and beam at my reflection in the mirror.
Later, when I pass Vaughn in the hallway, I read the question in his eyes. Monday? I tilt my head only slightly, offering him the smallest of smiles, and watch with satisfaction when the corners of his mouth quirk up in a brief grin.
For the rest of the week, I try to be good and not succumb to my growing infatuation.
I channel all my confused emotions—excitement, anticipation, the rush of attraction, even the constant warning to keep myself in check—into my dancing, thinking about the little book of poetry waiting for me at home. I torture myself with it. I won’t let myself touch it until Sunday after the matinee. And then I will read. I will read for the rest of the day, giddy with the knowledge that I will see him on Monday.
Vaughn’s gift has held pride of place on my bedside table since Tuesday, and when I arrive home on Sunday, I finally reach for it, running my fingers over the gilded letters. How in the world did he find the time to buy it and place it in my dressing room before I arrived at the theater on Tuesday morning when we parted at my apartment on Monday evening? His thoughtfulness makes butterflies flutter in my belly as I flip onto my back and sigh.
Sitting up in bed, I plump two pillows behind my back and open the book to the first page, looking at the handwritten invitation on a yellow sticky note.
I will bring the halla. –V
I giggle softly at the words, touched beyond measure that he’s not only invited me to attend a second private book group with him but will bring the “snack” this time.
Where will this lead?
“Don’t worry about it. Be in the now , Sasha,” I mutter aloud, opening the book to a page in the middle. My eyes land on a poem called simply “I Loved You,” written by Alexander Pushkin in 1829.
I loved you, even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain;
But do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not want it to sadden you again.
Hopeless and tonguetied, yet I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.
I stare at the words, moved by them for reasons I can’t begin to express.
Hopeless and tonguetied. Jealous and timid.
Isn’t that all of us in the first throes of love? I think, tracing the letters with the tips of my fingers. Isn’t that how Vaughn looks when he’s looking at you?
Wait. What?
I gulp softly.
Love? No! We are eons away from love.
We’re barely friends , I remind myself, but a rush of adrenaline has already made my skin prickle, like I’ve been “found out,” like a secret I meant to keep well-hidden is at risk of being exposed.
Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz.
I glance at my bedside table where my cellphone is vibrating. My mother’s face lights up the screen.
“Mom!” I say, pressing the phone to my ear. “Hi!”
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“What’s up?”
“Just planning your brothers’ birthday celebration and looking for some input.”
My twin brothers, Danny and Greg, turn thirty in September.
“Already?”
“Mm-hm. It’s a big birthday,” she says, “so I want to do something special.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Danny and June aren’t going to want to travel far,” she says. My sister-in-law, June, is five months pregnant with my parents’ first grandchild, and they are over-the-moon.
“True.”
“So…I was thinking about renting a house out for all of us at Rehoboth for Labor Day weekend. Short drive, but a nice getaway. What do you think?”
“I’m surprised!” I blurt out. “Can you…” I lower my voice. “Can you and Daddy afford that?”
My parents aren’t poor, but they aren’t Rockefellers either. My father is a junior high school math teacher, and my mother is a secretary in the school’s front office. It cost a lot of money to put me through ballet school and pay my brothers’ tuition at state college. Beach houses on the Delaware coast don’t come cheap over holiday weekends.
“Your firstborns only turn thirty once,” she says cheerfully. “Can you get Labor Day weekend off?”
“With this much notice, probably yes.”
“You’ll be back from the workshop in time?”
I am scheduled to spend the last three weeks of August dancing with the Manhattan Ballet Theater in an exchange program. It’s a great opportunity to collaborate with one of the world’s leading companies, and I was honored to be selected.
“Uh-huh. I think there’s a train from New York to Wilmington. Can you or Daddy pick me up from the train station there?”
“Of course!” She pauses. “I was also thinking…” I wait. I know my mom. She’s plotting something. “Your friend, Sayaka, was such a nice edition to last weekend’s barbeque.”
I tilt my head to the side and smile. My mother’s in matchmaking mode, and my brother Greg is her target.
“A nice addition for…Greg?”
“Sasha Grace, I’d never presume to matchmake my own son, but now that you mention it…they did seem to notice each other. Greg even mentioned her after you left.”
“He did?” I lean forward. I love a good romance as much as the next girl. “What did he say?”
“Nothing much. Just that he’d never met someone from Japan. It was charming of her to bring me a watermelon. Is gifting melons a Japanese custom?”
“I have no idea, but she was insistent about bringing you food, so…maybe?”
“Well…no matter. Anyway, what do you think? A few days on the shore would be nice for her, right?”
“Mom, you’re terrible.”
The dam breaks. “I just want Greg to be happy! Look at Danny and June! They have that sweet new house and a baby on the way! Don’t you think Greg would like the same? He takes all of the night shifts so that Danny can go home to June. He works too hard! He has no time to meet anyone!”
“I’ll invite her but don’t get your hopes up.”
“Why not?” My mother’s Russian accent, which she mostly lost during her adolescence in Maryland, is a little stronger when she asks, “Is she too good for my boy?”
“No! She’s not like that. She’s super nice. But she’s a dancer! You know how busy we are.”
“She could do a lot worse than Greg,” she informs me. “He’s a nice boy with his own business.”
“Now you sound like Bubbie.”
“Humph! Well , I could do worse than turning out like my mother,” she says, her voice cheerful and tart. “Thank you very much for the compliment, Sasha Grace.”
We giggle together, and she promises to drag my dad down to the city next weekend to catch my final appearance in Swan Lake . We trade “I love yous” before hanging up.
Snuggling back under the covers, I reach for my book and open it again.
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely.
I think about my grandparents and about my mother and father.
I think about Danny and June, and Greg and…well, and Sayaka, maybe, I guess.
I think about Vaughn.
And I keep reading.
***
Vaughn
Before I left the house this morning, I borrowed a fuzzy blanket from the back of Lottie’s sofa, so I could make the plaza wall more comfortable this evening.
On my lunch break, I race back and forth to Le Pain Quotidien to grab the challah bread I reserved online when they opened at six.
I shower and change into the same (carefully cleaned and ironed) outfit after work and splash on a little of the same aftershave I found in the locker room cupboard last week. My dark hair is wild and unruly after my shower, so I comb it back carefully, surprised by how much more presentable it looks.
I get to the River Plaza a little early so I can spread the blanket under the weeping willow. It’s the shadiest place on the terrace, though this evening isn’t as warm as last week, thank God. A giant storm a few days ago cleared out a lot of the heat, and it’s much more comfortable tonight.
I don’t have a picnic basket like Sasha’s, so I pull the challah from its tan paper sack, smooth out the bakery bag and place it on the blanket. Beside it, I add the plastic ice bucket I bought at the dollar store, filled with ice I got upstairs at the Rooftop Café. Into it, I place a bottle of honey-flavored Stolichnaya and beside the bucket, two clear plastic cups.
I don’t actually know if she drinks. And I hope bringing alcohol isn’t presumptuous. I’m not trying to get her drunk or anything, but I read up on Russian food and drink, and nothing is more Russian than vodka.
I’m not a big drinker myself, though I occasionally indulge and have certainly found myself drunk more than once, especially in my early teens when I was trying to block out—
I cut off that line of thinking, rubbing the back of my neck and taking a deep, calming breath.Most of my past isn’t worth remembering, but the worst of it, between ages nine and thirteen, is a minefield. Thinking about it will send me spiraling into depression or fury or…or worse. I stand up and clear my throat, walking to the railing that looks over the Potomac.
“ Doo-sha. Ma-ya. Doo-sha. Ma-ya .”
I whisper the nonsense words under my breath because they pop instantly into my mind, as they always do when I am trying to soothe myself. I concentrate on them, and like a secret talisman, they keep my terrible memories at bay.
I am fully aware they make no sense.
“Doo-sha?”
I don’t even think that’s a thing.
And “ma-ya?”
What’s that all about?
Over the years I’ve wondered if they’re the lyrics to an old song that someone sang to me as a baby. I don’t know why my brain would retain the words, but it did. Or maybe it means nothing at all—some gibberish leftover from a lost childhood. All I know is that when my mind goes to dark places, these words comfort me. They always have.
“Vaughn! Hi!”
I turn around and lean back against the railing as she approaches, drinking in the welcome sight of her.
She’s wearing a light-blue T-shirt and bright white shorts. Her bare legs are pale and muscular, and her feet are tucked into little white tennis shoes. Back are the white-rimmed sunglasses, but she pushes them on top of her head as she moves closer, so they hold back her chestnut-colored hair. With her hair down, without makeup, she looks so young and pretty, my breath catches. She’s here for me. For me.
“H-Hi,” I manage, the word breathless though I am standing still.
“ Privét ,” she says with a grin.
“Pree-vee-yet?”
“ Da . Yes. Privét. Hello…in Russian,” she says with a small, graceful curtsy. “ Privét, Vaughn.”
“ Privét , Sasha,” I say, the words strange on my tongue.
She looks over my shoulder and makes a small sound of surprise as she points to the blanket under the weeping willow. “Wow! For us?”
“ Da ,” I say, nodding at her.
“Ha!” Her brown eyes flash with approval. “Look at you! Fast learner.”
I shove my hands in my pockets, gesturing to the refreshments. “I didn’t know if you drank vodka or not. You don’t have to—”
“Not drink vodka?” she asks, placing a hand over her chest as though shocked. “You know I’m half Ruski , right?”
“I didn’t want to assume.”
“Assume away! Let’s have a toast,” she says, sitting down on the blanket, her little feet dangling.
I open the bottle, pour about two shots in the bottom of each plastic cup, then offer one to her.
“Do you know how to say ‘Cheers?’” she asks.
I shake my head no.
She lifts the cup and exclaims, “ За здоровье !”
I watch as she tosses back her head and lets the entire shot slide down her throat. When she rights herself and looks at me, her eyes are shining. “It means, ‘To your health!’”
“ За здоровье ,” I say uncertainly, drinking my own shot as well.
She holds up her cup to me.
“More? Already?” I’m frowning at her. I can feel it. But in my experience, a drink is okay. Binging isn’t. It leads to bad and sometimes terrifying behavior.
She cocks her head to the side. “Only so that the glass isn’t empty.”
I pour another shot of vodka in her cup, but she doesn’t drink it this time, and I get the feeling that she’s not going to. At least not right away. And I can’t explain why, but something about that fills me with happiness.
I fill the bottom of my glass too, place the glass beside me, then put the vodka back on ice. When I look up, the book I gave her is open on her lap.
After I said goodbye to her at her apartment Monday, I was so amped, so excited, so crazy about her in new and marvelous ways, I got off the bus at Jefferson Circle and walked past the brightly lit shops on my way home. The big Barnes & Noble was still open, and I stopped in, deciding it was fate when I found two leather-bound collections of Russian poetry available for purchase. I got one for her and one for me and hoped—only hoped—it might be enough incentive for her to meet me again.
That little smile she gave me on Tuesday in the dressing room hallway? It was the highlight of my week…until now—until five minutes ago when she said my name.
“What?” she asks, her head still tilted to the side.
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at me. What’re you thinking about?”
“I’m…I’m glad you’re here,” I hear myself saying. And then I add, “I’m stunned you’re here.”
“Of course I’m here.” She grins at me, reaching over to place her hand on my denim-covered thigh. “You invited me.”
I don’t suck in a breath, but I do hold the one already filling my lungs.
Does she know what she’s doing to me? Can she possibly know what the touch of her hand on my leg is doing to my insides? The rush of my blood through veins heretofore unknown. The dizzying, almost paralysis that is taking place in my mouth as I stare back at her and force myself not to look at her hand. I don’t mean for it to happen, but my cock twitches, and I pray to every god that ever held dominion that she doesn’t notice.
“We’re becoming friends, aren’t we?” she asks, her smile so sweet and lovely, it breaks my heart.
Whomp. There it is.
That raging fire inside of me is suddenly doused with a thousand buckets of icy water.
Friends.
Fuck. Ouch.
Friends.
“Friends” is so far—so insanely fucking far—from where I want to be with Sasha, it actually physically hurts to hear her to say the word.
“Friends don’t stand each other up,” she tells me, then she pats my thigh as I would the head of a good dog and tears off a piece of challah.
“Mmm,” she hums. “Where did you get this?”
Still reeling, I clench my teeth together and swallow. “Um…I don’t…earlier.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says after swallowing. “So! Russian poets! Do you know who I really liked? Boris Pasternak! Especially here, where he writes…”
She is looking down at her book, chirping away about Boris Pasternak, who is my second favorite Russian poet after Marina Tsvetaeva, but I don’t hear a word she’s saying.
We’re becoming friends, aren’t we?
I hear the words on an endless loop in my head, and it’s like a dagger each and every time. Becoming friends. Becoming friends. Friends…friends…friends —
“…kind of sad too, right?” She clears her throat. “Vaughn? Vaughn, what do you think?”
“Can you excuse me?” I ask her, placing my book on the blanket and standing up. “I need to…”
“Bathroom? Sure. I’ll wait here.”
I hurry toward the building, uncertain of where I’m actually going.
I don’t have to use the fucking bathroom.
I just…I just…I thought…
What did you think, Lurch?
I beeline to the lobby bathroom just as a guitarist and pianist begin a jazzy duet on the Millennium Stage. Pushing through the bathroom door, I step into a stall and lock the door.
Did you really think someone like her could want someone like you ?
I run my hands through my hair, then brace them on the stall door, forcing myself to take a deep breath. My heart aches.
Did you really think a goddess ballerina could be romantically interested in a theater janitor?
I turn around and lean my back against the door, eyes closed, hands fisted by my sides as disappointment courses through me as fiercely as arousal did a few minutes before.
You are a misfit in every way.
You are ugly and strange.
You will never belong.
Not to anyone.
Not anywhere.
Opening my eyes, I fill my lungs with bleach-scented air and unlock the door. With a profound heaviness weighing down my heart, I rinse my hands in the sink then dry them with paper towel, pressing the cool, damp paper against the back of my neck and looking up at myself in the mirror.
I wanted more .
I hoped for more.
But I am all angles and corners, with nowhere soft and flat for her to land, even if she was willing to take a leap of faith—a chance —on me.
My cheekbones are sharp as knife edges, casting shadows on the pock-marked skin of my cheeks. My body, under my twice-worn good shirt and jeans, is muscular, but lanky—tall and hard, wiry and lean—like I’ve been racked and stretched. My Adam’s apple protrudes slightly in my throat, the cartilage bobbing when I swallow. And my eyes, set into deep sockets and hooded with dark eyelashes, are unintentionally unwelcoming.
There is no beauty in me.
None at all.
And maybe, Vaughn…just maybe…more’s the better.
I yearn for love, yes, but even if I found it, what would I do with it? Do I have an answer to that question? I mean, I don’t know how to be a boyfriend, how to be a lover. I know the mechanics of fucking, sure, but even if she had declared her intention to fall in love with me, would I be prepared to love her? Not from afar, not as a crush or an infatuation, but…up close and for real?
I sigh at my reflection, flexing my jaw.
Maybe friendship, as much as the word chafes at my masculinity, is best for now.
Make peace with your fate, Vaughn. Let friendship be enough.
I crumple up the paper towel, toss it in the trash, then head back out to the plaza.