Chapter 10
ELENA
I was seven years old the first time I held a baby.
My mother’s friend from the building downstairs had a three-week-old daughter, and she brought her up one afternoon. My mother called me in from the hallway, where I was doing nothing in particular, and said, “Come, come see.”
The baby was wrapped in something yellow, and her face was very small and very serious. She smelled like something I did not yet have a word for.
My mother’s friend lowered her into my arms and told me to support the head, and I did, very carefully. The baby looked up at me, and I looked back at her, and something settled in my chest that has never fully left.
I think about that afternoon sometimes. The way my mother stood behind me with her hands hovering an inch from my elbows, ready to catch, not catching, letting me hold the weight on my own.
My mother has been gone for eleven years.
I still remember exactly how that baby felt in my arms.
The intercom on my desk crackles at three forty-five.
“Elena.”
One word. His voice through the small speaker, even and unhurried.
I pick up the receiver. “Yes.”
“Come in.”
I set the receiver down, sit for exactly three seconds, then stand up and walk to his office.
He is behind his desk. His hands are resting flat on the surface in front of him, and he’s looking at me with an expression I have cataloged every version of in two years and have never seen before.
Not cold exactly. Not warm. Something that has been worked down to its purest form, stripped of everything except the thing itself.
I sit down without being asked.
The office is very quiet.
Outside the glass wall, the floor moves the way it always moves, phones and keyboards and people passing with folders and coffee cups.
“The masquerade,” he says without preamble.
The word sits between us. I do not reach for it, and I do not push it away.
“Yes,” I say.
“It was you.”
I can’t speak. My tongue has suddenly become tied up.
“Answer me, Elena.”
“Y-yes,” I stutter.
His jaw moves.
“You came upstairs with me, and you said nothing.” His voice is not raised, and that scares me. “You sat at that desk for three weeks. You looked me in the eye every single day, and you said nothing.”
“Yes.” I hold his gaze. “All of that is true.”
“So explain it to me.”
“I know how it looks—”
“I didn’t ask how it looks. I asked you to explain it.”
I take a breath. “I… I finished my work that night, and I was supposed to leave, but I didn’t.” I pause. “I should have told you who I was. I know that. I am sorry for that, genuinely, and I understand completely if you want my resignation on your desk by—”
“I don’t want your resignation.”
“Mr. Petrov.” I say it evenly. “I deceived you, and I understand that this changes things, and I think the cleanest solution for both of us is—”
“You think.” He leans forward slightly. “You think the cleanest solution is for you to hand me a letter and walk out, and that resolves this.”
“I think it resolves the professional complication, yes.”
“And what about the other complications?”
I look at him. “There are no other complications.”
Something moves across his face. “You were in my bed, Elena.”
“I know where I was.”
“And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning. For three weeks.”
“You didn’t recognize me for three weeks.
” I say it quietly, and I say it clearly, and I watch it land.
“I am not the only person in this room who was in that bedroom. You were there too. You made choices too. So yes, I should have told you who I was, and I am sorry that I didn’t, but I’m not going to sit here and be spoken to like I did something to you when you were a full and willing participant in everything that happened that night. ”
The silence that follows is the longest one yet.
Roman looks at me from across the desk. I keep my eyes on him without looking away. Everything I’ve said is true. We both know this, and the only question is what he does with it.
His phone rings.
He looks at the screen and answers.
“Yes.” A pause. He stands. Turns slightly toward the window. “How many?” Another pause, longer. He says something in Russian, low and clipped, and whatever the answer is, it moves through his shoulders. “I’ll be there. Tonight.”
He hangs up.
He turns back to me.
“I have to leave. We finish this when I get back,” he says.
“What… leave? For how long?”
“Three weeks. Maybe less.” He picks up his jacket from the back of his chair, moves toward the door, and then stops. His back is to me. His hand is on the doorframe. “You’re not going anywhere, Elena. We are clear on that. You’d better be here when I return. Reschedule my meetings.”
He walks out.
I hear him cross the floor, hear the low exchange with Kostya that starts immediately. The elevator arrives. The doors close.
And then there is nothing.
I sit in his empty office in the chair across from his desk, and I look at the space where he was standing. I don’t move for a long time.
The afternoon light comes through the windows at a low angle and falls across the desk.
Outside the glass wall, the floor goes on the way it always goes on. A phone rings and is answered. Someone laughs at something near the printer. The city moves beyond the windows, indifferent and enormous, not particularly interested in what just happened in this room.
I press my hands flat on my thighs and look at the desk.
Three weeks.
I stood up to him and said what I needed to say, and I don’t regret a word of it, and I’m also fairly certain my face is doing something I would not choose for it to be doing in a glass-walled office where anyone could look in.
I stand up.
I walk back to my desk. My cursor blinks back at me.
Until now, I have never in two years wished that I could simply disappear into this chair and never have to walk back through that door again.