Twenty
TWENTY
THE HOUSE WAS empty, or seemed to be empty.
If Andrei was in the house somewhere, she’d know it; she felt unnaturally attuned to him, like there was an invisible wire buzzing and snapping between them no matter how far apart they were.
She did not know what she would say when she saw him again, and in fact was not certain she would see him again.
She wondered if she would still feel that buzz once she got on a plane.
She wondered if she would feel it for the rest of her life.
Her skin was still humming, and when she’d showered she’d found pale bruises on her thighs and the round of a bite mark on her breast.
Would Judd notice this, when she got home? Would he think to look at her that closely, or think to ask?
Andrei had not been in his room when she knocked or when she pushed the door open. But for the first time, his window shades were open, and light filled his room, and the breeze blew in through the open window.
It was strange that she did not feel guilty about what happened, nor did she feel any longing for it to happen again—it could not happen again.
She was leaving so soon. But if she saw him again in the flesh, if they were alone, she wasn’t certain if she would be able to keep her body calm.
And what would he do? Or would he act like none of this had ever happened?
Where was everybody?
She sat down at the kitchen table and opened up a video of Angel.
Even now, she thought, she could still cover some ground; there were so many places she had yet to search, so many options she could still comb through.
Was it really possible that Russians had kidnapped Angel?
She could put up signs in Cyrillic, she supposed, she could—she had nine hours left.
No, it was enough. Enough already. The dog had vanished to the winds.
And she wondered, thinking back to the woman in the park (could that have really only been ten days ago?) if she’d thought she was talking about Roxy, if even the woman herself had thought she was talking about Roxy, but it was really poor good Angel who was lost. Poor Angel who the woman had a psychic connection to.
She thought maybe she believed in psychic connections now.
She would have to pack soon; her clothing was dingy and smelly, and she thought it might be best to just toss out the jeans she’d been wearing yesterday instead of trying to rehabilitate them in the wash.
She’d meant to find a laundromat, she’d meant to find a dog, she’d meant to find something to justify her trip to this part of the world, a hero’s welcome or a sense of purpose or a reason to not be so mad at her husband anymore.
Her skin tingled. Andrei was somewhere nearby.
She remembered, from her tour with Bachana, how to find certain rooms (or at least she thought she did?), and although it seemed presumptuous of her, her flight left in nine hours; she wanted to tell them she was going, and she wanted to make sure that Maia had come home.
The hallway that led out of the other side of the kitchen went up stairs and down stairs, like she remembered; the paisley wallpaper peeled where she remembered.
She walked slowly, listening for signs of life; when she got to a door she thought might be Maia’s, she knocked and then opened it, slowly.
The room was empty. Zazi, somehow, had escaped the basement again and was lying on the unmade bedclothes, but the rest of the room looked thoroughly unvisited from the last time she’d been in there.
The roses were already starting to droop in their makeshift vase.
She had never ever planned on being unfaithful to her husband.
She had never thought such a thing was possible for her to do.
When he had cheated on her, when she had caught him, and even when she had only suspected he’d been unfaithful, she had never thought of revenge (or at least not bodily revenge, or even an emotional entanglement).
She had thought only of escape, of getting out of this unholy mess of her life, of making something new for herself because whatever else this first life was (was it her first life?
Her second or third?) it was clearly, irredeemably broken.
Moreover, she had always assumed that Judd had discovered what was broken in her, and had sought to escape that himself by burying himself in much younger women.
He lusted after women who weren’t old enough yet to have fallen apart.
Women who were barely women at all. And who therefore stood in opposition to her; she thought they’d been a response to her.
But she knew now with great certainty that whatever Judd had done in the past (and god knows maybe even this morning?) really had nothing to do with her, because what had happened with Andrei had nothing to do with him.
She was rebuilding herself here by herself, not in response to anybody else.
She was attempting, for the first time in forty-six years, to act according to what she wanted, not just what she needed.
The feeling of Andrei’s rough cheek against her skin would never leave her.
The pressure of his lips. His thighs, his ass under her hands, his eyes.
And although she knew she would never have him again, she knew, too, that he would be with her always.
That connection could look like anything and be everything.
She glanced down at her phone, at an old image of her and Judd, and felt nothing more than gentle nostalgia, the nostalgia for a life that had held together as long as she didn’t pull at its threads.
A life that would be hers again as soon as she stitched the threads back together.
All of it, as much as she could have of it (not Judd’s faithfulness, necessarily, but his home and his money and their child) would belong to her again and Andrei would be lost to time, to a past that might never have even really happened.
Downstairs, she heard a door open and shut, and the howl and whine of the dogs—someone they knew had walked in. She walked down the rickety stairs to the front door. It was Maia, looking bruised and tired and satisfied.
“Maia, are you—everyone was so worried. Call your mom, please. You have to call her.”
“I did,” she said. She plopped down on the floor and let the dogs embrace her.
“When did you call her?”
“She knows I’m okay.”
“Are you? You look—”
“I know,” Maia said. She was missing a front tooth, not one of the middle teeth but the one right beside them on the right, and her nose was definitely askew. But she was smiling.
“I was really worried, Maia. When I left you, I didn’t know—”
“But as you can see, I am fine.” She stuck her tongue in the space in her mouth. “I mean, I will have to go to the dentist.”
She was surrounded by the dogs, on the floor, all eleven of them were rumbling about, sniffing her, licking her, so happy that she was home.
They must have known, too, when she was gone, when she was unsafe.
Dogs knew that. They too had invisible humming wires that connected them to everyone they loved.
“They retracted the law,” Maia said.
“What do you mean?”
“They announced an hour ago, they were retracting the foreign agent law.”
“What?” Amy said. “You won?”
“For the moment,” Maia said. “There will be more.”
She had her arms around one of the dogs, who was licking her ardently on the cheek; her cheek seemed a little bit swollen, but she didn’t push the dog off, and in fact seemed to welcome her, drew her in closer.
The dog was white, Lab-shaped, medium-sized, very fluffy.
The dog stopped licking Maia’s face for a second and looked directly at Amy with her beautiful, expressive brown eyes.
Had this dog been one of the pack the whole time Amy had been in this house?
“Maia—”
The dog sat, looked straight at her. She felt a strange wave inside her gut, a wave of confusion. And something like anger, and also an odd sense of relief. She reached out her hand. The dog moved toward her and licked it.
She had seen this dog before. Its familiar shape, its fluffy white fur. She had seen this dog many, many times.
“Maia?”
It was her, she was sure of it.
“Maia,” she said. “Is this Angel?”
Maia busied herself rubbing the dog’s white fur.
“Has she always been here?”
Maia sighed. She pulled the dog into her, onto her lap, where she sat, contentedly.
Could it really—“Is it?”
“Amy, it’s not like—”
Had she been in the basement the whole time? Been one of the heap of the dogs? Running outside with the group?
“Like what?”
“My mother did not think you’d notice,” Maia finally said. “She said Americans don’t see the obvious. Or they don’t look for it even when it’s right in front of them.”
Amy felt her insides crumple in humiliation; she actually gasped. Then she said, “Your mother tricked me.”
“She did not think—it’s a long story.”
The dog came over and began licking her hand; Angel was licking Amy’s hand. This dog, this hero of Georgian democracy, or at least of Georgian children, this beautiful animal, this holy fool.
“Maia—Maia, Jesus Christ,” Amy said. “I feel mortified.”
“Please don’t,” Maia said. “If she’d told you, you never would have come.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And she needed you to come. She wanted to meet you,” Maia said. “She wanted to know you.”
“She wanted to use me?”
“Please don’t think of it that way.”
Amy couldn’t move because the dog was now content under her hand; despite herself, she was rubbing Angel’s chin. But her gut was twitching.
“You see, it was just one small thing and then another small thing,” Maia said. With her missing tooth, her esses sounded a little muddled. “As you know, after my mom fired Eteri from the school, there was a huge outburst.”
“Eteri is the teacher?”
“In fact, Eteri was my girlfriend,” Maia said.
The photos. Well, that had been obvious.