Chapter 2 #5
The first piece was the base. Four walls joined at the corners, the seams aligned, the glue applied with a toothpick because the kit had not included an applicator and I had learned from experience that too much glue warped the wood.
I held the walls in position for thirty seconds while the adhesive set.
The second piece was the floor. I slotted it into the base and checked the fit. Tight. Good.
The third piece was a window frame. I picked it up with the tweezers, applied glue to the edge, and placed it against the wall.
It was three-eighths of an inch tall. My hands were steady.
They had been steady all day — through the pipe, through the ceiling, through Sergei’s broken face and my father’s careful request. They were steady now because they were doing something that mattered to no one except me.
That was the point.
Little space did not make me a different person.
I knew that. I had spent years being afraid it did — afraid that the part of me that wanted stuffed rabbits and striped socks and macaroni from a box was the real me, and the woman in leather boots who analyzed Voronin traps and managed building inspectors was the costume.
I had been afraid that if anyone saw the pajamas and the blanket nest and the cartoon playing on the television, they would understand something fundamental about me that I had not chosen to reveal.
It took me a long time to understand that the truth was simpler.
Little space was not a different person.
It was me without the armor. Me without the anticipation, the accommodation, the constant calculation of what everyone else needed and how I could provide it.
It was the version of myself that existed when I stopped being useful and simply existed.
The relief of it was enormous. The loneliness of it was, too.
I glued the fourth window frame. The fifth.
I began assembling the tiny flower pots, gluing paper stems into them, attaching leaves one by one with the tweezers.
The leaves were the size of my thumbnail.
Each one required both hands, both eyes, and the full measure of my attention.
For minutes at a time, I thought about nothing except whether the leaf was straight.
My phone buzzed. Zoe.
What are you wearing tomorrow to see the terrifying Sokolov?
I picked up the phone with glue on my fingers. I typed: I’m attending for Papa. Not for Daniil Sokolov.
That’s not what I asked.
It’s what I’m answering.
You’re deflecting.
I’m gluing tiny leaves. I don’t have time for deflection.
A pause. Then: Wear the dark green dress. The one with the collar. You look like yourself in that one.
I looked at the message. Zoe had opinions about my clothes the way she had opinions about everything — freely, confidently, and usually correctly. The dark green dress. She was right. I looked like myself in that dress. Not Orlov furniture. Not a Pakhan’s daughter deployed for display. Myself.
Maybe, I typed.
The phone buzzed again. Different sender.
Father.
Seven tomorrow. I need you with me, Ksyusha.
I read it twice. The same words he had spoken in his office, reduced now to text on a screen. The diminutive looked different in type — smaller, more formal, as though the written word couldn’t quite carry the warmth his voice had given it.
I typed: Of course, Papa.
I sent it. I put the phone face-down on the table.
On the television, Kiki was learning to fly.
She was falling, mostly. Getting up. Trying again.
The animation was hand-drawn, the colors soft, the movement imperfect in the way that old animation was imperfect — every frame slightly different from the last, every line carrying the evidence of a human hand.
I looked at the miniature greenhouse on the coffee table. Four walls. A floor. Five window frames. Six tiny flower pots with paper stems and leaves. The beginning of something that would sit on my shelf when it was finished, small and useless and mine.
I began packing the pieces back into the box.
Carefully, one by one, wrapping the fragile parts in tissue paper.
The glue would need to set overnight on what I had already assembled.
I could continue tomorrow. Or the day after.
Or next week. There was no deadline. No inspector.
No funding requirement. No one waiting for this to be finished except me.
Tomorrow I would wake up early. I would shower, do my hair, put on makeup that made me look composed rather than exhausted.
I would choose the dark green dress, because Zoe was right and I knew it.
I would drive to Volna and stand beside my father and be the Orlov Pakhan’s daughter — polished, useful, steady in a room full of men who measured everything in territory and debt and blood.
Daniil would be there. He would stand at Lev’s right hand, wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, his face carrying that composure I had watched for fifteen years. He would look at the room. He would look at my father. He would look at Anton.
He would look through me exactly as he always had.
I only wished the thought did not disappoint me.