Chapter 19 #2
Arkady’s face eased. The young guard from Boris’s car had spent weeks in hospital after the attack. I had learned his name there, standing beside his bed while his mother tried to thank me for paying bills that should never have been hers to worry about.
“Home. Still doing rehab. Still being paid.”
“Does he need anything?”
“A reason to stop apologizing for being off work. I told him if he called me about it again, I’d extend his leave.”
“You went to see him?”
“Someone had to explain it in terms he’d understand.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s handled.”
He looked at me.
Something had been playing on my mind. Something I hadn’t resolved. “In the truck,” I said. “What I asked you to promise. To take her and leave if I didn’t get out.”
His jaw moved.
“I remember.”
“I know what I was asking?”
“Do you?”
I sat with that. With my brother looking at me across the desk, refusing to make the conversation easy.
“Yes,” I said. “I was asking you to be Pakhan. To step in, take my place in case I . . .”
He looked away first.
“Don’t ask me again.”
“I hope I never have to.”
“Good. There. We’ve had feelings. Go and see your wife before I develop a rash.”
I laughed. He stood and picked up his phone.
At the door, he paused.
“You know, you laugh more these days,” he said.
“Do I?”
“It’s unsettling.”
“I’ll try to stop.”
His mouth curved.
“Don’t.”
He left before I could answer.
I checked the time, sent Ksenia a message to say I was on my way, and put on my coat.
Ksenia handed me a hard hat before she kissed me.
“Priorities,” I said.
“I’ve grown attached to your head. Begrudgingly.”
“Just my head?”
She looked me over, taking her time.
“The rest has its uses, I suppose. But they don’t make a hat for the other part I like.” A wicked smile.
I returned it, then put on the hard hat.
Over my crotch.
“Daddy!” she said with a laugh, grabbing the hat and putting it on my head. She adjusted the strap beneath my chin, stepped back, then took out her phone.
“Absolutely not.”
The camera clicked.
“For the project records.”
“If Arkady sees that—”
“He’s already replied.”
She showed me the screen.
Does he come with a little toolbox?
I looked at my wife. She smiled innocently and unlocked the gate.
The bathhouse stood behind it, three storeys of weathered brick and tall windows overlooking the harbor. A board beside the entrance carried the project name and, beneath it, KSENIA ORLOVA. She paused beside the sign to find the door key.
“Wait,” I said.
She looked up.
This time I took the photograph.
“Daniil.”
“Project records.”
Her smile changed. She stayed beside the sign for another moment, letting me take a second one.
Inside, the entrance hall was cold enough to see our breath. Small blue and cream tiles stretched towards a broad staircase. There were gaps where tiles had lifted, patches covered with protective boards. Above us, a piece of old lettering survived over a doorway.
Ksenia pointed it out before I could ask.
“They painted over it. Three times. We found it beneath the last layer.”
She was already moving, showing me the remnants of the reception counter, the curve of the stair, the place where the old changing rooms began. I followed her through rooms I would otherwise have dismissed as empty and watched her fill them.
“The floor here stays,” she said. “These partitions go. That opens the view all the way to the stairs.”
“You’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”
She stopped with her hand on the banister.
“Years.”
Then she grinned.
“Try to look more impressed. I had an excellent presentation prepared.”
“I’m enormously impressed.”
“Too much. Now you sound frightened.”
“You did threaten me with a screwdriver early today.”
She laughed and led me upstairs.
On the landing, she showed me a window sash marked with blue tape. The glass bent the view of the harbor slightly; a crane beyond the water seemed to waver when I moved my head.
“The contractor wanted to replace these.”
“Did he survive the conversation?”
“He’s still breathing. And getting another quote. From someone who repairs windows.”
“A diplomatic success.”
“I was extremely diplomatic.”
I looked at her.
“I didn’t use the word vandal,” she said. “Out loud.”
I could have listened to her all afternoon. She had stopped noticing the cold. There was dust on one knee of her trousers and a pencil tucked behind her ear, and she looked happier than she had in the expensive dress she wore to our wedding.
So was I.
We looked down into the entrance hall. The light reached the landing, then faded beneath the stair.
“Could you bring it down there?” I asked.
“The light?”
“Along that wall. A narrow opening above it. So when someone comes through the door, they see the brick instead of a dark corner.”
She looked at the wall. Then up at the ceiling.
“A rooflight?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know what’s above us.”
“I do.”
She took out her drawings, found the section she wanted and spread it on a covered workbench. I stood beside her while she traced the roof structure with her finger.
“Here?” she asked.
“A little further over.”
She moved her finger. I nodded.
“We’d need to check the structure and the sightline from outside.” She made a note. “But that could work.”
I waited for her to return to the tour.
Instead she held out the pencil.
“Show me.”
“Ksenia.”
“A sketch. On the back. You won’t ruin anything.”
I took it.
For a moment I stood with the pencil in my hand and felt ridiculous. I could sign away a building without hesitating. Drawing one line on a piece of scrap paper made me feel twelve years old.
My father had opened my school notebook at the dinner table. He had looked at the floor plan I’d copied from a book, then asked whether I wanted to spend my life drawing buildings for other men to own.
I had never answered him.
“There isn’t an exam,” Ksenia said softly.
I looked at her. She was waiting beside me, entirely willing to give me the time.
I drew the wall. The opening above it. A few lines to show where the light would fall.
The proportions were wrong. I rubbed out the top line and tried again.
She leaned closer.
“Yes,” she said. “I see it.”
I added the stair. Then I realized I was still drawing, although I had already shown her what I meant.
Ksenia said nothing.
When I finally put the pencil down, she took the sheet and wrote the date in the corner.
“I’m keeping this.”
“It’s barely a sketch.”
“It’s the first one you’ve done for me.”
She rolled it carefully with the other drawings and put them back in the tube.
I caught her by the waist before she could move away. Her hands settled on my coat. I kissed her beneath the old window, hard hat knocking softly against hers.
She laughed into my mouth.
“Very smooth, Sokolov.”
“There he is,” Arkady said when we walked into Volna. “New York’s most expensive apprentice.”
“I’m deleting that photograph.”
“Too late. Kiryl has made it his phone background.”
Kiryl held up his phone.
I looked at my wife. She was removing her coat with a serenity I did not trust.
“Family is so important,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“It’s overrated,” I said, faux-grumpy.
Eight places around the table. Yelena and Sal on one side, my brothers making too much noise on the other, Anton already reaching for Ksenia’s coat. He kissed her cheek and asked about the bathhouse before she had even sat down.
“She’s converted me,” I told him.
“To architecture?”
“To being told where to stand.”
“That happened months ago,” Yelena said.
Sal poured me wine with an expression of deep sympathy that did not survive his wife’s glance.
It was good to have them here. Yelena had greeted me at the door with a hug so fierce that I had stopped trying to say hello. She had done the same to Ksenia, then immediately begun arguing with Kiryl about his coat.
Now she stole an olive from Sal’s plate. He moved the plate closer without looking.
Food arrived from the kitchen downstairs: fish, potatoes, platters of meat, enough bread to feed another table. The waitress set a basket beside Arkady. He looked up at her as though she had personally saved his life.
“My favorite woman.”
“You say that to all the waitresses.”
“And I always mean it!”
She gave him an extra roll. Kiryl watched this with outrage.
“How does he keep doing that?”
“Years of practice,” Nikita said. “Very little shame.”
“None,” Arkady corrected, and passed the extra roll to Kiryl. “And don’t forget my natural charisma!”
The table got louder. Anton and Sal began discussing a restaurant in Chicago. Kiryl tried to explain something from a lecture, lost his place when Nikita asked a question and accused him of doing it deliberately.
“I’m interested,” Nikita said.
“That’s the problem. Be less interested.”
Yelena laughed so hard she had to put down her glass.
I sat back with my arm across Ksenia’s chair and let them talk.
My father would have wanted to know what we were accomplishing. There would have been a point when he put his glass down and everyone waited for the conversation to become useful.
I reached for another potato.
Beside me, Ksenia rested her hand on my thigh.
Arkady reached beneath his chair and brought out a box. He dropped it beside Kiryl’s plate.
“Before I forget.”
Kiryl opened it. Inside was a desk lamp, adjustable, heavy enough to stay where it was put.
He looked up.
“Mine broke.”
“I know.”
“I only mentioned it once.”
“To each of us,” Arkady said. “I’ve spared the family an appeal fund.”
Kiryl took the lamp out of the box. He turned it over in his hands, testing the arm.
“This is a good one.”
“Then it shouldn’t break. We all benefit.”
“Thank you.”
Arkady reached for his wine.
“Study something useful.”
“Such as?”
“How to carry a conversation without mentioning a lamp.”
Kiryl grinned and began putting it carefully back in the box.
I caught Arkady’s eye. He pointed at me with his fork: not a word.
I obeyed. I could be generous too.
Later, when the plates had been cleared, Anton stood with his glass.
“To our fathers.”
The conversation settled. I lifted my wine with everyone else.