Chapter 7 #2
“Spiders don’t want anything to do with us. They’re just looking for bugs to eat. So if I put them outside, they can eat bugs, like mosquitos, that might bite me and then they’re actually working for me, right?”
“Do you want to catch the spider on the wall by my shower?” she asks.
“Sure thing,” I tell her. “You know, girls need to know how to catch bugs.”
“Why?” The word is part curiosity, part revulsion.
“Well, what if when you’re older there’s a spider in your room and there isn’t someone else around to catch it for you? It’s important to know how to do these things for ourselves.”
Her face manages to perk up a bit while still looking skeptical. I slide my eyes up to Aleksandr, who looks at me with that same mask he wore when I first entered his kitchen. Gone are the eyes that were burning as they slid across my face.
“How about if I show you how I do it so you’ll know how next time?” I say as I hold my hand out to Stella.
“Okay.” The word is fear and bravery wrapped inexorably together.
I glance up at Sasha. “Could you get me a glass and a piece of paper? Or something stiff like an envelope?”
“Sure,” he says. Now that Stella has released her hold on his legs, he steps around me and hurries down the hall.
I take her hand and say, “Why don’t you show me where this spider is, and then I’ll explain how I’m going to catch it.”
She follows me to the bathroom door but stops on the threshold and won’t come in.
Instead, she points her hand up toward the glass door of her shower.
There on the wall is a light brown spider, smaller than a dime.
“Okay, so what I’m going to do is put a glass over it.
Then, I’ll lift one side of the glass ever so slightly and slide a folded piece of paper or an envelope under it.
Once the spider is on the paper or glass, the trickiest part is getting your hand under the paper so you can carry the spider in the glass outside, without the spider getting out. ”
“But when you put the cup over it, won’t it jump or run around?” she asks. I notice that she’s looking at the spider with some degree of curiosity. At least she doesn’t seem petrified anymore.
“Maybe. But spiders can’t jump or run through glass, or through plastic if we use a plastic cup. And even if the spider gets away somehow, believe me, it’s trying to run away from you, not toward you.”
She takes a small step into the bathroom so she’s standing next to me.
“What makes you so scared of them?” I ask.
“They move so fast.”
“Think how fast you could run if you had eight legs,” I say.
Where the hell is Sasha with the glass? I don’t like spiders any more than the next person, but I do want her to know that it’s important that she learn to do things like this for herself.
As a rich kid growing up on the Upper East Side, it would be too easy to end up spoiled and entitled and unable to do anything for herself.
I never had anyone teach me how to be independent, how to take care of myself, or how to advocate for myself.
My parents did everything for me when I was a kid, then my mom died and my dad became what I generously call ‘emotionally mute.’ I had to learn how to be an adult overnight, and I had to figure everything out myself because my dad was so wrapped up in his grief he was utterly useless as a father.
“Here you go.” Sasha’s voice startles me. He stands in the doorway, his hand extended with the glass. At least he has a shirt on now.
“For someone so large, you move remarkably quickly and quietly,” I say as I take the glass. I try to ignore the shock of his skin on mine when our fingers touch, but I bobble the glass and he has to catch it and hand it back to me again.
“You’ve seen what I can do on skates. This should not be a surprise.”
Still, how does a two hundred-pound man not make a sound when he walks?
I show Stella how quickly and easily a spider can be caught, then I leave the bathroom with the offending arachnid. Aleksandr tells her to take a very quick shower and shuts the door behind him.
He eyes the way I’m holding the spider between the glass in one hand and the folded piece of paper in the other. “How mad would you be if I tickled you right now?” A sly smile barely cracks his lips enough for me to see his teeth.
“How mad would you be if there was shattered glass all over Stella’s floor and a spider loose in her room?”
“You play dirty, Volkova. Always have,” he mutters.
“Sometimes winning is dirty work,” I say, throwing the words he always used during our childhood right back at him. He never apologized when we were kids and he tripped me or knocked me out of the way during a game. Back then, he’d win at any cost. I wonder if the same is true today?
Our eyes size each other up in a mini staring contest, both of us, I’m sure, remembering our competitive childhood relationship that turned to deep friendship before his betrayal.
“Can you show me where to let this thing out?” I say, not wanting to dwell on the past I thought I’d left far behind me until he showed up in a lawyer’s office two days ago.
He leads me back through the living room and opens one of the glass doors.
I follow him through it and onto the terrace.
The sound that leaves my mouth when the spectacular view of Central Park hits me is almost a grunt of pain.
The view I saw the other night was amazing, but he was right, it is even better in the daylight, especially now that I can see this terrace.
We stand on travertine tiles laid in a diamond pattern, and there’s a low stone wall that runs along the perimeter with a short glass wall above it—high enough that you can’t accidentally fall over the edge, but low enough that it doesn’t interfere with the view.
A large wrought iron table and chairs sit near one wall, and lush planters full of small trees, shrubs, and flowers surround us.
I follow the length of the terrace with my eyes.
“Is that a . . .” I search for the word but can’t find it.
“It’s a solarium,” he says. The glass walls and ceiling easily soar twelve feet from the floor to the peaked roof, and it runs to the end of the terrace. Inside it’s loaded with plants and another table and chairs.
I take a few steps closer to the solarium so I can better see the inside. “This is magical,” I say, because I cannot for the life of me think of another word for this space.
“The solarium is another thing that sold me on the space.” His breath falls against my neck, which leads to the same tingling in my spine I felt when he had me backed into the cabinet in the kitchen.
“My bedroom has glass doors that lead out to it,” his arm extends past me, pointing to the end of the terrace. “So does the guest room.”
“Wow, to wake up in a place like that.” My sigh is laced with appreciation for this life he’s built for himself.
“It would make a lot of sense for you to stay here, Petra. In the guest room,” he quickly adds, as if I might have thought he meant in his room. “If you’re willing to help me and Stella, we’ll need to find a way to live together, at least some of the time.”
My spine stiffens. “I have a life, and a career. I can’t just walk away from them. Even if I wanted to help you, I can’t move to New York, and it’s unfair of you to ask me to.”
I glance over at him and there’s a flash of pain in his eyes. I do want to help you, I almost say. But I bite my tongue instead, because I don’t know how to help him without hurting myself.
“I know this is a big ask . . .”
“A big ask is ‘Hey, can you watch my kid for a week while I go on vacation.’ This is life-changing. A fake marriage that needs to be real? A kid to adopt? Getting you US citizenship? You’re not talking about helping you out.
You’re talking about me changing everything, giving up much of what I’ve worked for over the past few years, relocating . . .”
“Petra, I don’t know what else to do. The thought of Stella ever ending up with her aunt and uncle . . .” He trails off as his body visibly shudders.
And as if they knew we were talking about them, a doorbell sound chimes inside the apartment.
Aleksandr rolls his eyes skyward. “That’s Martin letting me know they’re here.”
I quickly set the spider trap on the ground, lift the glass, and then pick up the paper after the small spider scurries away. When I stand, I feel like I’m going to face a firing squad—I don’t even know these people, I’m not sure why I am involved, or why I care what they think.
“Can you get Stella and I’ll entertain them? I don’t want you to be stuck with them while I get her.”
Even though I still don’t think they can be as bad as he’s making them out to be, it sounds like he’s giving me the better end of the bargain. “No problem,” I tell him.
He opens the door to the solarium. “First door on the right leads to the guest bedroom. When you come out in the hall, Stella’s room is to the right.” With that, he turns and heads back through the door to the sitting room and is gone.