CHAPTER 26 #2
A pause arrives then. The pause is part of the protocol.
The four men are silent and I am breathing and they are breathing, and every wrist in this room is bare of time because Nikolai has put the Patek on the bedside table for the first time in his life.
Stefan brings water from the carafe on the bedside and hand-feeds it to me from the small ceramic cup, his palm under my head.
Cool. I drink. Alexei strokes the inside of my left thigh once and stays. Gabriel kisses my right palm and stays.
"Color for me, Elena."
I say, "Green."
Nikolai's voice. "Confirm you are with me."
I say, "I'm with you."
The rotation continues.
Alexei moves to my left hand. He takes it the way Gabriel took my right — both of his around mine, the ring on his thumb against the inside of my wrist. Stefan moves down to my hips.
Gabriel returns to my right side, at my breast, his mouth slow, the San Gennaro medallion at his own throat brushing once across my sternum when he leans.
Nikolai stays at my head. His hand has come back to my brow; the angle of my face goes back to neutral; the cervical-spine angle a doctor would set for sleep.
Stefan is between my thighs.
He listens at me with his ear at my sternum, four-count in, six-count out. He lifts his head and says the conditional way he always says.
"Doll. If you would, breathe with me. One. Two. Three. Four."
I breathe with him. One. Two. Three. Four.
"There."
He kisses me at the hipbone and enters me, slow as the call-room night in October was slow, the Moscow surgeon's count in his cadence, the cord at his left wrist drawing once across my belly. He says, low, "Made for this, doll."
He moves in fours. I register without meaning to. Nikolai's hand on my brow counts in nothing at all because Nikolai is the ground.
I come on Stefan a long, slow, four-counted come that goes out from my sternum and down through my hips and back up to my mouth and out into Stefan's mouth when he lowers his face to mine to take it from me.
He comes inside me. His forehead drops to my collarbone.
The cord brushes my throat. The medallion is at my sternum.
"Doll," he says, against the hollow of my throat. "If you would, stay."
"I stay."
Nikolai's voice. "Color."
"Green."
"Tell me."
"Here, all of me."
The bed holds still this time on the brass castors.
Stefan lifts off me and Gabriel comes to my right hand and Alexei moves to my left foot and Nikolai's hand on my brow is the ground.
The pause is longer. Stefan brings water again.
He hand-feeds me. The cool of the cup at my lip.
He wipes the inside of my thigh with the warm cloth he has had on the bedside table all night, the cloth Alexei taught him in two-thousand-twenty was the right after-cloth for the first cycle.
I drink. Stefan kisses my forehead. Alexei kisses my left ankle. Gabriel kisses my right knuckle. Nikolai holds his mouth in reserve. Nikolai's mouth is for the last round.
The rotation continues. The room has been moving for five hours.
It is two a.m.
I have lost track of the panels in the ceiling. I have not lost track of the men in the room. I mark the medallion: one. I mark the men: four. I lose the breath count and Nikolai's hand on my brow takes it for me.
Nikolai shifts.
He says, only to Gabriel, with the smallest motion of his hand, "Take the ground."
Gabriel rises from my right side and walks the four steps around the lower brass rail to my head.
He sits at the pillow where Nikolai has been.
He stays wordless. He lifts his hand. His palm finds my brow exactly where Nikolai's palm has been for five hours.
The contact is dry, cool, deliberate. The hand is heavier than Nikolai's.
His other hand stays at his thigh; the one palm is enough.
The architecture redistributes. The room rebalances.
Nikolai stands.
His eyes hold mine until the count completes of nothing. He is the coldest of the four and the most decided and the line is in his face as the chi-seal is in the wax on the blotter in his study downstairs.
He sets the Patek farther from the edge of the bedside table with one finger. The face has stayed turned down since twenty-one hundred. A man punctual his entire life is right on time tonight.
He slides the simple silk slip down from my hips and off me.
The asking was finished hours ago. I have been bare to the waist for hours.
He folds the loosened silk and lays it on the bedside table beside the pencil and the pin and the watch.
The medallion is at my sternum. Gabriel has cupped a hand around it once to keep the chain from sliding under Stefan's palm; that is the only hand that has touched it tonight.
Nikolai climbs onto the bed.
He kneels between my thighs. He puts his forearms beside my shoulders. He stays at the threshold. He lowers his face to my throat and breathes once at the hollow there. The Russian curse he says when he is afraid for me stays sealed behind his teeth. Tonight the fear is gone.
"Elena, color."
"Green."
"Let me hear yes."
"Yes."
He enters me, slow.
He has set the SIG down on the chest of drawers before he climbed the stairs tonight.
The weapon stays on the chest, where every weapon stays in this room.
The Patek is on the bedside table. The strap is in Gabriel's pocket.
The ring is on Alexei's thumb. The cord is on Stefan's wrist. The medallion is at my sternum.
Nikolai's mouth is at my throat.
"Mine."
The word is one he spends rarely during sex.
The first was the night against the gallery glass in his foyer.
He had said it then with my cheek to the cold pane.
He says it now with his mouth at the hollow of my throat and Gabriel's hand on my brow and Stefan's hand on my right and Alexei's hand on my left.
He says it once and then he says it again, soft, into my skin.
"Elena. Mine."
I say, "Yours."
He moves. He has the most controlled rhythm of the four. He counts in nothing. The curses stay locked behind his jaw. He breathes through his nose and stays silent for the length of a held breath and then he says, in his ledger voice with the trauma cadence pushed under it, "Moya. Mine."
He comes inside me. He stays braced on his forearms; he has been a chief of surgery for three years and a chief of surgery keeps his weight off a body.
He lowers his forehead to mine and breathes there.
The bed shifts on its brass castors for the fourth time at two-thirty and the brass rings on the hardwood and the room records the sound.
Gabriel's voice from my head. "Color."
"Green."
"Tell me, Elena."
"Here. Awake."
Nikolai pulls back, breathes once, lowers his mouth to the medallion at my sternum, kisses Saint Raphael through the chain.
"Stay."
"I stay."
He lifts off me. He sits up. The four men are still. The four-poster is still. The bed has shifted four times tonight; the count is closed.
It is two-thirty in the morning.
The bath is ready. Stefan refreshed the clawfoot tub at two-ten after filling it at one a.m. while I was with Alexei. The bath salts in a small brass box from the brownstone kitchen. The cashmere blanket over Stefan's forearm.
Nikolai lifts me.
He carries me from the bed to the master bath. He carries my weight easily; he has carried me before. The medallion is at my sternum the whole way.
The master bath is warm. The clawfoot tub is cast iron with a brass interior the color of a winter penny, set under the window where the candle is still burning. Steam rises in a soft slow column that fogs the windowpane and clears at the edges.
Nikolai sets me into the water.
The heat goes into me like an instruction. I lower my lashes. He holds me until my eyes open again. I open them. He nods once and lowers himself onto the small stool he keeps in the corner of the bath for the days his knees would rather he did not stand.
The four men are with me in the room. The bath holds one.
Stefan kneels at the head of the tub. He has my hair in his hand.
He has been waiting to wash my hair for six hours.
He pours water from the small ceramic cup he hand-fed me from.
The water runs through my hair and over my forehead and into the tub.
He does it twice more. He sets the cup down.
He opens a small enamel tin Nikolai bought from the Brooklyn shop, takes a pinch of the loose lavender salts inside, dissolves it between his palms, and works it into my hair.
His hands move slow, unhurried. He talks to me. The praise line stays in his throat tonight; the praise line is for the rounds. The bath is for the words that arrive after the rounds are over.
"Doll. I have wanted to wash your hair since the night at the call room. I have been thinking about how a person's hair holds the smell of a day. The day is over. I am taking it out."
He rinses me with the small ceramic cup again. The water runs warm down the back of my neck. The hairline crack in the angel's wing is under his thumb when he steadies the medallion against my skin.
He brushes the wet hair back from my forehead with the side of his hand. He moves to the back of the tub and works the back of my neck, both his hands, slow, deliberate, the four-count under his fingers.
Alexei kneels at the left side of the tub.
He has my left arm. He has lifted it from the water and rested my elbow on the brass rim.
He washes me as he taught Stefan: shoulder, upper arm, the inside of the elbow, forearm, wrist, each finger.
He sets my hand back in the water and lifts my left ankle from where it has rested against the side of the tub.
He washes my calf the same way. In aftercare Alexei goes wordless and uncounted; his hands are the conversation.