Chapter 10 Nameless
Nameless
Vitali is dead.
That was the first thing Elena panted out as she fell against me when I opened the door. She took the stairs, and there were a lot of stairs to take.
“Wait—wait what?” I tried to calm her, stroking her hair as she doubled over, breathless and inconsolable.
“He’s—he’s dead,” she wheezed, and thrust her purse into my hands.
It bent and hung open, revealing a hairbrush and an extra pair of socks with a bundle of crinkled papers wedged in between.
My insides twisted, knowing whatever was coming would be awful, but unclear on how awful because Elena tended to jump off cliffs rather than climb the mountain.
“Come to the kitchen,” I said quietly as she kicked off her snow boots.
I was just about to make tea. Mama took Maxim to the movies where they were showing one about an American Christmas. It was December, and Vitali was supposed to return any day.
I set the tea kettle down with shaking hands as she coughed and spread the contents of her purse across the small table with the checkered vinyl cloth.
“You can’t just come in saying that, Elena. What’s going on?” I said measuredly, because the thought that this might actually be happening didn’t make sense.
“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat and pulled off her wet scarf.
“I just—I got scared. I told Lyosha about that restaurant—the one you went to, the ‘Labyrinth,’ and he got this weird look on his face and they both got very angry with me. And I’m not a stupid girl, Katya, I’m not a stupid girl.
I backed off. But then I heard them talking. ”
“Elena!” I whipped around, the little glass dish in my hands rattling the sugar cubes. “You need to get to the point right now.”
She nodded, wide eyes focused on the salt shaker beside her elbow, because she didn’t want to look at me. “You know—they were all joking about Bratva this—Bratva that. Then they said his name and I got scared.”
“His name? His whole name?”
“No, just his first name, but I got scared because they were talking about the ‘Labyrinth.’ I got scared for you because, well, Katya—you can’t get involved with that stuff. Not you.”
I quietly slipped onto the stool opposite her, praying I misunderstood what she was about to tell me.
“You’re good—you’re so smart, Katya,” she stammered. “I don’t want you to end up like me.”
I went to put a hand over hers but she pulled back and shoved the papers toward me.
“I asked around. Dima knows someone at the ZAGS office—asked them to find more information. I didn’t want to worry you.” She took a deep breath and I grew increasingly angrier at her tactics of ‘not worrying’ me. “Vitali Konstantinov is dead. At the age of forty-five, in 1988.”
I didn’t realize how much of me tensed until it unraveled at that moment. “Elena, you are something—you couldn’t have led with that?”
“No! No, look at the papers. Look!”
So, I looked. A lot of official documents. Legal words I saw every day. My hand stopped on ‘Acts of Civil Status.’
“Elena, you found some man with the same name and didn’t even call? Just ran here, panicking?”
She anticipated this and shoved the next paper toward me, then slapped another and another onto that pile. All certificates of enterprise and shareholder registrations.
All dated after the man’s death.
“This can’t be right,” I muttered, fumbling at the documents. “You’re mixing up paperwork.”
Elena stabbed it with a finger. “He owns a brick company, Katya. Two kiosks by the Administrative Building, two warehouses, a handful of cellphone outlets by the train station, and a company that installs security doors. I snooped—and half those businesses aren’t even open.”
I stared at the paperwork, a part of me relieved and the other part screaming. Willing blindness couldn’t last forever, but I found I was angrier that he didn’t tell me his real name than everything laid out in front of me—if she was even right.
“Why are you so sure it’s him…” I mumbled, clinging to the last string of hope I had that she was wrong. But I already knew all this, didn’t I? There are no countries without phones.
“Because they were talking about him. None of it made sense until I got a hold of the records. Katya, please, please don’t see him again.”
The kettle whistled and I didn’t hear it until she shot up and took it off the stove.
“How can you tell me that?” I asked without looking at her. “How can you say that with the company you keep?”
She didn’t say anything at first. Then, “Where does Mama keep the tea?”
“In the second cupboard. There is a box. You’re still going out with Dmitri and Lyosha—how can you tell me not to see Vitali again?”
Elena sighed and set the teacup before me, then sat back down. “I’ve been around them for a long time, Katya. If not them, then men just like them. I can’t just walk away from it.”
“You don’t need expensive perfume. You have a job—and when this is all over, you’ll still have a job no one can take.”
“No.” She shook her head and again averted her eyes.
“You don’t understand. I can’t walk away from it.
You don’t just listen to them go on about their bullshit and guzzle their vodka and walk away.
I have… I have lovers. And people say a lot of things when they’re in that position. And people like me don’t leave.”
I put a hand over my mouth, staring. “Elena are you selling yourself?”
“No, they’re lovers. They buy me things and they take me places. And they pay our bills now that no one is getting their salaries. I’m lying to my mama and papa and telling them I still have the job at the hospital.”
“You don’t have the job anymore?”
“No. I got so mad I stopped showing up, so I said they switched me to the night shift and I go over to Dmitri’s… or Lyosha’s…”
“Elena, what are you going to do?”
“I told you. I have to keep doing this. You don’t.
” She shifted uncomfortably and tapped the teacup, then smiled, but it wasn’t genuine.
“I’m going to England, you know. They’re taking me to England, and then we’re going to Thailand.
I keep some clothes over there, and I get to wear dresses like you wouldn’t believe.
I have this one dress—it’s Chanel. It debuted in the Paris Fashion Week in 1989.
It’s the prettiest gold, with this bunched-up crimson fabric on the back.
And I get to wear it.” Her face tensed, and she blinked rapidly to chase away the tears. “I get to wear it.”
There was more to say, but the door whined and Mama and Maxim returned. I hurriedly shoved the papers back into Elena’s purse while she sat and silently stared at her teacup.
* * *
Vitali returned and I said nothing to him about Misha or Elena. Of course, he brought flowers. There were always so many flowers. Too many, and soon I’d have to ask him to stop because they didn’t die fast enough to make room for the new ones.
He showed up twice a week, and we talked on the phone almost every day.
Mama stopped giving me a hard time, I think in her mind I was already married off.
She didn’t mind all the time we spent together as long as it wasn’t overnight.
Of course, he never even gave an indication that he wanted to, which pleased her and infuriated me.
By this point, it had been months and he still hadn’t kissed me.
What’s worse—he still wouldn’t hold my hand.
The contact was always lower back, neck, knee, and thigh.
Sometimes his hand moved so close to my heat I thought I was going to lose my mind.
One time, I accidentally let out a moan and he immediately pulled back, swearing under his breath.
Vitali never swore, and hearing that frustration could have made me cum right there, in the passenger seat.
So then I knew he wanted it, but for some reason (I was afraid to ask) he practiced this absolutely psychotic self-control.
It was a week before New Year’s when he arrived out of breath with his face comically red and dragging a huge fir tree.
All he said was ‘the elevator’s broken’ while Mama ohh’d and ahh’d, twirling around it and trying to make a cup of hot cocoa for him at the same time. I asked why he didn’t just have an employee deliver it, but he only shrugged.
“I can have a gold necklace delivered. Would it mean as much as if I’d put it on your neck myself?”
I was enamored, and every day the guilt died a little more.
I convinced myself it was all a misunderstanding with Elena, and Misha had been talking about someone else.
Looking back, they were stupid thoughts of a stupid girl, but I had no way of knowing that at the time.
All I knew was being completely and tragically caught up in Vitali Konstantinov.
* * *
He didn’t come over to decorate the tree.
Maxim and I did that, hanging garlands and silver pine cones, and fragile ornaments Mama had since she was a girl.
We sat on the floor and tied threads over individual wrapped candies, then hung them between the lights and streamers.
You weren’t supposed to pluck them off and eat them until New Year’s Eve, but Maxim still did when no one was looking.
I strung up lights across the wall, wrapping them over picture hooks and the colorful carpet decorating the wall.
There weren’t many, and we only got to decorate the living room, but I was afraid to buy more because Mama would get suspicious.
I’d been so careful to keep my spending low, or I would have to explain how I was able to buy everything on my ‘salary.’
The salary Vitali gave me for being a good girl.
By that time, Mama had already known no one was getting paid, but just like me, she chose to believe the dressed-up lies rather than the devastating truth. I guessed she told herself I was still getting paid in the same way I told myself Vitali was getting paid.