Chapter 73
JULY
After my shift one night, I get a text from Byron as I'm folding my apron into my locker.
Him:
I take it you've already seen the video
Me:
What video?
Him:
…………
Him:
You're going to need to sit down.
A link to a video pops up. I tap it, and the words “EVERYBODY'S MOVING TO RUSSIA?!” blow up in front of my eyes. The account that uploaded the video is called “Dinah in Russia.”
Oh, Jesus.
I see Dinah outside, wearing a fancy dress and looking better than she did last month.
“Do you share traditional Russian values, but your woke Western government has been scaring you with Russophobic lies?” she says into a microphone. “Everybody's rushing to Russia, so don't get left behind! Don't believe me? See for yourself!”
It cuts to her in a grocery store produce section, picking into a bin of oranges and tomatoes. Bored people stroll around her with their carts, uninterested in the spectacle she's creating.
“Look at how stocked this grocery store is! Look at all the fruits. Look at all the low prices. Look at all the White people! You think your Western sanctions are tearing Russia down? We're not surviving, we're thriving!”
She turns a corner and crashes into a cart pushed by an old woman, who starts yelling at her in Russian. Dinah turns to the camera and says, “You know, if I looked up her skirt, I'd probably find that she's not a man. Can't say the same for the ladies in America.”
The only explanation I can think of is she's being forced to do this.
“That's right, my friends! You don't have to worry about they/thems here. No Peter Pansexual gender horseshit. No homeless tweakers pissing on your front door.”
I glance at the text below the video:
You can find out more about making the move to Russia through our website, Rush2Russia.
For a very reasonable crypto payment of one hundred dollars, you'll get access to a fast-track shared values visa for residency in the Russian Federation, along with a primer on all the hottest new places to live above the Arctic Circle.
We have all the best-kept secrets that your Western government doesn't want you to know.
Dinah now stands on the cobblestone road of Red Square, spinning around like she's the lady in The Sound of Music.
“I don't regret my move to Russia. You won't regret yours. Make your Russian dreams come true today!” She blows a kiss toward the camera as the image fades out and credits in the Cyrillic alphabet roll.
I ask Byron where he found this, and he sends me a link to a news article. Prepared for one more jump scare, I take a deep breath and click.
TEXAS WOMAN WINS RUSSIAN CITIZENSHIP ON NEW HIT GAME SHOW
37-year-old Oyster Pit, Texas, resident Dinah Dornoff charmed her way through Russia's hottest game show, Do You Love Russia?
, where she won Russian citizenship and one hundred thousand rubles.
Contestants on the show vie for citizenship and money through feats of strength and talent that demonstrate their love of Russia and traditional Russian values. Watch Dinah in the video below!
In the video, Dinah prances onstage with the rest of the contestants, all of them decked out in traditional Russian dresses and headdresses with strings of silver and gold beads hanging over their ears.
They cradle small wooden barrels in their arms as they dance with partners across the stage.
“Heaven Is a Place on Earth” blasts from the speakers behind them.
The women spin toward their male partners, wrapping themselves in their arms. They dunk their wooden barrels over the men's heads and pull them back off, revealing bear masks over their heads.
They uncoil themselves from the men's arms, their hands still gripped together.
One woman accidentally drops her barrel, which rolls down the stage and trips another woman. Dinah lets out a cruel laugh.
In another clip, Dinah plunges into a vat of ice water wearing a top with the US flag. Her opponent shivers and can barely dip her foot in before she runs offstage. After almost a minute under the water, Dinah leaps back out wearing a top with the Russian flag. The audience roars.
In the final round, where the contestants must dance the pas de deux from The Nutcracker, the curtain opens to reveal Dinah in a ballerina outfit, with a ripped, stoic blond man in all white waiting for her on the other side of the stage.
She poses gracefully as notes from a dreamy harp float through the auditorium.
She sweeps toward the male dancer as he takes her hand and spins her around, her right leg staying curled around her left knee.
Behind them, a giant Christmas tree rises high above, revealing the head of a stony-faced Vladimir Putin at the top, the rest of the tree adorned with Z-shaped ribbons of the Russian flag and candles in the form of intercontinental ballistic missiles marked with a nuclear trefoil.
At the end of the show, the women wait in a line nervously until the spotlight shines on Dinah, and she's crowned as the winner. The others, sobbing into their hands, get pulled backstage by Russian police.
The host, a beefy bald man in a tuxedo, brings Dinah to the front of the stage. “Nasha Dinushka, I have only one question for you: Do you love Russia?”
As tears drip down her face, Dinah nods and cries out, “Yes! I love Russia! Forever and ever!”
“Otlichna! Because Russia love you!”
The camera sweeps over the audience, who have jumped out of their seats to celebrate. White, blue, and red balloons fall from the ceiling. Roses fly at Dinah, who shouts, “Russia number one!” at the camera.
“Nasha Dinushka, you are now Russian citizen with one hundred thousand ruble!” He grabs Dinah's jaw, almost threateningly, and wrenches her head toward the camera. “Now say, ‘Spasiba, Vladimir Vladimirovich!'”
Dinah's eyes twitch uncomfortably for a brief second, her frozen face unable to contort, but she manages an awkward smile for the camera. “Spasiba, Vlado-vlado-vladovich!”
The host releases her jaw. “Everybody sing! Ya Russkiy!”
A group of soldiers join Dinah onstage belting, “Ya Russkiy!” as the camera pulls back, and they all wave goodbye as it ascends to the top of the theater.
I can't even.
When I'm home and get her on a video call, she's no longer in the dinky apartment she last called from in her fit of despair. She's in a more opulent bedroom with a chandelier, the walls gilded like a nineteenth-century palace.
“I've almost got the money for your plane ticket,” I say frantically. “What is going on?”
“Why would I want a plane ticket? I don't want to go back to Oyster Pit.”
“I thought you hated Russia. Blink twice if you're being held hostage.”
“What are you even talking about, Wade? You're so negative. It must be all that Russophobia the government poisons you with.”
“I saw the TV show.”
She scoffs. “Whew. I had to compete with some broke bitches from Tajikabekamastan and this Oklahoma trailer park pastor's wife with their six homeschooled kids. The losers all got sent to the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Sucks to be them!”
“So you won citizenship and a ton of money?”
She explains how the babushka who owns the apartment complex came by with an interpreter to demand she pay the rent. When Dinah said she didn't have any money, the babushka encouraged her to apply for the show.
“If I won, I thought I would just take the money and fly to Thailand to kill Ruslan. Then I realized during the filming of the show that these people wanted to me win. They loved me. For the first time in my life, I felt appreciated. And I got to dance to the Nutcracker in front of the world. Not to mention, my very own Nutcracker prince was watching in the audience!”
She narrates a meet cute about an oligarch named Oleg who was sitting in the audience next to Dinah's babushka landlady.
He told the babushka that Dinah was like an angel from the heavens and he had to meet her, so she pulled him on stage after the show and played matchmaker.
I question the part about her looking like an angel from the heavens, but sure, okay.
“You could say it was love at first sight! Speak of the devil,” she says.
Oleg ambles across the room behind Dinah, fully nude and ripped like a bodybuilder, with tattoos of a crucifix and Orthodox church domes all over his back.
He steps into the bathroom and kicks the toilet lid up, then puffs on a cigarette with one hand while controlling the direction of his piss with the other.
“Look at that body! Well-bred and kasha-fed. Nursing a broken heart, though. His wife tragically fell out of a window.” Her voice slips into a whisper. “But really, how dumb do you have to be to fall out of a window?”
She goes on about the dream job she got hosting the show that he produces, and her new addiction to kvass, a fermented beer-like drink that's popular over there.
“Sounds like you're set for life,” I say.
“You bet your ass. Oleg's got a yacht that would make Brandon Barton Ballbuster cry tears of blood,” she says, pouring herself a glass of kvass. “Speaking of being taken care of…”
An email pops up on my phone screen.
CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR FUNDRAISING GOAL OF $367,495.34 HAS BEEN MET!
“Compliments of Oleg.”
I rub my eyes, assuming this must be some trick they're playing on me. “Are you serious right now?”
She nods, downing her beverage, then wipes it from her lips. “Ah! Delicious kvass.”
“Why?”
“Wade, you're a pain in my ass. A real blight on humanity. But,” she says with a pained pause, “if you hadn't ruined my career and forced me to flee the country, I wouldn't have met Oleg or found happiness here.
I can't be mad at you. Once again, you've failed upward.
I used to love watching Hallmark Christmas movies.
Now I'm living in one. It even snows here in June! That said, I asked Oleg for this one favor.”
My head swells. The medical debt I thought would haunt me over the course of a hundred lifetimes is no more. I never have to think about it again. Except for the fact that it was paid for by a Russian oligarch, which hopefully doesn't mean I owe him a favor in the future.
“I don't know what to say.”
“Finally! The version of you I like best.”
“Thank you. And Oleg, I guess. I'm glad to know you've found your place, even if it's in Russia.”
“I'm done with America. It's a good place for someone like you as it collapses. Anyway, I've had enough of your Russophobia. Don't bother me anymore, Wade. I'm happy.”
“I won't.”
She waves. “Then goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
She keeps waving. “Bye.”
“Best of luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Take care,” I add before she quits the call.
“Goodbye, goddammit,” she says, then disappears forever.