“I have wonderful news,” Margarita Anatolyevna said. Her silk scarf gleamed under the music room’s lights. “The university has agreed to send us to Vladivostok at the end of the month for the Eastern Winds ethnic festival. It’s an honor. Truly an honor. We’ll perform for more than a thousand people.” Her voice swung. She paused, and everyone applauded, a noise rapid and furious. “We haven’t gone for two years.” This last bit was half-drowned by their excitement. “Chander, can you tell everyone more?”
Ksyusha caught Chander looking at her before he stood. “This is great,” he said. “Right, they didn’t fund us last year. It’s for three or four days—”
“December twenty-third to twenty-sixth,” Margarita Anatolyevna broke in.
“And we dance, meet other ensembles, see a real city. Stay in a hotel.” Though he wasn’t speaking in Ksyusha’s direction, she knew he said that to her. “It’s fun.”
Alisa squealed, which set everyone off again. Even Margarita Anatolyevna was grinning. Ksyusha pressed her hands together to clap along with the rest of them, but she could not think of what to do next. Chander had told her that the troupe performed in public, but she’d pictured…visiting a local hospital ward, or taking the stage at an elementary school. Not missing classes to fly to Russia’s Pacific capital. And so soon…What would Ruslan say? He wasn’t planning to visit this month, as instead she would go to Esso to celebrate New Year’s at home, but…staying in a hotel, in a different region, with people he did not and should not trust?
Ksyusha excused herself and called Ruslan from the bathroom. “What is it?” he said when he picked up. Men and machinery were noisy behind him.
She told him about Eastern Winds.
“Vladivostok,” he said. “God.”
“I know. I know.”
“Just the name of the thing is ridiculous. ‘Eastern Winds.’ ”
“I know,” she said again, “but everyone else is excited. Alisa practically screamed when the director announced it.”
“Of course she did,” he said. “It’s incredible. A free trip to Vladivostok. I told you this dance thing was a good idea. How long do you have to be there?”
“Four days,” Ksyusha said. Even to her own ears, she sounded miserable. He clicked his tongue, and she understood that the more unwilling she seemed to take the trip, the more likely he would be to let her go.
That only made her feel worse. She had tried, since the first collision with Chander, to be better for Ruslan. But that effort—the tender questions, the caring noises, the more frequent promises that she loved him and home best—amounted to a strategy that paid off for her. Had she planned for this result all along?
“Drums and skins and Eastern Winds,” Ruslan said. “I wish I could see you all perform.”
She turned away from the bathroom’s line of mirrors. She wanted to cry. “I wish you could, too,” she said.
He didn’t have the money for a plane trip. Neither did anyone else in their families. So saying that didn’t matter—saying she wished for them to come together, though it would ruin them.
In the time before their next practice, Chander held her so tight she could not breathe. “Everyone else will go out at night,” he said. “They won’t expect you to come along. You’ll stay in your hotel room, and I’ll tell them I’m sick, or tired, or have to do research. Then I’ll come to you.”
“All right,” she said. It couldn’t stay kissing forever. Under her palms was his chest, the muscles tense in anticipation.
In their hall, they clung to each other, but once practice began they kept to opposite sides of the room. The knowledge of what was coming made her skittish. Margarita Anatolyevna announced an increase to five practices a week, and Ksyusha could not turn her head to look at him. She imagined he, and everyone else, knew what she pictured: his body above hers. The music started. Chander stepped forward and she flinched.
“When’s the next time you’ll see Ruslan?” Alisa asked. The two cousins lay in their separate beds. Ksyusha, who had been thinking of the university hallway, opened her eyes when Alisa spoke. Nothing but darkness above.
“New Year’s,” she said.
“Are you sad without him?”
“Sometimes.” The guilt rose in Ksyusha. She stared up.
“Maybe he can come visit before we go.”
“There’s no time,” Ksyusha said. She turned toward Alisa, who had her cell in her hand. The glow from the screen made Alisa look even younger, like a little girl at a campfire. “I’ll see him soon enough. Don’t worry.”
Alisa’s eyelids flickered. She was back to playing on her phone. A charm hooked to its top corner made a black line across her knuckles. “You’re the one who’s always worried.”
Ksyusha was sick of her cousin’s questions. Facing the ceiling again, she tried to return in her mind to the hall outside the practice room, but it wasn’t coming as vividly as she wanted. How Chander spoke to her today. The way he touched her.
What would their first night in the hotel be like? Under Chander’s patience was a growing force; he spent real effort unwrapping his hands from her as their time drew to an end each afternoon. If she agreed, he would peel her naked tomorrow and press her against the tiles. Ksyusha’s stomach flipped at the thought.
She had lost her virginity to Ruslan that first summer on her childhood bed. Afraid of making a mistake, she barely moved, and afterward he called her a cold fish, fastened her bra, and kissed her. Now she knew what to do for Ruslan, but Chander might expect something more, some great experience. Or he could be disappointed in her body. She looked better in her clothes than out of them. Soon he would find that out.
No. Chander, in his kindness, could never find her insufficient. She parted her lips in the darkness and imagined his face. Those brown-black eyes reflecting the hall lights. That quick breath, promising to adore her.
The troupe spent most practices in costume now. Over Ksyusha’s jeans, a leather dress hung heavy, with red squares embroidered from its bottom hem up to her knees. Strings of beads swung from medallions at her waistline. When she raised her arms, fur bunched at her neck. In less than two weeks they flew to the festival. After they got back, as soon as her last exam ended, she would take the bus north.
These were the days that would decide her. She would sleep with Chander, then see Ruslan. In doing these things she would learn: either one or the other. The cruel period of having both would end.
She wanted to be with Ruslan forever. But she did not know how that would go. For now, she played at being good enough on the phone that he didn’t notice anything, but when she stepped onto their home pavement, wouldn’t he spot betrayal right away? And even if he did not catch her— She loved Ruslan, she did, and always had, but was it right for her to stay with him after what she had done and what she was going to do?
Of all people, Ksyusha was honest with Chander, so she told him. “I don’t know what’ll happen after this trip,” she said. “Not the one to Vladivostok, the one to Esso.”
They were sitting cross-legged on the hall floor. He lifted her knuckles to his mouth.
“It’s possible—when I see him—everything will go back to the way it was.” Chander nodded. “I can’t stay in the ensemble after that,” Ksyusha said.
When Chander spoke, his words came out warm on her skin. “It’s possible it could go the other way, too.”
“I can’t say. I don’t know.”
She studied his face, his stippled cheeks and serious brows. He laughed, then, a short noise. “I can’t stand it,” he said. He tugged on her arm and she folded forward into his lap. “In the hotel, they make up the sheets all white and crisp,” he said. “The mattress is like a dream. Can you picture that? We’ll be dreaming.”