The next time Alisa came home while Ksyusha was on the phone, Alisa took off her winter hat, pointed to the cell, and whispered, “Ruslan?” Who else? Ksyusha nodded. “Tell him hi,” her cousin said, then spun to lock the apartment doors.
Ksyusha, watching the padded line of her cousin’s back, said, “Hi from Alisa.” They never had a say-hello-for-me relationship. Ruslan used to call the girl crazy.
“Okay. Remind me when you’re leaving for the festival,” Ruslan said. At least he was always the same.
“Eight days.” Not this Friday but the next. “And the week after that, I’ll see you.”
Ruslan sighed, the sound coming thick from his lungs. “Wish it was sooner.” Ksyusha shut her eyes. He didn’t know what he was encouraging—what he was urging them toward.
Margarita Anatolyevna clapped for quiet. “Get in your pairs.” Ksyusha stepped toward the center of the room; she knew, without looking up to confirm, Chander was near. Her mouth and cheeks had been kissed sensitive by him this afternoon, leaving her feeling like a tender extension of his body. Ksyusha pressed her lips together while she waited.
“My partner’s missing,” said the boy from Achavayam.
“Where’s Alisa?” Margarita Anatolyevna shouted. Chander was already next to Ksyusha. The boy from Achavayam crossed his arms.
“We didn’t see her before practice,” a girl said.
The director jabbed a couple buttons on the stereo, making the music start and stop. “This is unacceptable,” she said. “Do you understand the festival is in one week? Take responsibility for one another. Ksyusha!” Ksyusha jumped. “Where is she?”
Ksyusha’s cell phone was tucked in her bag, but suggesting she call would only irritate things. No distractions during practice, Margarita Anatolyevna would scream. Ksyusha said, “She must be on her way.”
Margarita Anatolyevna punched another stereo button. “Line up. Salmon dance.” The boys gathered in the middle of the room. Ksyusha fell into place with the other girls, all of them in their costumes, leaving a spot for Alisa until the director motioned for them to tighten up.
Ksyusha tented her fingers in front of her chest. The song started, and the boys began to dance, lifting their feet to wade through a river that was not there. They squinted at the dusty floor to look for fish. Flexing her toes, Ksyusha waited for the girls’ entrance. Her mind was with her cousin. Was Alisa sick? Had she missed today’s classes? Their mothers had been texting them all week with worries about money after Tuesday’s market collapse. Could they not make Alisa’s tuition? Had she been called back to Esso? She had still been at the apartment this morning when Ksyusha left.
The recorded drums crashed. Ksyusha raised her arms with the rest of the girls and stepped forward. The boys pressed shoulder to shoulder, making a circle, and the girls swam around them. They turned until they found their partners. The boy from Achavayam frowned into space.
Chander grabbed at the air over Ksyusha’s head, and she ducked. Bent at the waist, she spun into the next formation. She looked up. Margarita Anatolyevna faced away from the dancers. Relief: Alisa was at the door of the practice room, pulling a cap off her orange-streaked hair, gesturing in apology.
Behind Alisa, another person stood in the doorway. Alisa had brought a man.
She had brought Ruslan.
Ksyusha’s hands, which should have been flat as fins, clenched. He’s cheating, Ksyusha thought, wildly, because what were they doing together, but her cousin and her boyfriend were both smiling without guile. Alisa pointed at Ruslan, mouthed something to Ksyusha, and waved her palms in the air. These days of their echoing questions—how Ksyusha was doing, when she was leaving, when she expected to see him next—aligned.
Alisa had brought Ruslan to Ksyusha. They must have worked together to arrange this. Because Ksyusha had seemed to them nervous, Ruslan, who couldn’t watch her in Vladivostok, came to surprise her before she left.
Through the speakers, a synthesizer blared. Ksyusha pivoted with the line of girls to face away from the door. She tipped her head up. She kept the beat.
Inside her was white and smooth, a frozen landscape, solid bone.
So this was the last time she would have both. Though Ruslan and Alisa could not see her eyes from this angle, Ksyusha did not dare look Chander’s way. She had waited for the moment when her future would be decided. Only now when that moment was here did she know: the weeks she’d spent with both of them had been the best. The best. Ruslan calling in the mornings to wake her up, his texts popping into her phone throughout the day, and then an hour and a half of Chander…those days were over.
Women’s recorded voices rose high over the drumming. Underneath came the bass notes of men’s growls. The steps brought Ksyusha back to her partner. She looked. Afterward, she knew, she would have to be careful, but she couldn’t help this once—she glanced up at Chander and saw all his sweetness laid raw. His face was distorted with want.
Ksyusha stepped out of formation, away from him.
She turned toward the door so quickly her left knee twisted, and ran the few long meters that separated her from her boyfriend, the distance she needed to cross. Ruslan and Alisa might have allowed her an instant of shock after their arrival, but that instant was over. Ruslan could already suspect her. She had to get to him.
She pitched herself at Ruslan, her arms around his neck, and she only knew she was safe when she felt his body tighten under her, his hands grip her waist so the lines of beads there pinched, and his familiar mouth bear down.
He was saying something in her ear but the music was too loud to hear. She kissed him hard and pressed her cheek to his. He held her closer. She should have been thinking of her next alibi, but all she could bring up were memories: Chander in the afternoons, Ruslan on weekends, the pristine hotel bed she only ever heard described. The conversations she and Chander would never have again. The boys in this troupe practicing with their lassos. The first day of practice, shaking a dozen strangers’ hands. Ruslan in his car in traffic, making his way toward her, and him as a boy playing soccer on their street with her brother. The summer they fell into each other. Her parents—her brother—their constant concern for her—their village lives. The horses they rode. The trails followed. The nights Ksyusha spent in the tundra, when she was younger and braver and slept alone, when her world was clear, smelling of smoke and grasses, and thousands of reindeer passed her by.
NEW YEAR’S
Though it was only eight o’clock, Lada was well on her way to drunk. She had helped finish another bottle before Kristina came back to the kitchen. Kristina returned to the group looking like a billboard model for cell service, with her phone propped in one hand, her bikini, and her blond bangs. “Guess who’s coming?” she shouted over the music as she slid into place on the banquette. Lada was distracted by the tinsel flattened on the bottoms of Kristina’s feet. Silver sparkles vanished under the kitchen table. “Masha.”
“Who?” said a guy at the end of the table.
“Masha!” Kristina said. Her face was quick, pleased, her lips flushed brighter pink by vodka. Lada listened, not believing. “Masha Zakotnova.”
“Who?” the guy said again, more sourly. A few people laughed.
Masha. The music was too loud. Lada wanted sobriety now as much as she had wanted festivity before. She focused on the food in front of her: cake, cured meats, salted and braided cheeses; ribbons of orange peel; pillars of boxed juice. An apple—she would have an apple. She reached over the tablecloth to take one. In the heat of their holiday rental house, which was slick inside with steam from the sauna down the hall, the fruit was surprisingly cold. Lada pulled the apple to her lap. “Give it,” the man squeezed next to her said and plucked it from her bare thighs. He started peeling it clean with a paring knife.