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I WAS GLAD TO FINALLY have a day to myself, without Igor, Mira, Misha or the others to pester me about Jaqui, or anything else, for that matter. It was a bitterly cold day, and the snow from last night was still crunchy and cold under my booted feet. I needed this day, I reminded myself, as I tucked a small easel, set of paints, and canvas under my arm and set out for the Red Square on the River Moskva.
Growing up in St. Petersburg, a full ten hours’ drive or three hours by train away from Moscow, I felt so isolated from the beloved ocean straight where my aunt lived. I knew my parents were from Moscow originally, had spent some time in Finland, until I was about two or three, but my earliest memories were of my Aunt’s house on the hill overlooking the cliffs. So instead of cliffs and rising tides, I painted lonely people and even lonelier buildings.
Today of all days, I needed to take my mind off Jaqui. It had been hard to send that letter last week, especially today, when I received one from her. I’d cursed that woman for continuing to write me, until I realized the postmark was dated before I sent my harsh words. I cursed the gods even more for sending me her picture and realizing she was, at least by French standards, rather gorgeous.
Was I a fool for tucking her snapshot in my wallet? Most likely. But I was an even bigger fool for staring at her jet-black hair, thin pointed nose, and vivid green eyes. It was clearly a promotional photo, taken in a white, sparkling ballet costume, her left hand delicately poised up and her right in the angled third arm position. She wasn’t thin, like most ballerinas, but oddly proportionate, muscular in her arms, legs, and even waist. That surprised me, after spending every minute of every day with such slender dancers in my company. I wondered if she was tall, even taller than me, but I had no point of reference in the photo.
Another “one that got away” before I could even meet her in person. Curse my bad luck with women. I got off the subway, hoisting my easel higher under my arm as I strolled toward Red Square. It was for the best we would never meet. This was me, of course, and I would say something awkward, and she would look at me strangely and walk away, as they all did.
It was illegal to paint in Red Square, but I’d found just the perfect place to ply my trade, under the awning of a bake shop that directly faced the ancient Kremlin palace. The law stated as long as it happened within the bounds of a business owner, and with their permission, it was permissible.
“Vasily Petrov, my lad, you are much late today,” Nikolai Alexandrovitch, owner of Alexi’s Goods, greeted me as I set up the small stool that came with my easel. “Long day at the ballet?”
“Da,” I smiled at him, setting my paints on the narrow tray and affixing the canvas on the stand. It was late afternoon, and the sun was setting behind the pink and blue towers of the Kremlin. “How goes the day, Nik?”
“Ah, it is too cold to sell much today.” He handed me a cup of warm water. Not ideal for paint, I knew, for the colors would run, but a cold glass would freeze in these temperatures in under an hour.
“I will buy lunch, as long as you are selling pierogis this time of day,” I told him.
“Vasily, I sell them all times of day, this you know.”
“Then tell Katerina to bring me your finest bowl.”
“You may have a bowl,” he laughed. “Not the finest.”
“It is the same,” I laughed with him. Nik shouted in the open door at his daughter. “What paint you today?” He asked, turning back to me. “Not some old woman, or a horse, or a man with drums on his legs, then?”
“I thought tourists today.” I scanned the plaza. Though late fall for Russia was not the height of the tourist season, there were still quite a few older men with their much younger wives, stumbling around with cameras and taking pictures.
“Ah, well then, I shall leave you to it, boy. Oh! Here is the perogies.” Nik disappeared back in his shop.
I stuck my hand out to retrieve the bowl while staring at my canvas. How could I translate tourists to a work of art? They were common here, as I’m sure they were in any big city. Though I had never been out of Russia, I had many dancers tell me this was the case in their homelands.
“Hello, Vasily,” a light, breezy voice said as I felt the warm bowl placed in my hand. I looked over to see a tall, thin woman with red hair tucked under a green scarf wrapped around her head. She was modernly dressed in a Pink Floyd shirt and jeans, a very casual counterpart to Nik’s button up shirt and tie, even as a baker.
“Katarina?” I said, blinking. When she did get so tall? And so... old? “Weren’t you fifteen yesterday?” I blurted, immediately wishing I was dead.
“Eighteen, as of yesterday.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “And I just got back from school. Are you happy to see me, Vasily?”
“I, uh.” If I said yes, that would make things more awkward. But saying no, I realized, women did not appreciate. I decided a safer route. “I suppose?”
She laughed, a delightful tinkling sound. She lightly punched me on the arm. “I have missed you, Vasily,” she said. Leaning closer, she put her lips to my ear and whispered, “You came to me in my dreams some nights, do you know that?”
She shocked me so much I backed up, nearly falling from my stool and struggling to stand. “Katarina, I, uh ...”
“Kat! Come here! Customers!” Her father called from the shop.
“Oops! I must go. You will be here later, yes?” She winked at me.
She was gone before I could answer.
Shit, I swore silently as she disappeared. I plopped down on the stool heavily. Painting was completely gone from my mind as I watched her bounce away from me. It was a good sight. I shook my head and splashed some of the warm, quickly chilling, water in my face. What was wrong with me? I wanted nothing to do with Nikolai’s daughter, one I had met when she was eight years old. The entire feeling of being attracted to her was disgusting and yet ... she was certainly more woman than I remembered, that was for certain.
I idly ate the contents of my bowl, which was cold now, as I watched the people in the square. Then I saw it, the woman I wanted to capture. Bright blond hair and deep red lipstick, she wore sunglasses, a red scarf, and was dressed in a floor length pink coat with white fur. Even I knew she was tacky-looking, like some kind of 1950’s propaganda model. She was both perfectly Russian and American at the same time, a blend of tourist and homeland girl. Setting my bowl aside, I picked up my paintbrush and dipped it in the yellow paint, swirling an abstract shape of puffy yellow clouds that resembled her hair. As the sun set behind the woman, who was slowly making her way to the other end of the square, I blended in shades of orange and red to show the highlights of the afternoon sky.
I didn’t see her face directly, so I could only guess by the square shape of her chin that she was Russian. Instead of glasses, however, I gave her green eyes, like Jaqui’s, and her blunt, wide nose became more pointed and slightly upturned in my mind’s eye. Before I knew it, hours had passed, and I had replaced the pink coat with a short, wide tutu, and lifted one of her arms into the sky. She balanced with legs one right behind the other in the fifth position.
For all my years and ballet, I came here to forget it for one day. I never drew anything from the ballet. Why today?
I stared back at the woman that, if not for the blond hair, could be Jaqui. She was a beautiful ballerina dancing in the Red Square with the Kremlin behind her.
What had I done in sending her away?
“She looks like me,” Kat said, startling me for the second time as she leaned over my shoulder and peered at the canvas. “Except what is wrong with her nose? And who is she?”
“No one I know,” I said truthfully. “Just someone I’d like to meet someday, I think.”
“Is she one of the girls you dance with?” She said, a slight whine in her voice.
“No,” I answered. Though, someday I would like to.
“Would you like to dance with me, Vasily?” Kat said bluntly. “Father will close soon, and I will go back to my apartment. Would you like to come over for a drink?”
I sat my paintbrush down and looked up at her. “I don’t think so, Katarina. This won’t work between us.”
“Why not?”
“I have too much respect for your father,” I whispered, hoping Nik couldn’t overhear us.
“Oh, please, Vasily. My friends are all away at school, and I’m so lonely.” She was whining again.
I licked my lips, considering. It had been months since I rescued Natalie at the University, and almost a year since I’d had a woman’s touch. With Jaqui out of the picture, what other options did I have? Not that I’d had them with an unobtainable French woman, though, I had maybe considered what we could have had.
“You look sad.” Kat frowned at me. “I’m sorry. I will go back to shop now.”
I reached out for her gloved hand. Even through the fur lining, it was warm. “Do you have vodka at this apartment?”
***
“I’M SO GLAD YOU DECIDED to come,” Kat giggled as she unlocked the door to her ninth-floor apartment, in one of Moscow’s poorer districts. The climb up nine stories was nothing for me, but she struggled with it and kept apologizing.
“It is fine,” I tried to reassure her. I was more worried about the piles of garbage sitting in front of every other door and the sounds of the screaming children and parents that echoed throughout the entire building. This was nothing compared to the near-squalor my Aunt raised us in; it was far, far worse.
“I don’t have much,” she whined again, “Just a couch that pulls out, a small TV, and a few plates and cups.” She laughed, sadly. “I don’t even have a table or a bed yet. Soon, when I find work outside my father’s shop.”
“It’s fine,” I said again. I wasn’t sure what else to say. I sat my easel by the inside of the door, having left the canvas at Nik’s to pick up another day when it had dried. I sat down on the sagging couch where a plume of dust rose around me. I tried to stifle a cough, but couldn’t contain it.
Kat threw her bag down by the small icebox that served as her fridge in the tiniest kitchen I had ever seen. Of course, who was I to complain? I lived in a dorm with nothing to my name but a bed, microwave, sink, and a toilet. And those weren’t even mine.
She sank down next to me with two tumblers of clear liquid. I sipped mine while she threw hers back and got up for another. “Sorry it’s cheap,” she offered.
I chuckled. She had no idea what Igor ordered at the bar down the street from the academy. “I like it,” I told her.
“Good,” she answered from the kitchen. This time she returned with the bottle and the remote to the TV. She flipped it on to some singing contest. “Is this okay?”
I shrugged. I hardly watched TV, when there wasn’t something special in the commons at the dorm. I had no idea what was popular these days on Russian TV.
My sipping became tumblers full, and we polished off the bottle quickly. It wasn’t long before we were laughing at the singing show, and mimicking the ridiculous commercials about everything from beef to soap.
I stood to use the bathroom, which was blessedly in a separate room, and stumbled to find the light. I hadn’t been this drunk in a long time, which was probably dangerous. But I knew when I accepted Kat’s offer tonight would turn out this way. At least, part of me had hoped it would.
Much to my surprise, when I opened the bathroom door, Kat was standing there. She grabbed my head and pressed a kiss to my lips, wet, sloppy, and heady with vodka. Then as quickly as she surprised me, she raced back to the couch.
“What was that?” I said, standing beside the couch and looking down at her. At some point she had changed from Pink Floyd to a thin, low cut shirt. And boy, was it ever low. From this vantage point, I could see more than I had ever seen of Kat.
She looked up at me, her face pure innocence, her eyes wide. She hiccupped, breaking the moment. “I think it was the vodka talking! Are you mad?”
“No.” I sat on the couch beside her. I put my arm around her and pulled her close, thinking how much I would like to feel her lips against mine again. “In fact, it’s been a long time since someone has done that.”
She twisted her head to look up at me. “There’s more where that came from.”
I looked down at her. “I hope there is.”
For all my awkwardness with women, being with Katarina felt as natural as being with any man or woman could be. And while the snow fell softly outside, I made love to her right there on the couch.
Despite my clumsy movements and her constant apologies, after it was over, she reached beside the lamp on the small table next to the couch and lit a cigarette. I waved the smoke away from me, though my Aunt smoked a pack a day and it didn’t really bother me.
“You have to go now,” she said, her voice slurred.
“What?” I questioned, still wondering if I was too drunk to understand her. I couldn’t believe she was already kicking me out, especially this late at night. Was this some sick joke?
“Da, my boyfriend will be home soon.” My face turned red, my mind slowly clearing from the high of the sex, and the fog of the vodka. Nik hadn’t mentioned Kat was dating.
“Your ... excuse me?” I couldn’t believe her. She was acting like she didn’t even care as she shrugged at my question, taking her time to answer, as though we had all the time left in the world. I was hurt, angry, confused, and naked. A powerful combination, and yet one I didn’t often find myself in. This was why I didn’t get involved with women. They were vile creatures who were only out to do one thing. Destroy me.
She turned and blew a plume of smoke directly in my face and laughed. “They all thought you were not into women,” she said, “but I proved them wrong, didn’t I?”
“Oh, no. Who has told you this?” I curled my fists around the thin blanket that covered our naked bodies.
She just laughed and took another drag, shaking her head, not telling me a thing.
“Fuck,” I mumbled as I reached for my clothes and dressed as fast as I could without falling over. I was still way too drunk to concentrate, and my head was swimming in vodka and not so post-coital bliss. “How will I get home? It is too late for the subway.”
“Call a cab then,” she said, still idly smoking.
“I don’t have any money!”
She opened the drawer under her cigarettes and pulled out a crisp bill, tossing it to me. I caught it as I slipped my other arm into my shirt.
“Katarina,” I shrugged into my coat. “Who are you?”
She laughed, the laugh of a drunk who should cry for their mistakes, but instead is only given to gaiety. “You’ll find out soon enough. Did you hear me? Go, before he finds you! It’s already been too long!”
Before I could grab my easel by the door, it burst open. The small figure that stood there was almost laughable in my inebriated state.
“Misha,” I said, emotion fleeing every part of my body, and my back going rigid. “Katarina is your girlfriend?”
He looked behind me, then at me. “Or something like that.” He tossed her four large bills, which flittered through the air before landing on the floor at her feet. She scrambled to collect them. “Smile, Vasily,” he sneered and held up his phone, snapping a picture of me before I could duck out of the way. “Now get the fuck out of my apartment.”
“I’d have paid more for the cab,” Katarina called after me, “but the fuck wasn’t that good.”
My pride wounded, my dick ashamed, and worst of all, being caught by the star of the fucking ballet, I snatched my easel, then tucked tail and fled the apartment building.
I was glad for the cab, even though it only took me halfway back to the dorm, because I didn’t have to answer the awkward stares in the subway, as I let the tears roll down my face.
What had I done?
I was grateful it was the middle of the night, so I could let myself into the dorm unnoticed. I didn’t know how I would face anyone tomorrow during practice. For four years, since Misha transferred here, I had been teased, made fun of, and the recipient of many a “practical” joke, though I saw nothing practical about it. Even Igor and Mina, though they meant well, I knew, were grating on my last nerve. There had to be more to life than ballet and love.
I sat heavily on the edge of my bed, my head in my hands. Maybe it was time for a break. I missed St. Petersburg dearly, my aunt, my cousins, and the friends I had back there. Pytor had only become more brutal without an assistant and everything just seemed to be falling apart.
Pulling my suitcase out of the closet, I made up my mind. I didn’t have much money, other than selling paintings here and there to tourists, and I had enough saved for my scheduled visit home for Christmas in two months.
But I needed a break, and I needed it now. Even if it meant a couple of days, to sleep in my own room and wake up to my aunt’s pancakes and strong-brewed, fresh coffee—that sounded like just the break I needed.
And I couldn’t spend one more minute in this old, stuffy, freezing dorm, surrounded by people that hated me. Once Misha’s picture got out, I wasn’t even sure Pytor would want my “influence” at Tanets anymore.
Best to leave now and avoid all this awkwardness.
I slammed the suitcase shut and pulled the empty paint kit from the shelf in the closet that contained the only money I had to my name. There was more than enough for a cab ride, a ticket, and even some to buy my aunt something for Christmas. Even if I had to sleep at the train station, I’d be on the first one out of Moscow in the morning.