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THE TRAIN RUMBLED TO a stop in St. Petersburg and I softly nudged Jaqui awake. She had spent the entire three hours curled up in the seat next to me, sleeping off her pill and alcohol induced hangover. When she opened her eyes and looked at me, they were clear and wide, a sign her sobriety had returned at last.
“We’re here,” I told her.
She yawned and stretched, her disheveled, tangled hair covering her face. We were a mess, her and I. I hadn’t slept at all, and she was still recovering. She was even still in her dress from last night, too busy to change for her rush to the station, I decided. I was slightly ashamed to notice that the swell of her breasts nearly escaped the top of it, as I keenly realized when he slept against me. I shook my head to dismiss the thought of it.
Hair a mess, an expensive dress, and mascara smudged around her eyes. She was never more broken, or more beautiful, than she was as I stared at her right then.
Stepping of the train and feeling the rush of the icy ocean winds, the bitter chill of the mid-December air was refreshing, and I nearly forgot how much sleep I needed. Aunt Aloyna and the boys, sixteen-year-old Sergei and twelve-year-old Vladimir, anxiously waited for us on the platform.
Aunt Aloyna was still dressed in her nurse’s outfit, and looked as weary as I felt when she hugged me. I clasped the arms of my two cousins, and Sergei pulled me into a one-armed hug. Jaqui stood next to me, a slight smile on her tired face.
“It is nice to see you, cousin,” he greeted me with a smile.
“You as well,” I told him. To my aunt I said, “Still working nights at the hospital?”
“Yes,” she said, hoisting her purse on her shoulder as she yawned. “The boys put the room together, just as you asked. You look exhausted, Vasily. How has the Nutcracker practice been?”
“As you said, exhausting, as usual,” I agreed with her. “May I introduce my trainer, Jaquellyn Arnolt? She is Pytor’s assistant for the season.”
My aunt stared at her, frowning. I wanted to explain, but I didn’t have the words. I was sure they assumed Jaqui was not my instructor by any means, but a woman I’d found outside a bar.
Jaqui skipped the handshake and hugged them all, who froze at such a warm welcome from a stranger, and a foreign one at that. “It is nice to meet you,” she stifled a yawn. “I’m sorry I’m a mess. Last night was a bit ... difficult.”
Sergei looked the least concerned. He shrugged and looked at me. “They party hard at Tanets, eh, cousin?”
I laughed, though more of relief than mirth. “I suppose we have to at some point.”
“Your accent is funny,” young Vlad interrupted, holding in a giggle.
“Oui, it is from Paris, France,” she told him, smiling.
“I’ve never been to Paris,” Sergei interrupted in perfect French.
Jaqui gasped and fired off the fastest French I’d ever heard. Sergei nodded and responded just as quickly. My French was good, but not that good. I was lost after he said something about visiting a museum.
Aunt Aloyna beamed between them. “He’s waited a long time to speak French with someone.”
Vlad just shook his head. “Russian is good enough.”
“Da,” I told him, ruffling his hair. “Now, Aunt Aloyna, what is this I hear about preparing your world-famous synikis for my friend?”
She laughed. “After a nap, Vasily, after a nap.” She looked between us, her laugh suddenly replaced with her ever-present concerned frown. “For all of us, it would seem.”
***
THE HOUSE I GREW UP in hadn’t changed in the four years I’d been home. It was still the same two-story, three-bedroom townhouse I remembered, even down to the doily on the Straub piano in the living room that sat below the picture of Aunt Aloyna’s babushka, Ivanna. As usual, everything sparkled and shined with cleanliness, down to the aged crystal glass in the cabinet that stored my aunt’s collection of porcelain eggs and dolls, which sat among her prized silverware and china set passed down through the family for ages.
Aloyna hugged Jaqui, welcoming her to her home, and apologized with a yawn that she would have to retire for a couple of hours. She exited to her bedroom off the kitchen, while Sergei and Vlad ran upstairs to the two upper bedrooms to prepare for Jaqui’s visit. Sergei nodded to us as he took Jaqui’s bag upstairs.
“Is this your parents?” Jaqui perused the pictures atop Sergei’s beloved piano. She yawned again as she held up the oranged photo Aunt Aloyna had once told me was taken thirty years ago.
“Yes,” I told her, “That is Grigori and Natasha Petrov.”
She trailed a finger down the glass of the frame. “You look just like your father.”
I laughed. “Aunt Aloyna says I look like my mother.”
“What is this? Young Vasily? And baby Sergei?” She moved down the line to a picture of me when I was about six, holding newborn Sergei. Next to it, I was a bit older, around age ten, with Sergei on one knee and Vlad’s swaddled form on the other.
“Did Aloyna never marry?” She questioned, moving to the next picture.
“She never did,” Sergei interrupted, coming lightly down the stairs. “Vlad and I have different fathers. We do not speak of it.”
She looked at him, sympathy in her eyes. “I understand. More than you know.”
I had a feeling she would. Her family was just as strange as mine, especially when it came to different fathers. The only difference was, she actually had one, but we did not. “Aunt Aloyna never let up on us as kids,” I added, “but she made sure we knew how to treat a woman.”
Jaqui just looked at me, saying a million words in her silence.
“And this, the first day of ballet,” I changed the subject, picking up the black and white photo of me in my first leotard.
“I was about the same age when I started,” she told me, taking the picture from me. “You look so happy.”
“Art is his life,” Sergei said, taking the picture back down on the piano. He stood awkwardly, waiting for us to move, I knew.
“He wants to play,” I told Jaqui, and we sat down on the small rose-colored love seat by the bay window that faced the busy street.
Sergei bent over the piano, and Flight of the Bumblebee flew from his fingertips. He learned it from a young age, an important part of our legacy.
“Cousin, you have gotten better,” I told him. Vlad appeared down the stairs then and headed to the kitchen. We could hear him rummaging around in drawers and opening and closing the icebox. “Do you ever stop eating?” I shouted at him as Sergei finished the piece in a flourish and continued into a softer nocturne.
“Never!” The twelve-year-old called back.
Jaqui looked at me, and I translated quickly. Sergei finished his piece and started something of his own design.
“He’s really quite good,” Jaqui whispered. “Will he go to school for it?”
“Ah, eventually,” I shook my head. I knew Aunt Aloyna wanted to send him outside Russia, but didn’t have the money yet to do so. For reasons that were Sergei’s alone.
Sergei spun on the piano stool, crossing his legs daintily, interrupting us. “Do you play?” He asked Jaqui.
“No, but my brother Renee plays,” she spoke with Sergei in French. “He loves Chopin most of all. Our French roots I suppose. The first piece, that was Rachmaninoff, right?”
“My grandfather,” Sergei puffed his chest out proudly.
“Vasily told me,” she smiled at him. “You must be proud.”
“I would have given anything to meet him.”
“I’m sure my brother would agree with you. You both like the classical composures. He’s going to the University of Montreal, in Canada, next year. He’s sixteen, like you. Maybe you could be ...” she looked at me, “pen-pals?”
“Eto?” Sergei said to Vasily.
“Write to each other,” I told him, “that’s how Jaqui and I met. We exchanged letters.”
“Who writes when there is email?” he said in French this time.
Jaqui laughed softly. “There is nothing like an old-fashioned postcard.”
“Sergei also played the viola,” I interrupted, “among other things.”
“You are quite talented,” Jaqui told him, smiling.
Sergei spun back around and started to play again. “Why do you sit here when you should show her the town?” He called to us over the sound of the piano.
I looked at Jaqui. “Do you need to rest? Or we could take a walk?”
“I could sleep for days,” she said, “but what about you? How much have you slept?”
At the idea of sleep, I stifled a yawn with my fist. “I suppose my aunt was right and we could all use a nap.”
“And a change of clothes,” she added.
Vlad appeared from the kitchen, bread in one hand, cheese in the other. “Room’s read,” he announced with his mouth full.
Jaqui stood, while I hoisted our suitcases. “After you,” I told her, “the second door on the left at the top of the stairs.”
I didn’t miss the look Vlad and Sergei shared, but they said nothing.
“Separate rooms,” I told them, and left it at that.
***
THOUGH I’D DONE EVERYTHING possible to keep our distance, Jaqui had other ideas. I didn’t even bother to change, but stretched out one if the twin beds that crowded my cousin’s room and was asleep in minutes.
But I didn’t wake up alone.
At some point during the day, Jaqui had curled up next to me, her head in the crook of my shoulder and her arm flung over my chest. I felt her heart beat against me, a solid tune that intertwined with me. Her hair was still damp and curly from a shower, I assumed, as I brushed it behind her ear. Her eye lids fluttered, dark lashes that rested against her ivory cheeks in her deep sleep. She looked so peaceful I didn’t want to move her. My arm was dead asleep, but I didn’t even care.
My stomach rumbled, spoiling the moment, as she began to stir.
“When did you get here?” I murmured.
She yawned and sat up, though I didn’t want her to move. “The bed in the other room is lumpy,” she whined. “And you looked so peaceful. Did you have a good sleep?”
I flexed my arm, trying to get the feeling back. Judging from that, and the midday sun that dipped below the window frame to my left, we had nearly slept the day away, again. This was doing nothing for our schedule back at Tanets.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked her, fully expecting her to decline.
“A walk would be great,” she beamed at me, which nearly made my legs go weak.
I noticed she was dressed in a half-shirt tied just below her breasts and high-waisted jeans. Something so very un-Russian yet again, and not warm enough for the frigid coastal breeze, especially her all-too-bare, flat, midriff. But her innocence and ignorance delighted me, and I gave in. Unfortunately, it was also the least clothes I had ever seen her in, and my brain triggered the most awkward, awful thing in the world.
“You might need to change,” I offered.
“Why? Can’t I just wear a coat? What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Fine, wear a coat,” I said hastily, and I felt myself blush. “but you’ll need to leave for a minute.” I struggled to sit up, nearly dumping her off the narrow bed. Just leave already, I panicked, before this gets any worse.
“Okay...” she stood and eyed me, her gaze resting below my waist, where she gasped, a hand covering her mouth. “Vasily!” I didn’t quite understand her next phrase, but I got the gist: “Tu avoir la trique!”
I was so embarrassed I didn’t know how to respond, as I felt the heat rising to my cheeks even more. I stared at her, gasping for air, as I grabbed the pillow behind my head, shoving it over my lap. “La trique is no laughing matter. Privacy, please?”
She started to giggle, which only made it worse. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she gasped, turning for the door. “For once we agree—I will put on more clothes!” She rushed out of the room.
I hit my head against the headboard a couple of times, willing the blood to return back to my brain. I swore softly and lifted the pillow. “Worst timing,” I muttered. I cursed my brain for it having allowed such a travesty to happen. Could this trip get any more awkward?
“Vasily! Time for Lunch!” my aunt appeared in the doorway that Jaqui had left wide open.
Yes. It could get more awkward. My aunt, who was no stranger to such things with three boys in the house, just smiled and shook her head. “When you’re ready,” she pulled the door shut and softly padded back down the stairs.
I ran a hand through my hair. Jesus, now this couldn’t get any worse. It slowly subsided, however, and I was finally able to get out of bed. I pulled on a different shirt and shrugged into my coat and headed downstairs.
Jaqui was already at the table, eating my aunt’s simple soup passionately, as if it was a last meal. I was glad to see she had changed into a sweater with a high neck, much to my relief. She smiled up at me, stifling a giggle.
“Enough,” I told her, taking a bowl from my aunt and sitting across from her. In the kitchen, my aunt chuckled. “Are the boys at school?” I asked her.
“Da,” she answered. “They have missed too much today already.”
I nodded.
“Don’t they get a break?” Jaqui asked, tearing off a small piece of bread from the center plate.
“In a few days,” I told her, “the breaks here are small.”
She nodded.
“What plans do you have today?” Aunt Aloyna asked, sitting to my left. She blew across her bowl and reached for the bread.
“I want to show Jaqui the town.”
“The town is very big,” she winked at me.
I almost rolled my eyes. My aunt never held anything back and always spoke her mind. In many ways, Jaqui reminded me of her.
Jaqui and I finished lunch quickly, and after helping her into her coat, we bid my aunt goodbye, promising to be back before dinner.
“Where do you want to go?” I told her, shoving my hands in my pockets. It was warmer here than Moscow, but not by much.
“What is there here?” she looked around in wonder.
“Ah,” I racked my brain. “There’s the Hermitage, an art museum, with more Rembrandts than the Louvre, they say. Then Yusupov palace, Catherine the Great’s palace, parks, the canal, ...”
“Canal? Like Venice?” Her eyes lit up.
“You’ve been to Venice?” I eyed her, surprised.
“Haven’t you?”
“I’ve never left Russia.” I hated to admit I wasn’t as well traveled as she, but she didn’t seem to care.
“Oh. The canal sounds wonderful.”
“It’s not place to be after dark, though.”
“Okay.”
“This way.” I hesitated. Despite what had happened in the last few days, I still badly wanted to hold her hand. Growing up poor in St. Petersburg, I hadn’t taken many girls out, and I wasn’t sure how to even ask her. I let it go, and strode down the street to the nearest Metro, hoping she would just follow me.
The canal wasn’t far from the poorer side of the town where my aunt lived. Fontanka street was the closest access to the canal, a place with hostels, five-star hotels, and street vendors. We exited there.
“This does look like Venice, but colder,” Jaqui said, wide eyed, as she looked at the bustle of people that pushed around us. “Even the river is frozen.”
“Of course, it is frozen. It is winter.”
“Have you taken many girls here?”
Her statement shocked me, and I didn’t know how to answer. I took a minute to think about it.
“Well?” she pressured, knocking against my shoulder playfully.
“No, not really. Especially since I’ve lived at the Academy since I was ten years old.” I briefly thought of Katarina, the first girl I met in Moscow, and how we had spent time in the Red Square. Such a shame she had grown up to be, well, who she was.
“What is that?” she pointed across the footbridge to a huge estate.
“The Tolstoy house,” I told her.
“Like ... the writer?”
“The same.”
“Of all the places I’ve traveled, Venice, Madrid, Athens, nothing has looked so beautiful in the snow.” She tucked her arm into mine, and I had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other as we walked. “It’s so colorful,” she pointed to a few estates painted lively green, yellow, and red.
“Much of Russian is colorful,” I told her. “Come, I see coffee ahead. I pulled away from her, sadly, and swiftly ordered in Russian from a small woman at the stand.
“Your English is getting better,” she mused in French. “I can barely speak it. What’s it like to know three languages?”
I laughed. “You have to think about it, sometimes. It is not easy,” I responded in her native language.
“Yes, but you’re just so good at it!”
“I am good at few things, Jaqui.”
“Like painting?” She gasped, holding her coffee to her mouth.
“How did you know I painted?”
“You told me you sold a painting,” she said slowly, avoiding eye contact.
“Jaqui...”
“Oui, Vasily?”
“Did you buy my painting?”
She bit her lip, and I wanted to tell her to stop. It was driving me crazy. “I did. I couldn’t help it. She looked like me.”
“I supposed she did,” I said, strolling away from her. She jogged to catch up.
“Are you mad?” she quipped, sounding worried.
“Why? That you bought my painting for more than it was worth? That I made more than I have ever made? Why would I be mad?” I shrugged. I wasn’t mad; far from it.
“You were doing that thing, where you frown.”
“What thing?” I frowned even deeper, despite what she said.
She laughed, then tried to mimic a sad look.
“I do not look like that,” I told her. I shook my head. This was ridiculous.
“It’s, uh, milyy,” she smiled at me like a little child who had just remembered the word for dog. It was immature and sweet all at the same time.
Feigning shock, I searched for the right word in French. “Adorable? What is this?”
“Cute,” she said in English, looking out over the water next to us. “It’s cute.”
I didn’t really understand. Confused, I pulled her closer to me. “Puppies are cute. Babies are cute. Men are not cute.”
“You are cute,” she laughed. She danced away from me, tossing her empty coffee cup in a nearby trashcan. “I’m famished. We should eat.”
“Where?” I matched her delighted smile. Her effervescence was contagious. To see her so excited about everything was such a drastic change, and I liked it.
“This is your town; I would be lost without you,” she said, batting her eyelashes at me.
In more ways than one, I thought, but couldn’t bring myself to say it. Yet, her attentions confused me. She was hot and cold, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I wasn’t sure what her feelings were, but this, I wasn’t a stranger to flirting. The girls at the ballet did it all the time, though I was never sure if they intended to.
“No restaurant,” she mumbled, and I looked at her. The flood of everything that had happened in Moscow came rushing back, and I tried with all my might to push it away. The look on her face told me she felt it, too. I reached up and pushed the hair back from her face.
“None of that,” I cautioned her. “This is St. Petersburg. Land of new beginnings.”
She smiled, but the shadow on her face remained. “I want to believe that.”
“You will, I’ll show you,” I comforted her. We strolled over a bridge to the other side of the canal. “There are many market stalls, or we can go to a grocery store,” I said after a few minutes of thinking.
“Like, the kind normal people go to?” She slipped her arm in mine again.
“Normal people?” Everything she said was either wonderful or hard to understand. Either way, I just shrugged, not really understanding.
“In France, our food is delivered, or Jean, our cook, gets it. We don’t get to go shopping.”
That surprised me. “When I was nine, my aunt sent me to get groceries,” I told her. “Alright, Jaquellyn, we will go to an ordinary grocery store like normal people.”
She clapped her gloved hands, her arm still dangling in mine. “And they will have heat?”
I laughed. “More than likely.”
Our stroll down the canal ended as we descended into the Metro once more. We headed back to my Aunt’s neighborhood, and stopped at a little grocer a few blocks away, in a busier part of town. It was nearly five, with the sun setting, and as usual in St. Petersburg, everything was packed. I frowned at the lines as we pushed through the glass doors.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked her.
“Come on, I can’t read anything in Russian. Help me find something.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd, weaving past old women and laborers as they slowly shopped for their evening meal.
“You’re good with crowds!” I shouted above the din of the people around us.
“When you dodge the paparazzi all your life, you get good at it!” She yelled back.
We reached the back of the store, a deli, with sandwiches, salads, and hot soup. Jaqui picked a Caesar salad with calamari while I pursued the soups.
“Uha!” I exclaimed, pulling a Styrofoam container to the side to fill it.
“What’s that?” Jaqui asked, peering over my shoulder.
“Fish soup,” I told her, “with carrots. I haven’t had this in years!”
“But ... this whole city is on the coast. Don’t they serve fish?”
“Too expensive, it’s better to export,” I told her with a shrug. “I am glad to see this, though.”
“It smells horrible,” she made a disgusted face, frowning.
I shook my head. “French food smells horrible.”
She just laughed.
We made our way to the front and stood in line behind a dozen other people. Jaqui hummed a tune, and I listened, marveling at how different she was outside the ballet. I knew then I was right; the place was poisoning her, and this was the real Jaquellyn Arnolt, so full of life and wonder. And, despite everything, every single day I was falling more in love with her. And despite how awkward waking up to her had been, I realized I wanted, no craved, more of that. Just her and I, in a pas de duex made for us. I wished I had enough balls to say that to her.
“What’s that?” she stopped humming suddenly, and pointed to the back of the store. Momentarily lost in my thoughts, I looked over the shelves to hear a scuffle, and people shouting. “What are they saying?” She gripped my sleeve suddenly, her voice high-pitched. “What’s going on?”
“I ...”
All around us, people started yelled and screaming, and those in line behind us started to push.
Bombit’!
Bombit’! Bombit’!
“That sounds like...” Jaqui was saying.
I dropped my soup on the counter and grabbed her hand. “We have to get out of here!”
“Were they saying bomb? What were they saying?” Jaqui was still yelling at me, not listening.
“NOW, Jaqui!” I tried to pull her along behind me, but the crowd rushing towards the doors beside us pushed me away from her. I lost my grip.
“Jaqui!” I screamed her name, but in a sea of black haired women, some in scarves and some not, I couldn’t find her.
The deafening explosion rocked the grocery store, blowing out the glass in the doors and shoving most of us off our feet. I hit the floor, two men falling over me and children screaming.
“Jaqui,” I breathed, before I lost consciousness.