I knocked on the door of Daria’s hotel room. No answer. As I took from my pocket the key card I’d stolen, I couldn’t guess what condition I would find her in, if she was even in her room. A couple of hours earlier I’d received an angry message from her wondering where I’d disappeared to after the park. She didn’t mention the incident with Aino’s parents or how it had ended. What if Daria had taken her own life? What if my problems were already solved? With my hand on the door handle, the possibility also flashed through my mind that you would be waiting for me surrounded by her musty towels and despair-stained wineglasses, and my chest ached as if the oak stake that had been pounded into it had shifted.
Daria had passed out in the wrinkled, twisted sheets and didn’t stir when I poked her in the ribs. She was still alive, though. Restraining myself, I left the bag of clothing I’d brought her next to the bed and started collecting the empty bottles in the trash. They were the only clue to how she had taken the incident, and I decided to use the opportunity to my advantage. I was instantly as alert as a soldier. Even though I’d searched Daria’s belongings before, I would do it again with fresh eyes, because now I knew more, and the time to find evidence was running out. At home I’d checked the passport Ivan had given me for you. It was still valid.
I began by counting the contents of Daria’s purse and going through her credit cards. I would steal all of it at the appropriate moment, which would help, but the suitcase lying open on the floor didn’t offer anything interesting. The stickers from previous flights showed that Daria had been an active traveler on the budget airlines, and her international passport was full of stamps. At the bottom of the suitcase was a little sand, as if she’d carried shoes in it without protection, some bits of loose tobacco, and a battered bag of Semki sunflower seeds. Shaking a handful of them out, I crunched the seeds between my teeth as I moved to the desk. It was covered in new papers. A map of Helsinki had our morning route marked on it: the dog park, the family’s home, the husband’s and wife’s offices, the children’s school, the market hall, the corner store. The family’s schedules were written on sheets of hotel notepaper, which also included the phone numbers of the school and teachers, as well as a series of numbers that looked like a door code. Maybe Daria had chosen Aino out of all those children because here she had an accomplice, one who knew the language. That might be the only reason she hadn’t exposed me to the agency or the Kravetses. Daria’s resentment toward me had been no secret.
Despite my hopes, I didn’t find any maps of the Kravetses’ daily routes, no handwritten notes, nothing that would prove that Daria had been stalking Lada Kravets’s kids. Taking Daria’s phone, I opened it with her thumb. The camera roll had been cleared except for pictures of Aino. I decided not to give up. Throwing the bag of sunflower seeds on the floor, I moved on to searching the bathroom. At the door, I held my breath. I wasn’t used to the helter-skelter of odors Daria had created there. Everything was somehow sticky. Dust and hair were stuck to the threads of bottlecaps. From the cosmetics bag, which was stippled with dots of toothpaste and stank of valerian, protruded a brush that smelled of dust and whose bristles were covered in blond hair. Toothpaste had dried around the handle of the toothbrush, and its head was splayed into a fan. Next to the washbasin were plastic bags turned opaque from use, which based on the smell contained chaga tea. Strong painkillers, including Pentalgin. Maybe back problems? Some donors developed those. However, given her physical condition, Daria’s movement seemed effortless. Cancer? Maybe. That happened, too.
As I searched the cosmetics bag, my fingers hit something sticky. I pulled my hand back. A ball of bee glue rolled out and fell onto the floor. I washed one of the glasses with soap and drank some tap water. The ball was still staring at me from the floor. My family believed in the power of bee glue, too—my mother and my aunt ground it up and prescribed it for every ailment—but here it just looked like excrement. It was in the wrong place. I was in the wrong place. So was my life. None of Daria’s things were helping me forward.
Picking up the waxy ball with a paper tissue, I dropped it in the trash but managed to knock the brush onto the floor. I picked blond hairs out of it. Short hairs. Very short. Daria’s hair was dark now. Returning to the room, I tugged on Daria’s bob. It didn’t move, but I still saw the mesh of her wig cap. I didn’t dare tug anymore. The wig was genuine, and it was good quality, Indian. Maybe she really was taking the Pentalgin for cancer. If that was the case, she only had herself to blame. For not stopping in time. For continuing. Stupid girls kept donating. Stupid and greedy girls. Daria’s possible health problems didn’t bother me. Something just didn’t add up, though. If she had the money to spend thousands of euros on a wig to disguise herself, why was she dressing practically like a bag lady? Then I realized. She didn’t care what she squandered her money on. She didn’t care about her sale value. She didn’t have anyone she needed to look good for. She was alone, like me. I felt this realization for a moment, like the pinch of a pair of tweezers, no more than that.
As I shoved the brush back in the bag, I noticed another bottle buried in the corner. Prenatal vitamins. I glanced at the expiration date. Despite the worn look of the bottle, it was quite fresh. Half of the pills had been taken. I pulled out a thermometer I also saw in the bag and then finally dumped all the contents onto the table. In the middle of the pile of junk, I saw the corner of a ripped cardboard box. I would have recognized the logo on it anywhere. Had Daria been pregnant? Had she wanted a baby and not been able to have one? Had that driven her to start chasing her clients?
“How did you get in?”
Daria had woken up and was stretching on the bed.
“You dropped one of your key cards on the steps in the park,” I said and started cleaning the floor with the cleaning rags I’d brought from home. She swallowed my lie or at least didn’t have time to think about it properly, because it reminded her of Aino’s clothes. She’d forgotten them in the park because of the incident. Tomorrow we would have to go shopping again.
“I’m really glad you came.” Daria sighed and watched me work for a while. “Isn’t that a job for the staff?”
“We can’t leave any trace of ourselves here.”
“That’s wise,” Daria admitted and then started chattering about Aino as if they had a common future.
The “Do Not Disturb” sign was still hanging on the door, and for a moment I was annoyed. There were few people in the world I wanted to be cleaning up after less than Daria. The faucet dripped in the bathroom like a clock. I tried to shut my ears and thought about the dog park boy’s life as I cleaned. Finally, I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Daria for a few seconds. She seemed to be sober enough now. I would have to take the clothes she’d been wearing during the scuffle and throw them away. I pulled at Daria’s blouse until she agreed to turn over and wriggle out of the sleeves. There was a clinking sound. From the shirt pocket a ring rolled onto the floor, narrow and gold. I grabbed it before Daria. The epiphany cleared my head. The vitamins, the thermometer, the pregnancy test box. Had I guessed right? If she couldn’t have children, it wasn’t our fault. It was her own fault, at that weight, with that lifestyle. She knew the factors that affected fertility just as well as the rest of us.
“When did he leave you?” I asked.
“Did you know that in England there are a lot of couples who fund their own treatment by donating? They give other people baby after baby, but their own nurseries stay empty.”
Daria held out her hand. She wanted the ring. I dropped it into her palm. Why the hell had I called Ivan? I could have handled this situation without anyone’s help. Couples who split up because of infertility were a familiar problem to me, and I knew better than anyone what strings to pull. I no longer wondered at Daria’s state. Maybe it was endometriosis, maybe a burned-out ovary, maybe something else. Or maybe the problem was with the guy. If I could figure out the background, I could nurse Daria back into shape. Then she would leave Aino and Väinö alone to focus on her own family. Then I remembered that I could never return to the dog park.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what your life would be like with your son?” Daria asked.
“Excuse me?”
“We can take him, too, and run away together, the four of us. What do you say?”
I wanted to say yes. Oh, how I wanted to do that, and for a moment I considered it. But I knew how Donbas would look in the eyes of a boy who had grown up in Finland.
I checked on social media whether the dog park woman had written anything about the incident. There were no new updates. Instead, a picture from a couple of days earlier caught my eye. I showed it on my phone to Daria, who was huddled next to the hotel bed. The woman had shared with her followers some memories from the previous summer as an aperitif for the upcoming vacation season. A typical shot of vacation toes: sugar-waxed legs, pedicured nails, heels rasped soft, and nearby a book to signal intellectualism.
“Look,” I said. “This is what we have to shoot for. You have to pull yourself together and set an example for Aino.”
Daria turned her gaze away. I zoomed in on the heel in the picture. No cracks, no dry skin, not the slightest sign of hardening, no rubbing from the wrong size shoes. The wrinkles in the soles were so shallow that sand wouldn’t even stick in them.
I took hold of Daria’s head and forcefully turned it toward the mirror. It was the only object in her room Daria hadn’t managed to dirty, and it was merciless. Her eyelids were swollen to overripe fruit, and discharge leaked from the corners of her eyes to dry in her lashes. I saw from her expression that she understood what I meant: she looked like a vagrant.
“You’re attracting attention, too much attention. Your behavior in the park only made carrying out your plan more difficult. How do you think you’re going to get Aino to go with you after this? She’ll be afraid of you.”
The mockery that had played across Daria’s face ever since our meeting disappeared. I understood. Aino wasn’t sitting in her lap, she was with that woman.
“You knew what kind of a bitch she is, and you still made me believe she would be a wonderful mother.”
“Isn’t she? The children have a dog, hobbies, and expensive clothes. Their parents make good money. What more do you want? A spaceship to the moon?”
Daria wrinkled her nose. I didn’t want to think about how she must have looked walking through the hotel lobby to the elevators. The scene caused by a confused Slavic woman in the dog park would be in the tabloid headlines within hours, and someone might recognize Daria from pictures readers sent in. The obscenities she’d shouted would be enough to tell the family that their attacker wasn’t a local, and by now the parents must have figured out who Daria was. Recovering from the shock would take a while, and it would take time to straighten things out with the police, defend the dog, comfort the children, and cry. But eventually they would realize what the incident in the park meant.
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “That woman is going to press charges against you for assault.”
“She doesn’t know who I am.”
“Of course she does.”
Daria snorted. Nothing seemed to shake her belief in her own invisibility. Then she thought of something and perked up.
“Should we take Aino to your place first?”
To my place. Of course. At home I could squeeze a confession out of Daria and record it. And after that? What then? You said once that a human skull is like an eggshell that can be cracked with anything that fits in the hand. I’ll make everything easy for you.
I told Daria to make a shopping list while I finished the cleaning. This idea seemed to excite her, and she started looking on social media for hints about Aino’s favorite foods. After finding a picture of the father shopping for groceries, she showed it to me. The man was a good dad, just as I had assured Daria, and progressive in many ways. He handled most of the shopping, enjoyed cooking, and did laundry. This didn’t affect Daria’s plans.
“Should we get something for your son, too?”
Daria had repeatedly pulled this same trick, and every time I felt like hitting her. I didn’t, though. A pillow. That would be quick. But not yet, not here.
“Have you ever seen them fighting?” she asked, still browsing pictures of the parents.
“Never.”
“Good actors,” she quipped.
I didn’t argue. Although the air-conditioning tried its best, I could still smell vomit, bile, and liquor, partying without the party. But things were beginning to look reasonable. There were people banging around in the neighboring room. Closet hangers hit the wall. They had a child, who started running around, and a baby, who would be crying soon. I didn’t know how Daria would react to that. Probably not well.
“Why the hell did you keep donating?” I burst out.
“For money. Why else?” Daria asked in confusion. “I stopped when I had enough for a good life. Aino won’t have to worry about anything with me.”
I raised my hands in a declaration of truce. I couldn’t argue. I had to seem like a sympathetic helper, with whom Daria would leave the hotel chatting cheerfully. Telling her to change into clean clothes, I pulled out the shirts and skirts I’d brought for her. They weren’t anything special, but they were fine.
“Find something that fits. So Aino won’t be embarrassed.”
That worked, and Daria dragged herself into the bathroom carrying the bundle of clothes. Obediently she climbed into the shower. That was something. The baby in the next room burst out crying, and I glanced at my watch. My wrist was empty. I patted my pocket. My mother’s watch wasn’t there either. I shoved my hand down into the pocket and found a hole at the bottom. It could have fallen out anywhere. Hopefully just not in this room. I felt around the floor with my hands and checked the spaces between the pillows, with no luck. Maybe it was gone forever. I would never wind it again, and for some reason that thought made my determination falter for a moment.
“What do you think?”
Daria had sneaked in from the bathroom without me noticing. She was holding her hands in front of her as if she were naked and trying to cover herself. I looked her up and down, taking my time. This was my moment to give back some small part of the agony she had caused me. But I held back.
“Well?”
“Good.”
A smile lit up Daria’s face, and she ventured a look in the mirror.
“Shall we go?”