He didn’t see Maryruth again. She stopped coming to the Russian bathhouse. Whenever he thought of her, he thought of her as Maryruth. ‘Mary’ hadn’t done her justice. It was as if she needed two names to tell the world of her vibrancy, her passion, her clarity.
Damn it all to hell. He felt like a teenager who’d had his heart broken for the first time. Though he wasn’t a teenager, there was truth to the statement. Until Maryruth, he’d never been in love before. His heart had been broken when his mother died because she’d left him.
Maryruth had left him.
No, that wasn’t really true. She’d never been with him in the first place, so how could she leave him? Still, he felt abandoned.
Night after night, as the winter snow turned to early spring rain, he drank. He drank but couldn’t get her out of his head. Sasha told him he was spiraling. His father berated him for his lack of focus.
He didn’t care about any of it.
Katarina came into town, but he made up an excuse not to see her. In true Russian fashion, he was good at wallowing in his vodka.
One particularly terrible, wet, and dark Tuesday after a business meeting gone wrong, he went home and tried to shower off the day. Just as he was wrapping a towel around his waist, the apartment phone rang.
“Mr. Dolinsky,” the doorman said.
“Charlie, what can I do for you?” Igor asked. Droplets of water dusted his skin, his wet, brown hair falling into his eyes.
“You have a visitor. She says her name is Maryruth.”
His heart nearly dropped out of his chest. “Send her up.” Blood rushed through his veins as he stumbled to his room to throw on a quick change of clothes. He didn’t bother looking to see if they matched. Holding his breath, he waited for the knock.
It was tentative, indecisive. So unlike Maryruth.
He opened the door and stared. She stood on his threshold, drenched, blond hair plastered to her neck. Rainwater dribbled down her cheeks, or…were those tears?
Without a word, he grasped her arm and hauled her inside his apartment and against his chest. He held her to him as she cried, her entire body a shaking force. He whispered words in Russian against her wet hair, reveling that she was in his apartment. Igor didn’t care why she was there or that she was an emotional mess. He was glad and for the first time in weeks, his heart was lighter.
When her sobs quieted, she finally pulled back. “Sorry,” she muttered in embarrassment, mopping at her tears.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said gruffly. Taking her by the hand, he led her farther into his apartment, not caring that her shoes were tracking mud onto the wood floors.
He brought her into the master bathroom and switched on the light. “Clean towel,” he said as he opened a linen closet. “I’ll leave some clothes for you on the bed.”
Her eyes were wide in her pale face. “You’re not going to ask me why I’m here?”
His smile was soft, and it took every ounce of his willpower not to reach out and touch her. “Shower first. Talk later. With vodka. Da?”
“Da,” she replied with a smile of her own.
He closed the bathroom door and let out a breath. After laying out a pair of sweatpants and a thermal shirt, he went back into the living room and flipped on the gas fireplace. He poured a glass of vodka and drank it while staring out at the gray sky and sheets of rain that splattered against the window.
“Can I get one of those?” Maryruth asked, startling him. He hadn’t heard her approach. Bracing himself, he turned. Her wet hair was combed back from her face. She looked innocent and young. She was young, he reminded himself. But not so innocent. He didn’t care, he realized. He’d tried to be angry at her, for her relationship with Auggie, but when she’d told him the story of how it had come to be, he found he couldn’t fault her.
He poured a glass and held it out to her. She hesitated before taking the few steps to his outstretched hand. When she moved to take a seat by the fire, he shook his head.
“This chair is more comfortable,” he said, gesturing to the black leather club chair.
Clutching her glass, she curled up in the chair, pulling her bare toes underneath her. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I—”
“Drink,” he commanded.
She drank.
Igor took a seat in the opposite facing chair and watched her. Maryruth looked around the apartment, as if noticing the decor for the first time. “Nice place,” she said.
“Thank you.”
He could tell she wanted to ask him what he did for a living, to be able to afford such luxury. At the bathhouse one long Saturday ago, he’d told her he was in the family business and had left it at that.
They sat in silence for a few moments before he asked, “How did you find me?”
She traced the rim of her glass with her index finger. “I went to the bathhouse. I figured if you could find out about me, I could do the same. A nice gentleman by the name of Sasha Petrovich gave me your contact information, no questions asked.”
“Ah, Sasha. Yes.”
“Friend of yours?” she gathered.
“Yes.” He took a sip of vodka and didn’t elaborate.
She frowned in contemplation before obviously deciding to speak. “You know when you came to Long Island to see me and I told you the reason I didn’t show up at the bathhouse that day was because Auggie’d had a crisis?”
“Yes.”
“I lied.”
“Did you?”
“When you kissed me,” she exhaled, “it was like everything I didn’t know I could feel exploded inside of me. It terrified the hell out of me.”
“That’s why you ran? Because you were afraid of feeling?”
She shook her head and lowered her gaze in shame. “I ran because your kiss threatened my entire way of life.”
He gripped the glass in his hand, knowing if he clasped it too much tighter it would shatter. He forced himself to loosen his hold. “Explain.”
“I’m a small-town girl…living in a lonely world.” She smiled, but her humor faded when Igor didn’t return her grin. “I have a high school education—and a famous painter wanted me. Me. He exposed me to the world, Igor. Introduced me to food and wine, culture, art. I had nothing to offer him except my looks. I knew one day Auggie would find someone else—another muse.”
“Is that what brought you to my door?” Igor asked. “He found another?”
She shook her head. “He let me go.”
“What?”
“He said our time together had run its course and that I was free to explore and live my life—without him.” She hunched in the chair and stared into the clear liquid. “Have you ever felt lost and found at the same time?”
He didn’t know how to answer. He wasn’t sure she wanted him to. “Did you come here because you needed a place to stay?”
She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing and then softening. “I don’t blame you for thinking that. But no. I didn’t come here because I needed a place to stay. Auggie… He…took care of me.”
“Then why are you here?” He needed to know. He needed to hear her say it.
“Because I want to be,” she said simply.
Igor didn’t make a move to get up, nor did she. They finished their vodka in silence, staring into the fire, thinking of the possibilities.