29

In early 1999, the Noskovs had to put their apartment on the market. They sold it by summer and started their move to a much smaller apartment in a residential district in the deep south of Moscow called Chertanovo. The man who bought the Old Arbat apartment was working for the mayor’s office. He didn’t seem to have been affected by the recession in the slightest. The family had a lot to say about him behind his back. He was the closest thing they’d encountered to the physical embodiment of their strife, but they had to remain civil to seal the deal.

Mitya liked to think about the name of his new neighborhood, Chertanovo, which he was convinced stemmed from the word chert, the devil. It sounded fun. After studying the map, he realized that Chertanovo was close to the area where he’d attended the concert in the abandoned building. It was also in the south, the same direction where Marina used to live, where Chervyak and Zolotoy’s market was, and where the kvartirniki happened. Mitya considered this all to be a sign. Unlike everyone else in his family, he was excited about the move.

The majority of the bulky things were moved by a truck that belonged to Dr. Khristofor Khristoforovich Kherentzis’s younger brother’s construction company. In the recession, they were glad to do some moonlighting, even if it was at a reduced rate. The rest of the things had to be moved by metro. Because Alyssa Vitalyevna was at work, and his parents were out looking for new jobs, it was often Mitya’s responsibility to cruise back and forth between the Old Arbat and Chertanovo. Mitya had to be sneaky because he was using Alyssa Vitalyevna’s subsidized metro card, but no one ever checked.

He didn’t mind taking the trips because this way he was able to transport all the girly things. There were so many of them, accumulated and hidden across the apartment in places no one would ever look. For example, his lipsticks were in the old jar of bay leaf branches that his parents had brought from their honeymoon in Tuapse. There was a newer jar of bay leaves that Yelena Viktorovna used to make soup, but she still kept the old one for its sentimental value.

She saved many things like that: old, useless, dusty, unopened for the last decade, but things that brought a stir in her heart. Yelena Viktorovna did most of the packing for the move. Alyssa Vitalyevna refused to participate, and no one even asked Dmitriy Fyodorovich, but Mitya obediently helped. They managed to pack everything they had in the old apartment, even in the pantry, and then Mitya began to transport it. Each time, he added something of his, hiding it beneath his shirt when he left the Old Arbat and taking it out closer to the metro.

It was Mitya’s duty to help his mother unpack too. Sometimes they did it together, sometimes Mitya was on his own. He noticed new hiding spots: among his old toys, in boxes of clothes that didn’t fit anymore, in bags filled with broken Soviet kitchen utensils. His treasures would be safe.

It was a pleasant day in the middle of August, a Friday, and Mitya was taking his last haul to Chertanovo. They would get the remainder of the belongings from the Old Arbat together as a family over the weekend, and then they’d relinquish the keys to the new owners. For now, Mitya had two heavy bags loaded with pots and pans, and the yurt-like sculpture he had made from lamb ribs salvaged from the Greek party was thrust on top of them. A jar of lipsticks was tucked into his pants. He would have put it into one of the bags but there wasn’t any space. He had to take two metro trains and then a bus or a tram to get to his new home, but as long as there were spaces to sit, he’d be fine.

Mitya was reading Lord of the Flies, the book that Seva had recommended to him some time ago. Mitya liked it, it had a lot of boys he imagined to be cute, but the atmosphere of the island scared him. Besides, he kept getting distracted by his thoughts. He was making plans for the fall ahead of him, when he would start at the new school in Chertanovo. Because no one knew him there, Mitya could see a massive number of possibilities for reinventing himself. He wouldn’t need to be invisible anymore. In his head, he practiced what he would say to his new classmates. He imagined them and imagined himself, universally liked, and acknowledged. Mitya thought of things he and his new friends could do together. He had never been invited over to a classmate’s apartment before. He had never gone kart riding. Mitya thought about opening up to them about Lena, Devchonka, or whatever he wanted to be. He wondered if they’d like her too. He was sure they would. He wasn’t yet sure how to present her, but he knew it would all work out.

After all, the needle was, once again, giving him a chance to start his life anew. And it would be safe. None of the horrors would follow him. Most importantly, Vovka would stay on the Old Arbat to continue his unsuccessful, slow attempt at dying.

Calmed by the sweet thoughts and the rhythmic movement of the metro train, Mitya was almost lulled to sleep. But suddenly through the window to the next car, he saw something that caught his attention: a head of wispy, light blond hair. Mitya couldn’t make out whom the hair belonged to: it was definitely someone tall and skinny, most likely a guy, but the person had their elbows on their knees and their head in their arms, and so the face was concealed. Could it be Zolotoy?

Mitya moved closer to the window but kept enough of a distance so that the person wouldn’t see him. It was still unclear whether it was Zolotoy. The clothes seemed like they couldn’t belong to a homeless boy, but then again, Zolotoy was pretty neat. Besides, he could have stopped living on the streets, for all Mitya knew.

Mitya resolved that he would switch train cars during the next stop, but position himself farther away from the sitting person so that he could observe them first. He stood in front of the doors to be able to get out as soon as the train stopped; from there, he could still see into the next car through the window. But as the train started approaching the station, he noticed that the other person had also relocated to the doors. There were two tall men standing by the doors in the other car, and Mitya couldn’t see the blond person clearly. There was not enough time and not enough space to maneuver to the window and back to the doors again in time to get out at the station, so Mitya had to trust his gut and assume that the blond person would be leaving at the next stop too.

When they reached the platform and the doors opened, Mitya hastily stepped out of the train. He was about to go to the left when the jar with the lipsticks slipped out of his pants and fell to the floor of yellow and gray granite. The glass collapsed in a million sparkles, and the lipsticks rolled in every direction as the ancient bay leaves crumbled among them. Mitya instinctively reached down and got on his knees. But then he realized that he wasn’t sure if the blond person had gotten off the train, and by trying to pick up the lipsticks, he could miss the chance to get back on. Mitya winced as a piece of glass tore through the knee of his pants and began raising himself, like a sprinter from a low start. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, as if within an aquarium. And as Mitya was getting up, he saw the person with the blond hair walking down the platform in the distance. The person also started turning around in his direction, perhaps because of the sound the breaking jar made.

Mitya removed a piece of glass from his knee and looked down at his palm to see red blood on his fingers. He raised his eyes just as the blond person did the same, and he smiled, ready to explain the lipsticks and his blood. He’d have to tell Zolotoy how he had been looking for him everywhere, how he kept returning to the market, and how he was approached by the ment with the mustache on the pleshka. He would also need to mention how he had almost left for Donbass with Marina. Would Mitya feel comfortable talking about Vovka? After all, it was behind him now, and it couldn’t hurt him anymore, so why not share? Or maybe he would start at the very beginning, with the needle?

As Mitya debated where to commence telling Zolotoy his story, their gazes locked, and their faces were flooded with the lamplight reflected off the indentations in the station’s ceiling. With blood dripping from his knee to the granite, Mitya rushed forward toward Zolotoy.

Zolotoy rushed toward Mitya.