Pia Padukone - The Faces Of Strangers

“Dude, where have you been? I’ve been trying for an hour.”

“I’m just trying to get a little Zen over here before what is sure to be a big day. What’s up?” Nico tugs at the dry cleaning plastic that sheathes his victory suit, as Ivy calls it. He can feel his impatience mounting. He yearns to be calm and controlled today.

“There’s an issue.” Nico’s press secretary, melodramatic on the best of days, speaks in a tone that can only be described as shrill.

“Unless you’re calling to tell me that your numbers were all wrong, let it go, Mase. We’re golden. Five-point spread, remember? It’s the magic number.” Nico counts to ten before releasing his breath. Perhaps coffee isn’t necessary today, he thinks to himself. Adrenaline is enough. He is a shoo-in. Polls taken days before elections are rarely wrong.

“Well, we’re going to need more than magic today. When were you going to tell me that you have a kid? With some European supermodel?”

“This isn’t the time for jokes, Mase. I’m tightly enough wound as it is.” Nico dodges the fly that swings toward him in the mirror. He adjusts his tie and smiles at himself. Appearances.

“Tell me you didn’t know about this. You didn’t know, right?” Mason’s breath catches between his words.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nico pushes air out of his nostrils and swats at the fly as it veers toward him once again.

“It’s not a joke, Nico.” The words hang in the air; Nico feels like swatting them, too. “Some bored paparazzo decided to do some sleuthing on you. And he had absolutely impeccable timing.”

“Paparazzo? Sounds like a dirty Guzman ploy to me. I can’t believe they’re playing at this on election morning. Give that asinine campaign advisor of his a call and tell him that a supermodel is just cliché. And remind him—ideas, not incumbency. Just to drive it home.”

“Cliché or not, it’s all Channel 1 is talking about. Turn it on.”

“I don’t have time, Mason.” But Nico can feel something turning in the air. There shouldn’t be a horsefly in November. His coffee machine should be working. He should be able to breathe.

“Well, you have to find the time, Nico. As soon as you step outside your apartment, the cameras are going to be on you like stink on shit.”

Nico can barely squeak the words out. “What—what supermodel are they saying?” He finds his legs and sinks his tailbone onto the bed.

“Some Russian lingerie model—Maria? Marie?”

He can feel the blood drain from his face. He feels as though he hasn’t used his voice in days. “M-M-Mari. Sokolov. She’s Estonian,” he croaks.

“Potayto, po-fucking-tahto, Nico. Jesus Christ, it’s true? You’re her baby daddy?”

“No! For God’s sake, stop being so vulgar. I haven’t seen or even talked to her in something like ten years. She was my Estonian exchange partner’s sister. We barely even talked when I lived there. We just...” And then it hits him. Actions have reactions; isn’t that one of the basic laws of physics? Snippets of Mari’s body flash against the backs of his closed eyelids like a strobe light: curved ribs, pursed lips, steely gaze. When he opens his eyes, Ivy has moved toward him, but he holds his hand up to ward her away under the pretense of swatting away the fly that has become more brazen with its advances. Ivy’s eyes narrow in deep concentration as she attempts to read Nico’s face.

“It couldn’t be. There’s no way.” Nico hears himself say the words out loud, but the words that rush through his head are, Of course there is a way. Tucking the BlackBerry under his ear, he opens his laptop, angles it away from Ivy and types Mari Sokolov into the search engine.

The last time he’d Googled Mari, he’d been a junior intern on a tense campaign trail for a congressman who had no chance of getting reelected. Surrounded by take-out cartons in a nameless motel chain with the ghostly glow of the television flickering in the background, Nico had jerked off to her image on top of a morose bedspread. Back then he had needed to take the edge off a particularly grueling day of press dockets, speeches and a neck cramp from sleeping on the campaign bus. He’d found Mari parading around the internet wearing ethereal, lacy undergarments that left little to the imagination, but helped him perform—though rather perfunctorily—that night. He woke up the next morning feeling rejuvenated, but that had been the last of it. Now, the hits reveal that her promotion to a Victoria’s Secret Angel means that she will wear more clothes rather than simply lingerie.

Nico clicks rabidly as Ivy shifts and sighs loudly on the other side of the laptop lid. He alights on the celebrity gossip website DishIt.com.

Dark Angel Mari Sokolov’s ten-year-old daughter, Claudia, accompanied her mother to the Haute Couture Awards last Friday. Until recently, when Sokolov has been seen dining and yachting with Spanish media mogul Javier Pizarro, Sokolov has been notoriously single for the past decade, and has kept the identity of her child’s father confidential. Rumors of the father’s identity have included British multimillionaire Eric Rausch and Persian model Feni Rahman, though Sokolov has denied both counts. Both the Sokolov women wore Dior.

“Nico, man, we’ll figure it out,” Mason says softly, breaking into Nico’s thoughts. “But I can’t cover your ass properly unless I know the truth.”

“But this is insane. There’s no proof of anything. I knew her when I was sixteen. It was a lifetime ago. I didn’t even start it. She...she used me.” There are a thousand things to say, and Nico is saying them all at once. When he closes his eyes again, Mari has disappeared, but the infamous Latin term flashes in his vision like an LED sign: ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law does not excuse.

“So you did have relations with her.”

“Stop talking to me like some Clintonian. It’s not like that. It’s not like anything!”

Ivy is searching Nico with her eyes and she sits on the armchair facing him on the bed just as he slams the laptop shut.

“Look, I think it’s best if you forget about the photo op for now. Lay low for a few hours until I figure some things out. Promise me you’ll stay put.”

Nico promises. Mason hangs up, but Nico keeps the phone to his ear. He wants to keep this to himself for as long as he can. The moment he puts the phone down, Ivy will rush in and insert herself into the situation, demanding to know every last iota. But there is nothing Nico can do now to stave her off. She will find out eventually. She’ll try to make sense of it all calmly and rationally at first, like the lawyer she’s been trained as, but eventually her anger will mount and she will erupt like a steam kettle. And just as Ivy will find out, so will everyone else: the whole city and constituency, his family, Paavo.

He thinks back—it’s been what? Over eleven years since he was in Estonia for the Hallström program, a third of his life ago. He has memories of Estonia, the long bovine vowels that make up the language, the burn of Viru Valge as it traveled down his throat, and of course, Paavo, his exchange partner. He hasn’t spoken to Paavo in a few years. There’d been a rift, and while Nico had tried to understand and repair it, things just got so busy. He was writing speeches, and then he was making speeches, and before he knew it, he met Ivy and she was encouraging him to run for city office. Which he’s doing now. Or at least he’s trying to.

He feels a cold chill run through his entire body, as though he’s sitting on a roller coaster and it has just peaked at the top of its parabolic climb and is about to tip over. Is this what his sister Nora wanted to talk to him about a few months ago? That must have been it. Unlike him, Nora has stayed close to Paavo. Their bond—once created when Paavo had first come to New York those eleven years ago—has strengthened over the years, and Nico is ashamed to admit that she now knows more about Paavo’s life than Nico does of his own exchange partner. Nora knew, and despite the code of therapist-patient ethics to which she usually steadfastly adheres, she had suggested rather intently that Nico reach out to Paavo and Mari. Until now, Nico had no idea as to why.