Lydia Fitzpatrick - Lights All Night Long

Sadie nodded. She moved one of her legs so that it rested against his knee.

There was a knock at the glass doors, and Sadie and Ilya both whipped around. Molly was standing under the deck in her swimsuit, a pair of goggles pulled torturously tight across her eyes.

“Come swim!” she yelled. “Mom says you’re going to get vitamin deficient if you don’t get outside!”

Sadie looked at him.

“OK,” he said. He clicked the X in the top corner of the picture, but it took a second for the image to disappear, and in that second Lana’s expression seemed clouded with disappointment.

After church the next day, he and Sadie worked on the list of Gabe Thompsons, starting with Colorado and Utah, where, Sadie said, there were the most Mormons. They found two matches, and Sadie must have seen the excitement on his face because she said, “I think everyone is Mormon there. Not that one of these isn’t him, but just so you know.”

Ilya stared at the two numbers, which he’d circled in red ink. “I don’t think I can call,” he said. “My accent—I don’t want him to know I’m looking for him. Or at least not until I’m there to see his face.”

“I’ll call. What should I say?” Sadie said.

Ilya had thought of this. All those nights when he’d compiled the list, then begun crossing Gabes off it. “Say you’re calling for Mr. Gabe Thompson because he left a personal item on his flight.” Ilya was especially proud of that quintessentially American phrase, “personal item,” which had been used dozens of times on his own flight to the States.

They told the Masons that they were taking Durashka for a walk and sat on the stoop of the half-built house at the bottom of Dumaine Drive. Durashka curled at their feet resignedly, as though she’d known all along that the walk was a ruse. Sadie punched the first number into her cell and cupped the phone to her ear. Ilya was expecting to have to wait, because nothing about finding Gabe Thompson had been easy thus far, but a voice answered before the first ring had even finished.

“Howdy,” the voice said.

“Hi,” Sadie said, “I’m calling for Mr. Gabe Thompson.”

“You got him.” It wasn’t him. Ilya was almost positive. The man sounded like a cowboy, like John Wayne in the few westerns that Vladimir had allowed in his VHS collection.

“I’m calling because you left a personal item on your flight.”

“My flight?”

“Yes, sir,” Sadie looked at Ilya, eyes wide. This was as far as the script went.

“Darling,” he said, “I wish I’d been on a flight recently, but I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”

Ilya shook his head, and Sadie apologized and hung up.

“OK,” she said, “take two,” and she dialed the second number they’d found.

This time the call rang and rang, the sound just like that blinking cursor. Sadie was in another of her enormous T-shirts. Her collarbone jutted through the fabric like a shelf, and he thought of his own snapping at birth, and he was suddenly terrified to let her have anything at all to do with Gabe Thompson.

“Hang up,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Please,” he said. He reached for the phone, just as the last ring was cut short by the static of a message machine: “You’ve reached Gabe Thompson. Leave a message if you’d like. Have a blessed day!”

The voice was wrong. Ancient and rickety and nothing at all like Gabe Thompson’s, which had been confident on his better days, but more often sullen and curt, as though he meant for his blessings to sting. Ilya ended the call, and Sadie looked at him.

“No?” she said.

“No,” he said.

She rubbed Durashka’s belly with the toe of her sneaker, and the dog rolled onto her back and lifted her feet up to the sky. The refinery was small on the horizon, looking, from this distance, like a castle sending out an endless smoke signal. Above them, the tarp covering the second floor ballooned with wind, then flattened again with a sigh. Somewhere inside the house, water was dripping.

“I followed you once,” Ilya said. “When you went to see your mom.”

He had been wanting to tell her this since the night at the Pound. She didn’t know everything about him—she didn’t know about the boards, didn’t know that he’d kissed Lana—but he wanted her to at least know everything he knew about her.

Sadie tucked her hair behind her ear. “So you saw her,” she said. “She’s a wreck, huh?”

“I’ve seen worse,” Ilya said. He turned and looked at her. It was almost dinnertime, and the last of the light pinked her skin. She squinted into the grass like she was looking for something in the blades. “Why do you go?” he asked. “Why do you watch her?”

She shrugged, and he thought that was it. He stood up, and Durashka did too, her collar jangling. Then Sadie said, “For the same reason you’re doing this.” She lifted the phone in her hand, but kept looking at the ground, and he realized why her room looked the way it did. Uninhabited. Like there was a suitcase just out of sight. Like she was ready for flight. She’d been the Masons’ daughter for over a decade, but she was still waiting for the moment when her mom might call, might toss a bottle at her window, might want her or, at least, need her.

The sun went down, and Durashka barked as though in response. She began to chase her tail, her feet springing, the white fur on her haunches flashing. She looked like one of the chechotka girls, twirling on the stage.

“What an idiot,” Sadie said, and together they walked back up the hill to the house.

Ilya woke in one of the folding chairs with Vladimir’s jacket draped over his chest. Lana was gone, and Aksinya and Vladimir were intertwined in the lump of blankets. All Ilya could see of them was the point of an elbow, the coil of Aksinya’s ponytail, and a stray foot, the sock a holed disgrace. The room was hazy. It was dark enough that it could have been early morning, that there could still have been time for him to flag down a bus headed for town, to sprint from the square to the school, to slide into his desk so quickly that its legs shrieked against the linoleum. Maria Mikhailovna would be angry, furious, but she’d forgive him when his scores came back. She’d still drive him to the airport in Leshukonskoye as they had planned. He’d still get to go to America. For a minute he let himself lie there and believe that that was what would happen. Then he got up and lifted a corner of the rug that had been hung over the window.

The sun was ridiculously high. It was almost noon. Ten, at least. The snow was electric with light, and the sight of it made blood surge at his temples. A car flashed by on its way north to the refinery. Dmitri Malikov, he thought, no doubt looking at the Tower with the same scorn that had surfaced when he talked about it. He could hear the grind of a lumber saw in the woods somewhere, and the noise drilled into his head until he could feel it in his teeth.

Behind him, someone sighed. Ilya froze, terrified that Lana had reappeared. He had no idea what to say to her. They had only kissed, but it occurred to him that he might be the sort of boy a girl regrets kissing in the morning. When he turned, Vladimir was up, pulling on his jeans with a hand against the wall. He had always been skinny, wolfish, the sort that babushkas live to feed, but there was something wrong with him now. He looked like the photos of the camp prisoners that Daniil Chernyshev showed anyone who was unlucky enough to end up in his apartment. For a dumb moment, Ilya thought, He’s sick , then Vladimir turned, put a finger to his lips, and tipped his head toward the door. Ilya stepped over Aksinya. Sleep had drained the drugs from her face, and she looked peaceful again.