Lydia Fitzpatrick - Lights All Night Long

Next to her, Papa Cam reached for Mama Jamie’s hand. Ilya did not know whether he was asking for permission or giving it until Mama Jamie nodded. “OK,” she said.

Marilee and Molly made a new sign with Vladimir’s name etched in deliberate letters, only this time Ilya helped them write it in Cyrillic, because, he explained, Vladimir really, truly didn’t speak any English at all. Sadie sat next to him on the ride to the airport, and though she was careful not to touch him, he could feel that she wanted to, and that was enough.

Vladimir had called two days earlier. Ilya and the Masons were just home from Star Pilgrim, where Pastor Kyle had told a whitewashed version of Vladimir’s story after which the collection basket had bobbed down the rows, filling with money to fund his stay. Marilee had been the one to answer the phone, and after a moment she had looked at the receiver with exasperation and said, “I think it’s a wrong number.” She punched the speakerphone button, and Vladimir’s terrible English had flooded the kitchen.

“Hello,” he’d said, over and over, only coming from him the word sounded like “Yellow.”

Ilya grabbed the receiver from Marilee and turned the speaker off just as Mama Jamie realized who it was and ushered the girls out to the deck, hissing something about privacy to Marilee.

“Vlad,” he said.

“You better stop emailing me about this girl and seal the deal. Just once, Ilyusha, think with your dick instead of your brain.”

“You got my emails,” Ilya said.

“Of course I got them. One day in the life of fucking Ilya Denisovich.” His voice was rushed, euphoric. There was no regard in it for the risks he’d taken. It was exactly as Ilya had expected it to be, as Ilya had wanted it to be, but still Ilya had to fight the urge to ask him if he was high. He wanted, so badly, not to ruin the moment.

“Are you home?” he said instead.

“At the Kebab, and Kirill the tight-ass motherfucker is the only one in this whole town not cutting me a deal so I have—I don’t know—a minute left, but I’ll see you soon, bratishka.”

“Wait,” Ilya said, wishing there were a way to keep Vladimir on the phone for the next two days until he saw him in person. “Tell me how you did it. How’d you get him on tape?”

Ilya had wondered this; he’d marveled at the planning it must have entailed for Vladimir to know that Dmitri was coming to the clinic and to record him.

“He came and threatened me,” Vladimir said. “He said he wouldn’t let you go if I didn’t confess to the murders. And the boards—he said you’d have it on your record for life that you’d cheated, that you wouldn’t be able to go to university, get a job. He said he was going to fuck you over so completely, and the whole time he’s talking, I’m thinking, I’m going to fuck you over, you fucker. I’m going to rip you apart . That’s the thing about everyone assuming you’re an idiot—every once in a while it gives you the upper hand.

“So I told Dmitri I needed a couple days to think about it, and then I convinced that nurse to give me a little warning, and two days later, when he comes back, I stuck the tape player under the sheets. Right where my knee should be.”

“But how’d you get the tapes?” Ilya said.

“Aksinya brought them. I’d been listening to them for a while. Like you,” he said, sounding almost bashful at this confession. “I figured if I could just learn a little English then you’d find a way to get me there.”

Someone called Vladimir’s name in the background.

“I’m talking to my brother, asshole!” Vladimir shouted. And then he lowered his voice, so that it was just like it had been when they were little and would whisper in bed even though their mother was at work and Babushka was sleeping and no one was trying to overhear them. “You and me, Hollywood Boulevard, right?” he said, and the call ended.

Ilya and the Masons waited by the arrivals door for fifteen minutes, more even, until the people coming from the gates slowed to a trickle. The security guard stationed by the NO RE-ENTRY sign took out a pen, gave it a cruel click, and began to do a crossword puzzle. An airport employee pushed past him with an old woman in a wheelchair. Something was stuck in one of the wheels, making a ticking sound with each revolution. Surely the old woman was the last passenger, Ilya thought, which meant that Vladimir had missed the flight. He’d found some party in Moscow and had ended up using his tickets as roll papers. Or he’d never left Berlozhniki at all.

Sadie pulled her hair back, twisted it into a bun, and then let it drop again, which was something that she did when she was nervous. She saw him looking at her, saw him see her nervousness, and perhaps to make up for it, she took his hand and squeezed it. Mama Jamie noticed without understanding, and she gave Ilya this small, close-lipped smile. It was a smile meant to temper expectations, and it made Ilya’s chest hurt.

“Maybe he missed it,” he said, just as a figure appeared at the end of the corridor. He was silhouetted by a bank of windows, and far enough away that Ilya couldn’t be sure. His first day in America he had conjured Vladimir in the back of the Masons’ car, and he thought he might be doing it again. The loose-jointed walk. The laces of his boots dragging on the carpet. How slowly he moved! Had always moved, as though he had nowhere in the world to be. And often he didn’t. He was meters from them now, but Ilya was afraid to look at his face, afraid it might disappear under scrutiny.

Papa Cam said, “Is that him?”

Marilee and Molly raised their arms over their heads, locked their elbows, and held the sign high.

The figure seemed to hesitate there, by the NO RE-ENTRY sign, by the chubby guard and his crossword puzzle. His face was bland and friendly. His eyes bovine in their lack of guile. He looked at Ilya with a mild disinterest that felt like a kick in the gut. And, of course, he had two legs, and Vladimir had only one.

“No,” Ilya said.

Papa Cam and Mama Jamie left Ilya and the girls, and went to have Vladimir paged. That same terrible Russian blared through the bathroom’s empty stalls, each of which Ilya checked and rechecked, hoping that somehow he had missed Vladimir, that he might be lost, hiding, as scared or hesitant as Ilya had been two months earlier. They got pretzels from the vending machine, took over a bank of chairs, and waited until the next flight from Atlanta had arrived and departed, until the security guard had finished his puzzle, and then his shift, and finally Papa Cam said, “Let’s go, troops. We can always come back tomorrow.”

There was a message waiting on the Masons’ machine, and as soon as Ilya saw the flashing light, he knew what it would say. Or maybe he’d known sooner, when that other boy, that American boy, with his two perfect legs, had walked past them, and then out the door to the curb, where he’d stood and blinked in the light.

Ilya’s mother’s voice was detached, formal, as though the Masons might be able to understand her. Vladimir had gone to Aksinya’s on his last night to say good-bye, only he hadn’t come home in the morning. He’d taken krokodil again. They both had, and Aksinya had woken up with his arm around her, and his mother said that she had lain that way for minutes, because she hadn’t been so completely happy in a long time, and then Vladimir’s arm began to take on a strange weight, and he wouldn’t answer when she said his name.

A month later, early in the morning, Ilya woke to the sound of splashing. The sun wasn’t up yet. The sky was the color of slush. He pulled open the doors under the deck and climbed up to the pool expecting to find Papa Cam there, dredging leaves, or Mama Jamie swimming as part of her new exercise regime. There was something in the pool. It was moving, dark and fluid under the leaves that had fallen overnight. It swam more slowly than a person, though, and as Ilya stood there and watched, it did not surface for air. Could it be one of the girls, Ilya wondered, unconscious and drifting on some current? Only he must have known that this was not the case because he made no move to jump in. He was, in fact, backing up the stairs onto the deck. His fingers found the light switch, and he flicked it, and the pool shone, a turquoise brick cut out of the earth. Swimming in its depths was a crocodile. Its body was the color of mud, its shape impossibly prehistoric, yet it drifted with a slow grace that held Ilya there on the deck.