Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

Their taxi from the airport dropped them at the Metrograd shopping complex in Bessarabskaya Square, where Annika directed them toward the modern facade of a branch of a restaurant chain. On the way into the city, Annika had assured them that it would be open for breakfast at this early hour. Stretching their legs, Jack and Alli had been surprised and pleased to find the weather here far milder, though more humid, than it had been in Moscow. Alli unzipped her coat and already had it off before they entered the restaurant. She looked different now, with her hair cut short. Not wanting to take chances after the scare with Igor, Jack had insisted she cut her hair before they left the aircraft. In the taxi, he’d told Annika that they needed to find hair dye for her before the day was out.

In the cheerful interior, amid brightly colored balloons and cartoonlike paintings of dva gusya , the two geese of the popular folk song that gave the restaurant its name, they sat on café chairs at a blond-wood table and ordered the first food any of them had had in twelve hours.

“We must wait several hours for the documents—the passports—that Gustav is preparing for us.”

“Can I sleep here?” Alli said.

Outside the plate-glass windows, the sky was clearing, revealing a cerulean sky as the city stretched, yawned, and came to life around them. The rumble of traffic rose and fell like a drowsing giant periodically clearing his throat.

Annika ordered more coffee, drinking it black this time. It steamed like a stoked engine. “Stop looking at me that way,” she said.

“What way?” Jack’s voice held the rueful tone of voice of a child caught at the cookie jar.

“Like I’m an exhibit at the zoo, or the sex museum.”

“Was I doing that? I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

She was partially right. “I don’t—I don’t know how you could have done it.”

“It’s not for you to know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is, but you don’t want to acknowledge it.” She sipped her coffee as if it weren’t scalding. “In any event, we’re safely here, just as I promised.”

“But the price—”

She put down her half-empty cup. “You want me to be just the way you imagine, and when I’m not you’re disappointed in me.”

“In my country women don’t do what you just did with Igor.”

“Yes, they do, you just don’t know about it.”

Jack looked down at the smeared remnants of his breakfast. He could hear Alli’s calm, even breaths as she slept, and he thought of what he’d told her about the past, that you only knew what happened to you, not to others around you, and even then wasn’t everything distorted by the unreliable lens of memory?

“Would you like me to tell you something about this city?” Annika said this in an altogether different tone, as if the last contentious exchange had never happened, or had happened to two other people.

“Yes,” he said, grateful to be brought out of his thoughts. “I know nothing about Ukraine besides its difficult history with Russia and the secret naval base in Odessa.”

“War,” Annika observed, “that’s all you men know.” She fished a cigarette out of her purse and lit it with a metal lighter, took a first, long inhalation, and let it out slowly and luxuriously.

She regarded him for a moment through the veil of smoke. Then she said, “Kiev, the mother of Slavic cities, was founded by nomads, fifteen centuries ago, if you can believe it. The name is derived from a man, Kyi, a knyaz , a prince of the Polans, a tribe of eastern Slavs who, along with his two brothers and a sister, felt this place on the western bank of the Dnieper was an ideal point on the transcontinental trade route, and he was right. Now, of course, the city spans both banks, but the left bank only came into being in the twentieth century.” She blew out another languid cloud of smoke. “That this story is shrouded in myth only makes the current inhabitants all the more certain of their beloved city’s origin.”

Just then, a pair of police officers entered the restaurant. Annika’s hand froze halfway to her mouth, the glowing end of her cigarette releasing its curl of smoke, rising toward the ceiling. Jack didn’t think they should stop talking, but just as he was about to open his mouth he realized that his accent was something he should keep to himself right about now. He could see Annika tracking the cops’ movements as they crossed to a table and sat down facing each other. They took off their hats, stroked the greasy hair off their low foreheads as if one were the mirror image of the other, and settled themselves to look at menus.

As a waiter arrived at the cops’ table to take their order, Jack was acutely aware of how vulnerable he and the women were without identity papers, of how fragile was the line between freedom and incarceration. All it would take was for one or both of the officers to saunter over and ask for their passports, and they would be undone. He felt a cold sweat creep out from under his arms, slide down his spine to rest like a serpent at the small of his back.

Annika had unfrozen and was now sipping at her coffee again. “Don’t look over there,” she said, smiling. “Stare into my eyes as if you love me. We’re a family, remember?”

He did as she asked, but the serpent, restless in its anxiety, kept coiling and uncoiling, creeping him out.

As if sensing this, Annika said, “I have the keys to a nice flat not far from here. An apartment, you Americans say.” Her smile broadened as if to help ensure that he would not look away. “From Igor. You see, he isn’t all bad.”

Jack was aware that he was still judging her decision on the plane. He didn’t like that in himself, especially under the current circumstances, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“It has two bedrooms,” she continued, “so the girl can have her privacy.”

“That leaves the other bedroom for us.”

“Yes,” she said, “it does.”

A dirty joke told by one of the cops to the other caused both to laugh raucously, and their voices never lowered, reverberating around the restaurant. They rose; they’d come in for coffee and pastry only, it seemed, and had wolfed both down in record time. As they passed through the open door, their voices faded slowly, as if reluctant to relinquish the vigilance of their masters.

“Wake the girl,” Annika said, “we should leave.”

“The police are still outside, smoking cigarettes and ogling female legs.”

“All the better,” she said, putting money on the table, “they can ogle my legs.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her ‘the girl.’ She has a name.”

Annika gave him a level stare in which he could discern no irony. Nevertheless, she said in a light tone, “So do I, but she feels ‘psycho-bitch’ fits so much better.”

THE COPS, slouched against the wall, did, indeed, ogle Annika’s legs as she, Jack, and Alli walked away from them, and she even turned her face to them, presenting them with a warm smile.

“Was that so smart?” Jack muttered.

“Flirting with the police is not a suspicious action.” Annika kept their pace up in the face of a brisk wind. “In fact, just the opposite.”

Since Jack had no experience in the matter, he made no comment. She took them into a department store, where they all bought a change of clothes, as well as a package of hair dye for Alli. The entire time the women were shopping Jack kept a keen eye out for police officers, but all he saw were glum, overweight shoppers who paid them not the slightest attention.

Twenty minutes on Kiev’s crowded streets brought them to a yellow brick building with a trio of cupolas rising from its copper roof like doffed hats.