Salt the Snow

by Carrie Callaghan

  “Hello?” She forgot to answer in Russian.

  “Milly baby!” Zhenya’s bright voice glittered through the phone. “Come out with us tonight.”

  “To where?” She clutched the phone wire and hoped he would be willing to go dancing.

  “Luba is having a name day party,” he said.

  “But today’s not her day.” Milly had spoken to Luba about name days during their weekly Russian lessons in Zhenya’s apartment.

  Zhenya laughed, a lilting, delighted sound.

  “Yes, but Victor is calling her Antonia, I don’t know why, and today is the day for Antonia. We have to celebrate.”

  Milly sighed and smiled.

  “Does Luba know?” She never knew what the quiet, blond-haired woman found amusing. She’d be silent one moment and pitched over giggling the next.

  “Of course. Milly baby, you must come. Get dressed and meet us at the Metropol. Victor says we’ll give Luba—Antonia—the best.”

  He hung up, and Milly stared at the unwrapped chocolate squares on Anna Louise’s small counter. She had been about to make fudge, in an effort to be kinder to the confounding woman who hosted her, but that could wait until tomorrow. She put the ingredients away.

  Milly arrived at the Metropol in her favorite black dress, the velvet one that hugged her curves and ended at the knee, so she could show off her legs. On her finger she wore a new purchase—one of the pieces of jewelry she had bought from a Russian woman anxious to get rid of the jewels that Communism now declared passé. Milly didn’t care. She adored garnets, and this silver ring with the pile of small stones like a split pomegranate didn’t embarrass her at all. She cascaded her fingers and let the bloodred stones drink in the light. Maybe Zhenya would notice.

  Luba was already there, standing at the ornate bar in her black cotton shirtdress, with the collar rebelling and pointing upward on one side. She ought to have looked uncomfortable in that hideous thing, but she was relaxed, leaning with one elbow against the polished wood and already holding a small glass. The carved wood of the small bar stretched above them like a regal bed post from another age.

  “Milly! You came,” she said in delighted Russian.

  “Luba.” Milly kissed her cheeks, then held her shoulders and regarded her friend. “Or should I say, Antonia?”

  Luba wrinkled her small nose and laughed. Maybe that wasn’t her first drink. Milly raised a hand and ordered two more, then slapped the necessary rubles onto the glossy wood for the bartender to take when he could. Milly had lived in this hotel for a few weeks last winter with Jack Chen’s two sisters, and she had all the prices memorized.

  “Are the boys coming from the theater?” Milly asked in slow Russian.

  Luba’s face stilled, and Milly almost repeated the question, certain she must have messed up a word or two.

  “I saw them at the theater,” Luba said, her eyes fixed on the wall behind Milly’s head. “They were … holding hands. Said they would meet us. You should know this, Milly.”

  Milly waved a hand, then grabbed the drinks the bartender had deposited.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, though it wasn’t. “You know how affectionate Zhenya is with everyone.”

  Luba nodded, then took a sip of her vodka. She didn’t grimace, unlike Milly, who needed a few sips to acclimate herself to the smooth drink. She had written to her friends, trying to describe vodka, how deceptive and dangerous it was. But like with everything she tried to describe to her friends back home, her words seemed to shrink when they fell from her pen.

  “I have another study session tomorrow,” Luba said, enunciating. There wasn’t much noise in the bar, but the tile floors and high ceilings still made nearly everyone’s conversation echo, and even the smallest distortion could make it hard for Milly to figure out what her friend was saying.

  Milly started to ask about the young man who liked to loiter outside Luba’s study sessions, when the snap of quick steps against the tiles sounded. She turned to see Zhenya barreling toward them, his lean frame rigid. He was frowning, but as soon as he saw Milly, a smile brightened his expression. He caught her in his arms and spun her around, nearly knocking Luba’s glass from her hands.

  “Milly baby,” he said, as if relieved.

  He kissed her on the temple, then gave her a dip, cradling her in his muscular arm. Her breath fluttered in her lungs, and she stared into his gray eyes. He held her gaze, pressing his fingertips into her waist, and a heat kindled deep inside her.

  “Where’s Victor?” Luba asked. She straightened the buttons on her dress.

  Zhenya righted Milly, then released her.

  “He met a friend. He’s coming.”

  Zhenya turned to the bartender and ordered three more vodkas. Above the bar, a small crystal chandelier sparkled, and the bartender’s gloved hands seemed to wink in and out of the light as he moved.

  “Did you fight?” Luba asked again, her small eyes hard.

  Milly opened her mouth to protest, but Zhenya shrugged.

  “Fight, not fight, what’s the difference.” He downed his glass in one go.

  “Luba, it’s your name day, right?” Milly said with a broad smile. Maybe it would help if she reminded everyone that this was supposed to be a party.

  “And tomorrow I have to go to study group,” she groaned. She had faint circles under her eyes.

  “Here they are!” The reedy male voice shot toward them, like an arrow.

  Victor stood at the entrance to the bar area of the hotel with his arms thrown wide and a golden crown perched upon his brown hair. His face was unremarkable, but his skin seemed to glow with the healthiest of golden light.

  Victor marched toward them, and as he walked, a short, stocky man kept pace with him. Zhenya wrapped an arm around Milly’s waist.

  “Is that the friend?” Milly asked Luba, who nodded and placed her hands on her hips.

  “Dear friends! Today we celebrate Antonia.” Victor waved for the bartender and ordered a bottle of wine.

  “Is he paying for that?” Milly whispered to Zhenya in English.

  “He’d better. Unless his friend is.” Zhenya released his arm around her waist.

  Milly wished she could grab Zhenya and whisk him off to the dance floor. Or better, her bedroom. He just needed to be distracted. But Zhenya, despite performing as a dancer for the opera, never danced when he was out. And neither of them had their own bedroom.

  Instead, she wove her arm around his and rubbed her hip against his muscular thigh. He gave her a sly smile.

  “Antonia, we salute you,” Victor said once his glass was filled with pale wine.

  “You salute yourself, you fool,” Luba said, but then she smiled. The group laughed, probably more out of relief than humor.

  “Sasha is in the military,” Victor said. “He knows all about salutes. And digging latrines.” He laughed, and Sasha smiled.

  Zhenya wrapped his arm around Milly’s shoulders. He smelled of vodka, and Milly glanced at the bar, where both their glasses stood empty. She snuggled into the warmth of his ribs.

  “Today, Luba. Tomorrow, Milly and I!” Zhenya pronounced the words as if they were lines on the stage, and he finished with his lips slightly puckered, like he did when he was posing for a photograph.

  “What do you mean?” Victor took another swallow of his wine.

  “I’m done with this fairy business,” Zhenya growled, his voice surprisingly sharp. Luba gasped, and Milly pulled away from Zhenya. She looked at him, at the fine structure of his cheekbones, the gray eyes filled with dreams, and the tousled blond hair. He looked at her back, his eyes longing.

  “Milly is the only one …” he began.

  “Don’t get any big ideas,” she interrupted him in English, her voice low.

  He wilted. “But, Milly baby, we …”

  “You were going to say we were getting married, weren’t you?” She jabbed her finger into his chest. His eyes widened.

  Milly laughed. Marriages were easy
here in Moscow, simply a matter of a few forms and rubles. They were easy to dissolve too.

  If a marriage was what this handsome man needed of her, she could give it.

  She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  “It’s been my dream to ask a man to marry me,” she said. Then she coughed and pulled away. Their friends needed to understand this, if the marriage was going to help Zhenya at all.

  “Zhenya, let’s get married. Tomorrow,” she said in loud Russian.

  He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her, firmly on the lips.

  “My baby,” he whispered, his lips tickling the ridges of her ears.

  Her insides melted.

  The rest of the night he beamed at her, and never once looked at Victor, except in passing.

  She had done what Zhenya wanted.

  They married the next day, merely by showing up, nursing their headaches at the Vital Records Office, and signing two forms.

  “Can you ask Anna Louise to give us one night?” Zhenya asked her when they stood on the sidewalk, blinking in the bright June light.

  Milly pulled his hand between hers and kissed his fingertips.

  “Really?” They had never had a full night together, though they’d managed some snuggling and petting in his room while his mother slept. She wasn’t sure how much he desired her.

  “Yes.” His eyes burned as he held her gaze. “I am happiest with you. That is the only truth.”

  “And the others?” She couldn’t bring herself to say his other men.

  He waved a hand. “We will have a modern socialist marriage. You can still go with your other men.” He had misunderstood. Or feigned to. Milly parted her lips to object, but he drew her toward him and silenced her with a kiss.

  “I’ll talk to Anna Louise,” Milly said. Coward that she was, unwilling to ask Zhenya about his men.

  Anna Louise squealed when Milly told her the reason for wanting the apartment to herself that night.

  “Of course! Is he a Party member?”

  “No.” Milly looked at the floor. “But he makes me feel … special, like no man has before. Like I’m his queen.” She blushed.

  “That’s all right,” Anna Louise said, oblivious to Milly’s confession. “I’ll only marry a Party member, I’m sure, but it’s not for everyone. And we really should be getting you your own room, shouldn’t we. I think I heard of a place, where was it, over by the subway construction site I think. I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “You’ll have a place to sleep tonight?” Milly partly felt guilty for displacing her benefactor, and partly worried the woman had already forgotten her original request.

  Anna Louise waved her manicured fingers.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  AFTER WORK THAT night, Milly rushed back to the empty apartment. She had stopped at Torgsin and bought the cheapest bottle of wine they had. It was all she could afford.

  She set the bottle on Anna Louise’s kitchen table and grabbed two scratched tumbler glasses from the sparsely populated cabinet.

  “What a nice surprise.”

  Milly jumped at the sound of Zhenya’s voice, then nervously laughed and turned around.

  He stood in brown tweed trousers with a short-sleeved brown shirt that showed the curve of his muscles. His blond hair was combed gently to the side. He smiled and held his arms open.

  “My little wife,” he said, his voice like raspberry jam.

  She cocooned herself in his embrace and nestled her ear to his chest, where the thump of his heartbeat threaded into her pulse.

  “Wine?” he said, pulling her away so he could look at her. “It must be a special occasion.” His gray eyes twinkled.

  “It’s not every day a girl gets to celebrate her second marriage.” Milly winked.

  “To a famous opera star!” Zhenya struck an exaggerated pose, and they both laughed. She wanted to kiss him then, in gratitude for breaking the awkwardness, but she turned to open to the bottle.

  “Stand back,” she said with a smile. “Who knows what’s going to happen when I pop this cork.”

  Zhenya reached out to cup her cheek in his hand, then stepped back. She extracted the cork without crumbling it and then tipped generous pours into the small glasses.

  “A dish for you.” She handed it to him.

  “Za zdaróvye,” he said. They both drank.

  Behind the silence of their room, streetcars rattled below, and in the room above someone walked with heavy feet.

  “You are beautiful.” Zhenya put down his empty glass.

  Milly tossed her hair. It was the compliment she most wanted and most hated, since she could never believe the words. Her nose was too big, her eyes were too small, her chin jutted too far. Wrapped up in an overcoat she could have been mistaken for a man. But she wanted, so desperately wanted, what other women had.

  “I think you mean I’ve got swell legs.” She did a little spin, ending with her ankle turned out and her rounded calf on display beneath her skirts.

  “No. I have good legs.” He jumped and landed in a firm plié, then smiled. “I mean that you are beautiful.”

  He reached his hand behind her head, twined his fingers in her thick hair, and pulled her into a kiss.

  Milly’s shoulders melted as the heat from between her hips rose up, into her chest and neck and then spiraling into his firm kiss. She threw her arms around him and pressed her body to his. Her softness pillowed against him, and she pushed him toward her room.

  “Not yet, Milly baby,” he said, his voice husky. “I brought you a treat.”

  He reached into his pocket and extracted a small pouch made of a twisted white handkerchief. He placed the bundle on the table and unwrapped it to reveal five bloodred cherries.

  “Sit.” He pulled out a chair.

  “I haven’t had a cherry in over two years,” she said, her voice soft. “I haven’t seen any here.”

  He winked and held up a fruit as if preparing to hang it on a Christmas tree.

  “Open.”

  She obeyed, and he placed the cherry between her teeth, then tugged to remove the stem when she closed her lips. Her teeth cut into the flesh and a current of sweetness washed over her. She nipped and tugged at the fruit in her mouth until she had extracted the cherry stone from inside. She lifted her hand to spit it out, but Zhenya stopped her.

  “Here.” He held his palm to her mouth, and she kissed the delicate skin at the center of his hand as she puckered her lips to produce the stone. Then she closed her eyes as she savored the rest of the fruit.

  They repeated the dance for the remaining four cherries, and Zhenya scowled when Milly tried to press him to take a fruit for himself. Then he placed the stones in Anna Louise’s trash bucket, and Milly poured two more glasses of wine. She drank hers in a few gulps, while Zhenya took a sip of his and replaced it on the table.

  “Now,” he said with a half-smile.

  He stood tall, as if drawing on his stage presence, and grasped her hand. He led her into her room.

  Milly bit back the impulse to crack a joke or make a sarcastic remark. Instead she stayed silent, and Zhenya eased her down onto the edge of the low bed. He got down on his knees, then unbuttoned her blouse, letting his fingers brush her breastbone, her ribcage, her stomach, and finally, her waistband. She shivered and closed her eyes as he eased the sleeves off her shoulders. Then, he frowned and laughed.

  “The buttons. You are sitting on them. I’m sorry.” He stood, then lifted her to her feet so he could reach around to her backside and unfasten the closure to her skirt. The heavy cotton fell to the floor in a puddle, and Milly slipped her hands under Zhenya’s shirt. His torso was firm, but not carved, and she trailed her fingers up his sides.

  He sat her back on the bed, leaving her brassier and underpants on. He got back on his knees again and kissed her waist, then her hip bones. She shivered and tried to pull him toward her, but he stayed on his knees and only angled his way between her legs, where he kissed the moun
d beneath her underwear. She threw her head back and moaned.

  Zhenya rubbed and pressed, and Milly’s breathing grew rougher. Then he paused, lifted his hands to the waistband of her underwear, and ripped it apart.

  “I only have—” Milly started to object, shocked out of her pleasure by the loss of a rare undergarment, but then his mouth was moist upon her, hot and rough, and she collapsed back onto the bed with a roar.

  His lips upon her were like nothing Milly had ever felt, and her hands tingled and her eyes flashed stars, and soon she was rocking into him uncontrollably, until the stars behind her eyelids exploded and she shuddered still.

  Zhenya crawled onto the bed, curling around her head as she lay, stunned, and he ran his fingers through her hair.

  After a few moments, Milly gathered herself and pulled all the way onto the bed, alongside him. She reached her hand down below his waist, where he was growing hard.

  “Not now.” He pulled her hand up to her lips. “I prefer in the morning.”

  So Milly pulled on a frilly negligee Ruth had given her before she left, which Milly had thought she would never use, and she curled under the sheets with Zhenya, still in his trousers.

  When she awoke the next morning, he was in the kitchen frying four eggs and a sliced sausage.

  “More surprises,” she said in a sleep-roughened voice, and she pointed at the eggs, though she wasn’t sure if she meant the food or the cook.

  He lifted the wooden spoon like a wand and waved it in a circle, sending a few splatters of grease onto the floor. Milly picked up a worn rag and wiped them from the wood.

  The kitchen was cramped, so she stepped back out to the eating and living area.

  “Do you have to work today?” Zhenya called from the kitchen.

  “Of course. Why?” She was willing to risk even Axelrod’s anger if Zhenya was proposing an encore to last night.

  “Next time, then,” he said, looking at the pan. “We are organizing last season’s costumes today at the theater. I thought you would like to come.”

  He tipped the breakfast out of the pan and onto two plates.