“I didn’t.” Chander looked at Ksyusha with new care. “I heard about it when I flew through Esso that fall.”
Ksyusha had just started university when that girl went missing. Lilia Solodikova. Though Lilia graduated from the village’s high school only the year before Ksyusha, their paths at home had hardly crossed. Even Chegga, who had taken Lilia out on a few early dates, lost track of her in their teen years. Lilia got low grades. As small and sweet-looking as a child, she acted shy in public, but was rumored by classmates to be reckless with men. People said Lilia would let them touch her for money. The boys in Esso shouted after her as she passed. There were times that Ksyusha, up late on a school night, looked out her bedroom window and saw Lilia’s tiny body crossing into the shadows of the village’s athletic field.
Lilia and Ksyusha were nothing alike, yet for months after Lilia’s departure, Ksyusha heard warnings from her parents, her brother, and Ruslan. Don’t go out alone. Guard yourself. Avoid temptation. Don’t talk to strangers. Chegga swore Lilia had been murdered by some jealous admirer. It was then that Ruslan first decided Ksyusha and he should stay constantly in touch.
“What do you think really happened to her?” Chander asked.
“She ran away,” Ksyusha said.
“Is that true?” he said. “I heard that she didn’t leave a note. She just vanished.”
“She…” Ksyusha hesitated. “I was already living here in the dormitory when everyone in Esso started talking about it. I can’t say what happened exactly. But Lilia wasn’t so happy at home. Her brother, the one who worked that season for my grandparents, was crazy. Their older sister had already left because of it. Their father was dead, and their mother was…Lilia didn’t have much to keep her living there.” She smiled at him. “Maybe Lilia also became an au pair in Australia.”
He did not smile back. “Did she seem like the type of girl to run away?”
“Who’s the type of girl to do anything?” Ksyusha said. She shrugged. “I really didn’t know her, Chander. I don’t think we ever spoke.”
“I see,” he said. “I just think about her story when I see the city news.”
“No, I do, too.” Lilia, who was nothing more than a source of minor rumors when she and Ksyusha lived blocks away from each other, had changed the course of Ksyusha’s life in the three years she’d been gone. The constant check-ins now. The scheduled calls.
Ksyusha supposed she ought to be grateful. If that girl hadn’t left her life behind, would Ruslan have been so determined to hang on?
“The village police gave up on her instantly, didn’t they? Meanwhile, the city sends out search parties for the missing sisters all the time. People here talk about those girls even when they have nothing to say,” Chander said. “A white guy, a dark car, in the city center…that could be anyone.”
Chander was right. In the city, Lilia might as well have never existed. Reporters behaved as though the sisters from this summer invented the act of vanishing.
But that obliteration was almost certainly why Lilia left. Ksyusha wasn’t like Lilia, but she understood her. The belief that nothing better would come. The trap of family. The plan in secret for some desperately needed escape. Ksyusha used to feel that way, too, before Ruslan chose her.
Chander’s hands hung over his bent knees. His voice was low. “A white guy and a dark car. They’re everywhere,” he said. “You know what I mean.” She did. Chander wasn’t insulting Ruslan. He wasn’t even talking about his own ex-girlfriend. He was onto something else, deep common knowledge, an ache that was native.
* * *
·
Would Chander and Ruslan get along, if they met independent of her? They were only a year apart: Ruslan twenty-seven, Chander twenty-six. Ruslan was pricklier, fiercer, and Chander more studious, but if they’d gone to the same school or been called to a single army unit, they would have inevitably become friends. One white, one Koryak, each never doubting where he belonged.
* * *
·
Ksyusha skipped practice the last Friday of November, as she had the month before, to clean the apartment for Ruslan’s visit. Alisa was staying at a friend’s house for the weekend (“I don’t want to hear your gross noises together,” she’d said and laughed when Ksyusha squirmed). On her knees, Ksyusha scrubbed under the bathtub, while music blasted from her phone. The place smelled like synthetic oranges. She was aware of her kneecaps on the linoleum, the weight of her body warm with sweat, and all at once it hit her. She was happy. Really happy. Happier than she had ever been before.
All fall, small pleasures had come together. Now Ksyusha had everything: a boyfriend, a new home, good grades, a talent, and a friend.
Ksyusha’s conversations with Ruslan were different from those with Chander. More about the neighbors they knew, the memories they shared, the desire that continued to knot them together. And when Ruslan was stressed, behind schedule on a project or harangued by his supervisor, he used their phone calls to search for her missteps. Where have you been? Who were you with? Are you sure? She squeezed out the sponge. The orange smell was sharp in her nose. She didn’t mind his scrutiny, really, because she became better when he watched her, but how nice it was to spend three afternoons each week away, saying just what she thought to a person who would only sympathize.
How lucky to have them both. Ruslan in all his tempers, and Chander coming to her with no demands. After years of telling herself that Ruslan in Esso was enough—more than enough! she corrected herself—Ksyusha had discovered someone new in Petropavlovsk. Some people had nobody and nowhere; Ksyusha now had two.
By the time Ruslan arrived, it was nearly eleven. Before starting his drive he had worked in Esso all morning leveling dirt roads in preparation for asphalt. They had sex on the futon, his body electric, his duffel bag dropped on the floor and the air still sparkling from cleaning solutions. Ksyusha touched him with a fresh appreciation.
His voice afterward was rough in her ear. “Did you have a good day waiting for me?”
“I had a perfect day,” she said.
He studied her. “What’d you do?”
She slipped a hand over his side to pull him closer. The smooth lines of his ribs slid by her fingers. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
They were quiet. “Show me one of your dances,” he said finally, as he had the last time he came down, and she pressed her face against his chest and groaned but got up. The moonlight through the window lit her bare body. He rolled onto his side to get a better look.
Ksyusha chose a favorite routine. The paired one where Chander knelt. She leaned forward, beckoning. Shimmying. Her fingers pulled the air. She tipped toward Ruslan, then away, and stepped and spun and smiled. He watched her. For years, in bed with him, she had been shy, self-conscious, but she turned now in the white light without hesitation. Forward. Away again. Her body flowed into the next step, the next, as easily as a river following its course. She was dancing well. She knew it. She moved as if these steps didn’t want a partner—as if she were fine on her own.
* * *
·
In the hall on Monday, Ksyusha was glad to see Chander coming. His sneakers and jeans and cheap waffle-weave shirt: they all made her soften. “I thought I’d see you here,” he called.
“Where else would I be?” She had her book out to hold while she waited, but started to put the text away as he got close.
“Practice is canceled,” he said, and she stopped. “Margarita Anatolyevna told us on Friday. Alisa didn’t let you know?”
Ksyusha’s fingers were on her bag’s zipper. “No. I haven’t seen her.” The only communication she’d had with Alisa all weekend was when her cousin texted to ask how the visit was going, then sent kissy faces, winking faces, yellow dots of glee.
Canceled. She wouldn’t tell Ruslan, because that would suggest that practices could be ca
nceled on any day. That they weren’t to be depended on. That she, by extension, was undependable. She dragged the zipper shut and drew her hands back to her lap.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“With Anatolyevna? Sure. She has a doctor’s appointment.” Chander sat down beside her.
Ksyusha tilted her head at him. “Why are you here, then?”
“To find you. How was your weekend?” he asked.
She told him about the visit. The movies watched, the news from home. Not the sex. Not the happiness. Still, maybe both showed.
“You must get upset when he leaves,” Chander said.
“I do.” She thought. “Not as much as I used to, though.”
At a point not too long ago, saying that would have seemed like a betrayal. But she and Chander understood what she meant—she used to fear going out of reach of the microwave timer. Now Ruslan was growing more comfortable, and she, too, was improving.
“Bring him to practice next time,” said Chander.
Ksyusha laughed. “I don’t think so.”
He leaned back, showing the easy curve of his throat. They sat in silence. The heater hissed down the hall.
“We missed you,” he said. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said.
He looked right at her. “I need to ask you something.”
“All right,” she said. And dread rose in her. Dread and curiosity, the two mixed up like sand lifted in seawater.
“Why did you join this group?”
“Alisa wanted me to.”
“I know,” he said. “But Alisa wants you to do many things you don’t. She wants you to go to the café every day. You’ve never been. So why this?”
He was searching for some particular answer from her. His eyes moved in concentration from hers to her cheeks to her mouth. That sick mix swirled in her chest. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess…I don’t know.”
“You wanted something different.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Yes.”
“A change.” He reached over to her. “Me, too. Don’t be scared,” he said, as he took her hand from her lap.
He held her hand. That was all. Still, she felt her pulse thud through her back on the wall. Chander. Her friend. She didn’t want him to let go.
She had thought of him this weekend. Naked, fresh from the futon mattress, performing for Ruslan, she thought of Chander. She said she’d missed him. That wasn’t a lie.
He was her friend but something more. Wasn’t he? Coming to this hallway three times a week, she wished she could come five times instead. Their conversations, his seat beside her. She had wanted to find him here today.
They had already crossed some line together. He laced his fingers between hers. “Don’t be scared,” he said again, probably noticing the beat under her skin.
“I’m not,” she said. Not of him. He kissed her.
* * *
·
When she was little, staring at Ruslan across the coated tablecloth during a family meal, she alternated between pretending to be his girlfriend and reprimanding herself for playing pretend. Their neighbor—her brother’s friend—this sunburned boy. Something in that fantasy was mean, ludicrous. She felt it even then.
Then the summer after she graduated from high school, only a month or so before she moved away, Ruslan started talking to her like she was more than Chegga’s little sister. On any given night, he asked where she was going, showed up at the spot she named, told her classmates she’d hit curfew, and led her home. Chegga had moved away the year before for his mandatory army service, and Ksyusha’s parents had headed into the tundra for the season, towing along horses, sacks of flour, and handles of vodka to help them pass the time in the rangelands. That left Ruslan in charge. He took the responsibility seriously. They walked together over creaking bridges, past slatted wooden houses, and down dust-covered roads. The village black and abandoned. Ruslan finally kissed her under a streetlamp. He held her face as if she were beautiful.
That first month they were together, in the weeks before Lilia went away, Ksyusha kept wondering if this was pretend. It was too wonderful. Each time Ruslan came to the house, she opened the door to him in amazement. No matter where they met, she felt like she had on that perfect night, when they were alone on the streets they grew up on and their bodies were bathed in light.
And he wanted her even more after she left Esso. Checked in hourly, drove down regularly, and made sure she was avoiding risk in the city. Being his girlfriend still felt impossible. Ksyusha had tried for years to seem good enough to deserve his attention, but she really was not. She found little ways to slip out from scrutiny. She made excuses. She disobeyed.
After all this time, Ksyusha was showing her nature. It felt a base kind of good to know it: she was, in truth, the person she had promised Ruslan she wasn’t after Lilia left—the person he feared was there. She was treacherous.
* * *
·
“I missed you,” Chander said into her ear. His hair brushed soft against her cheek. His body, which she had been careful to move around for weeks, was close. “I kept picturing you with him on Friday.” He kissed her jaw, her collar, and she lifted her chin so he could go on. He pressed his face to her neck. She put one hand on the back of his head and held him there.
* * *
·
Nothing should seem to change. No one could know. Ksyusha and Chander kept their same arrangement, meeting in the hall for an hour and a half before each practice, except now they pushed against each other as they talked. They shared secrets. “I wish I’d met you then,” he said once, meaning when she was in high school. Before Ruslan, he really meant, but such a time had never existed.
Chander’s mouth was sweet. Ruslan’s was urgent, tasting of cigarettes. She knew Ruslan’s mouth in the mornings, or from drinking, or like a hot iron pressed on her after an argument—all those times, good and bad. She loved it. But Chander’s was sweet. Always. Soft. Lips full, teeth smooth, his tongue searching for and finding her, and then his breath coming in relief.
At times she doubted her affection for Chander, because it was so much slighter than her need for Ruslan. But she did love that puff of breath. One exhalation and she became powerful.
* * *
·
Was she happy? No and yes. Not in the same way she had been. She could hardly remember what had gone on inside the version of her that so diligently scrubbed the floor in November.
Instead she recalled other, older things. Coming home on the last day of school each year to find her father there. And being thrilled to see him, after his months out with their animals, but also knowing what his presence meant—that the next day he would take her and the rest of their family away from Esso to join the herd.
In early summer, the herders drove the deer closer to the village, so the animals could graze on mosses only thirty kilometers from home instead of three hundred. All the same, to reach them, Ksyusha’s family had to ride on horses for hours through plains and mountain passes. When she was little, her parents tied her to the saddle with a rope around her waist, and every time she nodded off on her mare’s wide back, her father yelled her name to startle her awake. The sun moved above them as they repeated that routine. At ten years old, she graduated to holding her own reins. The horses aged, their paces slowed, but the tundra kept the same shrill degree of emptiness.
Ksyusha dreaded those journeys. Her parents always ended them by fighting as they wandered the plains looking for signs of the herd. They would shout at each other about her father’s drinking, her grandparents’ health, their narrow wishes for her and her brother’s careers, the weak market for venison, the deer’s feeble calving and ragged pelts, the politicians who were killing the herding industry by refusing to subsidize it. During the rest of the summer her pare
nts managed to keep their marriage together, as her father loaded the family’s bags on their animals to move camp each morning and her mother set aside the best cuts of meat for him each night, but the long days they took to start and end the season only got worse every year.
At last, the summer before university, she told them she could not go out to the tundra with them again. Too much required reading to get through before school started, she said. Maybe because she had never refused before, they actually agreed to leave her home, and she was grateful, and then she was amazed, because that summer was her last one spent unsupervised. It became the season of Ruslan.
But now, in Petropavlovsk three years later, she thought of what she had missed in the tundra that last season. She thought of what she had seen out there all the years before.
The blue-lit black of nights. The limitless dry yellow of days. For all that she loathed about those summers, setting up camp in the rain and pretending not to hear insults spoken in Even and growing sick from the smell of singed fur, they had become some of the most vivid times of her life. The repetition of them: her father’s arrival back in the village, their trip out together, the way when they finally got there that Chegga was folded into the men’s shift schedule to watch the animals and Ksyusha carried water as part of their grandmother’s kitchen crew, the ground the reindeer ate clean overnight, the early-morning packing of tents and bags that followed, and the daily moving of camp, on horseback, again, making their way along the thousand-kilometer loop of trails that took the herd a year to cover. The sameness of each day, each year, acted like the endless reopening of a cut, scarring those summers into her memory.
While the rest of the family slept in separate tents, Ksyusha’s grandmother kept two spots for Ksyusha and Chegga in the yurt where the women did the cooking. After the evening meal, their grandmother banked the fire, spread the horses’ blankets around its coals, and left the siblings to rest in the sudden quiet. The sun didn’t set until almost midnight but the yurt would already be dim with smoke inside. Ksyusha and her brother lay there smelling the day’s sweat with fresh crushed grass trapped underneath.
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