One time Ksyusha woke up in the middle of the night, not knowing why. The smoke hole at the top of the yurt was filled by the moon. A meter away, her brother, still a chubby schoolboy, was breathing.
The hearth’s coals popped. She rolled onto her side to look. The coals were black, but still somehow crackling; she watched without understanding. Crackles getting louder. Only after a minute did she grasp that the pops weren’t from the fire at all—the reindeer were passing outside the yurt. The men had taken the herd, for some reason, right through camp. The noise that woke her was the motion of eight thousand delicate hooves stepping just beyond the canvas wall.
Why return to these childish images? She had other things to think about these days. Course work, exams, the banking internship her brother’s girlfriend promised her next summer, the phone calls she owed the people who were waiting at home. Ruslan, if she could bear it—or if she couldn’t, then Chander, whose arms were around her. He pulled her close so her head rested on his shoulder. His lips brushed her hair.
Maybe it was because she was working hard at dance practices. Afterward came that same old soreness from the days once spent lugging wood, tending fires, building and taking down the yurt. Or maybe it was because she was around native people again; she hadn’t been with so many since she was still living in Esso. Or maybe it was the troupe’s herders’ dance. Chander did look foolish holding his lasso. A tool like that belonged to her father and grandfather.
She remembered her family, their animals, lessons, and chores. The empty, rolling earth. Maybe it was that her childhood, seen from this distance, seemed simple. And that as much as she now loved these men’s mouths on her, some part of her wished she could go back.
* * *
·
Ksyusha was idling around on her guitar, avoiding schoolwork, when Alisa came home. It was Thursday—no practice. Her cousin’s face was red from the cold outside. “Scoot over,” Alisa said, and Ksyusha made room on the futon. They sat with their knees touching.
Alisa’s leg was chilly. Winter was here. Snow had been falling for a week straight, and the city beyond their apartment windows was heaped in white. The muted television showed the Golosovskaya girls’ school portraits before their faces were replaced by a graph of the falling price of oil.
“Where do you suppose they are?” Alisa asked.
Ksyusha plucked a couple strings. “Who?”
“Those sisters. Do you think they’re alive? Somewhere?”
To her cousin, Ksyusha did not have to pretend away danger. “No.”
“Sometimes I imagine they could be in the next apartment over. You don’t think they’ll be found?”
“Not alive. I hope not.” The missing girls were not like Lilia, old enough to run away. “Whatever happened to them, I hope it ended quickly, and they didn’t have to suffer.”
The news changed again to a weather report: continued blizzards. Stuffed cabbage rolls were heating in the oven. The smells of pork and onion filled their apartment. “Everything with you normal?” Alisa asked.
“Yes,” Ksyusha said automatically. Once that answer came out, it didn’t sound like enough, so she said it again. “Yes.”
“Because you seem different.”
“I’m not.” Alisa laughed at the abruptness of that, and Ksyusha shifted her tingling fingertips. “How do I seem different?”
“You’re nervous. I thought maybe Ruslan did something wrong.”
Ksyusha glanced up from the neck of the guitar. “No.”
“Okay.”
“He wouldn’t.”
Alisa’s mouth twisted. “Great.” On cue, Ksyusha’s phone vibrated underneath them. Alisa dug the phone out, looked at the screen, and handed it over.
“Hi,” Ksyusha said. Her cousin stood up, off to their bedroom to change her clothes. “Nothing. I miss you.” Ksyusha strummed a G-major chord for Ruslan. “Hear that? I’m here. I’m good.”
* * *
·
In many ways, Ksyusha had improved as a girlfriend since joining the troupe. She was more patient, supportive, responsive. The worse she was in private, letting Chander trail his lips down her neck, the better she knew Ruslan to be. He had taken care of her all this time. So she texted him more, and asked for less, and when on the phone he got frustrated, she no longer tried to explain herself. She only soothed him until he settled down.
* * *
·
“I have wonderful news,” Margarita Anatolyevna said. Her silk scarf gleamed under the music room’s lights. “The university has agreed to send us to Vladivostok at the end of the month for the Eastern Winds ethnic festival. It’s an honor. Truly an honor. We’ll perform for more than a thousand people.” Her voice swung. She paused, and everyone applauded, a noise rapid and furious. “We haven’t gone for two years.” This last bit was half-drowned by their excitement. “Chander, can you tell everyone more?”
Ksyusha caught Chander looking at her before he stood. “This is great,” he said. “Right, they didn’t fund us last year. It’s for three or four days—”
“December twenty-third to twenty-sixth,” Margarita Anatolyevna broke in.
“And we dance, meet other ensembles, see a real city. Stay in a hotel.” Though he wasn’t speaking in Ksyusha’s direction, she knew he said that to her. “It’s fun.”
Alisa squealed, which set everyone off again. Even Margarita Anatolyevna was grinning. Ksyusha pressed her hands together to clap along with the rest of them, but she could not think of what to do next. Chander had told her that the troupe performed in public, but she’d pictured…visiting a local hospital ward, or taking the stage at an elementary school. Not missing classes to fly to Russia’s Pacific capital. And so soon…What would Ruslan say? He wasn’t planning to visit this month, as instead she would go to Esso to celebrate New Year’s at home, but…staying in a hotel, in a different region, with people he did not and should not trust?
Ksyusha excused herself and called Ruslan from the bathroom. “What is it?” he said when he picked up. Men and machinery were noisy behind him.
She told him about Eastern Winds.
“Vladivostok,” he said. “God.”
“I know. I know.”
“Just the name of the thing is ridiculous. ‘Eastern Winds.’ ”
“I know,” she said again, “but everyone else is excited. Alisa practically screamed when the director announced it.”
“Of course she did,” he said. “It’s incredible. A free trip to Vladivostok. I told you this dance thing was a good idea. How long do you have to be there?”
“Four days,” Ksyusha said. Even to her own ears, she sounded miserable. He clicked his tongue, and she understood that the more unwilling she seemed to take the trip, the more likely he would be to let her go.
That only made her feel worse. She had tried, since the first collision with Chander, to be better for Ruslan. But that effort—the tender questions, the caring noises, the more frequent promises that she loved him and home best—amounted to a strategy that paid off for her. Had she planned for this result all along?
“Drums and skins and Eastern Winds,” Ruslan said. “I wish I could see you all perform.”
She turned away from the bathroom’s line of mirrors. She wanted to cry. “I wish you could, too,” she said.
He didn’t have the money for a plane trip. Neither did anyone else in their families. So saying that didn’t matter—saying she wished for them to come together, though it would ruin them.
* * *
·
In the time before their next practice, Chander held her so tight she could not breathe. “Everyone else will go out at night,” he said. “They won’t expect you to come along. You’ll stay in your hotel room, and I’ll tell them I’m sick, or tired, or have to do research. Then I’ll come to you.”
“Al
l right,” she said. It couldn’t stay kissing forever. Under her palms was his chest, the muscles tense in anticipation.
In their hall, they clung to each other, but once practice began they kept to opposite sides of the room. The knowledge of what was coming made her skittish. Margarita Anatolyevna announced an increase to five practices a week, and Ksyusha could not turn her head to look at him. She imagined he, and everyone else, knew what she pictured: his body above hers. The music started. Chander stepped forward and she flinched.
* * *
·
“When’s the next time you’ll see Ruslan?” Alisa asked. The two cousins lay in their separate beds. Ksyusha, who had been thinking of the university hallway, opened her eyes when Alisa spoke. Nothing but darkness above.
“New Year’s,” she said.
“Are you sad without him?”
“Sometimes.” The guilt rose in Ksyusha. She stared up.
“Maybe he can come visit before we go.”
“There’s no time,” Ksyusha said. She turned toward Alisa, who had her cell in her hand. The glow from the screen made Alisa look even younger, like a little girl at a campfire. “I’ll see him soon enough. Don’t worry.”
Alisa’s eyelids flickered. She was back to playing on her phone. A charm hooked to its top corner made a black line across her knuckles. “You’re the one who’s always worried.”
Ksyusha was sick of her cousin’s questions. Facing the ceiling again, she tried to return in her mind to the hall outside the practice room, but it wasn’t coming as vividly as she wanted. How Chander spoke to her today. The way he touched her.
What would their first night in the hotel be like? Under Chander’s patience was a growing force; he spent real effort unwrapping his hands from her as their time drew to an end each afternoon. If she agreed, he would peel her naked tomorrow and press her against the tiles. Ksyusha’s stomach flipped at the thought.
She had lost her virginity to Ruslan that first summer on her childhood bed. Afraid of making a mistake, she barely moved, and afterward he called her a cold fish, fastened her bra, and kissed her. Now she knew what to do for Ruslan, but Chander might expect something more, some great experience. Or he could be disappointed in her body. She looked better in her clothes than out of them. Soon he would find that out.
No. Chander, in his kindness, could never find her insufficient. She parted her lips in the darkness and imagined his face. Those brown-black eyes reflecting the hall lights. That quick breath, promising to adore her.
* * *
·
The troupe spent most practices in costume now. Over Ksyusha’s jeans, a leather dress hung heavy, with red squares embroidered from its bottom hem up to her knees. Strings of beads swung from medallions at her waistline. When she raised her arms, fur bunched at her neck. In less than two weeks they flew to the festival. After they got back, as soon as her last exam ended, she would take the bus north.
These were the days that would decide her. She would sleep with Chander, then see Ruslan. In doing these things she would learn: either one or the other. The cruel period of having both would end.
She wanted to be with Ruslan forever. But she did not know how that would go. For now, she played at being good enough on the phone that he didn’t notice anything, but when she stepped onto their home pavement, wouldn’t he spot betrayal right away? And even if he did not catch her— She loved Ruslan, she did, and always had, but was it right for her to stay with him after what she had done and what she was going to do?
* * *
·
Of all people, Ksyusha was honest with Chander, so she told him. “I don’t know what’ll happen after this trip,” she said. “Not the one to Vladivostok, the one to Esso.”
They were sitting cross-legged on the hall floor. He lifted her knuckles to his mouth.
“It’s possible—when I see him—everything will go back to the way it was.” Chander nodded. “I can’t stay in the ensemble after that,” Ksyusha said.
When Chander spoke, his words came out warm on her skin. “It’s possible it could go the other way, too.”
“I can’t say. I don’t know.”
She studied his face, his stippled cheeks and serious brows. He laughed, then, a short noise. “I can’t stand it,” he said. He tugged on her arm and she folded forward into his lap. “In the hotel, they make up the sheets all white and crisp,” he said. “The mattress is like a dream. Can you picture that? We’ll be dreaming.”
* * *
·
The next time Alisa came home while Ksyusha was on the phone, Alisa took off her winter hat, pointed to the cell, and whispered, “Ruslan?” Who else? Ksyusha nodded. “Tell him hi,” her cousin said, then spun to lock the apartment doors.
Ksyusha, watching the padded line of her cousin’s back, said, “Hi from Alisa.” They never had a say-hello-for-me relationship. Ruslan used to call the girl crazy.
“Okay. Remind me when you’re leaving for the festival,” Ruslan said. At least he was always the same.
“Eight days.” Not this Friday but the next. “And the week after that, I’ll see you.”
Ruslan sighed, the sound coming thick from his lungs. “Wish it was sooner.” Ksyusha shut her eyes. He didn’t know what he was encouraging—what he was urging them toward.
* * *
·
Margarita Anatolyevna clapped for quiet. “Get in your pairs.” Ksyusha stepped toward the center of the room; she knew, without looking up to confirm, Chander was near. Her mouth and cheeks had been kissed sensitive by him this afternoon, leaving her feeling like a tender extension of his body. Ksyusha pressed her lips together while she waited.
“My partner’s missing,” said the boy from Achavayam.
“Where’s Alisa?” Margarita Anatolyevna shouted. Chander was already next to Ksyusha. The boy from Achavayam crossed his arms.
“We didn’t see her before practice,” a girl said.
The director jabbed a couple buttons on the stereo, making the music start and stop. “This is unacceptable,” she said. “Do you understand the festival is in one week? Take responsibility for one another. Ksyusha!” Ksyusha jumped. “Where is she?”
Ksyusha’s cell phone was tucked in her bag, but suggesting she call would only irritate things. No distractions during practice, Margarita Anatolyevna would scream. Ksyusha said, “She must be on her way.”
Margarita Anatolyevna punched another stereo button. “Line up. Salmon dance.” The boys gathered in the middle of the room. Ksyusha fell into place with the other girls, all of them in their costumes, leaving a spot for Alisa until the director motioned for them to tighten up.
Ksyusha tented her fingers in front of her chest. The song started, and the boys began to dance, lifting their feet to wade through a river that was not there. They squinted at the dusty floor to look for fish. Flexing her toes, Ksyusha waited for the girls’ entrance. Her mind was with her cousin. Was Alisa sick? Had she missed today’s classes? Their mothers had been texting them all week with worries about money after Tuesday’s market collapse. Could they not make Alisa’s tuition? Had she been called back to Esso? She had still been at the apartment this morning when Ksyusha left.
The recorded drums crashed. Ksyusha raised her arms with the rest of the girls and stepped forward. The boys pressed shoulder to shoulder, making a circle, and the girls swam around them. They turned until they found their partners. The boy from Achavayam frowned into space.
Chander grabbed at the air over Ksyusha’s head, and she ducked. Bent at the waist, she spun into the next formation. She looked up. Margarita Anatolyevna faced away from the dancers. Relief: Alisa was at the door of the practice room, pulling a cap off her orange-streaked hair, gesturing in apology.
Behind Alisa, another person stood in the doorway. Alisa had brought a man.
She had
brought Ruslan.
Ksyusha’s hands, which should have been flat as fins, clenched. He’s cheating, Ksyusha thought, wildly, because what were they doing together, but her cousin and her boyfriend were both smiling without guile. Alisa pointed at Ruslan, mouthed something to Ksyusha, and waved her palms in the air. These days of their echoing questions—how Ksyusha was doing, when she was leaving, when she expected to see him next—aligned.
Alisa had brought Ruslan to Ksyusha. They must have worked together to arrange this. Because Ksyusha had seemed to them nervous, Ruslan, who couldn’t watch her in Vladivostok, came to surprise her before she left.
Through the speakers, a synthesizer blared. Ksyusha pivoted with the line of girls to face away from the door. She tipped her head up. She kept the beat.
Inside her was white and smooth, a frozen landscape, solid bone.
* * *
·
So this was the last time she would have both. Though Ruslan and Alisa could not see her eyes from this angle, Ksyusha did not dare look Chander’s way. She had waited for the moment when her future would be decided. Only now when that moment was here did she know: the weeks she’d spent with both of them had been the best. The best. Ruslan calling in the mornings to wake her up, his texts popping into her phone throughout the day, and then an hour and a half of Chander…those days were over.
Women’s recorded voices rose high over the drumming. Underneath came the bass notes of men’s growls. The steps brought Ksyusha back to her partner. She looked. Afterward, she knew, she would have to be careful, but she couldn’t help this once—she glanced up at Chander and saw all his sweetness laid raw. His face was distorted with want.
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