The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter (The Ingrid Winter Misadventure Series)

by J. S. Drangsholt

  He thought we were kidding around, and part of me was glad. Aside from the day I told him about this trip, it had been a long time since our communication had been anything other than a bare-bones exchange of information. But another part of me was dreadfully scared, and I broke into a cold sweat again, wanting to tell Bjørnar all about the icon and the misunderstanding and the possible secret agents and how the gulag thing wasn’t actually hypothetical joking around.

  How likely was it that this phone was bugged? In Homeland it took them only three or four hours to install cameras and microphones, and here they’d had a whole day. So the likelihood was probably around 170 percent.

  “We’re going to the opera tonight,” I said breezily.

  “What are you going to see?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, have a good time.”

  “Thanks. Hope your day goes well. Sorry you have to man the ship alone. I know it’s not easy.”

  “I’m just looking forward to it being over.”

  “Me, too.”

  I went up to my room and lay down on the bed, so that I was free to study the ceiling. The microphones were probably attached to the back of the pictures and the mirror. The cameras could be anywhere. The worst thing was that I couldn’t find them and get rid of them, because that would make me look even guiltier.

  I shut my eyes and breathed in and out and out and in, imagining life carrying on without me as I lay in a coma after an overdose.

  After a car accident.

  After an operation for stress cancer.

  Right at this moment my body was so heavy and weary that I almost believed I had overdosed. If I hadn’t been in the coma too long, Bjørnar would probably be sitting next to me holding my hand and saying things like, “Move your pinkie finger if you can hear me.” But if I’d been unresponsive for a month or maybe even a year, there probably wouldn’t be anyone sitting there.

  By then I’d be alone except for the underpaid professional health care workers who came in once or twice a day to drain the urine out of me and wash me and massage my legs and talk to me about some singing contestant’s most recent engagement or whether the skier Petter Northug was going to have to wear a house-arrest ankle monitor for his DUI. If it had been a really long time, Bjørnar would already have a new girlfriend and would be trying to decide if he should pull the plug on me or not. Or he would at least have gotten himself a dog.

  I lay in bed and shivered and moved my pinkie finger and squeezed my hand into a fist. Just to be sure.

  27

  There was an annoying sound by my head.

  I fiddled with my phone for a bit, but the noise didn’t go away.

  “Go away!” I cried at the room, but that didn’t help, either.

  It took a long time for me to realize I needed to answer the hotel’s phone on the nightstand.

  “Where are you?” a voice hissed. “We’re late!”

  “Deckard?” I mumbled, still half dreaming, my mind focused on replicant-related issues.

  “Who? We’re ready to leave for the opera. Everyone’s here. You have to come down now, otherwise we won’t make it.”

  “I’m in a coma. Go without me.”

  I hung up.

  A little while later there was another infernal noise.

  “Go away!” I cried again, but this time I had to get out of bed and shuffle over to the door to mute it.

  It was Pretty Putin.

  “I’m sick,” I said. “I have to stay in bed. So if you want me to trudge along the Neva for hours on end, you can just forget it.”

  “You’ll be healthy soon,” he said and handed me a brown paper bag. “We’re not going for a walk by the Neva. We’re going to the opera.”

  “But I’m sick,” I reiterated. “Fever, cough, maybe a sinus infection.”

  “Like I said, you’ll be healthy soon. There’s medicine in the bag.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to meet the university president tomorrow? I’d better save my energy, sleep off the fever.”

  “Medicine in bag.”

  I tried to sigh, but it immediately turned into coughing.

  “I’ll be waiting in the lobby. You have thirteen minutes to get ready.”

  “Are Peter and Ingvill waiting in the lobby, too?”

  “They went on ahead, with Irina and Ivan.”

  “Double honey trap.”

  He stared me in the eye, and it felt like he was searching for something. I tried to look as blank as possible.

  “Fine,” I finally mumbled. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in thirteen minutes.”

  I walked into the bathroom and threw up. Then I opened the bag.

  Tylenol, decongestant spray, and a bottle full of something that smelled strongly of alcohol. Pretty Putin had made his own diagnosis. Apparently good old-timey cough syrup was still available over the counter in Russia. I took two Tylenol, jammed the spray bottle into my nose, and took a few good swigs of the liquid in the little brown bottle, which immediately blazed a warm path down into my chest.

  I took another swig, pulled a black wool dress over my head, tugged on one boot and then another, bundled myself up in my coat, and forced my body out the door and into the hallway.

  On my way to the lobby, I took a detour past the exclusive bar on the top floor to make sure the icon was still there. That was a rookie move considering the entire hotel would be under surveillance by now, but I couldn’t help it. I sat down on the sofa and discreetly felt around underneath until I found the bulky item.

  For a second, it almost felt like the little package gave me an infusion of energy. And hope. It was as if it were radiating some kind of heat, and I started wondering if it really was a sacred painting. For all I knew, the dean might have gotten it from some functionary during his KGB days, in thanks for his assistance or as some form of bribe. In which case it really might be valuable. To a lot of people.

  But right now it was mine and I rested my fingers on the warm, oddly comforting bulk for a bit before I took a deep breath and headed downstairs to fight yet another battle with Pretty Putin.

  He blew off my suggestion that we take a cab to the opera, so I was forced to pull my hand-knitted wool cap down over my ears and stuff my hands deep into my pockets. My throat was scratchy and I wished I could find a place that sold lozenges. Saint Petersburg seemed to be full of scrap-metal dealers.

  “You know it’s a complete waste to take Ingvill to the opera,” I said. “She’s the world’s least talented linguist.”

  He smiled.

  “What are you smiling at?” I asked.

  “Your alliance is already showing obvious cracks.”

  “There’s no alliance,” I said. “We’ve never been a team.”

  He didn’t respond. He was probably trying to psych me out, but he’d forgotten to consider the cough syrup. Because although I was weak, it also felt like my insides were some kind of soft pudding or jelly, and I regarded my surroundings with a sense of indifference I couldn’t remember ever having felt.

  My entire youth had been filled with strategies—counting ten yellow houses, jumping over puddles, avoiding shadows, walking only on the left side of streets, thinking positively, anything to ensure my survival.

  To ensure that things would go well.

  Which they very rarely did. But I had Bjørnar. And the kids. And I was secretly confident that things would have gone much less well if I hadn’t managed to count ten yellow houses or not worn my very best sweater. And even though these sorts of concrete strategies had evolved to become subtler and more focused on the power of my mind and the creation of magic shields, there was no doubt that my everyday existence was still filled with the whole same exhausting business.

  I giggled.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “I was thinking about Stalin. To be totally honest, he was a little funny looking.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I guess it mostly comes down to how you feel
about receding hairlines. Personally I prefer Gorbachev. Wasn’t there a pop song about him? Do you remember the one I’m talking about?”

  I started humming.

  “How much cough syrup did you take?”

  “The right amount.”

  The icon. That was what he wanted. We should have just given it back the first day. I could have brought it downstairs when we met to go to the Hermitage and said, “Look what I found on the floor,” or “Look what Peter brought back from the dean’s office. He thought it was a present. He’s not all that bright.” And then we could have bonded and become good friends. They probably already figured Peter had some kind of mental issue because of his urban bowler, so it wouldn’t have been hard to convince them that he had been included in our group via some type of special program.

  But for some reason I couldn’t wrap my brain around at the moment, I had insisted that we hide the thing instead. And pretend we had no idea how or why it had disappeared.

  And now I was going to die.

  Not that it mattered. I mean, I’d been expecting that my whole life.

  The catastrophe was finally here.

  It was all over.

  I thrust my arm into Pretty Putin’s.

  “We’re best friends,” I said. “BFF.”

  I could tell he thought I was becoming psychotic, and everything pointed to his being right. My mind reeled and I saw glowing spots on the street ahead of us. They were jumping around like little fairies. It was beautiful to watch.

  “What are you talking about? You’re like a—”

  “A what?”

  “A parrot! You talk and talk and make it impossible for other people to think. Can’t you be quiet for two minutes?”

  I hardly heard him. His voice was like the whistling wind.

  “Quiet?”

  “Be quiet? You? For two minutes?”

  “Don’t give in to hate,” I said. “Order and chaos.”

  28

  The others were still waiting in the lobby when we arrived at the opera house, so there was no way we were as late as Peter had made it sound. But I didn’t have the strength to get into it with him. I made do with noting that they had, in fact, each walked right into their own honey trap. Peter was chuckling at something Irina had just said, while Ingvill was watching Ivan with rapturous eyes. He was looking down into a glass of wine.

  “Ah, the Mariinsky Theatre,” Peter said. “I’ve spent so many lovely evenings here.”

  “You’ve been to Saint Petersburg before?” I asked, surprised.

  “Well . . . ,” he began, but stopped and took a sip from his glass. “At any rate the opera we’re going to see is wonderful. I’m sure I’m not far off if I say that this is the two hundred thirtieth time it’s been performed?”

  “That’s right,” Irina said with a nod. “Many people believe it is our foremost national epic.”

  “Prince Igor,” I said, flipping through the program. “I can’t recall ever having heard of it.”

  Ingvill laughed and tried to roll her eyes. It made her look like a constipated cow.

  “Have you heard of it?” I asked, irritated.

  “Of course.”

  “What’s it about, then?”

  “It’s about Prince Igor, obviously.”

  “Prince Igor? Yes, and . . . ?”

  She just smiled vacuously. She’d bought herself a glass of white wine. I thought about the cough syrup I had put in my purse and wondered if it would be a good idea to take another swig, but decided that it wasn’t. Either way, it didn’t taste good and it burned in my throat. Although the effect was good.

  “Prince Igor is about men who go off to fight in a meaningless war, while the women stay home to do most of the work,” Irina said.

  I laughed and nodded my head knowingly, but Irina didn’t seem to have intended any sarcasm. She gave me a scornful look and then took Peter by the arm and started pulling him down the hallway. She mumbled something about wanting to show him some interesting carvings.

  That arm grab made me nervous, but there wasn’t really any acceptable way for me to follow them. Besides, I wasn’t feeling so good. I started flipping through the program to find out how long this epic was meant to last. Four hours, it said.

  “I think I’ll buy a glass of wine,” I said.

  “I’ll join you,” Pretty Putin said.

  He led me up some stairs and into a narrow hallway, to a little bar where people were conversing quietly. I bought two glasses and handed one to him.

  “Here.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He took it, anyway, while I pulled out the cough syrup and poured a few drops into my glass.

  “Do you think that’s wise?” he asked.

  “We can’t always be wise,” I said, giving it a stir with my finger. “Sometimes you just have to step on the gas to survive the turn.”

  “Why do you keep opening and closing your hand all the time?”

  I looked down at my hand.

  “Have you seen Reversal of Fortune?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about Sunny von Bülow, who was in a coma for twenty-eight years until she died in 2008. True story.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “I’m kind of wondering if I’m in a coma right now.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know. Everything is so strange here.”

  “Typical Europeans. You make everything about yourselves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think all this”—he gestured around with his arm—“is something you made up? That it only exists in your imagination? What an ego!”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “Peter says you just bought a new house?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A very expensive house, if I’m not mistaken? You spent more than you’d planned?”

  “Quite a bit more, yes.”

  “And you could use a little extra?”

  My body went cold. He could tell, because a little smile appeared on his lips.

  “May I give a little sage advice?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Behave like a guest. Respect the host. Don’t reach for more than your share.”

  The room started slowly spinning. I tried to find something disarming to say, but there wasn’t anything.

  Pretty Putin took a long drink from his wineglass, placed it on a table, and moved closer. To the people around us we surely looked like lovers. Just like in that James Bond movie where he falls in love with a Russian agent. Who got shot and died.

  “You know,” he whispered into my ear, “that we have special prisons for women here in Russia.”

  “I see,” I said shakily, trying to make it sound as if we were discussing everyday touristy sorts of things, but it was hard for my thoughts to keep up when he was standing so close to me. Besides, I suddenly felt really hot. I opened and closed my hand.

  Fist.

  Flat hand.

  Fist.

  Flat hand.

  Pretty Putin took my hand and held it in a firm grasp.

  It was like being anesthetized. Suddenly there were no words.

  It was as if language didn’t exist anymore.

  He smiled and caressed my hair.

  “If I were you,” he said seriously, “I would consider very carefully what I was actually doing, what I wanted out of life.”

  I stared into those pale-blue eyes. A bell started to chime.

  I wondered what he had actually said to me . . . if he’d said anything at all. Suddenly I was having trouble keeping track of everything.

  “Honey trap,” I mumbled. “Honey trap.”

  And before he could react, I raised my face a tiny bit farther and kissed him. His mouth was supple and tasted sweet.

  I sucked on his lips. Sucked in all that sweetness, clarity, warmth.

  Long enough that it was
hard to separate again.

  But in the end he took hold of both my arms and pushed me away.

  “That,” he said, “wasn’t OK.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But you—”

  A new bell started chiming for me right then, and Pretty Putin pulled me back down the hallway and into the auditorium, where Prince Igor was preparing to take back what was his.

  29

  It was not entirely clear to me whether it was due to the fever, the cough syrup, or my lack of familiarity with the culture, but the plot of the opera seemed completely incomprehensible. Thanks to the subtitles rolling across the screen at the bottom of the stage, I was able to tell that vodka played a big part as well as defiling women, and when it came to Prince Igor himself, I got that hubris was a major issue with him.

  Because, like so many tragic heroes before him, Igor was totally out of step with his surroundings. Even though a solar eclipse took place right as he declared war against the Cumans, and even though the sobbing princess, Yaroslavna, pleaded with him to reconsider his plans and stay home, he pushed right on through with his plan. Naturally this resulted in his being taken captive immediately, which in turn led to famine and hardship throughout all of Russia.

  That pretty much seemed to be the gist of it, but there were quite a few minor characters that I didn’t get the point of, not to mention that they all had names that made them sound like bad guys, like Ovlur, Skula, and Yeroshka. I felt dizzy and weird, and at one point I might have fallen asleep with my head on Pretty Putin’s shoulder.

  During the intermission the others went to buy more wine, but I couldn’t face getting up. I was certain I had a fever. It was eating its way through my body, and the tickle in my throat kept compelling me to cough. I took another swig from the brown bottle and observed that no one had asked how I was doing or if I wanted to take a cab back to the hotel.

  It was like that summer when I had pneumonia.

  The nights were so long.

  I lay there as quietly as I could, waiting for the rest of the family to wake up.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Seven thirty.

  I could hear them moving around—the click of the coffee machine, the radio turning on, buttering their toast, reading the paper, mumbling to each other.