by Lola Keeley
It’s a sight to see, all that defiance packed into that pleasing frame with its barely contained muscular definition. Victoria swallows hard, but she steps aside, welcoming the unexpected visitor. In the open-plan hallway, with its high white ceilings, it would be quite easy to keep themselves a respectable distance apart.
Regardless, Anna brushes against her, her rain-spattered leather jacket transferring enough liquid to soak Victoria’s shirt. It turns her white shirt almost transparent, and she stares down at it just as surely as Anna does. On the way back up, their gazes meet, and Victoria can’t think of a single thing to say.
“Well.”
“Sorry. I need to—”
“Through there,” Victoria directs, a casual nod toward Irina’s bedroom. “Be warned, she’s on painkillers and has even fewer filters than usual. Do you need me to come in?”
“Private,” Anna says. “Sorry.”
Victoria shrugs. What does she care? She can ignore the pang in her chest at being shut out, at not knowing who made Anna cry, what put all the longing and loneliness behind that desperate look.
“I’ll be in the kitchen, when you’re done.”
“Okay.”
And Anna’s gone, in motion already, bearing down on Irina, who has no idea of the oncoming storm.
“Malenkaya,” Irina greets her, propped up on the pillows. “You remember where I live.”
“Did you know?” Anna can barely form the sentence, but she can’t chicken out now. “Have you known all this time? My whole life?”
“You’re not making any sense,” Irina points out, and it’s not unreasonable.
“You’re not from Russia.” Anna sticks to the facts. “You were born in Ukraine. You told me last time I was here.”
“Yes, and no. I was born in the Soviet Union. Do we really need to relive history? The wall came down, the gas comes through the pipelines. You can fly on Aeroflot and I can dance in America without defecting. Look how far we’ve come.”
“You knew.” Anna knows when she’s being deflected. She’s so tired of everyone thinking that just because she tries to be nice, she must also somehow be stupid. “You had a sister.”
“No.” Irina pushes the sheets aside, swings her legs out of the bed.
Anna steps back, unsure how much confrontation this is.
“No, I had no sister,” Irina continues. “Not one that I knew.”
“But you had one,” Anna persists. “Her name was—”
“Inessa. Our parents had great imagination, I see. They got no further than ‘I’ in the book of names.”
“My mother.” Anna clears her throat, because this is important and has to be said with the weight due the moment. “Was a Ukrainian immigrant to this country. Her name was Inessa. I could never say her surname quite right, and it made her so sad.”
“Ah.” Irina’s expression is pinched, and she won’t look directly at Anna. “There were moments, I wondered. When I first came here, I wanted to pay someone to find her. I never did. Inessa Sviderskyi.”
“That’s her.” Anna could swear she feels the fresh crack in her heart from hearing her mother’s name correctly spoken after all this time.
“How is it that you and Jess share your name, then?” She leans forward with a hungry look in her eyes that Anna knows must be reflected in her own. “Gale is not a name I think is so very common.”
“It’s not. My father and Jess’s father are distant cousins. A freak coincidence, but it’s how Jess and I became friends. I was at their house the night…the night…”
“You said your parents died,” Irina completes the thought. “I am sorry for your loss, Anna. But it isn’t mine to share.”
“No?” Anna thinks she might break if this fragile hope of a connection is shattered. She’s lost so much, and to find maybe a little bit of her family in this new place that feels like home would be more than she ever dreamed of. She hands Irina her mother’s papers.
Irina reads them with the care and attention they deserve, before clutching them to her chest. She looks strangely normal in her white tank top and running shorts. Not a ballerina, not a star. Twenty years fall from her face with a single tear.
“I never knew my sister.”
“I’m sorry,” Anna finds herself saying.
“That is not the whole truth. We were separated maybe at the age of four? Not yet five, I think. It’s hazy. I went with a family who lived in Moscow. She was supposed to be nearby but something changed. I asked to see her, every day, but for months I got excuses. Eventually I was made to stop asking. The last I heard she had been sent to America.”
Irina shudders. Anna steps closer, unsure if her comfort will be welcome. It would be more for herself than Irina, a cheating way to feel something like her mother’s hugs one more time. Would it be better or worse if the embrace felt the same? Anna can’t think straight; she just draws closer and closer until she’s right next to her friend and colleague, her sister’s girlfriend.
“Aunt Irina?” she tries, voice high and tight and cracking on the ‘t’.
“Oh, malenkaya,” Irina sighs, opening her arms as though they’re greeting for the first time. “Come here.”
CHAPTER 29
“You two should probably hydrate at some point,” Victoria says pointedly from the doorway. “But I should go. It’s late.” It’s an intrusion, plain and simple, but her curiosity has been pulling her toward the room for the better part of an hour now. Either someone spills the rest of the details, or she’s going home.
“Victoria,” Anna is the first to speak, her eyes red but her smile returning. “I’m sorry for before. I was so rude on the way in.”
“We’ll talk later,” Victoria promises. “Irina, do you need anything before I go?”
“No, Vicki.” Irina’s voice is a rasp. “But I think for today I’ve had enough company. You can take each other home.” There’s a hint of accusation in her tone, but Victoria lets the fast pitch sail right past, smoothing herself out like she never saw it coming.
“But—” Anna is protesting, because of course she is.
“Tomorrow,” Irina says. “Come over anytime. Well, not before nine. I can see you need to be told this.”
“She does,” Victoria confirms, and when Anna doesn’t move from the bed, she’s the one to move around and steer Anna by the upper arm. “Good night.”
“Na dobranich,” Irina replies, and it draws fresh tears from Anna as she mumbles back an approximation of the same word.
“Well?” Victoria asks when they’re back in the kitchen area. “What fresh soap-opera hell was that?”
Anna shrugs, and somehow looks older than her twentysomething years. “Turns out we’re related. I think I knew as soon as I saw her, but denial is a powerful thing.”
“You’re telling me there’s a story now, on top of everything? Our very own Cold War dynasty?” Victoria’s blood is racing. “God, even Michelle couldn’t mess up an exclusive like that. We’ll make sure Irina’s going to make it to performance, of course; an understudy isn’t going to cut it. The photos could be tricky, we need something—”
“Victoria.”
She ignores it. In a minute, the ideas are coming faster than she can process.
“Victoria.”
More insistent, but if she can just explain what she needs then…
Anna grabs her by the wrists. “Victoria, stop.”
“What?” Some people have no sense of building to a crescendo. Victoria expected better, honestly. No one can touch her with a narrative like this, not Rick or Liza or the crones in the orchestra seats with their dusty checkbooks and jewelry that’s the Harry Winston version of Jacob Marley’s chains.
“I-I don’t want that.”
Anna is pleading, and really, is Victoria going to have to drag her to greatness after all? How much more can she do for the girl?
“I won’t do it, I mean. I won’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. How can you turn down publi
city like this? If we play it right, there’ll be screenwriters sniffing around. Legacy is such an enduring theme, and throw in the tragic-orphan routine—”
Anna’s slap almost connects, but she pulls up short just in time, wrist swiping uselessly at thin air. “I said no. I don’t want that,” she repeats, lowering her hand. “No one will care, not really, and I don’t want to give up this one small part of myself.”
“Anna—”
“I swear, on anything you want. You do this, you try to make me do this, and I’ll quit the company. You can have Morgan, or whoever the heck—hell—you want. But I’ll walk before I’ll use this for a few pages in a newspaper.”
Victoria’s seen defiance in her before, but this is breathtaking. Other people get blotchy and puffy when they cry, but Anna is one of the lucky ones whose skin looks polished, whose eyes just get clearer and more hypnotizing to stare into. With anyone else in this moment, Victoria would lay down the law, complete with a diatribe about how lucky she is to be throwing away this chance at all.
But a little part of her, the part that still expects to hear the low rumble of her father’s greeting when she goes back to the house in San Francisco, understands what Anna is clinging to here.
“We’ll talk tomorrow” is all the compromise she can bring herself to make. “In the meantime, my car is waiting. Don’t argue, and I won’t mention the story again. Deal?”
“Deal.” Anna sighs. She looks like a stiff breeze would knock her over.
There’s no resistance as Victoria links their arms and steers her outside, leaning on Anna just a little instead of her cane. The car is idling, and honestly it’s barely a distance that requires it, but Victoria has had enough of exhausting her body beyond its limits lately.
They fold into the car, one after the other, a set designed for quick taking apart and reassembly. Their driver doesn’t comment on the short journey, or the additional passenger. When he stops on Victoria’s side of the road, she can’t quite bring herself to walk Anna across through traffic. Instead, she extends her hand from the sidewalk, making it quite clear that Anna can step out on her own or choose the hand that’s offered. A moment later, cool fingers clasp around Victoria’s own, and she has a guest for the first time in too long.
“Wow.” Anna doesn’t speak the whole way up until they step inside Victoria’s apartment, the moment the door is firmly closed behind them and privacy guaranteed.
“Did you think I lived in a music box? All lace doilies and satin slippers hanging on the walls?” Victoria heads straight for the hard liquor. She pours them both some of her preferred Scotch, and Anna accepts without question, cradling the heavy crystal in both hands as she looks around in wonder.
“It doesn’t look like this at all from the outside.” It isn’t the most obvious thing she could say, at least. “I feel like I’m in a magazine spread. And the color, God…”
After so many years in white-walled or mirror-walled rooms, Victoria’s personal taste extends to the bold and splashy. The high ceilings and huge windows of the quasi-penthouse apartment can take the deepest and wildest of tones, something the interior designer seized on like someone in the desert finding water while dying of thirst.
“You need the nickel tour?” Victoria asks. “I don’t usually… You just seemed a little lost.”
“I think I am,” Anna confesses. “Not lost, really. Just…the world is a different shape than I thought it was yesterday. My mom had a sister. I have an aunt. I thought everything about my mother died with her. This is like being given a gift three days after your birthday.”
“Mmm.” Victoria has no frame of reference for this, because her own losses have been permanent and unyielding. An aunt makes more sense. She’d been wondering about distant cousins. Is it a genetic quality, then, that Victoria has picked out in Anna? Despite the difference in their frames, she does have a flavor of Irina’s poise in the way she carries herself. “Do you need another drink?”
“God, yes.” Anna comes over, holding out her glass. “I’ll take that tour.”
“My art collection is limited, so don’t bring out your art-school snobbery on me,” Victoria warns, looking around the room for a place to start.
“Not even with all the art fairs you go to?”
Victoria sees that she suspects her ruse now. Let her. It’s almost refreshing for anyone to be close enough to see through her.
They walk through the living room, glance at the rarely used kitchen, and Anna stares at the framed posters and photos in the hall as though someone might have etched a treasure map on them and she’ll only have one chance to memorize it. Victoria answers the peppered questions with minimal fuss, and it’s actually pleasant to remember some of her triumphs, some of the wonderful people she worked with.
“My bedroom isn’t terribly interesting,” Victoria says, trying to gently dissuade her as Anna nudges where the door has been left ajar. “You want the room next door.”
“What’s in here?” Anna asks, but the door is halfway open and the lights are flipping on before Victoria can formulate her response. “Holy…”
“Still haven’t learned to curse?” Victoria leans against the doorjamb, amused.
Anna is slowly turning on the spot, scanning every item as though there’s going to be a quiz on exit.
“Welcome to my mausoleum.”
The dresses hang from a high rail almost at the ceiling, draped on strings that lower them to head height. The posters interspersed, flat against the wall, are some of the most artistic offerings that Metropolitan’s marketing has ever conjured, along with some bold additions from her time in London and San Francisco. Victoria features prominently, and even the abstract shapes and sketches are so clearly her.
“Do you know how many people would kill to step inside this room?” Anna is breathless as she asks, already drawn to the display cases with their elaborate headdresses and all the pairs of shoes, some dipped in bronze and others in their ragged post-show state.
“Do I strike you as a killer?” Victoria is moving closer, not entirely of her own volition.
Anna’s jacket has dried off, but her hair is still sticking to it in wet strands. It’s unusual to see her with her hair down, and from a certain angle she could be another person entirely.
“I thought you were outraged. You almost took a swing at me. Why did you decide to come up here?”
“In case I didn’t get another chance.” Anna faces her. “This is what heaven should look like, don’t you think?”
“No.” Victoria’s voice is drier than Arizona at the height of summer, but it doesn’t dissuade Anna in the slightest.
“Do you think I’ll have my own room like this one day?”
“That really depends on your therapist.” Victoria shrugs. “Grief needs an outlet, and at times this was mine. But you? Well, maybe a prince’s jacket in one corner, Kitri’s fan in another. Blow up the magazine spread to cover a wall, until you rack up some more.”
She gestures to the far wall, where her own Vanity Fair shots as Odette and Odile are separated by a jeweled crown.
“Well, it would have to be the one of us.” Anna’s voice is lower, a little husky. “Tied up together in satin ribbons.”
“A bold choice,” Victoria agrees. “Why? Does that one linger in the memory?”
Anna gives a lopsided smile, even closer still.
“I’m not sure I should have asked you up.” Victoria feels oddly exposed at the thought of what could happen from here.
“I’m…” Anna yawns, widely, taking herself by surprise. “Sorry, I should go home and get into something dry. Crying really takes it out of me.”
“Here.” Victoria steers her again, because habits are seemingly hard to break.
Anna sits on the long couch she’s directed to without complaint, groaning happily as she sinks into the cushions.
“Wait here.”
Luckily for their difference in frames, Victoria has a fondness for oversized pajam
as, the crisp cotton kind her father always favored. She plucks a blue pair from the closet, only to find Anna already tipped on her side and fast asleep.
Victoria pulls the throw from the back of the sofa and eases it over Anna, who gives a dreamy smile in her sleep at being cared for. It only takes a moment to prop her head up with a cushion, and Victoria is rewarded by a soft little snore barely a moment later.
“Sweet dreams,” Victoria murmurs, watching for a moment to make sure Anna settles.
Sure enough, her body only relaxes more into the softness of the furniture. Victoria’s spent many nights on that couch herself, and even her knee hasn’t complained about it yet.
Anna shifts slightly. Realizing how creepy it is to watch someone else sleep, Victoria flips off the last lamp and makes her way down the hall toward her bedroom. Should she have offered Anna the bed? That seems excessive. And dangerous, given that simmering heat between them that needs only a breath of oxygen to spark into life.
No. If Anna is invited into Victoria’s bed, it won’t be for sleeping. And since everything else is off the table…
She throws herself down on the neatly made sheets before pulling a pillow over her head and groaning into it. Yes, this was a terrible idea. Victoria just can’t find it in herself to care, so she kicks off her shoes and tries to get comfortable. The rest can wait for morning.
Anna gets up and it’s dark, so dark that nothing is where she thinks it should be. A few bruises on her shins and muttered curses later, leave her at the bathroom sink, the faint light from the window illumination enough to gulp down a few mouthfuls of water.
That’s better.
Her eyes are puffy and stinging from the tears cried earlier, so she splashes her face with cool water, reaching for a towel that somehow isn’t there. Great. She wipes her face on her shirt and wonders why she hasn’t bothered to change into pajamas. Oh well, back to bed. Not the sofa, which is actually way more comfortable than she remembers from propping her injured toes up. She stumbles along the hall and if she can just get in bed before waking up all the way, maybe the alarm won’t go off too soon.