Welcome to the Hotel Yalta: Six Stories of Cold War Noir

by Victoria Dougherty

  “Would you mind?” she asked, removing a tall vial of olive oil from her beach-bag. Etor sprinkled the oil over her hair, massaging it into her dry ends.

  “Of course Kástro is no place to find a husband,” Etor reminded her. “Only adulterers and seducers come here.”

  Kástro, or Old Town Monemvasia, as it was known to tourists—was notorious for offering what the flashier getaways never could—secrecy. Lily had nothing to hide on this—her last, she swore to herself—trip to the tiny peninsula, but she had plenty to hide from. And it wasn’t just a broken engagement; one that came with the added embarrassment of having to admit once again that she was a screw-up when it came to matters of the heart. No, Lily realized, the heart was too specific a category. Most people back home just thought she was a screw-up. Period.

  It was why she’d grown to hate Boston. And the whole Eastern seaboard, except for New York. Because despite how hard she’d tried to fit in—at Dana Hall, at the goddamned Junior League—Lily just couldn’t stand the stuck-up, intellectual pomposity of the men, or the prim, icy-cool affectations of girls who moved in cliques so armored you needed barbed wire cutters just to say hello. The same girls who feigned propriety with the right kind of boy from seven to nine p.m., then slipped a cute waiter a little note about where to meet for some real fun. Lily knew all too well that she wasn’t the only girl at Dana Hall who’d had more than the prescribed three lovers you could take and still remain vaguely respectable. The snooty pricks who’d wooed her onto their plaid couches knew that, too, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she wasn’t one of them.

  She’d thought Richard was different.

  And he was, at first. Late night coffees, introducing her to poets she pretended not to know, finding her family funny and eccentric instead of brash. Richard was the only non-Greek guy who’d ever had the guts to take Lily home; she had to give him that. But putting up with the long silences, the droll weekends at his parent’s “beach” house—a place set on the frigid, un-swimmable waters of Northeast Harbor, Maine—had proved to be too much. For both of them.

  Her father told her not to think much about Richard of the Philadelphia Putnams. He was destined to spend his life in old money oblivion, breathing rarified air and eating bland food.

  Not like her, Daddy said. Lily was the daughter of a Hellene. One who came to America at fifteen—alone—and made his own way. Theron Tassos had worked the docks, then the avenues and the markets, among other things, while the fathers of boys like Richard sipped their brandies and talked of the world’s stage as if they were on it as anything more than a ceremonial ribbon.

  Malakas, her father called them. Jerk-offs.

  They may have been just that, but it didn’t change the fact that Lily’s father thought too highly of her. If Lily was the mighty Hellene in Theron Tassos’ fantasies, she would’ve never tried to gain entry into Richard’s world in the first place—pining for their stamp of approval like a hungry beagle. She would have never put up with the not-so-subtle inquiries, Are you going to wear that to Mother’s? The dry, fervent kisses followed by the panted pleas to go down. That was something the Betsys and Lindys of Richard’s world didn’t do. Not well, anyway.

  “Go to Greece,” her father had urged. “A few weeks on the Peloponnese will remind you of who you are.”

  Only it hadn’t. It didn’t. It wouldn’t.

  Greece, while a virtual banquet of indulgences, had never been a place of clarity and motivation for Lily. Come to think of it, no place had. Not even New York, with its busy inhabitants who reveled in variety—enjoying life like they would an assortment of frutti di mare on a big silver plate.

  Furthermore, what Lily hadn’t counted on was how well Kástro in particular kept its confidences. The rocky cape trapped them like ghosts in a long-abandoned cemetery, and as Lily walked the winding trails and footbridges, nearly every blooming bush and medieval ruin murmured a story of some time or another when Lily had ended up flat on her back with her dress hiked above her hips.

  “What place could be more pleasing to the senses?” Etor beamed, uncorking a bottle of Malvasia wine as he beheld his adopted home.

  “Please,” Lily yielded, and Etor poured a liberal serving into her pewter goblet. She swished it around, watching the wine twirl.

  “You don’t have time to sit on Monemvasia for weeks like a Danish tourista,” Etor insisted. “By age twenty-five you won’t be marketable anymore.”

  Lily looked at her watch and nodded. “I don’t know that I was meant for marriage,” she said aloud, but not specifically to Etor. Lily had never been in love. And the only man who’d ever really cared for her was her father—a man whose tender bearing at home and zeal for his family felt at times like Lily’s only true tether to her heart. Of course, his dealings with the outside world were less benevolent, she’d learned.

  “Miss Lilia!” Stavros, the concierge called. “A note for you.”

  Stavros waved the sealed envelope in his hand as he teetered over the melon-shaped rocks. He nearly tumbled into the water twice, as if he didn’t make the journey from the Hotel Malvasia’s lobby to the seaside at least a dozen times a day.

  “It just appeared on my desk,” he marveled. “I didn’t see who could’ve left it.”

  It was a plain, white envelope—the size of an invitation—and Miss Lilia Tassos was scribbled on the back, looking more like Miso Lihila Tssas to the untrained eye.

  “Thank you, Stavros.” She tucked the envelope into her beach bag, and looked back at the jellyfish, which were now floating out to sea.

  “Open it,” Etor demanded. “It could be from an admirer.”

  Lily smiled at the Cretan gigolo, retrieving the envelope and then tearing it at the seam. She pulled out a short note scribbled in the same slapdash handwriting. Tucked inside its crease was a simple, metal card with a plus sign embossed on one side and a six-pointed star on the other. It was the size of a calling card and engraved with eight tiny Cyrillic letters.

  “Well?” Etor pressed. Lily patted his hand.

  “No admirer, I’m afraid. Just a man.”

  Tony Geiger sat on a partial fortress wall that looked down over the sea and a rocky perch that Lily Tassos had fled around dinner time—a tawdry Greek Romeo on her tail.

  Tony had hiked up from the waterfront an hour early to sit amongst the ruins at the top of the peninsula and smoke Chesterfields in the cool evening air. The night required a light jacket, but Tony had under-dressed on purpose. It kept him sharp when he’d had a lousy night’s sleep—taking the red-eye from Berlin to Athens and then driving another five hours to Monemvasia.

  “Fuck,” he said, flicking his last good cigarette into a bush of wildflowers. He watched the butt glow like a lightening bug, then fade under the frizzy bloom of the white buds. He wished he could buy a decent pack of smokes in Greece.

  “Well, it’s about time,” he murmured as he watched Lily scramble up a corkscrew rock path from behind a collapsed church wall. She was twenty minutes late and dressed in what looked like a white linen bathrobe that flew behind her like a spinnaker. Though he knew and understood fashion and finery, he’d never learned to appreciate it.

  “Tony,” she called.

  Lily had the kind of looks Tony could appreciate, complete with a big nose and a full set of lips that saved her from cuteness. As far as he was concerned, she wrecked everything she had going for her with flashy clothes and too much perfume. Despite her Boston upbringing, she looked and behaved like a new-money Greek.

  “You might as well go ahead and blow my vacation,” Lily grumbled, stumbling over the broken castle steps.

  Geiger rubbed the thick stubble on his cheeks and shook his head.

  “Come on, Lily. What’s a girl like you got to take a vacation from—shopping?” He smiled and folded his arms. “Besides, something vaguely resembling a job might actua
lly be good for you. Get you away from the Lotharios that hang around in places like this.”

  Lily put her palms to her temples then shook her hands as if she were chasing away an odor. She caught herself smiling at him and changed her look to a smirk. “It’s amazing what a girl will do for a guy who keeps threatening to put her daddy in jail.”

  Geiger pushed away from the fortress wall and pointed a finger in her face. The force of the gesture caused Lily to stumble backwards and trip on her white linen train. He grabbed hold of her arm before she could fall and drew her close. “Your father’s an arms dealer, lady!”

  He let go of her and glanced around them. Geiger then leaned back onto the stone wall, spitting over his shoulder and watching his foaming saliva disappear over the cliff-side into the black air.

  “You should thank me for letting you keep living this life of yours. You understand treason? How about seizure?” Geiger hoped the Greek baron would eat a bullet one day and figured that sooner or later, he would. “What’s it gonna be, Lily?” he said.

  Lily tucked her hair behind her ear. She hated it when Geiger popped up out of the blue like this. The funny little errands he’d sent her on—going to the Russian Tea Room at exactly 5:15 pm wearing a red skirt or leaving her purse at the Seven Sisters tube stop in London—weren’t much more than an inconvenience, but his brown eyes told a much longer story than his thirty years, and the way he sucked in his cheeks whenever she started talking made her feel like the kind of woman she feared she was—bored and rich, with the wrong kind of money. Lily had seen enough to know that wasn’t the way she wanted to spend her life, but she wasn’t sure what options there were for a girl like her.

  She looked at Geiger—into his eyes, which she often avoided—and nodded her head. “What have you got for me this time?”

  Tony Geiger reached down and moved a fallen stone about the size of a gold brick. He produced another envelope with Lily’s name on it; this one long and thick with folded papers. Lily grabbed the envelope and opened the flap, pulling out an airline ticket, itinerary, visa, and various receipts in her name. “This is going to Moscow.”

  “You’re going to Moscow,” Geiger corrected.

  “Why would I go to Moscow?”

  Geiger scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. “All the good parties are happening in Moscow these days—the rich Pinkos love it.”

  “I’m not a Pinko.”

  Geiger smiled, for once looking sweet, lighthearted and his age. “Lily, you’re not an anything.”

  Something inside her wanted to smile back at him despite the insult, but instead she rubbed her lips together as if she were redistributing her lipstick. “Moscow, huh?”

  “A little sightseeing—Lenin’s Mausoleum and all that. You know you can view his actual body in Red Square. The Bolshevik Fuehrer.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “No, I’ve seen it. He doesn’t look that different than he does in photos.” Geiger lit another smoke and inhaled deeply. “You still got that little present I sent you?”

  Lily tucked her index finger into the bust of her dress and slid the odd metal card he’d conveyed through the hotel concierge over her collarbone. The gesture was meant as a joke—a play on something you might see in a French movie—but Tony Geiger didn’t even smile.

  “Don’t lose that,” he warned. “It’s more important than your passport.”

  Lily took the card and flipped it over a couple of times, running her index finger over the Cyrillic lettering. She’d thought of taking Russian at Wellesley, hoping to rule the cocktail party circuit with unfiltered phrases from Anna Karenina, but ended up learning Arabic instead. Languages were the only thing she’d ever been really good at and she collected them the way some people collected amusing dinner guests.

  “It looks like a belt buckle,” she remarked.

  Geiger shook his head. “For your purposes, it’ll get you a suite at the best hotel in Moscow, provided you show it to my good friend Fedot at the front desk. It’ll also help you know who your friends are.”

  Lily mouthed “Fedot” and shrugged her shoulders. “And?”

  “And, on a separate note, you’re now a member of the American Communist Party. Back-dated three years, of course. Like you joined in college.”

  This time Lily laughed out loud. “What if the Ruskies find out I’m not?”

  “Oh, but you are. I’ve made sure of it. It makes getting you into Russia all the easier. And getting you out a little more interesting.”

  Lily stopped laughing and squeezed the card in her palm until one of its pointy edges dug into her skin. She held it up between two fingers and then flicked it at him. Geiger caught it.

  “Are you out of your mind?” she said.

  “Lily, keep it down.”

  Lily paced in front of Geiger and then stopped, pointing her finger in his face the way he had to her. The wind was turning wild and cold, blowing her dress every which way. She wished she hadn’t worn it. “Is this about my father? Or is it about something else?”

  If only, Geiger thought.

  “Your father’s in Boston and he’s not going anywhere that I know of—you can call him if you want. And as for something else?” Tony folded his hands together as if he were praying. “Look . . . it’s not even on my radar.”

  Lily hardly ever thought about that night in New York anymore, either. Until she thought about it, that is—the night she’d first met Tony and assumed, wrongly, that it was by chance. He’d approached her outside of her hotel as the bellman hailed her a cab. He said he was late and asked if he could share the ride.

  They talked about the weather—it had been lousy—and about Faulkner—whom they both loved. Then he asked her out for a drink. It occurred to her, as she found herself making love with him standing up behind a beer truck outside of Chumley’s, that he’d lied about being late for an appointment. She could never, for the life of her, understand how it was that men knew they could have her without even the polite formality of a hotel room.

  Then Tony just stopped in the middle of everything.

  “You want to go somewhere else?” he asked.

  In the cab back to the St. Regis she found he spoke Greek and Italian in addition to German and Hebrew. She didn’t speak Hebrew, but they took turns impressing each other with the languages they had in common. They also shared a love of black comedy and Tony told her that he’d never actually met a woman with a real sense of humor. He said that women he’d known liked laughing at jokes, but rarely made any.

  Somehow, though, despite all of the laughing and the teasing and the fact that she was pretty sure she was the best-looking girl Tony had ever gotten into bed, they “couldn’t close the deal” as he mumbled right before passing out. He blamed the two bottles of wine they’d shared when they got back to his suite, but he hadn’t seemed all that drunk to her.

  Now, as she looked at him—a year and some later—he seemed a hell of a lot older than he had then.

  She watched as Tony Geiger bent down and picked up the metal card she’d flicked to the ground. He dusted it off and held it flat in his hand as if it were some kind of peace offering, the lines on his palm looking like deep scars.

  “Lily, I don’t like your father very much, but I’ve got nothing against you. This is just something you can do pretty easily for me, that’s all.”

  Lily rolled her eyes at him, but instead of Tony giving her some smart-ass comment, he looked down and swallowed hard. “Look,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “I need you to do this for me.”

  Geiger stepped closer to her and held his hands up as if he were going to put them on her shoulders. For a second, she thought he was going to kiss her. And for a second, he wanted to.

  “You’ll walk around for a couple of days, go to a party or two, and on the third day you’re there—three minutes before noon�
��a man with a doctor’s bag is going to ring the bell at your suite. When he arrives, you’ll show him the card, go to the safe in your chest of drawers, and give him the contents. The combination will be your birth date. Easy to remember.”

  “I don’t need it to be easy—I remember everything.”

  “Yeah, you do, don’t you?” Tony said. It was funny to him how she remembered every line from every book she’d ever read. It was not funny how he remembered the soft curve of her hips and the way her toes tasted in his mouth. “Anyway, you can go home any time after that. Or stay and see Mr. Lenin’s mummy if you want.”

  Lily backed up and eyed Geiger from close-cropped hair to tightly laced shoe. This was definitely different from the other times, and Lily didn’t like it. Tony was edgy and distant—but as if he was acting that way on purpose. It wasn’t like he was a soft, warm blanket the other times they’d met, but he wasn’t stiff either and could laugh here and there, even if it was at her expense. She wondered if everything else until now had been a warm-up—a series of little tests meant to help him discern whether or not she could cross a line. And she wondered whether Tony ever acted real at all.

  God, she was sick of men. “I’m going back to my hotel.”

  “Lily!” Geiger called, as she turned on her heel and stomped to the slim path leading back to the castle. A thorn flower bush caught the painted silk scarf Lily had tied around her waist and the wind blew it off the tiny dagger of a petal, catching it around Tony Geiger’s ankle.

  “Lily! Are you going to leave a legacy or a residue?”

  Lily stopped and spun around.

  Geiger opened his palms and smiled like he meant it.

  This,” he said, holding up her airline tickets, “is a legacy.” Tony Geiger bent down and retrieved her scarf, letting it flail in the air. “What do you think a thing like this is? Bet it cost a pretty penny, but what’s it worth?”

  Lily rolled her eyes and turned back towards the path. It was one of her favorite scarves—and it had cost a pretty penny—but he could keep it.