Last night, Nina managed only about four hours of sleep, and now her brain felt mostly useless. Their pediatrician, who had just left, suggested that Katya, her four-year-old, might be sick with epiglottitis and recommended taking her to a hospital. He added that the condition––in rare cases––could turn life-threatening. Her daughter was hot to the touch but didn’t look like someone about to die.

“What do you think?” Nina asked. “Should I take her to the emergency room?”

Her mother, who sat by the sleeping child’s side, scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous! They always try to scare you into going there, like they get paid for it. Maybe they do.”

“What if he’s right?”

“If I freaked out every time you had a fever, I would’ve gone crazy,” her mother said. “Go find something to do. Eat something. She’ll be fine.”

When Nina was little, she’d spent countless weeks locked up in various Moscow clinics. Unable to wrestle her from the grip of the Soviet health care system, her mother had waved from the street while Nina, gluing her face to the window, tried to make out her mom among the dark, identical figures behind the fence. Most of her diagnoses had later been dismissed as fictitious.

The kitchen, which Nina had designed with the help of a prominent architect and which she loved to spend time in, now seemed strangely unwelcoming. It had been conceived as a harmony of unique objects: carved cabinets made of antique Italian chestnut, goblets of bluish crystal that used to belong to Giacomo Puccini, vintage bronze chandeliers, and her favorite piece––a 16-century painting by Vincenzo Campi, depicting a woman surrounded by a bounty of fruit. Nina’s husband had bought the still life at an auction for what had seemed an exorbitant amount at the time, but, like all his decisions, it had turned out to be the right move. Their art consultant assured them that the piece would only appreciate further. Right now, Nina really wanted to talk to Vlad but couldn’t: he’d turned off both his phones. His negotiations with foreign partners, he said, were expected to be intense, which mostly meant long.

She didn’t feel like cooking or even opening the fridge. Her insomnia medication had stopped working, and this lack of sleep rendered her unable to manage basic chores lately. Instead of making dinner, she decided to search for “epiglottitis” on the web. However, as she carried her laptop to the kitchen table, she bumped into a corner, and it slipped from her hands, crashing onto the floor with a vile noise.

Nina tried turning it on with no success. Her diamond-studded Vertu phone could do little more than make calls, so she retrieved Vlad’s computer from his study. After spending some time making guesses, she finally hit the right password: the date of their marriage. There was nothing about epiglottitis in Russian, so she searched in English and found an article crawling with unfamiliar medical terms. She didn’t learn anything other than what she already knew: epiglottitis was a condition in which the flap protecting the windpipe became inflamed. She was about to close the laptop when a “New Message” notification popped up in the ICQ messenger window. Nina clicked on it before she even had a chance to think about what she was doing.

Liza K. wrote.
will i seeeee youuu toniiight?
my pussy is dripping
come lick it, you naughty boy

For a few seconds, Nina thought she’d logged into someone else’s user account––someone she didn’t know. But there was a picture of Katya on the desktop background. In a folder named “Portofino_2007” she saw photos from their family trip several weeks months ago.
Nina expanded the ICQ window and read through the message history. Liza K. and Vlad Z. had been chatting for months. A week ago, he had written to her:

loved spending time with you, my sexy little thing!

Two weeks ago, Liza K. had sent him pictures of her dark, shiny vulva. It looked like something edible, cold cuts rolled into petals and arranged between pieces of sandwich bread. Nina studied the photos and, instead of feeling repulsed, she found that her mind had become a separate entity and floated above her. She saw herself peering into the monitor; she saw Katya asleep next to her grandmother; she saw the Patriarch’s pond outside, frozen, surrounded by snow-covered lindens and elegant historical buildings.

Three weeks ago, Vlad had written to Liza K.:

i’ve been looking for love
i fall in love every six months
but it always turns out to be just lust
i’m craving deep feeling

He’d met one of these flings in a strip club, he said. Then Nina saw a photograph of Vlad’s penis—long, wet, and sinewy. She shut down the laptop and put on her coat. Ducking her head into Katya’s room, she whispered, “I’ll go get some air. Be back soon.”

“Don’t be long!” her mother whispered back.

But Nina was already out the door.

***

She met Vlad in the summer of 2000 at Propaganda, a popular night club that she frequented at the time. Its face control policy was slightly more generous than some other places, and the crowd inside was mixed. Along with expats and businessmen, the venue was favored by students and all sorts of creative types, who danced to the club’s trademark jazz-house together. Fights and shoot-outs, common at other clubs, were almost unheard of at Propaganda.

Vlad was on his first IT consultancy job and had come to check out the place with a coworker. Noticing Nina, Vlad stopped on his way to the bar and offered to buy her a drink. After a few shots of tequila—she taught him to lick the salt first and suck on the lime after—they danced. Nina thought he was nerdy but handsome. At dawn, they strolled through the city and had the famous crêpe breakfast at Café Courvoisier. They ended up at Vlad’s place, in his bed with striped sheets, and had sex under a glittery handmade poster that said “Happy Birthday, sweet boy” in sloping letters.

“Who’s the poster from?” Nina asked.

“Someone I’m sort of dating,” Vlad said. His head was propped up on his elbow, and he was gazing at her from up close. His eyes were blue with a golden rim.

They spent the whole day in bed. When it got dark outside, Nina ordered a cab and informed Vlad that she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. He begged her to give him a month to straighten things out.

In exactly four weeks, he showed up at her doorstep with a gym bag and a backpack, both stuffed with his meager belongings. Seeing him freshly shaven and smiling, she realized everything was about to change. Nina told him––virtually a stranger!––that he could stay with her until he found another apartment, as his old one had already been rented out. After a week, she couldn’t imagine not waking up in the same bed as him.

Nina was twenty-four and Vlad twenty-two, but their age difference felt much greater. She taught him, an introvert, how to talk to people so they wouldn’t think he was a creep. She introduced him to films by Truffaut and Jarmusch and to books by Márquez and Kafka. She told him that a suit should fit slim and that, at the dinner table, only one piece of food should be cut at a time. Both of them came from typical Soviet families, yet in the three years after university, Nina had cultivated a somewhat discerning taste and a conviction that the world had a lot to offer. International brands had just come to Russia, bringing huge budgets with them. Oil prices climbed. The economy grew. Russians with nice jobs started buying Moschino jeans and Escada perfumes, dining at restaurants, and traveling first to Europe, then to more exotic locations. Nina sold ad space in magazines and made serious money. Vlad was a math prodigy, and he proved to be a fast learner even in disciplines that didn’t involve formal logic. Soon, the boy in cheap knock-off sneakers was replaced by a polished young man. His career took off, and the wealth he accrued stopped making sense to Nina within their first two years together. When he proposed, she quit her job and began decorating the enormous apartment that he’d bought in the city center.

***

Now, five years after her passport had been affixed with a marriage stamp, Nina was walking along Tverskoy Boulevard. The street was decorated with festive lighting and crowded with people passing in and out of stores and restaurants. She got to Café Pushkin, where Range Rovers and Bentleys were double-parked along the curb and where doormen in gilded liveries rushed to greet burly men with quick steely eyes and their female companions. Nina buried her face in her collar for fear of being recognized. The snow crunched under her feet, drowning out the honking cars and the laughter of passersby. Stray bits of sentences––“craving deep feeling,” “my sexy little thing”––kept flying into her brain, followed by images of Vlad with another woman, between crumpled sheets, and of a different woman wrapping herself around a pole. Nina walked until most of her body felt numb, then headed home.

She opened the door and froze. All the lights were on, and the long hall was a mess: clothing on the floor, a chair tipped over. Nina hurried to Katya’s bedroom and found it empty. Her sense of dread mounting, she dashed from room to room, but there was no one in the apartment. There was no note or any other clue to explain what might have happened. Finally, in the kitchen, she found her own phone with fifteen unanswered calls.

“Where did you go?” her mother yelled. “Katya started to suffocate, it was awful! She’s in the ICU now, they won’t let me see her.”

“Where are you?”

“Tushinsky Children’s Hospital.”

“How did you end up there? You were supposed to call the number I gave you!”

Her mother started crying. Between sobs, she confessed that she’d panicked and forgotten to contact the private medical company that Nina had told her to call in an emergency. And now Katya was in a state-run facility somewhere on the edge of the city on a street Nina didn’t even know existed.

She rushed back down the stairs to her Mercedes. Her hands trembled so violently that she couldn’t start the ignition. As she waited for the engine to warm up, it dawned on her that she didn’t know where to go and that she’d likely get lost. Abandoning the idea of driving, Nina ran out onto the street and got into the first taxi that stopped.

Familiar streets slowly morphed into desolate neighborhoods where dark buildings loomed, then into an industrial wasteland. The drive was interminable. It was already past ten by the time she arrived at a set of concrete blocks cordoned off by a perimeter fence, and the gate was locked. A guard dozed in the booth. He startled when she knocked, then grabbed her dollars as though they were something she owed him, letting her through.

Nina darted back and forth between identical buildings for several minutes before finding her mother in a malodorous vestibule with a small window. Behind it, a woman was reading a tattered paperback, her expression clearly telegraphing that no amount of money or tears would move her.

Nina appealed to her anyway. The woman scanned Nina’s fur coat and hair. “The doctors are gone for the day,” she spat. “Come back tomorrow.” Her stony expression shifted to one of smug satisfaction. Ill-kempt and stuck in a job that paid next to nothing, she relished this rare moment of power over someone like Nina.

Nina begged her for information about Katya.

“She’s in stable condition, I already told this woman right here.”

“Call Vlad,” her mother implored.

The calls went to voicemail. Before long, it was clear they would be spending the night in this room stinking of dirty rags. There was no way to rest in the rickety chair, and for hours Nina watched a mouse scurry from corner to corner, all businesslike.

In the morning, when the next shift arrived, Nina was taken to the ICU. The head physician informed her that this was strictly against the rules, even as he slid her money into his pocket. He took her to Katya, who was asleep on one of the gurneys lining the corridor walls—because, he explained, there was no room in the wards. But Katya’s life was out of danger, and Nina, fighting back tears, cradled her daughter’s hand. Children with closely shaved heads shuffled around the corridor, and Nina asked who they were. The doctor said they’d come from an orphanage where there’d been an outbreak of a rare infection.

Nina called Vlad again.

“What time is it?” he yawned. He explained that he’d gone to bed very late, very drunk. He was somewhat drunk still.

When she told him about Katya, he sobered up at once. “Which hospital? Give me a few.”

Two hours later, Nina was in a clinic that resembled a five-star hotel. A woman in a tulle dress strummed a concert harp in the waiting room while the staff spoke to patients in deferential tones. In Katya’s room, there were two comfy beds, a TV, and a couch. Outside the window, snow-covered trees stood in the garden. An assistant arrived to hand her a menu featuring items like foie gras and champagne.

Vlad showed up in person to make sure his daughter was taken good care of, but Nina barely paid any attention to him. Her chest was heavy with guilt. What kind of mother would leave her sick child like this?

***

The next day, Katya seemed back to her normal self. She was watching cartoons and laughing. She asked for pancakes with berries, then for chocolate ice cream. Nina’s muscles unclenched, and what she’d been blocking from her awareness descended on her again.

She needed to talk to someone, but who? Her friends were other society women who loved gossiping about other people’s problems while making it clear their own were off-limits. She couldn’t share the details of her indignity with them. And she’d grown apart from her two university friends, the only people to whom she could imagine revealing herself. After her marriage to Vlad, her interactions with them became increasingly pained. Their envy was so palpable that Nina felt moved to apologize for her luck, which she knew was almost indecent to them. When they ate out together, they expected her to cover the bill and then somehow resented her for it. When they asked for details of her fabulous life, she saw they were fishing for something ugly that they hoped was going on under the surface. Eventually, their meetings stopped. Nina couldn’t even find it in herself to blame them––because, had their fates been reversed, wouldn’t she have felt the same way?

Her mother came after lunch and spent some time reading to Katya. When the child fell asleep, Nina loosened her arm from under her daughter’s body and said, keeping her voice down, “Vlad is sleeping with other women.”

Her mother’s face went rigid and pale. Then she managed to say, “I see.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

Nina’s mother was a school teacher with fixed views of propriety. She’d always pretended sex didn’t exist. Whenever they watched a movie together and a couple on screen started kissing, Nina walked out of the room because she just couldn’t bear it with her mother there. This would be the first time her mother had ever acknowledged what transpired between people in bed.

“I’m thinking of leaving him,” Nina said.

“Are you crazy?”

Nina simply stared.

“It’s just––what men do.” Her mother groped for words. “A man like Vlad can be allowed some—harmless thrills.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Listen to me!” Her mother was suddenly frantic, her whisper high-pitched. “Don’t do this! You want to leave your daughter without a father? It’s your pride speaking, but sometimes it’s better to humble yourself a little.”

They heard Vlad’s voice in the hall, and then the ward filled with his presence.

He took Katya into his arms. “Hey, kid! You look great. Not like someone who came back from the other side.”

“What other side?” Katya was rubbing her eyes, groggy from sleep.

Grinning, Vlad put her back down and greeted his mother-in-law by kissing her hand. “Elena Petrovna, how are you feeling? How’s your hip after that wonderful night in a chair? I’m dying to hear the details.”

Nina watched her mother’s cheeks become flushed with pleasure. “It wasn’t that bad. Though my hip does feel funny, now that you mention it.”

“You should have it checked out. This clinic has every specialist you can think of. I’ll connect you to the right one.”

Nina’s mother looked almost silly in her adoration of Vlad. Was she really only thinking of Katya when she told Nina to humble herself? She still worked as a teacher, but only for the meaning it gave to her life. The apartment she owned had been gifted to her by Vlad. Without her son-in-law’s generous help, she’d have a hard time even feeding herself.

He walked over to Nina. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that, babe. I won’t turn off my phone again.”

Her body leaned into his almost against her will.

***

In three days, Katya was good to go. Vlad sent his company’s limo. The first thing Nina saw when she opened the door was a flower arrangement, all white. It was grand enough to be the centerpiece at a wedding. The note said, “I’m so happy I dropped by Propaganda that night! I thank whoever’s in charge of this thing called fate daily. Your devoted husband.” Vlad had sensed that something was off. He tried to get Nina to say what was bothering her, but she hadn’t been able to tell him, not with Katya around.

She walked through the apartment as if seeing it after a long time away. She ran her hand over some of the objects they had lovingly collected together. When Vlad’s income had surged, they both worked on adopting a new way of living, learning to fly first class, to differentiate between types of truffles, to feel in their element in the royal box at La Scala. Yet, even as he became one and the same with his wealth, as if he’d been born wearing one of his bespoke Italian suits, Nina couldn’t get rid of the sense of precariousness. Vlad was able to wipe away the memories of his childhood, but she couldn’t do it. Perhaps it was fitting that this absurdly good run of luck was a fluke not meant to last.

Vlad came home right before dinner, uncommonly early for him.

“So I’m walking down the street,” he said, looking at Katya with a cryptic expression. “And who do I see? Grandpa Frost! He says, I know Katya is waiting to get her New Year’s presents. But she’s been a very good girl, so I decided to give her a little something early.”

Katya squealed with delight at the box he produced. It was taller than she was. There was a faux antique dollhouse inside it, done in amazing detail, with several bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. The beds were covered with crocheted throws. A minuscule gramophone played a waltz. It came with six dolls: two parents, two children, a maid, and a cook.

“I’ll be the girl and the cook,” Katya said. “Mommy, let’s play!”

Nina usually enjoyed playing with her. But with Vlad here, and with the necessity to confront him like a gaping pit before her––it was all more than she could stand.

“Mommy’s tired,” Vlad said. “That’s okay, we’ll leave her be.” He took off his suit jacket. Wiggling the father doll, he spoke in a baritone, “I just read in the paper that the end of the world is coming. But our family will be saved! An alien spaceship will take us to Mars. Pack your bag, wifey!”

“No, daddy!” Katya giggled. “Stop it! We’re going to have dinner.” She reached for the tiny wooden vegetables. “I’ll cook some broccoli.”

“God, no!” Vlad protested. “I want yummy food that’s bad for you. You got any hotdogs? Or snails in lots of butter?”

His laugh was warm and mellifluous. Could a person with this kind of laugh be a scumbag? Vlad kept glancing at Nina, rounding his eyes in mock horror while he invented more ways to sabotage the doll family’s dinner. It was plain that he needed her, even in small moments like this. She couldn’t believe that he was the same person who’d typed those crude words. That he’d taken a picture of his penis and sent it to someone he barely knew.

At nine, she put Katya to bed, then took her time loading the dishwasher. As she stood by the window, staring out into the darkness, she heard Vlad approach her from behind.

Turning around, Nina saw a red velvet jewelry case in his hands. He opened it with an affected gesture, revealing a bracelet made of icy-white stones. It was designed to stun with its opulence, done in a style reminiscent of the tzars––and it seemed so incongruous she couldn’t think of anything to say.

Vlad wasn’t the type of man to get bling for his wife. His gifts had always shown care and observation. One time, Nina mentioned in passing that, as a little girl, she kept wondering what it would be like to live in a house made of ice. A short while after, Vlad flew her to the Arctic Circle in Finland, where they slept in a cabin built from transparent blocks. Another time, they’d seen a 1920s beaded gown in a museum, which she admired. He surprised her by ordering an exact replica of it, made to her measurements.

Presently, his expression was full of mirth––maybe this was a joke. Nina didn’t get it, but it didn’t matter either way.

“I know about you and Liza K.,” she made herself say. “I’ve seen your chat history.”

Even as she uttered these words, she wondered if she’d hallucinated that chat. She expected Vlad to be shocked or offended, perhaps even to the point of raising his voice, but instead he merely placed the open case on the counter and waited to see if she’d say anything else. She didn’t.

“That was monstrous of me,” he said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But everything’s over.”

For a moment, Nina felt completely disoriented. He was––or had been––her closest friend. She shared a connection with him unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Yet he seemed to believe that the colossal breach he’d committed could be dealt with by casually saying “sorry.”
He squeezed her hand. “I promise it won’t happen again.”

Nina was struck by how familiar this sounded. She pondered the possibility that this man she’d considered to be her protection against life’s volatility as dependable as she’d believed. Or maybe he’d changed without her noticing. Could she have contributed to this erosion of––what exactly? The sense of it being the two of them against the world?

“Why did you say you were looking for ‘serious feeling’?” she asked. “Did you fall out of love with me?”

Vlad let out a barely audible sigh. “I was just fooling around, pretending to be someone else. I love you, and this won’t change.”
“Explain to me how it works then,” Nina demanded, “loving me and sleeping with another woman.”

“She meant nothing to me. It was a way to de-stress and unwind.”

“Why couldn’t you de-stress and unwind with me?”

Vlad lowered himself into a chair, suddenly looking exhausted. Nina became aware of the physical distance between them. He seemed out of reach, as though she wouldn’t be able to touch his shoulder even if she wanted to.

“I came to think you didn’t enjoy going to bed with me,” he said, not meeting her eye. “Our sex stopped being exciting a long time ago. It’s nothing like what it was before Katya was born.”

Nina’s face became unbearably hot. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

But she already felt like an accomplice. He was right, her body had changed after Katya’s birth. It didn’t respond to his touch like before, and it took a lot for her to even become aroused. Their lovemaking had became rare and uneventful, but she’d thought their bond didn’t depend on sex. She believed that if he still held her hand while he slept, everything was all right.

“Why didn’t you––say something?”

He looked up at her. “I was brought up never to talk about these things. Even now it’s hard.”

Nina thought of Vlad’s parents, two math professors who’d written a famous textbook together. His father always seemed to be far away in the world of abstractions. His mother, haughty and prim, made Nina feel small in her presence. Nina couldn’t picture them having sex or even talking about it.

She stepped forward and pressed her face into Vlad’s. He stroked her hair, whispering, “Thank you.”

***

The last two weeks of December went by in a flurry of parties. Nina tried not to reflect too much on what Vlad had done. She thought she’d found a place for it in her head, but sometimes it would wiggle out and cause her to feel light and wobbly. She made a point of wearing the bracelet every time she went out.

On New Year’s Day, Nina’s mother took Katya to a resort in Thailand. Nina and Vlad took a different plane to a tiny Indonesian island. They were going to spend three days on their own before a group of his friends joined them.

They slept late at their bungalow and had breakfast in bed. They swam in a private pool below a stone god with an elephant’s head that was spitting water. They strolled the streets of a nearby town, ducking into temples and galleries. They ventured into a tropical forest where they saw a gigantic flower that smelled like rot.

“Did you know this is the largest flower in the world?” Vlad said. “It’s a parasite. Instead of organs, it has these tubes that suck juices out of the host’s body.”

He told her about other plants they encountered, and Nina remembered how he’d pointed out various trees to her when they lived in her rental apartment and took walks in Sokolniki Park. Over dinner, they reminisced about that time. Nina reminded Vlad that he’d once eaten an unripe avocado and declared avocados disgusting.

He laughed. “It was the first time I tried it! How was I supposed to know it had to be soft?”

That night they made love twice. The second time, Vlad pinched her nipples and slapped her hard, which he’d never done before. It was a sign of change. Nina was grateful for it. They’d turned a corner, she thought.

His friends arrived the next morning. Men dressed in white came to their first shared lunch in the garden under the shade of plumeria trees. They descended on Vlad in a swarm, shaking his hand and slapping his back. They pecked Nina’s cheek, looking past her. She knew most of their wives from their previous trips together, but this time the men came with new women. They were startlingly young and lithe, with hair cascading over their naked shoulder blades. They all took their places around a table that was set for a feast. “Where are the wives?” Nina whispered to Vlad.

He grinned. “Maybe they’re all having nose jobs?”

Nina studied the men, who spoke loudly and ate a great deal. They were clearly used to getting whatever they wanted. And who was going to stop them? It was easy for them to claim even more space for themselves, to grab the next thing that life dangled out in front of them. There was nothing to curb their appetites. The friend of Vlad’s that Nina liked best joined the table, and she was gratified to see his wife by his side. Nina wanted to get to know her better. Over the next few days, during a sequence of boating trips and festivities, she repeatedly tried to strike up a conversation with her. Yet the woman, keeping her distance, only responded with polite banalities.

On their last day on the island, Nina woke up at dawn and went for a walk around the property. She was alone on the paved alleys, surrounded by lush greenery and flowering plants. A vista opened up before her of the glittering ocean dotted by sailboats and the sun rising out of the water. Mesmerized, she listened to the trills of birds. Then something huge fell in front of her with a thundering crash, and she jumped, thinking in her confusion that a bicycle had just plummeted from a tree. But the dark shape sprouted crooked legs and scurried away––and she realized it was a giant reptile. Shaken, she started to sob.

Before the taxi arrived to take them to the airport, Nina and Vlad went for one last swim. They slipped out of their clothes and lowered themselves into the pool. Slowly, Vlad swam up to Nina and kissed her. She felt his penis pushing its way between her legs. Then he pinned her against the side of the pool, and they had sex that was more like a fight. When it was over, she asked, “Why do you want to be with me?”

“That’s a hard one!” he chuckled, clearly hoping to turn this into a joke. “Let’s see, how about––I love you?”

But somehow being in this place together made his words sound crass. Nina saw a trace of embarrassment in his face.

She surprised herself by deciding to bluff. “I spoke to one of your secretaries.”

“Uhm… Which one?”

“I didn’t ask for her name. I bumped into her in the street, and she told me you had an affair. You fired her when she became too much of a nuisance. A pretty brunette, green eyes.”

She expected him to deny knowing anyone who fit this description.

“Oh, that one,” Vlad sighed. He said that he’d gotten drunk at one of his corporate functions and had sex with the woman––her name was Nadya––only once, in the bathroom. When she started blackmailing him, he’d bought her a car so that she would leave him alone. “People are sleazy like that. What can you do?”

Clinging to the side of the pool, Nina found there was someone inside her head who was still an ally of Vlad’s. Her whole body began to shake.

“What about the secretary you have now? Are you sleeping with her?”

“What do you take me for, a sex addict?”

“I think you take me for an absolute moron.”

They were both silent for a long while. The water splashed gently; there was no use wondering what had gone wrong. Nina had to think about what would happen next.

“Will you fight me for the custody of Katya?” she asked.

Vlad blinked at her. “Please don’t do this. You’re breaking my heart.”

But she already knew there was nothing breakable left in him.

***

She moved into an apartment with Katya. It was modest compared to the one they’d shared with Vlad, but Nina didn’t have to remind herself that it was something that most people wouldn’t even dare to dream about. Three rooms plus a kitchen and the Moscow river outside. There was a glorious panoramic view and an abundance of space. It didn’t matter. Waking up in an unfamiliar bed, Nina felt like howling. Her body ached with failed love and the life she’d lost. Then she brewed some coffee and found solace watching the sun rise over the cityscape, coloring the water different shades of pink.

At first, Katya whined about wanting to go back. “I don’t like this new place. It’s so small! And I miss my toys!”

Most of her toys had stayed behind as there was no room for them in the new apartment.

“You’ll play with them when you see your dad,” Nina said.

Neither of them knew when that would be. They had an agreement with Vlad that he would spend every Sunday with Katya, but he often rescheduled, citing important trips or the need to entertain business associates. Very soon, Katya wised up like a good little soldier and stopped complaining. Hearing about changes in her father’s plans once again, she would only pinch her mouth and shake her head as if to say, “Unbelievable.” Nina had expected to be barraged with questions from her as to why they couldn’t all live together like they used to, but Katya asked about that only once. “Your dad broke his promise to me,” Nina said. “A very important one.” Her daughter nodded, and that was that.

***

Nina postponed telling her mother about the impending divorce for as long as she could. When she finally broke the news, she said, “This is settled. I don’t want to hear what you think.”

Her mother dropped to the nearest seat as if she’d been hit by a bullet. Then she was up again, telling Nina that she was destroying her own life.

“You think anyone else will take you with a child from another man?”

“Take me? I guess I’m not any better than a used rug!” Nina promised herself she wouldn’t be tricked into having a fight but she couldn’t help it.

When it became apparent that more crying and pleading was not going to work, her mother went silent. She made an “o” with her mouth and slid down to the floor, lying there, her eyes rolling into her skull. This was the same woman who’d told four-year-old Nina that her father, whom she’d never met nor even seen a photo of, had died in a car crash. For years, Nina had fantasized about her dad, picturing him as a handsome man with a kind face, wondering what would’ve happened if he’d lived. It wasn’t until her late teens that she discovered she’d been conceived from her mother’s one night stand with someone who’d come to Moscow on a business trip and then disappeared forever.

“You’re making a fool of yourself!” Nina snapped, appalled by her mother’s theatrics. This was the one person from whom she thought she could reasonably expect support.

Her mother pretended to be roused by her exclamation. She got up from the floor, collected her bag, and left, but only after declaring, “I will never speak to you again!”

***

For the next few days, her mother gave her the silent treatment, then switched tactics once more and tried to convince her to “work things out” with Vlad. At last, when it became certain that Nina was moving, her mother made good on her promise and stopped all communication. By her mother’s logic, Nina would be so overwhelmed by how hard and lonely her daily life would become that she’d crawl back to Vlad.

And it was difficult at first. Fixing up the apartment, getting groceries, cooking meals, taking Katya to her appointments––every task seemed insurmountable. Nina had to see a neurologist since her new insomnia medication had stopped working after two weeks and she felt too depleted to function. And she was running out of money. Vlad promised her a generous monthly allowance but kept forgetting to do the transfers. She burned with shame every time she texted him. He never failed to apologize, yet three days later the money still wouldn’t be there and she would have to nag him again.

Nina didn’t hate him for it. Mostly, she was furious with herself. She wanted to drive her head into a wall. All these years, she’d been so self-involved and oblivious, choosing the easy way, ignoring whatever signs that life was giving her, never thinking beyond the present moment. That person seemed so dumb to her now. Nina wanted to scream at her, what did you do with your time? Why didn’t you try making something of yourself? She could’ve got a degree or learned a skill. She could’ve opened a magazine or a bookstore or a lecture space. Vlad hadn’t wanted her to have a nine-to-five job, but he would’ve been happy if she’d done any of these things. So many opportunities wasted! How had she thought that attaching herself to a man and doing nothing would be a winning strategy?

The thing was, he hadn’t been just any man. He’d been so extraordinary, so unlike anyone else. There was no way he could be lumped together with other people.

***

Nina reached out to the two university friends she hadn’t seen in years, Sasha and Olya, suggesting they meet up. It took more than two weeks to find a date. When they finally got together, Nina was startled by how much they’d changed. They both radiated a confidence they’d never had before. The three of them stared awkwardly at one another until Nina said, “I’m a single mom now. What’s new with you?”

The two women exchanged a look, said “Wow,” and asked for details. Nina obliged, describing the breakup in a way that cast Vlad in the best possible light.

Sasha saw through it at once. “So first Prince Charming sleeps with every woman he sees, then drops you? Like you’re no one special?”

Hearing it put so bluntly made Nina wince. Vlad’s absence still ached as much as ever, yet he’d disappeared as if she’d been just another fling. Worse, Sasha’s words exposed the banality of it all. It was the same story as thousands of others.

Nina barely noticed the conversation shifting away from her troubles. Olya talked enthusiastically about running a chain of beauty salons, while Sasha described her job as deputy editor at Marie Claire, with its celebrity interviews and glamorous travel. There was a trace of superiority in Sasha’s voice as she mentioned having lunch with Tom Cruise. Nina didn’t mind. Sasha had spent years feeling inferior, and this was her reward.

Then they went to Propaganda, which was still one of the best places in town to get lost in a friendly crowd. After a few hours there, exhausted, they left to hang out at Coffeemania, an upscale café that was always busy. Even at this late hour, people were talking and laughing, ordering pastas and salads. Nina ordered a salad, too. She cracked up at the stories Olya told about her employees––one of her stylists insisted on bringing his pet lizard to work! in a little sequined romper! She noticed that she didn’t feel miserable for the first time in months.

At four in the morning, they hugged goodbye. It was already light out, the sun rising over the city.

Nina got into her car and drove onto Tverskaya, the main thoroughfare with storefronts on both sides. She began to accelerate. Suddenly, a black Geländewagen appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It overtook her in mere seconds and then rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, stopping so abruptly in front of her that she had to slam on her brakes, her tires squealing.

She tried to catch her breath. Her heart beat wildly as she racked her brain for what this could mean. Could Vlad have hired some thugs to scare her? Or maybe someone got an idea to kidnap her and ask him for ransom? During the few moments that the black SUV was just sitting there, its motor cooling and its doors closed, Nina pictured broad-shouldered, leather-jacketed men putting a bag over her head.

A guy in a suit and a pair of glasses climbed out of the car and walked up to Nina. There was an embarrassed smile flickering on his face.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!” he said. “I was at Coffemania. I kept looking at you but couldn’t work up the courage to introduce myself.”

It was obvious he was just feigning shyness. He definitely wanted to scare her, which in his mind probably equaled impressing her. He had waited for her to leave Coffemania just so that he could perform this stunt, clearly having taken extreme driving lessons. Nina smiled and let him talk. He said he was an architect and named a few conspicuous buildings that he’d constructed. Then he asked for her number, but Nina didn’t give it to him. Before going back to his car, he said “See you around” in a way that implied that he probably would. She knew he could find her by her license plate number. What he didn’t know was that she was going to sell the Mercedes. She was also going to sell her Vertu––what did she need a six-thousand-dollar phone for? And the bracelet, of course. Nina started the car and drove away, thinking about the architect. Almost against her will, she imagined herself waking up in his light-filled penthouse. Immediately, she experienced an acute bout of shame and made herself concentrate on the road.

***

Later that day, she was awakened by her doorbell. She dragged herself out of bed and peered into the peephole. Her mother was standing there in a hat with something like an oversize green tumor on its side. Nina couldn’t remember the last time they’d spoken, but it was just like her mother to arrive unannounced.

“I came to see Katya,” she said defensively when Nina opened the door.

“She’s in Greece with Vlad. She doesn’t come back until Monday.”

A stunned silence followed this announcement.

“You want to come in?”

After some hesitation, her mother entered. They went into the kitchen, where Nina yawned and turned on the coffee maker.
Her mother plopped into a chair and started fanning herself with the hat.

“Well. How are you?” Her tone was accusatory.

Nina shrugged. “Okay, considering. Trying to get a job.”

At this, her mother looked stricken. She put the hat down and leaned forward. “A job? Who’s going to stay with Katya?”

“I enrolled her into daycare.”

“What? Which one?”

“The nearest one, a ten-minute walk from here. It’s not that bad. She seems to like it.”

Nina sat down, watching her mother absorb this new information. Her mother was trying to figure out what it meant in the larger scheme of things. Her incredulity was overtaken by a sort of tired sadness, and her face crumpled. “I just wanted your life to be different.”

This was true. She’d raised Nina alone while the country had gone from bad to worse, working two jobs––teaching history and scrubbing floors. There’d never been a sign that she’d had a relationship with a man, and by the time Nina had entered college and had started working herself, it was too late for her mother to think about what she might want from life. Even when Vlad had made it so that her mother didn’t have to worry about money anymore, she couldn’t undo her past, couldn’t try and imagine that there might be something else out there for her.

Craving fresh air, Nina opened the window. A warm breeze blew in, the smells of cut grass and the river on it.

“I made syrniki for Katya,” her mother said retrieved a plastic container from her bag. “Her favorite kind, with sour cherries.”

“I guess we’ll have to eat them ourselves. You want coffee?”

They sat across from each other, eating the cheesecakes and listening to the swooshing traffic and bits of music from passing cars. They heard children’s shrieks coming from the lawn. Nina’s mother looked vulnerable and thoughtful, as though the worst had already happened.

“So what kind of job are you thinking of?” she asked.