Chapter Text
He said, once, that he would die with his head on a chessboard. Perhaps nearer to the truth is that he would die with his head between a woman’s thighs.
This is how Lizaveta likes him best—neck trapped under the vise of her legs, mouth against her drenched folds this close to smothering, scalp littered in bloody crescent moons.
When she sputters out, sometimes, how “you’re… thebestI’veeverhad,” his mouth is too full and his tongue too busy to ask for specifics. She may very well mean across 64 checkered squares. For the sake of his pride, he’d like to believe she means another game entirely—two pieces in place of 32, each one shattering to stardust if you play it right.
But, in truth, either will do.
He simply takes her and all she says, as they are, as she is.
He looks at Elizabeth Harmon the way Margarita Pavlovna Shcherbatova looked—still looks—at him. Like staring head-on at the sun, as much a killer as a giver of life.
The first time he saw how his once-wife looked at him was in the spring of 1948—shoulder-to-shoulder at some press conference where he understood little, the table their only barrier from camera flashes that rang too much like German bullets. She translated his every word, looked long, saw well. And when she put a steady hand atop his restless knee, he laced his fingers with hers.
Everything between them followed as it was meant to. Shy kisses in hotel corridors replaced whispered goodbyes. Smiles became secrets. Cold sheets began to stick to skin.
And in place of “Vasily Anatolyevich,” he became to her simply “Vasya.” In turn, she let him breach the distance between “Margarita Pavlovna” and “Margo.” Another gentle push further, and she became his “Margosha.”
She gave him 23 fiercely patient years. But above all else, she gave him a son. They named him Fyodor because he was a gift.
May he grow up a better man than his father.
A divorce is a drawn-out endgame, a checkmate in well over 40 moves. It is longer than it has any right to be, and—even then—far shorter than he deserves.
In the autumn of 1969, Vasily Anatolyevich Borgov broke his vows.
Yerevan, Armenian SSR.
November 1969.
He’s had his share of crushing defeats. Off the top of his head, the worst was at the Candidates in 1953. Weighed down by blunder after blunder, narrowly saved by a half-point, he just about made it to fourth place—still three places too far from the World Championship. Those who remember that old tournament like to call it “brutal.”
But the one just last autumn in Moscow, when he crumbled at the hands of Elizabeth Harmon? For that particular loss, they have a more searing adjective—“humiliating.”
Vasily thinks otherwise. By his own estimate, he put up a decent fight.
She played beautifully, besides—and about damn time.
Still, tongues wag all the same.
From Arkady Bogdanovich Luchenko, he heard a rumor about some impending punishment. Certainly, there’s always been some cause for fear—A decade or so ago, some footballers were stripped of their titles for an Olympic loss.
No such retribution comes for him yet.
Maybe in some years’ time, when Elizabeth inevitably unseats him as World Champion. But for now, his box of losses can collect dust undisturbed.
1969 has been good to him. Another World Championship defended, nine years since the first. Thousands of rubles—and a trophy—brought home from the Capablanca Memorial in Havana. And here in Yerevan, not even a half-day ago, when he earned himself the top prize at the Grandmasters’ Invitational.
He played her again too. A draw, this time. His offer.
It was just as thrilling—just as devastating—as the thrashing she gave him the year before. His only regret is that it had to come to an end.
How much she’s grown since, transformed in the span of a breath—more positional than tactical, more drawn to tempered theory than to pure instinct. A few more years on her, and she’ll have gained a fathomless mastery over the game. They’ll print her name in the history books with all manner of synonyms for “best.”
Clearer than water, their final positions from Moscow materialize before him. Her promoted queen on e8, home to his king before the overthrow. His helpless king on g7, with no other choice but to stand below her.
Vasily takes a drag on his withering papirosa. Nicotine mingles with vapor before his mouth in the evening chill.
The cold began to nip at his fingertips a half-hour ago, but he finds no pressing need to retreat from that balcony. What scant supply of charm he has, he already exhausted over dinner with the others.
His Margosha would have made up for it, all infectious smiles and easy manners. But two thousand miles and ten days now lie between them. No more hope of her stepping up as his second.
She chose to stay behind at the last minute, to keep an eye on Fedya and his building fever. But that was almost a fortnight ago. And yesterday morning, over the telephone, their baby insisted that he was well enough so “pleasepleaseplease, may I go French skipping with Antosha and his sisters now?” Too bad for him. His mother refused to budge.
This would have been Margosha’s fourth time with him in Yerevan. Shame, she might have enjoyed the canvas landscape hanging in his hotel room—the Sevan Peninsula on a lazy summer afternoon, rooftops drenched in sun, boats drifting along crystal blue.
His eyes flit down to the bottom of his glass. Empty, but for the thinnest sliver along the curve.
Turning away from the idle traffic along that sleepy intersection, he steps back into the warmth of the room and reaches for the nearest bottle of vodka. And of course he’s seen because he’s always seen, and they bully a round of toasts right out of him. He settles on the forgettable, the perfectly boring—“To good health in the coming year.”
He turns on his heel almost too soon after, already missing his makeshift perch. Not one toe out the door, the near-winter cold surges into his lungs. He welcomes it and the silence that follows…
Not so welcome, though, is the creak of the door.
Vasily takes a deeper, hungrier drag.
Who will it be now? Alexander Bergland, who fought well for fourth place? Georgy Petrovich Girev, who had to settle for third—?
Neither.
High heels click sharply against the bare stone floor.
Against his better judgment, he swallows down all trace of smoke. Only then does he glance over his shoulder, no more foggy curtain over his face.
She’s fond of the color green.
Elizabeth.
Then again, it becomes her hair. The harsh glow of the streetlamps catch on her curls, setting each strand alight.
His thoughts have wandered, sometimes, to that exact shade of fire-kissed red. They are his private shame, allowed only in empty apartments and hollow hotel rooms. And when it’s been seen to and dealt with, white ribbons drying on his fingers, he would rifle through tournament pamphlets and replay his old games—poking holes in his defenses, shredding his lines apart, tearing down his victories, proving why they’re unearned.
That was what he did the previous Wednesday. But never again after.
For this night, their last in Yerevan, she chose soft silk the color of emerald. It flows down, curves, hugs… Even goes so far as to squeeze his throat dry.
He takes an eager sip of vodka. Any excuse to swallow something.
In his mother tongue, she greets him—“Enjoying the view?”
No.
Breathtaking views aren’t meant to be quite so literal.
The thought of Moscow nags at him—Margosha doing the dishes, Margosha tucking their son to bed, Margosha dozing off not even three pages into her fantasy novel…
He nods at the street below. “I’ve made a shocking discovery.”
Elizabeth stares at him, expectant.
“People walk on the pavement… but cars drive on the road.”
Her silence stretches on. And on.
And on.
And then, her laughter—twinkling—breaks it clean. He can’t tell if she means it.
The only thing he can tell for certain is that Belomorkanal ought to make stronger cigarettes.
“How impressive,” she says, tone dry as bone, eyes clearly caught in some great struggle not to roll.
True conversation is still beyond the two of them. Just inconsequential murmurs about the sporadic rain or the hotel café’s cherry-stuffed ponchiki that were fried just right. Or “good morning” and “good evening” whenever they’d share an elevator, which never did happen often enough—perhaps, for the better.
Yesterday, though, he attempted something new—a quiet joke before their game. It coaxed an equally quiet chuckle out of her.
This is Number Two in a winning streak. He’d very much like to keep it unbroken.
“You should publish your findings.” She ambles closer. “This could change science forever.”
“Are you suggesting I abandon chess for the sciences?”
Damn that perfectly plump, red bow of a mouth.
The nerve of it. Smirking.
“Maybe this is where your passion really lies,” she says. “So why not?”
Before it can fully dawn on him that this is the longest they’ve ever sustained a conversation…
“Do you have any more of those?” Her eyes dart down to his busy hands—one with a half-finished cigarette, the other with vodka still enough for one last gulp.
It’s almost instinctive, the urge to down the rest. Knowing how the rumors persist… Not knowing if, even now, they still hold droplets of truth…
“The papirosa,” Elizabeth goes on. “I’ve never tried one before.”
… Just the cigarette, then.
“This is no Chesterfield,” he murmurs.
That earns him a familiar glare. “How rough?”
“Rougher than American.”
In English, she shoots back, “You’re acting like it’ll kill me.”
It may yet.
Keeping the tube beyond her reach, ignoring the petulant—almost childish—glimmer in her eyes, Vasily takes his precious time searching every last inch of her face. No reason for it, truly. Just to see if she’s begun to catch up to the seasons.
She still hasn’t, no matter the countless beatings she’s put her body through. No lines across her forehead. No creases in the corners. No planes like ruddy leather. Only smooth, pure porcelain.
For a moment gone in a breath, he sees a flicker of vivid memory—a beloved doll his mother kept from girlhood, her one treasure besides himself. Its cheeks were painted a blushing pink, a shade or two lighter than its brocade kokoshnik. She sewed it herself with what thread she had left over from his castoff clothes.
The last he saw of the doll was in the spring of 1943, in the charred remains of their apartment in Stalingrad.
Resolute, even to the point of shamelessness, Elizabeth meets his lingering gaze. But then again, she always has. A hazel wave over a wall of blue, until they’re both drowned, jet-black.
He swallows back a sigh and—at last—holds out the cigarette.
She doesn’t take it, simply leaning in. Cold fingers draping over his colder ones, chin brushing against his knuckles, she takes a slow, measured drag that ends with a cough he already expected.
“Son of a bitch,” she hisses, profanities laced with laughter.
When she pulls away, her bottom lip catches on his thumb. It leaves behind a red stain he itches to scratch.
“The orphanage where I grew up…” She grimaces through her words. “There wasn’t much around it. Just farm land… We could always tell when summer was over, because the whole place would start stinking of—”
Once more, she reaches for his hand… if only to turn the tube over so she could read the label along the side.
“Belomorkanal.” She punctuates it with a smirk.
“Priobretenny vkus,” Vasily says under his breath.
“Something… ‘taste?’”
“‘Acquired taste.’”
“Say it again for me?”
He does.
She attempts it herself, vowels drawn too far out, consonants much too sharp. Then… “May I have one?”
“You said you didn’t like it.”
“I never said I didn’t. I just said it smelled like—” She retreats to her mother tongue. “—cow shit.”
“The smell will cling to your clothes.”
“That’s my problem. Not yours.”
One-handed, he unbuttons his blazer. Her eyes follow the quiet movement, then the sudden dip into his breast pocket. By now, his fingers have long memorized the precise curves etched onto his cigarette case—À l’occasion de notre 10ème anniversaire de mariage. Avec tout mon amour, Margo. The date fell on the final day of his first Rémy-Vallon.
A permanent stench wafts from within, when he unlocks the clasp.
Carefully, Elizabeth pulls out a stick. She murmurs her thanks, her own lighter at the ready, but—
“Wait.” He positions her fingers, ignoring—with considerable effort—how prettily the silk heaves on her chest. “So the ‘cow shit’ will go down more easily.”
She throws him a cutting glare.
A fleeting brush of her knuckles against his, a toast of sorts, and she takes her first stretched-out puff. She makes another sour face—nose scrunched, eyes narrowed, the tip of her tongue darting out for a flash.
To that, he can only smile.
She rests her elbows atop the stone railing, chin propped on her hands like she’ll mate him in three. Maybe she will. Maybe he’s losing.
“Who were you hiding from?” she teases, fire curling just so on her shoulder. “Was it me?”
A forced checkmate.
He never stood a chance.
“I needed some quiet, or a papirosa, or both… I don’t do well in prolonged conversation.”
“You and me both.”
He doubts that. “The way I saw it, you seemed to hold your own quite well against Gosha…”
The signs are unmistakable. The boy is in love. Possibly, ever since Mexico City.
“Funny you should mention him. Guess who I was trying to run away from?” She hisses at an especially bitter drag. “He kept asking if the real Vegas is just like in Viva Las Vegas. Or if Hawaii is our version of Crimea. Or if I’d ever been to the Space Needle in Seattle, because that’s where Elvis had a dinner date in that one movie… I’ve never once cared about Elvis Presley. But one more question and I might start hating him.”
“Be kind. He only wants to practice his English.”
“Well, I want to practice my Russian.”
He doesn’t miss how her eyes rove down to his still-filled glass. Simply to remove all temptation lying in her path, he downs it all in one swallow. And to obliterate all that lies in his…
“He’s become a fine young man,” he says.
“Who? Georgy?”
“He speaks very highly of you.” True enough. “One might say that—” Perhaps he should practice his English too… “He has a squeeze on you.”
She blinks. “A… squeeze?”
“An infatuation.”
“… Oh.”
That makes her smile.
Good. She isn’t repulsed by the idea—
“Not ‘squeeze,’” she whispers, leaning closer. “‘Crush.’”
“‘He has a crush on you?’”
“That’s right. ‘Squeeze’ is more… for a lover. Like—‘He’s my main squeeze.’”
“That implies the existence of a second squeeze.” Shame-addled vodka still sticks to his tongue, plasters itself to the raw gashes down his throat.
“A stone best left unturned. You ever heard of that idiom?”
“I have.” Something pinches—hammers—on his temple. “Americans have strange views on love. Many of your words seem almost violent.”
Smoke makes a vain attempt to hide away her upturned lips. But they bleed too brightly to stay buried for long. “A crush doesn’t count, though. It’s not love.”
“It could grow to be.” In Russian, this time.
She laughs.
This is no victory, like the ones before it. Not when he’s being perfectly serious.
“You’re really encouraging this, aren’t you?” she muses.
“Why would I not? You’re evenly matched.”
“He’s half my age.”
“Half your age is 10. He’s 16.”
“Same thing… What are you planning on saying next, then? ‘Just wait two more years?’”
“And play chess, and watch Elvis Presley films, and live happily ever after and die on the same day.”
That wins him a snort.
He’ll take it.
She taps the charred end of her papirosa against the stone. “When I was his age, I was stupidly obsessed with a college boy. From then on out, it’s always been older boys… I like my men older.”
Fuck.
For a moment, outstretched, they say nothing else to one another. Speaking means acknowledging. Acknowledging means letting some invisible hand reach in to choke out a response.
It’s alien, even somehow wrong, this view of each other side-by-side. He prefers her head-on. Eye to eye—daring. Bare teeth to bare skin—attacking. Atop 64 squares, with only 32 pieces to speak for them, everything is simple. Obvious. Refreshingly uncomplicated.
Elizabeth’s gaze drifts up to his face.
He can only look back in silence. At cheeks kissed pink by the autumn chill. At wide, searching eyes. At that abomination of a mouth, lips dangerously parted. At that hair that must never come close to singeing his fingers—
It should be ten o’clock in Moscow by now.
Margosha should be fast asleep.
Her book has likely fallen on her face, the rough paper sticking to her lips. She might even be snoring into the pages—his bedtime music these past two decades, sorely missed over the last ten days…
“Thank you for offering a draw,” Elizabeth says, at last.
“Thank you for accepting it.”
She shakes her head. “I thought I could keep up my winning streak against you. Or, at least, make it even… ‘Borgov versus Harmon, 2-2’ has a better ring to it than ‘2½-1½.’”
“It’s still better than ‘3-1.’”
“Fair enough.” Through another shield of smoke, she adds, “That was a pretty wall of pawns you made, in the endgame.”
“Your queenside knight attacked beautifully.”
“Really, now, are we just going to spend all night complimenting each other?” she whispers, with a bite on her lip that doesn’t dig deeply enough.
“It was a pretty game. There’s much to compliment about it.”
“You think it was prettier than Moscow?”
“I don’t like comparing different beauties.”
Another laugh, hazel sparkling in the glow of the streetlamps. “How diplomatic of you… You know, I went over it all night, after the game. I barely slept. I wanted to see the exact move you made that stopped me from winning. In Mexico City, it was bishop to b5, right in the opening.”
“And now?”
“Move 13. The a5 pawn.”
At length, she reels off line after line—all the what if’s she could have played to secure a decisive win, if he had never thought to develop that pawn. No crumpled scoresheet on hand. No analysis set with tiny magnets for pieces. Just her and her perfect memory… and—maybe, beneath it all—her simmering disappointment.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Vasily admits, because he has no particular reason not to.
“What wasn’t?”
“The a5 pawn.”
Her brow crumples.
“Hellstrom versus Ulyanov, the 1962 Interzonal,” he explains. “When you advanced your queen to d3, I realized that our board looked exactly like theirs. Ulyanov played queen to c7 then, developing it too early. And he lost… So I improved on his position and moved the pawn first. It kept my queen safe… until we traded them in the middlegame.”
“Were you there? At the Interzonal?”
“No. I memorized the pamphlet.”
“I hate you,” she says, matter-of-factly.
To his own surprise, he chuckles. Only then does he meet the weight of her stare again. There’s something stubborn swimming there. Something softer too.
Hatred, is it? He’s unconvinced.
“Less than you hated me before, I should think,” he says.
Pouting a little, she shrugs. “Don’t be so sure… You’ll have to fight your way out of that corner.”
He lingers on her crooked mouth a second too long.
A sudden peal of laughter urges his attention away—a gang of young friends crossing the road below, a desperately welcome distraction.
He brings up the papirosa to his mouth. Only a few more drags left.
“Is it a holiday over here in the Soviet Union too?” Elizabeth suddenly asks.
“Not until the next weekend. The 7th—October Revolution Day.”
Hugging herself tightly, she turns her face away from view.
“Is something wrong?” he whispers.
“Nothing… Just the cold.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Vasily hands her the remains of his cigarette. And before he begins to regret it, he shrugs off his blazer and drapes it, snug, around her shoulders. She sinks under the worn wool, heaving a sigh into the lapel.
“Thank you,” she says, yet he only shakes his head.
Her hand emerges from the shadows, his papirosa held out. Their fingers twine for a breathless second as he takes it back.
He could swear that her next smoky exhale trembles.
“Why did you ask if it was a holiday?”
“Because it is back home.” She doesn’t look up. “All Saints’ Day. It’s not that important… You just pray for the people you lost. Or you light a candle, or leave flowers, or clean up their graves. I haven’t prayed since I was a small girl, but… I missed visiting my mother at the cemetery this year. She died the day we played against each other in Mexico.”
He knows.
And, in his caution, in his fear, he did nothing at all.
In a braver past, he would have sent her flowers. A modest bouquet, an even number of white carnations—small companions to keep her company in a too-large hotel room. It was the very least he could have done.
He of all people would know how deeply grief gnaws into bone.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his sympathies three years too late.
Her words wither away, the ends swallowed up by wind and distant car horns. “I don’t think she was in pain. Not at the very end. She died holding an open book… I remember when I saw her lying there. She could have been daydreaming.”
Vasily thinks, almost, to clasp her hand. Instead, with layer upon layer of wool and silk between them, he rests his palm flat against the small of her back.
She slouches at his touch.
“She’s in the city cemetery,” Elizabeth goes on. “I could just walk there from my house. But my father was buried someplace else. It’s about two hours out, so I’d need a car.”
The newspapers never once mentioned a father…
“They weren’t buried together?”
A smile—or a grimace—plays on her lips. “They didn’t know each other. He… He wasn’t actually my father. He was the janitor at the orphanage—”
“William Shaibel.”
She gapes at him, astonished.
“They mentioned him in Chess in the USSR, after your win in Moscow.”
A nod. Then, bolder, another. “Good.”
In silence, they each take a puff.
He doesn’t take back his hand. She doesn’t make him either.
“‘Elizaveta’ is Russian for ‘Elizabeth,’” she says. “What about ‘William?’”
He ponders it for a moment. But he must disappoint her.
“There is no equivalent. At best… ‘Elizaveta Williamovna.’”
She sighs. “That sound stupid.”
“No. Only unusual.”
“… You’re not what I expected.”
“Is reality worse or better?” he asks.
They exchange tucked-away smiles.
“The first time I ever learned about you was from Chess Review, when they reported that you’d won the USSR Championship. Again. That was the moment I put a target on your head… You were the one I had to beat. You were the one I had to push out of the way. And as time went on, I started coming up with stupid theories. Like how cruel you’d be to me. Or how you had a target on me too. Or how—when I’d finally meet you—you’d turn out to be…” She huffs, cloudy tendrils drifting out of her nostrils. “A monster.”
“Am I not?”
That pulls the softest laugh out of her.
He hasn’t been keeping count of his wins.
“Before Moscow, I’d never seen you lose to anyone,” she says. “So I didn’t know what to expect. But you were… I mean, you are… simpatichniy.”
His pulse spikes at the word.
The damn fool that he is.
“—it took me by surprise. It still does…” Elizabeth stills, catching something on his face. “What? I mean it.”
“‘Khoroshiy.’” His voice has grown—horrifyingly—hoarse. “I believe you mean ‘khoroshiy.’”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
He clears his throat and abruptly switches to English. “‘Simpatichniy’ does not mean ‘kind.’ It means ‘handsome.’”
Her mouth goes slack, frozen wide. And then, as pink blazes on her cheeks… she laughs.
Cackles.
He wants to bottle up the sound.
There’s still room for it up on the shelf labelled “Guilt.”
“Sorry, I—” Her shoulders shudder as she fights back another giggle, burning red bouncing in perfect curls. “It’s because—You know, in French, there’s ‘sympa.’ And in Spanish, they have ‘simpático.’ So I thought…” Her sigh wobbles with the last traces of laughter. “Well. That’s one vocabulary mistake I’ll never make again.”
With a shake of her head, she lifts the cigarette to her lips.
“‘Simpatichniy’ is true, anyway,” she adds under her breath.
… Fuck.
“Where’s your family?” she asks, a violent swerve in the opposite direction. “I thought they usually traveled with you to these tournaments.”
His palm is still pressed to her back. Glued.
Carefully withdrawing it, he replies, “My wife stayed behind to care for our son.”
Worry digs between her brows. “Will he be all right?”
“Just a fever. He’s well enough now to play with the neighbors.”
An ache, dull enough to tolerate, builds under his rib—the deeper those lines burrow into her skin, the longer he shamefully looks on.
She averts her eyes. “They probably miss you already.”
“And I them.”
“When’s your flight?”
“I’ll take the train home tomorrow morning.”
She frowns. “How long is that trip going to take?”
“Two days.”
“… Bozhe moi.”
He smiles at that.
“We reserved the tickets a year ago,” he says. “A journey on the Armenian Railway is a special treat. The food is impressive, the views are excellent… My wife would have enjoyed it. When I come home, I’ll tease her about all the good things she missed.”
Too much.
She’s missing too much—
Elizabeth smirks, though that upward curve quickly crumbles. She puts out her cigarette, the wind scattering its ashes.
“I should go… I have an early flight too.”
He nods.
No more counter moves left. No reasonable excuses to make her stay.
“We should do this more often,” she says.
He quirks up a brow. “Smoking ‘cow shit?’”
It’s pretty, the way she rolls her eyes.
And it’s bitter, the aftertaste of his shame.
“Talking to each other.” Her throat bobs, forcing an unwanted gasp out of her. “Aren’t you coming to Hastings next month? Or did you reject their invitation this year?”
“I wasn’t sent one at all.” And when her face falls… “I’ve had my chances. It’s wise to make room for young blood, to keep the game fresh.”
“Then why did they invite Luchenko?”
“Arkady Bogdanovich has always had a young soul. Don’t be fooled by the color of his hair.”
He watches the corners of her lips, waiting for that gentle tug upwards. But nothing comes.
His first loss of the night.
Idly, she plays with the dead papirosa between her fingers. “The first time I visited the Soviet Union, my minder told me you’d be interested in talking to me. He was so convinced you’d pass on a message.”
“To whom?” he asks, feigning ignorance.
“The president?” She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not acquainted with your president. I only send messages to friends.”
Shaking her head, letting her eyes flutter shut, Elizabeth suppresses a snigger behind her hand.
There.
One more fighting chance.
“Are you saying Richard Nixon would have to wait in line to talk to you?” she asks.
It’s his turn to shrug. “A national sport in these parts.”
He’s transfixed on her smile, a real one that lingers. It will be nearly another year’s wait before he sees it again.
Vasily knows what tomorrow is. Not the nameless day they’ll both leave this city, but something far more important—the 2nd of November. Her 21st birthday.
In those precious few years he had with his mother, she taught him all she knew and all she believed in. Luck, for instance, though it loved her little. She never let him wish her—or anyone else—a happy birthday until the very day itself. “Too dangerous,” she’d scold him, “with death always waiting by the door.”
It’s foolish.
All the same, he keeps silent. Just for Elizabeth.
“So… I’ll see you next September. At the Olympiad.”
“Don’t thrash us too badly,” he says.
“I’ll think about it.”
He holds out his hand, gestures at her cigarette. “Let me take care of that.”
“Thank you.” Her nails catch on his palm as she hands it over.
“Your verdict? This or Chesterfields?”
Her violent reaction spills out in English—“Are you kidding me?”
“It looked like it was growing on you.”
“I was being polite.”
“If you say so.”
Her steps towards the door are measured. Dragging. Willfully resisting.
But there’s only so much floor left for her to delay their farewells.
“Well, then.” She reaches for the doorknob. “Goodbye—”
“Lizaveta,” he hears himself say.
The name feels good on his tongue.
Easy.
He could say it again and again.
“May I have my blazer back?” he asks.
“Right. Sorry…”
He strides in her direction, meeting her halfway. With no more than fleeting glances passed between them, she hooks the blazer over his arm.
It could very well be the dark. But there’s no more hazel in her eyes.
Only the deepest black.
Lizaveta whispers another goodbye. So does he.
Then, she’s gone.
He hears the others’ protests at her sudden farewell, muffled behind heavy wood, muddied by the crunch of the radio. A car engine bursting to life follows not long after—her CIA minder, come to collect her, no doubt in a panic that they’ve already tainted her.
But Vasily doesn’t glance up to watch the car disappear down the road. His eyes are on the stub of her papirosa, shaky fingertips brushing over lipstick stains.
The first thing he’ll do when he returns to Moscow is to toss his clothes into the wash. The second is to kiss his son and ask if he behaved well for his mother. The third—once Fedya joins his friends in the playground—is to make love to his wife.
He has tonight and two more days until then. Enough time to blot out traces of red hair and heaving silk and lipstick-bruised cigarettes.
