“I can’t…”
“You can. I’ve had the paperwork since you asked about Mama… just in case. Here is the thing: it is very difficult to get there. I pulled every favor I had for these, so you can’t waste them. Mama and Maxim will depend on you, because you’re the only one who is in a position to secure their place in the country—”
“Vitali!” Now Iwascrying. What was the point of his ‘forever’ and his ‘I’m batshit crazy, I’m never letting you go’ speeches if he was going to let me go? Just like that!
“Stop interrupting, Kotik, or you’ll start losing privileges.”
I smiled through the tears.
“It’s up to you, because you’re going over there on something called a K-1 visa. That’s a fiancé visa—you’ll have to marry within ninety days to secure a green card and stay in the country. Then, you will bring them over from Germany. You only get one shot at this, Katya.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me—Vitali absolutely no!”
“I didn’t ask. Hush. His name is Dean Gray.”
“Dean Gray? What are you talking about! I can’t just marry someone!”
“The laws are very specific about that. Mama and Maxim are harder. Does she have any preferences in men?”
“Christian Orthodox? I guess? Wait—”
“And Dean is going to meet you at the airport in New York,” he continued. “He’ll propose, but just as a formality. The true proposal will be at a later time. When hegets better at it.”
I stared at him, mouth hanging open, but a smile twitched at the corner of his lips, and when I looked down—there it was, a ring held up between two fingers in the narrow space between us.
Beautiful, glinting in the dim hallway light just as brightly as it would in an expensive restaurant or at sunset on the beach in Greece.
“I want to see you wear it,” he said into my hair as I fell against him again, sobbing. “When you’re on the plane, I want you to flash it anytime the stewardess comes by,” he whispered now, clutching me tighter until his words became strained. “Tell them about this Dean. Practice saying the name over and over. Say it at every opportunity and announce to everyone how much you love him. Because Vitali will die here, in Russia, in the country he loves. But you go where the heart is. It does no good to speak a dead man’s name.”
I nodded vigorously against his shirt, smearing my mascara.
“I’m fairly sure you have to say‘yes,’ Katya,” he said. “Or it doesn’t count.”
“Yes, of course, yes!” I sobbed, holding out my finger. He slipped it on. The perfect size, as I knew it would be. So delicate and lavish against my hand, my fingernails still dark with the grime of a Bratva brothel.
He moved his arm lower, catching me at the waist, and our lips met in a kiss salty with my tears. A kiss, both long-awaited, hopeful, and a sweet goodbye.
No kiss should ever mean so many things at once.
43
Vitali: The Goodbye
Iwasn’t going to blow Katya’s childhood and everyone around it to bits, but I needed somewhere to construct what I needed to construct.
They were coming, so I had to do it by the window, and when cars started pulling up, I knew to get out. I would have to go off the balcony and needed a strap, and Maxim’s school bag with the two cartoon hockey players facing off was big enough to fit the bottles. It didn’t make for a cool descent between floors with that flapping on my back, but Katya wasn’t watching, so that was okay.
I had to talk myself through the next part because this was the closest I’d come to snapping, and this time I couldn’t let that happen. Not if I wanted to return to her, because I didn’t know what went on when I wasn’t in my head, and this was a delicate matter.
Return to her. Because I let her leave.
I made her leave.
Deep breaths. Track sixteen, then loop back around to one. Repeat.
I took the bus to Galeeva Street, then walked two blocks because the buses didn’t run that way in the middle of the night.
The casino was dark. They shut it down at midnight. The top floor was where Musa had his flat, and the rest of them gathered around him like flies, so the others’ apartments were filled too.
