Vitali Konstantinov. So that was the name of the prince whodefended my honor. I eyeballed him with what I hoped to be subtlety. The city might have housed over two million people, but sometimes it felt like a small village because everyone ended up running into each other, eventually. So why had I not seen Vitali before?
He palmed the cards, the protruding veins in his large hand shifting as he masterfully shuffled the deck with the precision of someone about to clean out the house.
“Showing off already,” the shaved head said. He introduced himself as Misha, which was appropriate because Misha looked like a bear. Bony shoulders was Andrei. Another woman joined in (she had to pull up her own chair), on the other side of Vitali. She didn’t tell me her name, but Misha addressed her as Ana. I immediately didn’t like her.
The bare lightbulb swayed when someone shut a cabinet too hard in the other room, casting unflattering shadows across everyone’s faces. There was something ominous about it. And it didn’t help the bad gut feeling I could no longer explain.
Kopeksclinked to the middle of the table, and I hurriedly pulled out a few, enough that I wasn’t the cheapest one betting.
“What?” Ana huffed under her breath, but before she could say anything else, Vitali reached for the middle of the table and slid a few kopeks back to me. Ah crap.
Riffle, bridge, and a last cut. The cards flicked before each player. The only time I’d watched people play poker I was busy with something else, most often at the casino, even if Elena and I didn’t have any money to spend on things like gambling.
I glanced at my cards, then set them down, covering the backs with my hand for good measure. I didn’t actually know what it meant, but I had a queen, and that had to be good.
They began trading cards, and I panicked, trying my best tofigure out how many I was supposed to change out because everyone did it differently. I studied their hands, and when my eyes landed on Andrei, he was looking back at me.
“Katya?” he asked, and it funnily sounded more like an accusation. Ana mouthed an ‘aweee’ as she bumped Vitali’s shoulder. Misha ignored me. He was too busy sweating.
I didn’t dare to look at Vitali.
Whatever I did, there was no use trying to fix it because I didn’t actually know what it was. I apologized and moved to stand, but Vitali put a firm hand on my knee, guiding me back down.
“Stay and watch my hand, I’ll show you.” He slung his arm over the back of my chair while Misha dealt the next round.
The embarrassment didn’t go away, but I was drunk enough to redirect my attention to something else. It happened to be the faint scent of something imported wafting toward me underneath the cigarette smoke. Cologne like that wasn’t sold in regular stores; you had to visit the specialty outlets, and even then it was wildly expensive. I couldn’t figure out the notes, but it had a pull to it, inspiring one to get close enough to truly take it in. Close enough to bury my face in the wool of his sweater.
I needed another drink. Or two.
What was he doing wearing it at some dingy party on the ninth floor of an apartment complex on the Left Bank?
He didn’t explain the game out loud, but used subtle gestures to indicate the good and the not-so-good cards. I learned nothing, but appreciated the excuse to watch him closely for forty minutes.
Eventually, Ana retrieved shots from the kitchen. “Everyone take one,” she announced, setting them in the middle. Her hands weren’t steady, and she splashed the cards, earning a ‘blyad’ fromMisha. The only one she scooted across the table personally was for Vitali.
He didn’t even look at it, just said, “I don’t drink.”
She gave him a disappointed frown, then bitterly pushed it toward me. Vodka. Switching liquors now was just poor judgment.
“Konstantinov is no fun,” Andrei said and tapped the glass, looking meaningfully at Ana to fetch another. “Katya, are you fun?”
“I can be,” I said, and side-eyed Vitali, who was pitilessly looking at me.
I badly wanted those words to be true, but I grew up in a household built on discipline and good grades. My mama would have had a heart attack if she knew where I was, despite my being twenty-three. She reasoned that you earned your dignity when you brought her the offering of a firstborn. No dictator is more ruthless than a Russian mama wanting grandkids.
Was I fun? I tried to be. Elena was far more fun than I.
She was blonde, outgoing, and charming enough to always get what she wanted. My best friend had been raised similarly, but acclimated to the new ways of Russia much faster than I. She kept the company of the ‘New Russians,’ the kind of people who came by a lot of money after Communism fell. No one else had an extra kopek (smart of me to gamble, but in my defense—the gin), and we survived on very little in this new world that the corrupted government and widespread crime were erecting on the ruins of what our country used to be. But Elena was charismatic enough to hide the fact that her family of five lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a bad district. Before some guy bought her perfume, she used to dilute rose oil with vodka and dab it on her wrists, regularly hemmed her dresses to beshorter, and always wiped off the bright red lipstick before she went home.
That’s what I wore that day—one of Elena’s short dresses and her lipstick. That’s why when Vitali placed a hand on my knee, it was on bare skin.
“Let’s see how fun,” Ana teased. “You and I, let’s go take another shot and go dancing.”
I didn’t notice that I already switched to vodka—so said the empty glass in front of me. Might as well.
I searched for Elena, but Ana had already come up behind me and grabbed my hand, adamant on leading me away from the table. Vitali glanced over, but said nothing as she took me to the middle of the living room, where a couple of girls were already dancing to Ace of Base’s‘All That She Wants.’
Everyone smelled like vodka, gin, and sweat-diluted perfume. Beautiful women, some of whom I knew, crowded the space—each trying to be the apex of sex appeal on the dance floor between the TV and the heavy rug hung up on the opposite wall.
