“You can’t just come in saying that, Elena. What’s going on?” I said measuredly, because the thought that this might actually be happening didn’t make sense.
“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat and pulled off her wet scarf. “I just—I got scared. I told Lyosha about that restaurant—the one you went to, the ‘Labyrinth,’ and he got this weird look on his face and they both got very angry with me. And I’m not a stupid girl, Katya, I’m not a stupid girl. I backed off. But then I heard them talking.”
“Elena!” I whipped around, the little glass dish in my hands rattling the sugar cubes. “You need to get to the point right now.”
She nodded, wide eyes focused on the salt shaker beside her elbow, because she didn’t want to look at me. “You know—they were all joking about Bratva this—Bratva that. Then they said his name and I got scared.”
“His name? His whole name?”
“No, just his first name, but I got scared because they were talking about the ‘Labyrinth.’ I got scared for you because, well, Katya—you can’t get involved with that stuff. Not you.”
I quietly slipped onto the stool opposite her, praying I misunderstood what she was about to tell me.
“You’re good—you’re so smart, Katya,” she stammered. “I don’t want you to end up like me.”
I went to put a hand over hers but she pulled back and shoved the papers toward me.
“I asked around. Dima knows someone at theZAGSoffice—asked them to find more information. I didn’t want to worry you.” She took a deep breath and I grewincreasingly angrier at her tactics of‘not worrying’me. “Vitali Konstantinov is dead. At the age of forty-five, in 1988.”
I didn’t realize how much of me tensed until it unraveled at that moment. “Elena, you are something—you couldn’t have led with that?”
“No! No, look at the papers. Look!”
So, I looked. A lot of official documents. Legal words I saw every day. My hand stopped on‘Acts of Civil Status.’
“Elena, you found some man with the same name and didn’t even call? Just ran here, panicking?”
She anticipated this and shoved the next paper toward me, then slapped another and another onto that pile. All certificates of enterprise and shareholder registrations.
All dated after the man’s death.
“This can’t be right,” I muttered, fumbling at the documents. “You’re mixing up paperwork.”
Elena stabbed it with a finger. “He owns a brick company, Katya. Two kiosks by the Administrative Building, two warehouses, a handful of cellphone outlets by the train station, and a company that installs security doors. I snooped—and half those businesses aren’t even open.”
I stared at the paperwork, a part of me relieved and the other part screaming. Willing blindness couldn’t last forever, but I found I was angrier that he didn’t tell me his real name than everything laid out in front of me—if she was even right.
“Why are you so sure it’s him…” I mumbled, clinging to the last string of hope I had that she was wrong. But I already knew all this, didn’t I? There are no countries without phones.
“Because they were talking about him. None of it made sense until I got a hold of the records. Katya, please, please don’t see him again.”
The kettle whistled and I didn’t hear it until she shot up and took it off the stove.
“How can you tell me that?” I asked without looking at her. “How can you say that with the company you keep?”
She didn’t say anything at first. Then, “Where does Mama keep the tea?”
“In the second cupboard. There is a box. You’re still going out with Dmitri and Lyosha—how can you tell me not to see Vitali again?”
Elena sighed and set the teacup before me, then sat back down. “I’ve been around them for a long time, Katya. If not them, then men just like them. I can’t just walk away from it.”
“You don’t need expensive perfume. You have a job—and when this is all over, you’ll still have a job no one can take.”
“No.” She shook her head and again averted her eyes. “You don’t understand. I can’t walk away from it. You don’t just listen to them go on about their bullshit and guzzle their vodka and walk away. I have… I have lovers. And people say a lot of things when they’re in that position. And people like me don’t leave.”
I put a hand over my mouth, staring. “Elena are you selling yourself?”
“No, they’re lovers. They buy me things and they take me places. And they pay our bills now that no one is getting their salaries. I’m lying to my mama and papa and telling them I still have the job at the hospital.”
