Instead of linoleum, my fingers sank into a thick rug. No bottle.
And I just saw Vitali.
Was I in his… was this… did I…
I shot up, immediately feeling for a nightstand, and praying it didn’t have a nice watch and a lamp.
Instead, I knocked over a cup of water, which went clanking and rolling under the bed. Alright… but these weren’t my pajamas—and I ran a hand between my legs to check how badly I’d messed up. The pants I could vaguely recall putting on that morning were still on.
After a careful shuffle along the wall, I located the switch and prayed that when I flipped it, there would be light. There was.
The room revealed to me was not my own, but it was not Vitali’s either.
It wasn’t much bigger. The decorations consisted of heavycurtains over one window and two landscape paintings on the opposite wall. There was a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a mirror. The Soviet lace-pattern wallpaper caught the light and turned everything the same yellow as the inside of a taxi cab. Then the memory came, swaying and bobbing: there was a new apartment, and this must be it.
I could hear the sharp thrash of wind against the window even with the drapes closed, but nothing else…
Oh God—Maxim…
I swung the door open, quickly learning about my unsteady feet, and had to grab the doorframe to keep from teetering.
A single lamp lit the living room, which looked eerily like every living room I’d ever seen. There was the wall-long bookshelf with a nook for the TV, the couch (although admittedly bigger than my own), a china cabinet with a set of creepy porcelain dolls, and a windowsill-length bench holding several potted plants and a stuffed animal of uncertain species.
Two more rooms, just as lived-in and old-fashioned (although I wasn’t the one to judge; our apartment hadn’t been any more stylish), were stacked with boxes of our things. Maxim’s toys and clothes were in the smaller one. I noted it had its own TV.
Absolutely not.God, where is he…
I heard the voices a moment before the key scraped its way into the lock, and then Vitali appeared with Maxim at his back. Each carried heavy plastic bags.
“You’re lying,” Vitali told him matter-of-factly, and catching sight of me, winked. If my heart ever planned on bursting, that was the moment. Right there.
“No, honest—I did! I can show you!” Maxim protested.
“Don’t say it in front of Katya. She won’t let you. We’ll discuss it later.”
I would bet money Vitali put the TV in there, even if it was his money.
“What’s all that?” I followed around the corner where they set the bags on a table big enough to seat four.
The kitchen was much bigger than my own, and blue instead of pale green. Age had touched everything equally, and things had been painted and repainted, but well cared-for, and to my disappointment, didn’t feel like a soulless temporary space. And, I could finally see where we were through the big window behind the pushed-back curtains.
At first, I noticed the not-so-distant lights and endless windows of the next apartment building. But they didn’t completely block the urban scenery. Beyond the power lines and streetlights, the onion domes of Orthodox churches and the lit-up buildings of Old Town came into view.
We were on the southmost side of Kurov.
There was no chance he’d gotten the apartment that day. Besides being the safest district in the city, there were museums and parks and… McDonald’s.
“We got everything I could think of,” Vitali said as he began pulling spices, flour, and cooking oil out of the bags, “but I don’t cook, so I’m not sure if all this goes together. Maxim gave some suggestions, but I suspect with an ulterior motive.”
I spotted the chocolate eggs before my brother snatched them up into his coat pocket.
“Go change,” I told him. Snowflakes caught in the creases of his hat and across his collar. Everything would be wet in minutes if he didn’t hang it to dry. He was about to argue, but I think I looked deathly enough to age me into being respected, and he obeyed.
Vitali grinned and focused on sorting out the assorted,individually wrapped cheeses.
“What am I supposed to do with so many cheeses?” I asked as I sank onto a chair. Gravity conspired with the pounding in my head, and they were winning.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I keep them in my fridge. Sometimes you get up in the middle of the night and just want something specific, you know?”
