by Megan Mulry
I take a deep breath—at this rate of constant deep breathing, I am going to start hyperventilating—and walk slowly across Nevsky Prospect to the new Starbucks. I need a taste of home.
For the next few days, I reluctantly bond with the management team at Voyanovski Industries. At the board meeting on Friday afternoon, my last work day in Russia, I agree to be named temporary CEO, only after assuring them that it will be in name only, to keep things running smoothly until they find a proper replacement. My resistance is starting to sound hollow even to my own ears, but I hope that once I get back to USC, this burgeoning tug of filial allegiance will evaporate.
I spend Saturday going through all the leftover paperwork in my father’s office. Uncle Alexei and I spend hours shredding everything from old passports to faded ticket stubs. It feels so final, but Alexei and I both agree it’s better to clear everything out than to leave it for another time. He goes through the old business documents, setting a few aside to make sure he also has copies, and I go through most of the personal files, keeping a few things for sentimental reasons.
There are some old clippings I decide to save, especially of Mikhail with my mother. One in particular, from Paris Match, shows them in some café in 1984. I count back from my birthday to the date in the magazine and realize Simone must have been pregnant with me when it was taken, but she’s not showing. They both look bored. Simone is all blond and leggy, with huge shoulder pads and a miniskirt, and Mikhail is looking all Russian Mafia as he reads a newspaper. I shake my head while I look at it.
“They really should have stayed together,” Uncle Alexei laments.
“Oh, please.” I snort. “They would have killed each other. She was probably already looking at another man behind those enormous Chanel sunglasses.”
Alexei laughs. “You’re probably right. But they were happy with each other in a way that neither one ever was after they parted. Or maybe your mother is now; I don’t know.” He shrugs.
“She’s not, not really. But maybe that’s why it would never have worked, eh?” I pat Alexei’s shoulder. “Maybe we’re not really meant to be that happy every minute of the day.” I think briefly of Rome, of pursuing him, of how happy I felt when I was with him. It would probably end horribly, like it did for my mother and father, bored with each other after a fortnight. I turn my attention quickly back to the busywork in front of me to chase away the thought.
Early Saturday evening, after Alexei and I finish clearing out my father’s office, we say our good-byes and I decide to wander through the city. I know something is changing—or has changed—in me. I try to parse whether it’s just a matter of being carried along by circumstance: the excitement of what I discovered by doing real work for a change, the raw sensuality of Rome, the death of my father. Or am I really evolving in some way instigated by—but ultimately unrelated to—what is happening around me?
Without realizing where I am going, I end up back at my father’s apartment. I walk up the sweeping spiral staircase, which must have been so grand when the building was originally constructed in the 1920s, before these beautiful buildings were carved up into small warrens to house The People. Despite my father’s wealth, I think he actually believed in those principles on some deep level. Of course, he had his beautiful house in Sardinia, but he always lived in this same modest apartment.
After I unlock the front door, the first thing I notice is that the hall clock is silent, no longer ticking without my father there to wind it. I set down my purse and stare around the darkening living room, then turn toward his bedroom.
I hesitate before sitting on the edge of the bed, and then I set both feet onto those worn spots on the carpet. My legs are long enough that my feet rest flat on the floor. My father and I were about the same height, nearly six feet. He was even taller when he was young and powerful and seducing my mother, but age shrank him in the usual way. I glance at his bedside table. It is more of a small chest, with five drawers. I open the top one.
It feels like snooping, until I remember he isn’t around anymore to catch me. It still feels like snooping. He was so private, so old-fashioned. His ideas of propriety and rules of behavior were from another era. The top drawer has a comb, and a shoehorn with a well-worn antler handle, and a recent ticket stub from the opera. An extra pair of reading glasses. A nail file. Blood-pressure pills. Aspirin. All neatly lined up in a drawer organizer with little areas for each thing.
The next drawer down has small containers holding a few pieces of jewelry . . . if you can even call it jewelry. Man jewelry? Some are pins from different organizations, then a couple of enamel flags, other shiny bits he used to wear on the lapel of his jacket. And then a few medals or something. Uncle Alexei will need to take those and decide what to do with them. Weird communist stuff.
The third drawer: three handguns. And boxes of bullets. I shut it quickly.
The fourth drawer has stacks of neatly folded handkerchiefs and knotted silk cuff links in small boxes lined up on either side.
The bottom drawer is the memory drawer. Pictures and a few yellowed newspaper articles. Receipts. Mementos. A few packs of matches. Random, or seemingly random, bits of his past. And it is all thrown in together. A French postcard. A theater ticket.
I pull the whole drawer out and put it on the nubby off-white bedspread next to my thigh. My fingers touch things: a piece of red ribbon, a chip from a casino in Monte Carlo. That casino. At the back and beneath the rest, I find a red leather billfold that turns out to be a case for two photographs, like something you’d carry while you travel on business.
I look up and around the room before I open it. Maybe I’m about to discover Mikhail has another family somewhere. It seems highly unlikely he fooled around with my mother in the South of France one night in the 1980s and then never had sex again. Highly unlikely.
I open the smooth, aged leather.
And stare at my gorgeous mother.
So, yeah. Right up there with my daddy issues, I am also a bundle of clichés when it comes to my mother. The Movie Star. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look as beautiful as she does in this old Kodachrome snapshot that this supposedly disinterested Russian man kept in his bedside table. For his whole life. She is in a fabulous string bikini, white triangles against her tan young body. She is looking up—at him, obviously—and her smile is completely unfamiliar to me because it looks so . . . genuine.
In the facing picture, she is in some glamorous, tiny, strapless beach cover-up, and my father has her tucked into his strong, tanned arms. She has that glorious smile again, and he is gazing down at her, looking as if he’s just received the best news of his entire life.
I put everything back where I found it, except the red leather photo case, which I slip into my handbag. After a few awkward attempts, I am able to get the drawer back into the opening at the bottom of the small chest. I get up and smooth the bedspread where I wrinkled it and take one last look around my father’s bedroom.
An unexpected crack of emotion, like a single fist, pounds once against my chest. It washes through me while I stand in the doorway and stare at everything. I don’t cry or gasp; I just feel like this is the beginning of something, like I am getting my very first glimpse of my father, rather than my last.
I turn back down the hall, pick up my purse where I left it by the front door, and return to my hotel room in the nicer part of Saint Petersburg.
Sunday morning, I leave the hotel and head to the airport. It seems strange I didn’t even have to change my original flight plans. My spring holiday has run its course, and my father happened to die while I was visiting. Quite practical of him, really.
Oh, and I had hot sex with some guy I will never see again. I can check that off my bucket list. And I became the CEO of a flourishing manufacturing company. Check.
The morning flight leaves Saint Petersburg right on time. I change planes in Moscow and am
back in LA by midafternoon, with plenty of time to make the dinner party at the Pearsons’. I get home, shower and change, throw in a load of laundry, and meet Landon there. It feels good to be with my friends, to put all of the craziness of the two weeks in Russia behind me. Landon gives me a firm hug when he sees me. He tells me he’s sorry about my dad and gives me an extra squeeze, but I can tell he doesn’t want me to make a big, emotional mess in our friends’ living room.
With a quick nod, I assure him there will be no hysterics, and he goes off to get me a glass of wine. My best friend, Vivian Steingarten, is also at the small party, and I fill her in on everything—well, almost everything. I leave out any talk of French billionaires.
“You’re going to what?” she asks in a stage whisper. We are standing out on the back terrace after dinner. No one else can hear us. Vivian is what is commonly known as a powerhouse. Our mothers were very close when we were growing up—both of them really successful actresses who were far less successful mothers. Vivian and I were thrown together as far back as I can remember, while our wayward guardians gallivanted. She’s a great role model: tough, confident, and, most of all, kind. Well, kind in her way—tough kind.
“I’m going to be the temporary CEO of my dad’s company.”
“What about Landon? Have you run it past him?” She’s never been a huge fan of my whole “Mrs. Doctor Clark” life plan, so I’m not sure why she’s suddenly acting concerned about his part in all this.
“It’s my life. Why do I need to run it past him?”
She raises an eyebrow and takes another sip of her wine. “No reason.”
“Of course I’ll tell Landon eventually, but it’s only temporary, and you know how he is. He’ll see this as a threat to our plan or something.” I wave my hand as if anyone can run a company on the side.
She nods and gives me another half smile. “If anyone can do it, you can.”
“It’s just temporary,” I repeat lamely.
Landon comes out of the house and cuts our conversation short, letting us know the party’s winding down and it’s time to head out.
“Lunch next week,” Vivian whispers. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Landon and I kiss good-bye in the Pearsons’ driveway, and I feel like I’m back on track. Nosy best friend. Self-assured boyfriend. Real life resumes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
That first week, I do my level best to dive into my routine. I surf and work out hard every day. Almost too hard, actually. I start taking some rougher waves and going farther out than I usually do. For most of my life, I’ve been a longboard surfer, more of an easy rider, I guess. But since I got back from Russia, since the rush of being with Rome, I feel like a bit of an addict who’s clamoring for a better buzz, picking the riskier waves and cutting in more aggressively with my shorter board. I try not to read too much into it and just enjoy the thrills where I find them, rather than pining for French pirates.
Landon and I seem good. We talk and text every day, even though we never end up getting together. All of which is totally normal for us. He’s busy. I’m busy. And we have plans to go away together for the weekend, so I’m not really worried about it. I show up on time for work; my research grant application is under review and seems to be moving forward. Even so, Alexei’s words keep echoing in my mind—about how teaching is an approximation of real work—and I can’t quite shake it. Well, I probably can’t shake it because his words are not just echoing but actually in my ear.
In addition to all my usual responsibilities at USC, Alexei keeps right on treating me like the CEO of Voyanovski Industries. I get about fifty emails throughout the day, and nearly that many phone calls, that either bring me in on various deals that he has going or ask a quick question about how I’d handle a certain labor dispute.
He’s a sly bastard, because of course I have opinions! And he knows that if he frames it as a “quick question” or “just a little something” he’s been meaning to ask me, of course I answer. (Under no circumstances should the foreman be given the authority to negotiate!) We also talk every night. Around ten o’clock my time, the phone rings, and even though I know I could simply let it go to voice mail, I’m getting sort of addicted to the conversations: speaking Russian, making decisions that affect hundreds of people’s lives for the better, and, I’m not ashamed to admit, making a boatload of my own money. I am reluctantly coming to realize that Alexei is a spectacular mentor.
The idea that I’m pinch-hitting for Voyanovski Industries is one that I’m holding on to by a very thin thread. Landon senses that I’m exhausted and tries to be sympathetic, but I can tell he’s not happy about all the new responsibilities I’m taking on. I keep telling myself it’s all fine. We have plans to drive up the coast on Saturday, so I tell him we’ll get to catch up properly then.
I also try to remain hopeful that sparks will fly after we’ve been apart for three weeks and I’ll simply forget about a certain sexy Frenchman. On a practical level, forgetting is becoming easier by the day; Rome hasn’t sent me a single text or left one phone message.
The realistic part of me knows he is being a normal, respectful man of the world who probably wrote the rules for this sort of thing. One night of sex in a foreign hotel room is likely in the Dictionary of Meaningless Flings. I try to remind myself of this on a regular basis. I make up little jokes, like:
What happens in Saint Petersburg . . .
An affair not to remember . . .
From Rome with love . . .
Yeah. No. That last one is not good, because the mention of love and Rome in the same sentence puts me right back in that limo in Nevsky Prospect, with him looking at me like he truly, deeply, et cetera, believes that I deserve the best damn life and that he somehow knows how to make that happen.
In my initial contain-the-lust plan, I didn’t expect to actually miss him so much. Not just the sex. I keep trying to tell myself it was just sex—to diminish it somehow—but that isn’t working, either. I have the terrible feeling, a real self-loathing doozy, that if Rome were to call, I would drop everything and . . .
So. Right. Thankfully, he never calls. After ten days of silence, I come to accept that our fling in Saint Petersburg was just that. A fling. Nothing worth wrecking my life over.
By Friday afternoon, I’m caught up on all my correspondence at USC, I’ve told Alexei I will not—under any circumstances—answer any of his emails or calls for the next forty-eight hours, and Rome is starting to seem like a vague, surreal memory. When Saturday morning rolls around and Landon pulls up in front of my place, Rome has become a dream—a sweet dream, but a dream nonetheless. Something I can shake off in the light of day, even if some pieces stay with me.
Landon picks me up in his very practical Saab convertible around nine on Saturday morning. I throw my bag in the backseat and get in the front. I lean over and kiss his cheek. I’m so hopeful, so eager for him to show me he’s the right guy for me after all. To prove that I’ve missed some critical part of him that is really spontaneous and joyful.
But he isn’t making it easy.
“You’re wearing that?”
I have on an old pair of cutoff jeans and a fitted tank top. I was cleaning up my house for a while before he arrived, and I thought we might go for a hike when we checked into our hotel in Ojai, so I didn’t bother changing. I also think I look kind of sexy in a biker-babe sort of way, with my strong, tan arms and the small tattoo behind my left shoulder showing, and my long legs all exposed for his delectation.
“As you can see.” I settle back into my seat and pull the seat belt across my chest—which is also looking pretty hot, if you ask me—slip my sunglasses down over my eyes, and look determinedly straight out the windshield.
He is wearing khaki shorts and a green polo shirt and a pair of Top-Siders. I may be slightly underdressed, but who cares? He is always so pristine.
He exhales slowly and says, “Fine.” He depresses the clutch, and I put my hand over his on the gearshift to stop him from moving the car.
“I’m sorry. Did you want to stop for lunch someplace nice or something on the way? I can change. I just thought we might get there in time for a quick hike, and I was grubby from cleaning up anyway.”
He smiles and kisses my bare shoulder. “I love you like this.” He even glances at my breasts for good measure. “Maybe I’m jealous that you can just throw on something and look like that”—his eyes slide down to my bare legs and then back to my face—“while the rest of us have to actually go to a bit of effort.”
I pat his hand and pull mine back into my lap. “You don’t need to try very hard, honey.” Landon is quintessentially handsome. Thick, light-brown hair with those sun-kissed California highlights. He’s thirty-five and looks twenty-five. Whenever someone compliments him on his youthfulness, he never disagrees; he merely replies, “Clean livin’.”
As we drive out of town, I steal the occasional glance at his handsome profile. Landon grew up in a really solid American family. His childhood feels almost magical to me. An Ohio suburb. Committed, loving parents. Two younger sisters who adore him. Ohio State. Johns Hopkins medical school. Residency at UCLA with the top cardiologists in the country. He is the genuine article. Athletic. Healthy because he loves the way it makes him feel to be healthy. He rarely drinks, never smokes, and loves running.
Why do I feel like enumerating his many assets is an exercise in trying to convince myself of something? He is everything I’ve always dreamed of: The Right Man. The one who would be a permanent remedy to the escapades and frivolity of my unstable upbringing.
Is it so wrong that I want some tiny thing more? Some bit of playfulness without upsetting the whole apple cart? A spark?
We are about an hour outside LA, past Oxnard, when I make my foolish suggestion. “Why don’t we pull off the road and I’ll give you a blow job?”
