by Alina Adams
"Hi!" Bex said brightly, still winded from her dash up the perfumed steps. And then she asked the cameraman, "Have you shot Lian's singles, yet?"
"No," he said confidently, as if Bex's question made any production sense at all. Fortunately, the unwritten rule at 24/7 was: If your colleague is acting strangely, there is probably a reason, and it probably has to do with the good of the show, so just play along until you figure it out. Had there been no such rule in place, Gil would never be listened to. Bex had been counting on this solidarity from the crew when she snuck in.
"Then I think you should, right away, before the ballet actually starts," Bex said. She turned to Amanda, "Would you mind stepping outside for a moment? We want to get some really nice, close-up shots of Lian that we can use for cutaways and interstitials, and we need the area as clear as possible so that we can match room-tone later."
She'd used a great deal of technical terms, gambling that Amanda wouldn't know what they meant, much less that they shouldn't be together in one sentence. To translate what Bex said in medical terms, she'd basically asked Amanda to hand her a stethoscope so they could perform brain surgery on an X ray, i.e., real technical terms, but gibberish in meaning.
"Oh, yes, of course," Amanda said, "I understand completely," and she tiptoed out of the box. So as not to disturb the... uh... room-tone.
The camera and soundman looked at Bex expectantly, eager for their next clue. Bex mouthed a silent, "Thanks, guys," and gestured that they could go back to what they were doing. She stepped over the video monitor perched by the camera and plopped into the plush purple seat next to Lian. The upholstery felt like pussy willows and meowed a little when she leaned against it.
"Got a quick question for you, Lian."
"Uh-huh..." Lian didn't turn her head and continued watching the milling people below. Bex supposed it might have been a while since Lian found herself a member of an audience, rather than the one in the spotlight.
"It's about the spinning lessons you took from Igor Marchenko."
"The what?" Lian pivoted in her seat, one hand clutching the golden balcony rail to keep from falling into the orchestra. "I didn't take any lessons from Igor. Why should I do that? My spins are good. I get enough revolutions for full credit."
"Well, I don't know about that," Bex lied. As a matter-of- fact, she knew perfectly well that most judges thought Lian's spins were too slow and didn't offer enough changes of position and they would have dearly loved for her to get some extra coaching. "But your mom told me—"
"Mom!" Lian popped out of her seat and, nimbly leaping over the various camera wires scattered about the floor, flung open the door.
Amanda was leaning against the opposite wall, hands behind her back, meeting the curious Russians' furtive glances at the obvious stranger in their midst with an unabashed, all-American "What are you looking at?" stare back.
"Mom!" Lian yelped. "Bex said you told her I went to Igor for spin lessons. That's so stupid. Why would I do that? My spins are fine. And besides, Gary would like, kill me, if I did that."
Amanda's bravado dissipated like a 6.0 after a fall. She glanced from Lian to Bex and back again. She blinked furiously. She didn't say a word.
"Mom!" Lian barked. "What is she talking about? Why would you say that? I never took any lessons from Igor!"
"Amanda..." Bex prompted politely, hoping if she actually made her words sound like a question, an answer might be forthcoming.
"What made you think I took lessons from Igor?" Lian ignored her mother and verbally clung to Bex like chewing gum tangled in a ponytail.
Bex looked at Amanda. Lian's doting mother was still apparently pleading the fifth. Unless you counted hyperventilating. Bex figured she had nothing to lose by telling Lian, "I found a check in Igor Marchenko's room. It was made out to him and signed by your mother. When I asked her what it was for, she told me Igor had been secretly giving you spin lessons, without Gary knowing."
"No way," Lian said. “Totally not true. Why would you tell her that, Mom?"
"Because." The hyperventilation made every word Amanda said sound like she was trying to desperately suck it back inside the minute it was uttered. "Because, I had to tell her something."
“Truth is always good," Bex offered, still polite, though suspecting she was about to get over it.
"I couldn't tell you the truth," Amanda puffed.
"Why not?"
"Because." Inside the theater, the Bolshoi orchestra launched into the first, plaintive notes of Giselle. The lyrical passage provided an unexpectedly dramatic background to Amanda's confession. "Because, that check I wrote to Igor, it was a bribe. To make sure that Jordan lost Nationals."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bex asked, "You were paying Igor to make Jordan lose Nationals? How was that supposed to work? What was he supposed to tell her? No, Jordan, don't land that jump on one foot, land it on your butt, the judges like it better that way?"
While being clever, Bex also snuck a side peek at Lian, gauging her reaction to Mommy's confession. She figured if Lian were in on this alleged plot, she would have also known to bluff to Bex about the money being for extra coaching— rather than for a bribe to get the competition to take a dive. The fact that she pretended not to know what Amanda was talking about suggested that Lian was ipso facto pleading innocence to the bribery plot. Unless, that was exactly what Bex was supposed to think.
"You paid Igor to make Jordan lose to me?" Lian asked her mother.
Amanda nodded. Then she shook her head.
"This isn't multiple choice," Bex pointed out.
Amanda wrung her hands. She really did. Bex had read about panicky people doing so, but she'd never actually seen the cliché in action. She'd always assumed the expression came from days gone by, when people still did their wash in a tub full of soapy water, and that "wringing" your hands referred to mimicking the action of drying clothes, i.e., turning them this way and that, to get the water out. However, in this dawn of the twenty-first century, Amanda was making a more modern, laundry-related gesture. Instead of wringing the clothes by hand, her nervousness expressed itself in jerky, jittery fingers. As if she were throwing coins into a dryer. Did that still count?
"I didn't pay Igor to coach Jordan badly. No. That would have been silly. No. What I did was... the money... it was for Igor to give to Jordan. So that she would skate badly on purpose. So Lian could win Nationals."
Lian, who, to be fair, did seem to grow more and more surprised as the story went on, bounced lightly on the tips of her toes (in synch to the ballet music outside) and asked her mother, "You mean you didn't think I could win Nationals on my own, Mommy?"
Amanda stopped tossing imaginary coins into the dryer and proceeded to unload equally imaginary clothes from the machine. Her hands bobbed from side to side. "I—I just wanted you to be happy, Lian. I wanted to help you."
Bex winced, wondering if it would be better to pop back inside the opera box or simply duck to escape the inevitable tantrum Amanda had just triggered in her daughter. Because, in all of Bex's experience interviewing elite athletes, she'd yet to meet a single one who could face the implication that they were not capable of winning an event solely on the basis of their own obviously superior talent, with anything resembling grace. Or a solid grasp on reality.
Lian's mouth dropped open as she pondered what her mother had just confessed. And what the confession meant about Mommy's belief in Lian's ultimate potential. She took a step forward, raising her arms. Bex wondered if she might actually see some fists flying. And whether it was her responsibility, as the only 24/7 representative on hand to witness the fracas, to interfere before Lian did irrevocable damage to her mother's face. Or, even worse, her sweet little skater reputation. It would be tricky to sell "U.S. vs. Russia: A Figure Skating Challenge" as a battle between good (U.S.) vs. evil (Russia), if one of the good was known to smack her mother around. Especially if you could see the marks.
Gil would be really, really mad if yo
u could see the marks.
"Mommy!" Lian threw her arms around her mother's neck. Was this going to be strangulation, then? "Oh, thank you, thank you, Mommy!"
Bex left the love-fest after several minutes of: "You're the greatest Mommy in the world," and "I would do anything for you, baby. I want what's best for you always, always."
She took a taxi back to the hotel and fell into bed without even checking why the message light was blinking on her phone. She figured she had tomorrow to deal with any crises that might have sprung up during her latest out-of-arena investigation.
When she woke up, the message light was still blinking. How interesting that it never just answered itself.
Bex rubbed her eyes, scratched her arm and, yawning, dialed the retrieval number.
"Hello? Bex? It is Sasha."
She was awake now. She even stopped rubbing and scratching.
"I am calling to say thank you to you. Yesterday, I am learning much about the business of the television. You are being very nice explaining everything to me. Please to have good dreams. I will to see you tomorrow at the production meeting, Bex."
Oh, damn! The production meeting!
Bex ran.
Bex didn't stop running until she reached the hotel conference room. (And no, technically, she didn't even stop running to pull off the T-shirt she'd slept in and to stumble into her work clothes, including panty hose, long underwear, turtleneck sweater, vest, jeans, parka, thermal socks, and boots; she had actually been heading towards the door the entire time she was getting dressed.) Everyone stared at her as she came in late. But only Sasha smiled.
Bex couldn't help it. She smiled back. He had that effect on people.
Gil asked, "Did we disturb your beauty rest, Bex?"
She stopped smiling. She couldn't help it. Gil had that effect on people, too.
"Sorry," Bex mumbled. Then, realizing that every seat around the conference table was already taken, she went to slump against the wall.
This seemed to make Gil happy.
"Bex," he said. "We were just talking about you."
Great.
"We're cutting together this piece on Marchenko buying the bucket for the first half of the broadcast, and we've got a problem."
Oh, no. Here it came. Bex felt certain Gil was about to publicly harangue her for not knowing who the killer was, thus leaving his piece without a "button." She got ready to blush, squirm, and otherwise wonder why she thought this was such a terrific job in the first place.
"We've got no footage of Marchenko's family," Gil made a circle in the air with his pen, indicating a great, big zero. "Zip from when he competed for Russia, definitely zip from his America days, and zip this time around. What I'm thinking we need to do, we need to track down his family and get their take on the whole poison-a-roo."
"That's a great idea, Gil," Bex said, somewhat in awe. Not only because Gil had come up with a great idea but, because, for a change, Bex actually concurred that it was a great idea. Even if she had thought of it, first, yesterday. "I'll get right on it," Bex said.
She wasn't one to let a tiny thing like not knowing how exactly she was going to do that dampen her enthusiasm.
Bex’s first stop was the Moscow phone book. There were fifty-seven Marchenkos listed. Bex decided, on first pass, to skip the men's names, since she knew Igor's mother had been single at the time of his defection and, if she'd married in the interim, she'd have a different name, anyway. (Bex really hoped she hadn't married in the interim.)
The exclusion narrowed the possibilities down to thirty-three. Bex let Sasha man the phones, which he did with his usual good humor. He endured six no-answers; eleven angry, "No one here by that name, you fool! Why don't you go stick your head a) under a train, b) in a toilet, c)..."—Sasha wouldn't translate out of respect for Bex's modest ears;” and six old people thrilled for the chance to speak to anyone at all. Then, still talking, he finally gestured enthusiastically at the receiver with his index finger, mouthing, "Yes!"
From the vehement sounds on the other end, the prospect of being invaded by an American television crew did not appear thrilling to Igor's mother and/or sister.
Bex listened to Sasha cajoling. Followed by more audio negativity. Followed by pleading. Followed by a little less negativity. Followed by a plethora of charm. A smile. A joke. He even seemed to be winking over the phone.
Followed by a sigh. A dosvedanya. And Sasha telling Bex, "Let us go."
The cab ride took forty-five minutes. After the first fifteen, they left behind the relative color and joy of downtown Moscow and entered an area two shades grayer than Bex would have previously thought possible. On either side of them loomed towering, nondescript apartment buildings, their top floors obscured by sloppily dripping clouds, their entryways by sad, shivering trees. Periodically, they'd see an old man dressed in a floor-length coat and sheep-fur hat come out of one of the buildings, stomp his feet, and frown at the world before trudging off. Or a woman of indeterminate age dragging a child wrapped up under a knit hat with a kerchief over his ears and a loose pom-pom on top. The child might, in turn, be dragging a sled. But mostly, it was just apartment buildings, identically grim streets, and a smattering of cars with at least one rusty sector.
Bex thought of the hospital they'd visited earlier and asked Sasha, "I take it this is one of the best neighborhoods in Moscow?"
"Oh, no," he looked at her in surprise. "The people who live here, in the days of communism, they must to do something wrong. Is a punishment."
"What about now?"
"Now," he shrugged. "Maybe it is habit."
"Or home," Bex offered.
"Yes." As soon as Sasha repeated the word, Bex realized it wasn't one he could be too familiar with. "Home."
That's good, Bex, she sighed to herself. Remind an orphan about home. What are you going to do next? Refuse him a second bowl of gruel?
The latter, at least, turned out not to be a problem.
Despite what, to Bex, had sounded like a distinctive lack of enthusiasm for their visit over the phone, Igor Marchenko's mother, Luba, and his sister, Svetlana, had nonetheless loaded up their dining room table with food in anticipation of their arrival. Just by peeking around the corner, Bex spied a platter of sandwiches. Black rye bread, butter, and equally black caviar. A blue ceramic bowl held sweetly browned pierogi, overstuffed with cabbage. Sliced sugared jellies were arranged like a rainbow on top of a clear glass platter. Four flower-pattern cups, with matching saucers and silver spoons, were set out for tea next to a second glass platter holding creamy meringue stacked like a pyramid.
Luba and Svetlana gestured for Bex and Sasha to please come in, take off their coats, have a seat, drink some tea, have some food. But first, the Marchenkos had to shoo away their staring neighbors. Though, maybe, neighbors wasn't the right word. To Bex, neighbors were people who lived across the street from you, or in the house next door to you, or, at the very closest, in an apartment that shared a wall with yours. But these people—an elderly woman, her look-alike (except for a mustache) son, his sour-faced wife, and caterwauling, bare-bottomed toddler twins, a boy and a girl—actually lived right inside of Svetlana and Luba's apartment. It was called a communal, a holdover from a time when the Soviet government had assigned two or more completely unrelated families to share what had once been a single-clan dwelling. Igor's mother and sister resided in the former living room. The other family owned the two smaller bedrooms in the back—one for the married couple, one for Grandma and the twins. All seven people shared a single kitchen and bathroom.
And they also, apparently, shared a keen interest in each other's private business, as indicated by the fact that, as soon as Bex and Sasha walked in, Grandma and her nosy kin magically materialized from inside their own rooms to unabashedly stare at them.
Bex may not have understood Russian all that well, but she certainly got the gist of Luba's waving the entire brood away, yelling for them to mind their own business and stay out of her w
ay. She also had a pretty good idea as to what guttural words the man-of-the-house spewed in return.
After the vitriol-filled exchange however, the other family did retreat, grumbling, to their own area, leaving Bex and Sasha alone with Igor's mother and sister.
According to Bex's research, Luba Marchenko was about seventy years old. Her daughter, Svetlana—"Sveta" was the preferred diminutive, Bex knew—was forty-eight; six years older than her brother. Having pondered newspaper photos of young Igor at the time of his defection, Bex could definitely see the resemblance between his adolescent features and the women of his family. All three shared blue eyes surrounded by nearly white lashes, full Slavic lips, and high cheekbones. Svetlana's hair was still the corn-silk blond that Igor's had been. She wore it very short, and the ends brushed her ears like Igor's had. Their mother's hair was completely gray now, worn in a long braid that she wound atop her head and fastened with pins.
Bex tried to thank them both for allowing her to come and ask some questions. She used the few Russian words— spacibo, horosho—that she actually did know.
But Svetlana interrupted to say, "We speak English. My mother a little bit, and me, more. I studied English at the school."
"Eat, eat." Igor's mother urged Bex to partake of a caviar sandwich even before she'd had a chance to sit down. And, while salted fish eggs were not usually her idea of an appetizing breakfast, Bex dove right in. A mouth full of bread, butter, and caviar gave her a chance to look around before feeling compelled to ask questions.
Back home in New York City, Bex lived in a studio apartment. A rather small studio apartment, even by NYC standards. Bex owned three pieces of furniture. A foldout sofa bed, a desk, and a stand for her TV. She had the desk and the TV-stand against one wall, and the sofa bed against another. When she unfolded the sofa bed, its metallic frame scraped against the front of the desk, its sides pressed against the walls. Like Bex said, it was a very small apartment.
