The good news is I’ve got a lead on a courier at last. As you know, I can’t very well stroll across the Soviet border and hand them my passport. People have been killed for less. The courier and I are supposed to meet and discuss terms at a quarter to four, dead of night—which I thought was twelve hours hence, but I just glanced out the window and saw a sky of inky blue, so maybe it’s sooner. I’ve probably lost time just scratching out this paragraph. And me with so many things left to do: I need to count half the man’s fee upfront, in small bills. I need to clean my little Galesi pistol, which is essential on the streets, and such a pretty thing. Mother-of-pearl handle, dark snub nose. It’s almost alarming how fond I’ve become of it.
But we were talking about my manuscript, weren’t we? (Or anyway I was, but considering your correspondence habits lately, that’s more or less the same thing. Me, with a pen in hand, imagining the look on your face, which comes so clear I know in an instant everything you would have said after making it.) I still remember the reeling of my senses, a feeling not unlike vertigo which overtook me when you said you’d burned it in the kitchen fire to keep me from debuting with a story below my worth. Too concerned with politics, you told me, too insular, just not good. Your face was calm, perhaps a bit of fret about the lips. I put my hand on the table, to steady myself. You said I looked green, and I broke out in so much sweat it seemed I’d been washed over by an ocean wave. I walked out of the apartment onto the streets of Paris and didn’t return for a night and a day.
I have no recollection of that interim. My first time jump? Or a simpler answer: a mind frosted over for its own protection. Erase what should, by all measures, be lost. When at last I showed up in your building’s vestibule, I was stubble-grown and raw of throat. Still wet all over, though you said there’d been no rain.
Even then, back in your arms, I dreamed for a time of your murder. Many scenarios presented themselves: a sympathetic fleshly fire, a bullet, a pair of hands around your throat. But you know this, don’t you? You were there, after all. You peeled my fingers off your neck, face calm as evening. You pressed me backwards, away from you—not a shove, just a suggestion—and picked up a cigarette, licking the tip to check for stale tobacco before lighting a match. Your father had gone out for a bottle of champagne, the better to celebrate our upcoming nuptials. I looked at you and quivered, Vera, because you seemed to know everything I didn’t know.
But. We don’t need to dwell. Do we need to dwell? I just saw a star fall across the velvet sky. Red sparks in black night—so, not a star, but a shell, exploding in what looks like celebration. I feel I’m back in that close apartment, watching you smoke. Drawing deep breaths, sucking in your cheeks. Exhalations more magnificent, coils undulating through the air. After which, you drew me forward, understanding that I would forgive everything. An explosion is a pleasure, Vera. An explosion means release. Do you know that the word grenade comes from pomegranate? So many seeds, spilled. So many chances, lost—or perhaps you could say honed, winnowing life to its essential pieces.
I wanted you dead. You put flame to paper. We both had our reasons, didn’t we?
Zoya
For a while I was sure that Kay would do something awful. She’d run to the administration and claim I’d perverted her vocabulary. She’d accuse me of aural assault, or battery of the brain. I thought she’d try to get me fired, just from spite. It would’ve been, in some ways, a relief.
Instead, days passed and—nothing. At first I waited for the early class bells to ring before venturing outside my greenhouse. I finished all my morning chores, weeding or watering, spritzing a mixture of hydrogen peroxide to decrease the chances of mildew and mold. No biology students were due that week, on account of the weather, and so I was able to creep away unmolested and go into town for breakfast. When I returned, I reluctantly opened the greenhouse for viewings (a simple matter of turning over the WELCOME sign, since I couldn’t leave the door ajar), and day after day no one came to visit except a first-year named Daphne who liked the hydrangeas.
I confided to John O’Brien about what had happened, and he laughed before turning serious. We were replanting some of our first seedlings into their mature pots, and he stuck his spade upright in the dirt, brushing off his hands and giving me his full attention.
“Zoe, have you ever considered going on a date or something?”
“What?” I must’ve looked shocked, because he quickly shook his head.
“No. Oh, no. Not with me.” John went a bit pale with embarrassment. A few months before, after a couple of beers and a dinner with Siobhan, he had pulled me into an embrace while walking me home. I hadn’t even needed to protest—he drew away of his own accord and apologized profusely, saying he just felt like we were family, and had gotten confused. I never brought it up again. “With a young man. Someone your age?”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s not that I think you did anything wrong, honey,” he added. “I just wonder sometimes if you don’t need another place to turn your attention. So those girls won’t get under your skin so much.”
I promised him I’d think about it. There wasn’t, in truth, a lot of extra time in my days, though of course I’d structured them that way on purpose. The greenhouse was my life, and I kept a mental calendar of which sections needed pruning or fertilizer, how often a major cleaning was required to keep the window glass pristine. Before I left in the evenings—provided there was no freeze in effect, and thus that I was able to leave at all—I whispered good night to many of my favorite plants individually, thanking them for their hard work and telling them how beautiful they’d become. In my time off, I often had to wash or mend my clothes, or else clean out my room, and was always surprised by how much of my time cooking and shopping took up every week. I was in the process of looking for an apartment, as well. It seemed likely that unless Kay ratted me out for vulgarity, I’d be offered an extended contract at the greenhouse, and I didn’t want to stay on campus over the summer, or ever again. There were several small houses being let in the area, and I’d been making my way through them with help from Nadine, who enjoyed circling rental notices in the newspaper. When all that was through, I liked to read, or take quiet walks by myself. It seemed a full life.
But there was something about John’s suggestion that struck a chord with me, nevertheless. My body had always been serviceable: long enough limbs, strong enough hands, good teeth, decent digestion. I’d been so young when I began working with my parents in the Lipetsk field that it felt natural to consider my legs primarily in terms of locomotion, and my fingers as diligent pincers for plucking weeds or removing pests. In school I changed focus, but still, there were things I needed. Eyes for reading, the ability to sit without growing stiff. I hadn’t given much thought to the fact of my body, its very existence. There’d been no call to.
Lately, though, things were different. It would start like this: a morning walk around campus with the clouds grading down into fog and then mist and then rain, moisture stuck to the fibers of my sweater, heat inside my clothes. I’d breathe in, and the air would have a scent like chopped ice, though it wasn’t quite cold enough anymore to snow. Bits of too-big gravel would trouble my feet beneath my shoes, and I’d kick them off the path, turning just in time to see a swallow sweep down over the lawn. And then came the girls.