“He came through with Mr. Round, he and his wife. She’s pretty, if you like ’em mean.”
“Should fit right in around here,” I suggested. At the time, I didn’t know we were talking about Vera, though I’m not sure it would have changed what I had to say.
Nadine made a hmm sound in the back of her throat and handed me another piece of apple. “So. You like his… writing? His… big ideas?” I turned immediately red.
“Yes, I do. And what’s your point?”
“No point.” She smiled. “Just trying to make sure we’re on the same page.”
I popped the last bit of apple into my mouth and tried to swallow without really chewing, then coughed. Hilda had to slap my back. “Well, I think it’s time for me to get out of here.”
“You do that. We’ll keep an eye out for your Mr. Writer.”
I left with the sound of laughter following me—a friendly sort of humiliation. I would never have admitted to them that I was intrigued by Leo Orlov, but I was pleased anyhow that they were on the case, ready to share any news they came up with.
That night at home I pulled all my Orlov books off the shelf and piled them around me, curious to see if they gave off any new energy now, my body having approached so close to their maker. I flipped through my favorites, pausing on the pages I’d folded down at the corner and rereading passages I’d underlined with pencil. In my hurry, I got a paper cut on my index finger and sucked the blood away until it dried, then went on checking the biographies printed on the rear flaps of the novels hoping to note any changes in them over the years, however small. I wanted to know when he’d moved to the United States, when he won his first award. I wanted to know everything about him.
I learned soon enough: Leo Orlov was a flirt. A burning flirt. I didn’t need Nadine to tell me, either; I heard it straight from the Donne girls, who’d begun using the warm corners of the greenhouse to gossip while pressing red petals between their fingers. Plucking those petals from the flower and bringing them idly to their lips. Girls spilling over with themselves and their enthusiasms.
“He sat on Katie’s desk,” one said, “and asked her to recite from Byron.”
“Oh yeah? Well, he said he wanted to measure the hem of my skirt, and the ruler was touching my leg the whole time.” A swoon sound.
“I heard he brought a bag of candies to class and threw one right into Nora’s mouth. She almost choked, but she said it was worth it. Right from his fingertips onto her tongue.”
During these confessionals I made sure to carry out minute tasks, things requiring the appearance of my full concentration. I wound vines up stakes, searched for and eliminated caterpillar eggs, trimmed dead branches off the flower bushes. In my state of pathological attention, the girls soon forgot about me; it was a convenient camouflage. But often I heard more than I cared to.
“He told Sophia how short to cut her hair.”
Leo Orlov wouldn’t do that.
“He graded Bridget’s paper B for Buxom.”
Leo Orlov is respectable. Leo Orlov is married to a beautiful wife. It didn’t matter that I had the same designs as everyone; the idea that he would stoop to flirting with children insulted me. I wanted to give all these girls a talking-to, shake Orlov’s books in front of their noses and tell them—what? That great men didn’t stray? Even I wasn’t that naïve.
One afternoon, about a month into the semester, I was sitting outside taking a break and enjoying the last of the waning fall sun when I heard a screech coming from a stand of laurels. Flashes of color whipped through the branches, too quick to make sense of. Then a girl jumped around a nearby tree and leaned against the trunk, grinning. Panting. It was Daphne, the onetime freshman—now senior—who used to haunt my greenhouse during finals week, trying to relax among the green. She looked insane.
“Come out, come out,” a voice called. Daphne pressed herself tighter against the bark, nearly melting into the tree despite her giggles. If you squinted, her arms were branches, her hair the bloom.
“Oh for god’s sake,” I muttered. Except, not wanting Daphne to overhear me, what I really said was Bozhe moi. Russian still found its way to my tongue now and then, for secret keeping. Useful, as it turned out.
A hand reached around and tapped Daphne on the shoulder, and she squealed.
“Now, my dear,” said the droll voice attached to the hand. “Run away to class, I know you’re late. You’ve made a quick study in the art of escapism, brava.”
I watched. She scampered off across the lawn, her little slippers so light she seemed to be dancing a ballet. Spring fawn, grand jeté, grand jeté, grand jeté. In retrospect I always imagine myself, in this moment, smoking a cigarette in furious protest, but that wasn’t yet my vice. I’d learn it from Lev soon enough.
“Nu, chto zdes est’?” What have we here? A man—my man, the same fellow who had peered into my greenhouse, the same pair of eyes that first dreamed up the words in Felice, which I’d just finished devouring that morning—walked over, wiping his hands on a pocket square, which he then deftly re-tucked. “Prostitye, kto est’.” Forgive me, who.
“Who, what, where,” I replied. Hoping to sound cool. “It doesn’t matter what I am, because you don’t have me.”
“Oh, very nice. I like that very much. But really, I need to sit for a moment. These infants are exhausting.”
Just like that I was sharing a patch of grass with Leo Orlov, hero of my reading life, current delicious villain of the rest. I tried to ignore the fact that he’d said exactly what I wanted him to say, and that he smelled like umber—the color, I mean. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but was too afraid to sound foolish asking. It crept up on me, invading my sinuses and my good sense.
“You seem to enjoy them well enough,” I told him.
“Well, one enjoys young creatures. The enthusiasm of the barely born. Don’t you think?” He asked me the way one asks a fellow traveler. A connoisseur. Then he leaned back against the greenhouse, glass creaking slightly beneath his weight. From the corner of my eye, I noted his mussed hair. The long hollow of his smooth-shaven cheek.
“I think they’re terrible.”
“T’i stishesh,” he said: You’re joking. He moved so easily into the familiar t’i that I hardly had time to register it. “How can something so naïve be terrible? They don’t have the strength.”
Without speaking I held out my arm, showing off a dime-sized burn on the inner curve of my elbow. Just a scar, now, but still a standout. Its twin itched on my leg, though that one had at least appeared accidental when it happened.
“No,” he said. “Them?”
“The very same. Baby animals. Sharp teeth.”
He corrected: “Sharp fangs.”
At last I turned to regard him straight on. “I’m Zoya,” I said. “Zoya Ivanovna Andropova.” I laughed. “You have no idea what a relief it is to say my whole name for once.”
“Lev Pavlovich Orlov.” He held out a hand, which I shook. “And I think I might.” Lev switched back into Russian without missing a beat. “There are days I can’t stand talking to anyone at all here. I just want to crawl into my bedroom and lock the door. Leave all those dreadful Hey Misters outside and take a sleeping pill with a glass of vodka.” He employed a dreadful American drawl to say Hey Meeester.
“You don’t really drink vodka.”