“Sure, hon. Keep those home fires burning.”
I left, and the bell chased me out to the street. Marie, I saw, had moved back behind the counter, scouring something unseen. I rested my forehead on a wall a few steps away, knocked it gently against the bricks. A little boy walking by with his mother looked at me with great seriousness.
“What,” I said to him. “What.”
But his frown only deepened as he moved farther on.
Excerpt of a letter from Vera Orlov to Robert Horne of Horne Publishing
(provided to the Maple Hill Police Department by Mr. Horne, with some reluctance)
Sitting on the train home with the contracts in hand for the re-release of Knight, Knave, making corrections (as I’m sure you assumed I would, Bobby). How many times must I tell you all that a delivery date for the next book is impossible? No addendums. Just buy what’s on hand. If anyone tells Lev he must work by such and such day he’ll hole up in his study reading Oblomov for half a week and then disappear in that terrible car. Let him be, and he’ll sit at the desk. The words come unasked for. Things that matter always do.
Meanwhile this train is impossible. What is it about Americans that makes you all want things to be new and disposable? Tea in a paper cup. I don’t understand. It seeps through at the seams. And you. You keep buying ghost stories, Bobby—yes, I look through your catalogues—but what do Americans know about ghosts? I could tell you a thing or two about spectrality that would curl your hair.
In Leningrad we knew our spooks on a personal level, to the point where a party at the end of the world looked just like a party at the height of one’s power. Candles, tables, buildings, liquor. Bloodlines, necklines, age lines, ambitions. Fingertips gone orange from tobacco and white hair swept at just such an angle to hide where it’s thinned. Terrifically civilized. All the while, everyone was on the verge of dying. That’s the trick, you see. True horror is when the worst possibility wears the face of ordinary life, but no Americans consider themselves ordinary, do they? It’s your prerogative to transform overnight, and people act like this is some kind of virtue. This attitude is rubbing off on Lev, and I don’t like it.
But listen to me, going on. I’m sure you have better things to do.
Don’t bother sending the next round of contracts to Lev, just courier them straight to me. And please get rid of this letter, Bobby, you know I find it morbid and distressing when you keep them.
Editor’s note: This letter was undated, but police records indicate that Mr. Horne, when pressed, estimated its vintage as late 1930.
Zoya
My plan, in its basic form, involved earning Vera’s trust and getting her to take me on a vacation (Lev’s idea: get her out of town and away from prying eyes. Now that I’d met their maid, I understood this requirement much better). A trip to the ocean seemed like the thing—quiet seaside hamlet, a rented cottage. Plus, New Jersey is lousy with beaches, so we wouldn’t have to go very far. Once we arrived I would give her the poison, and make an anonymous call from the road so her body would be discovered without much delay. Neither Lev nor I was interested in putrescence.
It wouldn’t be easy. She was, Lev assured me, a naturally suspicious woman, and I was coming out of nowhere, more or less. (“Less” Lev’s introduction, but that clearly hadn’t won me any favor.) In her position, I wondered, would I agree to such a thing? A sudden vacation with an ardent stranger, conspiratorial whispers over sherry. I considered my empty apartment, teapot whistling into space, and then thought about strolling down a boardwalk or sidewalk, brushing Vera’s shoulder with my own. Without being proud to admit it, I knew I’d jump at the chance; I was not exactly choking on friendship. And that was the point; neither was Vera. Though she gave off an air of self-sufficiency, surely it couldn’t erase the natural human need for love. Why else lend her earrings to the maid?
On Tuesday I went home early and tidied myself up, though not nearly to the same degree as I had for my first visit. I washed my face and put on a clean blouse without bothering to change my pants or shoes. Didn’t curl my hair, just ran a brush through. Added a touch of lipstick, and left it at that. Vera wouldn’t be expecting fireworks and I thought perhaps she’d appreciate the fact that I worked for a living; after all, Lev did. My fingernails were chipped and rough from where I’d torn at the dirt, pulling up weeds by stalk and root.
This time when I knocked, Vera answered the door herself, wearing a light cotton skirt and a shirt so crisply white it seemed to be made of sun on snow. The color—or lack thereof, I suppose—suited her. She looked like a weather event. Or perhaps like something more peaceful and self-satisfied. A young scout, say.
“Come in, my dear,” she said.
It felt strange to walk around the living room without Lev. The same, but not. His clothes had been removed from around the ground floor; no more jackets slung on the backs of chairs or errant cuff links on the windowsill. Just as I could feel his presence in every detail before, I could feel his absence now. A tea tray had been set out with a gleaming silver service and a platter of pastila.
“Did you make them yourself?” I asked, indicating the sweets.
“God, no.” Vera laughed. “You think I have time for that?”
I thought: I don’t know how you use your time. But that wasn’t quite true. I knew when she got up, knew the side of the house where her bedroom lay. I knew that she attacked Lev’s work with the loving axe of a firefighter saving a child. I knew she scratched and sniffled, curled her hair occasionally, bothered to wear different shades of lipstick to suit her skirt or shoes.
“But did you learn to cook as a girl?”
She gave me a hard look. One of many questions she would never answer about her past. For instance: whether she hoped Lev’s greatness would save her from it, or from some dark future. Or something else. “Let’s sit.”
Vera positioned herself beside me on the sofa, so near that our knees almost touched, though there were several open chairs. She poured, making sure to include a dash of milk in my cup just as I prefer, and the pastila came from the store Lev frequented, or so I judged based on the taste. I bit into one and was flooded with a sense of well-being, warmth that spread from sternum to shoulder blades, and from there down. It was not lost on me that Vera guessed without asking how I took my tea.
“Now,” she said, once we both had our cups and plates. “I have something for you.”
“Oh?” I tried to think how I might take control of the conversation, but all the tricks I’d learned in school—the sudden topical swerves and bold declarations—seemed impossible under the circumstances. My body recognized a dominant creature and grew sleepy. Passive. “That’s… nice. You shouldn’t have.”
Vera pulled an envelope from under the tray; manila, like the one Lev gave me filled with pills. I realized they must have often wandered into one another’s offices, and would naturally share the same supplies. She handed the envelope to me, and inside I found round-trip train tickets to the coastal town of Twisted Branch. Vera watched me, waiting for some kind of reaction, but even in my half-drunk kitten state, I was at least able to keep my face blank. Finally she spoke, with a false brightness.