Though they had been officially going together for almost two months, the ten minutes leading up to the eye incident was the longest time they’d spent one-on-one. The power had gone out at the school and second-shift grades were let out early. Instead of going home, several of them from ninth A and ninth C lingered at an abandoned construction site behind the soccer field. They played hide-and-seek among the concrete beams, tripping over metal rods and halfheartedly shouting the latest obscenities into the darkness. By accident or conspiracy, as the others were hiding, Sonya and Max found themselves sitting on two perpendicular slabs of cold concrete, all alone.
Here he was, so near. Sonya was barely breathing. He smiled, and she smiled. She was afraid. He was the captain of the basketball team and the tallest boy in all the ninth grade sections. His nose was large and his eyes slightly close-set, but he was very cute. He wore a neon yellow pom-pom hat, the hat she watched come out of the apartment building across from hers to take out the trash every evening. The hat she followed to school every morning, hanging back at a safe distance. In the evenings, she turned off the light in her room and stared at Max’s windows. If the lights in his room lit up before she counted to ten, he loved her. If his silhouette appeared in the kitchen, she loved him.
On those concrete slabs they were shy and tongue-tied. Sonya still couldn’t tell whether his eyes were brown or moss green. She had no siblings, she said when he asked. And yes, her father would be returning to America soon. His older brother was in the army, Max said; he himself wanted to be an engineer. His mother was already saving for the bribes to get him out of the mandatory two-year military service. Why? she asked. Terrible things happen to young men in the army. She didn’t ask for elaboration. He picked up some of last night’s snow and balled it up. What about his father? His father lived in another town with another family. She wondered what he thought of her family: he must have seen both her father and Oleg, her mother’s boyfriend, at the school.
Max threw the snowball and it hit Sonya smack in the left eye. The darkness around her became more solid, then flashed with yellow triangles. I will be blind, she thought. Tears ran down her face, out of surprise and pain and embarrassment. Max rushed over to her. “I didn’t mean to, it was a joke. I am so sorry. Does it hurt bad?” The pain began to recede and Sonya forced herself to smile. “I sure have excellent aim,” he said, dabbing her tears with his hat’s pom-pom. She laughed. She realized that he was holding her hand. And then everybody else appeared, stumbling and giggling, tired of waiting to be found.
* * *
Almost half an hour after the concert was supposed to start, the celebrity guests walked in — some men in suits and some in torn jeans and half-unbuttoned shirts with billowing sleeves. A group of beautiful young women in high heels tottered after them. Somebody started clapping and the rest of the audience joined in. The celebrities gave half bows from their chairs.
As the lights went down Sonya edged toward the balcony railing. The curtain rolled up to reveal a red throne in the corner of the stage; she remembered it from an operetta earlier in the season. It was empty. In the back, suspended by two wires, hung a huge black-and-white portrait of a handsome young man. Makin a long time ago, she assumed. Sergey Yakovlevich Frenkel, the theater director, strode out to the microphone in the middle of the stage. He was a massive man with red hair and an even redder beard. The applause petered out.
“Dear Magadanians and guests,” he thundered. “Thank you for coming to our historic celebration. I’ve just gotten word that Vadim Andreevich Makin is running a little late, so while we wait, and for the entertainment of our esteemed guests, please enjoy a performance by the youngest members of Magadan’s music community — the choir of the Children’s Music School Number One.”
A group of thirty children shuffled onto the stage. Sonya knew several of them as former students of her piano teacher, Faina Grigorievna. She had kicked them out for lack of talent. Sonya had studied with Faina Grigorievna since she was seven, half of her life. Her mother didn’t allow her to quit and her father always said: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Music School #1, on the other hand, accepted everyone, except the completely tone-deaf. According to some people at the arts college. The choir was dreadful. Sonya sank into her chair and watched the side curtains for any movement. She couldn’t believe this Makin would be late for his own concert.
After the choir finished its last song, two of the children brought out a large wreath of flowers and leaned it against Makin’s throne. Sonya would count to ten, she decided, and on ten Makin must appear. She counted to ten — no Makin. She counted again.
The theater director came out. He looked at the looming portrait.
“Dear comrades, unfortunately Vadim Andreevich is not here yet, but we cannot delay our show any longer. A special thank-you to our guests for making the journey all the way to our forgotten Arctic corner. Now we will celebrate the life of our dear Vadim Andreevich how he deserved to be celebrated a long time ago. Better late than never, yes, friends? Nu, of course, yes!”
The audience clapped. Sonya clapped, too — what else was there to do? Oleg had told her that Makin lived just across from the theater, on Port Street. So it couldn’t have been the distance. Or the weather: Magadan had known much fiercer winds.
The lights came up, then down again. Then Yakov Gutman came onstage with a cloth bag. Sonya had seen him many times on TV, but she hadn’t known that he was the most decorated singer in the history of both the USSR and the Russian Federation, as the theater director had remarked in his introduction. She’d always wondered whether his signature hairstyle — cut at sharp angles around his forehead — was a wig.
“I will now read passages from several telegrams and birthday cards received from Vadim Makin’s old stage friends and fans.” He pulled out a piece of cardboard paper from the bag. “‘My dearheart Vadimushka,’” Gutman addressed the throne in his distinct oily baritone, “writes Izabella Yurieva. You, of course, all know Yurieva, the legend of the Russian romance song. ‘So many years have passed,’ she writes, ‘so many lives we’ve lived, and we survived them all. Youth is in the soul, Vadimushka, keep singing.’”
The audience clapped, some whistled. Gutman put his finger to his lips and pulled out another piece of cardboard from the bag. “And this is a telegram from Yegor Tarasov, Junior Lieutenant, Veteran of the Great Patriotic War, residing in Rostov-on-Don. ‘When you sang,’ he writes, ‘hope was planted in our hearts and through all the noise and confetti, your angelic voice hewed a window to the essential, to the truth. You are not forgotten, Vadim Andreevich. Happy birthday.’” Gutman shook his head. “He is a poet, this comrade veteran, isn’t he? We should get our veterans to write our modern pop lyrics, eh?”
The audience laughed in approval. After the reading of postcards, a line formed at the base of the stage. People came up to Makin’s throne and piled on flowers, envelopes, and other gifts.
The theater director, Frenkel, lumbered on stage with a red folder. “We will now present a dramatic sketch about Makin’s life called ‘The World Spins Around the Song,’” he said. “Unfortunately, our respected Vadim Andreevich is still en route, but don’t despair, we have plenty of our own Makins waiting right here in the wings.”
Sonya was starting to feel cold and hungry. Her mother had insisted she wear her piano recital outfit — a brown corduroy dress with a three-tiered skirt that she couldn’t wait to grow out of. She wouldn’t want Max to see her like this. Despite herself, she searched for him in the audience again.