“Pasha Tarkhan, it’s been over two years. The last time I heard from you, I was in Oslo.”
“Bad place for a warm-blooded Moravian.”
“A nightmare. As cold as this Goddamn hotel.” Veliky whispered. “And who might this beautiful creature be?”
“This is my dear friend Brandy France, who’s visiting from America.”
“With most loveliest yellow hair I have seen,” Veliky gushed, proud of his English. He took her lacquered nails and put them to his lips, kissing each of her fingertips. “Do you have reservation? Think nothing of it if you don’t—I’ll get you best suite in the house.”
Brandy smiled and took a deep, long breath, putting her cheek to her shoulder like a flirt. Pasha was pleased to see her happy at last. From the kitchen, Veliky rounded up the front desk manager, who filled out their reservation card while boasting about the hotel through mouthfuls of smoked mackerel.
“Bulo will take you up to your suite,” the manager said, spraying a tiny, half-chewed morsel onto Brandy’s sleeve.
Bulo, a young bellboy of about sixteen, neither greeted them nor offered to take their bags until Pasha made him get a luggage cart. Miffed at having to exert himself, he sucked in his pimply cheeks and pouted all the way to their room.
“I’m glad you didn’t tip him,” Brandy sniffed as the boy stomped away, but Pasha wasn’t listening. He opened the large, metal door of their suite and held it for Brandy as she peeked inside.
The room was as big as a regular suite—in fact bigger, like everything else in the Hotel Yalta—but with hardly any furniture and none of the usual amenities. No bar, no welcome basket or pretty chocolates, and no robes or slippers to get cozy in. Ironically, what little furniture the place had was downright miniature compared to the antique bedroom set in Brandy’s Vienna suite. If it weren’t for the uniformed bellboys in the lobby—dressed like performing monkeys—the place could have doubled for a sanitarium.
“Don’t just stand there, my dear,” Pasha said, as he pulled their luggage cart in from the entryway. “Come in.”
The suite was a patchwork of beige and white, except for the institutional yellow linoleum in the bathroom. Their two low, single beds had been pushed together and were even harder than the ones in Austria. Brandy sat down and bounced a little on the corner of one of the mattresses. They were as stiff as dry sea sponges. The covers had been pulled tight, like they were in a military barracks, and the pillows were no bigger or softer than the decorative ones adorning the sofas of countless American living rooms. Those might read King and Queen, respectively, and be stuffed with wool. These were plain white and looked to be stuffed with crumpled tissue paper.
“I don’t even think I’ll be able to fit all of my things into these little drawers,” Brandy lamented of the bureau. “That man at the desk bragged that this hotel is state of the art. Better than anything in America. He said it’s only been open for a month and pointed to that big banner that read, ‘WELCOME TO THE HOTEL YALTA’ as if it was some sort of proof. Clearly,” Brandy huffed. “The man is a liar.”
“And what is it exactly you want me to do? Shall I ask for another suite?” Pasha opened his suitcase and began placing his folded clothes into the top drawer of their bureau, leaving the three drawers beneath it for her. Years of travel had taught him to make himself at home immediately and not live out of his baggage.
“I don’t know. Some of the older hotels we passed looked nice.” Brandy squinted out of their white nylon curtains onto Wenceslas Square several stories below. “I rather like the look of the Hotel Europa. It seems comfy and pretty.”
“The Hotel Europa is falling apart. At least we’ll get working faucets here.” Pasha eased up behind Brandy and massaged her delicate shoulders.
He wanted to say ‘welcome to the workers’ paradise,’ but he knew the irony would be lost on her. “Hotel Yalta, my dear, is where men of my position stay. It’s a monument to socialist productivity and skill.” Pasha opened his palms in a grand, presentational style. “How would it look if I stayed in one of the older, bourgeois-built hotels?”
Brandy hung her dresses—a robin’s egg Oleg Cassini, a jade Givenchy, and a watermelon Dior—in a wardrobe not much wider than their bureau. “I just don’t see why anyone would care who built a hotel and when they built it. And it’s not as if this place is cheap. It’s just… big.”
Pasha had forgotten how much Brandy liked to complain. Normally their liaisons supported only a few minutes of talk—thirty at most—as they were short on time and wanted to get down to business.
“Will you excuse me, darling? I’ll need to shave before the party tonight. Zablov should be here any minute. You remember Kosmo Zablov, don’t you? He was in Paris before getting assigned here, and used to come to Rome.”
Pasha took his razor and shaving soap out of his toilette case and entered the bath, closing the door behind him. Brandy heard the faucet turn on and the unmistakable click of the door lock.
“Pasha…” she started, and then thought better of it. A practiced wife and mistress, she knew a man needed his privacy sometimes. Brandy didn’t really feel like company right then anyway. She had a splitting headache and was upset that her clothes were all squashed together in an ugly wardrobe.
Brandy marched over to her luggage and searched her Louis Vuitton chest until she found the matching make-up case at the bottom, under her brassieres. She opened it, rummaging through her hair combs, toothpaste, mascara, eye shadow, Rouge Classique nail polish, Chanel #5, Crème la Perle hand cream, night oil, eye balm, sedatives, her toothbrush, breath mints, countless tubes of lipstick, and a small vial of ‘pick me ups’. She laid every item on the bed like they were evidence, but among all of her beauty supplies, powders, and pills there was not one single aspirin to help relieve the rhythmic pounding at her temples.
“Pasha!” she called out, but he couldn’t hear her with the water running. “Pasha, do you have any aspirin?”
Brandy sat down and put his toilette case into her lap. She unzipped it and pulled out several medicine bottles, leaving his hair balm, a comb, and pillbox inside. Amidst the antacids, laxatives, and boric acid lay a small, brown bottle of Myer aspirin.
“Pasha, I’m going to have one of your aspirin, okay? My head’s about to split.” She opened the bottle and tipped it over into her hand, but nothing came out. She shook it, hearing a ping inside, and stuck her pinky into the bottle. “Pasha, I think I’m taking your last one? Is that all right?”
Her pinky dug further until her nail hooked onto something that was sliding against the wall of the bottle. Slowly, she pulled her finger out, dragging with it a long, curly stretch of what looked like camera film, only smaller. She held the film up to the light and looked closely at some tiny, Cyrillic letters printed on what looked to be an architect’s drawing. She’d seen one of those when she and her husband, Buster, built their beach house.
“S-P-U-T-N-I-K,” she sounded out. Pasha had taught her his alphabet.
“What are you doing?”
Brandy hadn’t heard Pasha open the bathroom door and jumped up, dropping the film and the bottle onto the bed with all of her other beauty products. He was standing before her in his royal blue bathrobe with only his trousers on underneath. He didn’t look angry exactly, but all of his usual warmth was gone, replaced by nothing but a stare.
“I just wanted an aspirin, that’s all. Didn’t you hear me asking you?”