“Don’t lose that,” he warned. “It’s more important than your passport.”
Lily took the card and flipped it over a couple of times, running her index finger over the Cyrillic lettering. She’d thought of taking Russian at Wellesley, hoping to rule the cocktail party circuit with unfiltered phrases from Anna Karenina, but ended up learning Arabic instead. Languages were the only thing she’d ever been really good at and she collected them the way some people collected amusing dinner guests.
“It looks like a belt buckle,” she remarked.
Geiger shook his head. “For your purposes, it’ll get you a suite at the best hotel in Moscow, provided you show it to my good friend Fedot at the front desk. It’ll also help you know who your friends are.”
Lily mouthed “Fedot” and shrugged her shoulders. “And?”
“And, on a separate note, you’re now a member of the American Communist Party. Back-dated three years, of course. Like you joined in college.”
This time Lily laughed out loud. “What if the Ruskies find out I’m not?”
“Oh, but you are. I’ve made sure of it. It makes getting you into Russia all the easier. And getting you out a little more interesting.”
Lily stopped laughing and squeezed the card in her palm until one of its pointy edges dug into her skin. She held it up between two fingers and then flicked it at him. Geiger caught it.
“Are you out of your mind?” she said.
“Lily, keep it down.”
Lily paced in front of Geiger and then stopped, pointing her finger in his face the way he had to her. The wind was turning wild and cold, blowing her dress every which way. She wished she hadn’t worn it. “Is this about my father? Or is it about something else?”
If only, Geiger thought.
“Your father’s in Boston and he’s not going anywhere that I know of—you can call him if you want. And as for something else?” Tony folded his hands together as if he were praying. “Look… it’s not even on my radar.”
Lily hardly ever thought about that night in New York anymore, either. Until she thought about it, that is—the night she’d first met Tony and assumed, wrongly, that it was by chance. He’d approached her outside of her hotel as the bellman hailed her a cab. He said he was late and asked if he could share the ride.
They talked about the weather—it had been lousy—and about Faulkner—whom they both loved. Then he asked her out for a drink. It occurred to her, as she found herself making love with him standing up behind a beer truck outside of Chumley’s, that he’d lied about being late for an appointment. She could never, for the life of her, understand how it was that men knew they could have her without even the polite formality of a hotel room.
Then Tony just stopped in the middle of everything.
“You want to go somewhere else?” he asked.
In the cab back to the St. Regis she found he spoke Greek and Italian in addition to German and Hebrew. She didn’t speak Hebrew, but they took turns impressing each other with the languages they had in common. They also shared a love of black comedy and Tony told her that he’d never actually met a woman with a real sense of humor. He said that women he’d known liked laughing at jokes, but rarely made any.
Somehow, though, despite all of the laughing and the teasing and the fact that she was pretty sure she was the best-looking girl Tony had ever gotten into bed, they “couldn’t close the deal” as he mumbled right before passing out. He blamed the two bottles of wine they’d shared when they got back to his suite, but he hadn’t seemed all that drunk to her.
Now, as she looked at him—a year and some later—he seemed a hell of a lot older than he had then.
She watched as Tony Geiger bent down and picked up the metal card she’d flicked to the ground. He dusted it off and held it flat in his hand as if it were some kind of peace offering, the lines on his palm looking like deep scars.
“Lily, I don’t like your father very much, but I’ve got nothing against you. This is just something you can do pretty easily for me, that’s all.”
Lily rolled her eyes at him, but instead of Tony giving her some smart-ass comment, he looked down and swallowed hard. “Look,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “I need you to do this for me.”
Geiger stepped closer to her and held his hands up as if he were going to put them on her shoulders. For a second, she thought he was going to kiss her. And for a second, he wanted to.
“You’ll walk around for a couple of days, go to a party or two, and on the third day you’re there—three minutes before noon—a man with a doctor’s bag is going to ring the bell at your suite. When he arrives, you’ll show him the card, go to the safe in your chest of drawers, and give him the contents. The combination will be your birth date. Easy to remember.”
“I don’t need it to be easy—I remember everything.”
“Yeah, you do, don’t you?” Tony said. It was funny to him how she remembered every line from every book she’d ever read. It was not funny how he remembered the soft curve of her hips and the way her toes tasted in his mouth. “Anyway, you can go home any time after that. Or stay and see Mr. Lenin’s mummy if you want.”
Lily backed up and eyed Geiger from close-cropped hair to tightly laced shoe. This was definitely different from the other times, and Lily didn’t like it. Tony was edgy and distant—but as if he was acting that way on purpose. It wasn’t like he was a soft, warm blanket the other times they’d met, but he wasn’t stiff either and could laugh here and there, even if it was at her expense. She wondered if everything else until now had been a warm-up—a series of little tests meant to help him discern whether or not she could cross a line. And she wondered whether Tony ever acted real at all.
God, she was sick of men. “I’m going back to my hotel.”
“Lily!” Geiger called, as she turned on her heel and stomped to the slim path leading back to the castle. A thorn flower bush caught the painted silk scarf Lily had tied around her waist and the wind blew it off the tiny dagger of a petal, catching it around Tony Geiger’s ankle.
“Lily! Are you going to leave a legacy or a residue?”
Lily stopped and spun around.
Geiger opened his palms and smiled like he meant it.
This,” he said, holding up her airline tickets, “is a legacy.” Tony Geiger bent down and retrieved her scarf, letting it flail in the air. “What do you think a thing like this is? Bet it cost a pretty penny, but what’s it worth?”
Lily rolled her eyes and turned back towards the path. It was one of her favorite scarves—and it had cost a pretty penny—but he could keep it.
“Who’d you tell, Lily?”
Lily stopped and cocked her head.
“What?”
“Who’d you tell I was here?”
“Nobody.”
Tony Geiger took a step forward and wobbled a little bit. He closed and opened his eyes like he was shaking off a hang-over, then fell over onto his face.
“Jesus. Tony!”
Lily sprinted over and knelt beside him, running her hand down the length of his back. Something small and shaped like a pen cap was stuck between his shoulder blades. She pulled it out and saw that the thing had a thick needle that protruded from the top. Lily gasped and threw it to the side.
“Can you talk?” she asked him.
Tony’s eyes were open and his lips were still moving—not as if he was trying to tell her something, but rather in a struggle to keep breathing. She took his hand on impulse, holding it and squeezing his fingers until Tony Geiger was gone and she was alone.