I look to Valya to point out the fire escape tucked behind the building’s fa?ade, but he’s transfixed by something in the lobby windows. Bathed in the soft glow of a jeweled chandelier is a full grand piano, perfectly framed by the oversize window that looks out on what must, in better weather, serve as a café. Too much space everywhere; I spot only one alley curving behind the hotel. We cross around the wide traffic circle, with a cement plug where a war-shattered fountain must have been, and into the hotel’s golden light.
Major Kruzenko handles our check-in and sends us to our rooms to change for the Party banquet. We can already hear laughter spilling down the lush carpeted hallway that leads to the ballroom. Dozens of the highest-ranking nomenklatura, scientists, and cosmonauts mingle, all anxious to see the Veter 1 slingshot around the moon. Do they know the threat that faces the launch? That my father is circling us all like prey?
I have to share my room with only Larissa, and I couldn’t be more grateful. There’s barely space for us to walk past the beds. We’d never maneuver around Masha and her suite of luggage. “I wish we didn’t have to play pretend around these people,” Larissa says, as we unpack on our double beds. “It splits my concentration. I just want to do our job and get out.”
“And by get out, you mean … our escape,” I say. I glance at her from the corner of my eye as I try to shake the wrinkles from my satin dress.
She doesn’t look my way. “Of course.”
Lara manages to set our hair in gentle curls around the temples by leaving an iron to heat on the radiator. I choke down three glasses of murky tap water, and I almost feel human. Almost ready for the task ahead.
We ride back down the elevator arm in arm, our fake-fur stoles slung across our shoulders. The doors glide open and gorgeous, rich music flows around us: the song Valentin’s been playing so much lately. My heart edges up my throat, pounding anxiously, as I cross the marble foyer. It’s as if time has stopped around me, leaving me with just the music, and Valentin hunched over the keys.
It’s too beautiful. The notes are too crystalline. I’m afraid to move through them—I might knock them to the floor and they’ll shatter.
“Hey! Yulia!” Sergei waves us over to the piano; I lurch back into myself. He’s leaning over the piano, and from Valentin’s steely expression, I’m guessing Sergei has been harassing him about one thing or another. Bozhe moi, I can’t bear to look at Sergei now. I see his lineage in his nose, his ears, his chin. I wobble on my high heels as I carefully approach the boys.
Valentin glances up at me and the music falters. Two scarlet patches sprout on his cheeks as he stumbles to pick the tune back up.
“Damn. Looking lovely, ladies,” Sergei says. “You especially, Yulia. Nothing personal, Lara, but Ivan was a good friend, and some of us understand the rules about things like that.” He takes another swig of Shampanskoye. “Want to hear something pathetic? This stupid song Valya can’t stop playing—he thinks it’ll woo an ice princess like Yulia.”
I stare slack-jawed at Sergei, like if I look hard enough, I can see some trace of that goofy, kindhearted boy who showed me around the mansion months ago. But now all I see is Rostov and Kruzenko in his cruel smirk and clueless devotion to our work. His usual good cheer has burned away leaving this drunken, sloppy mess.
“Now would be a good time to stop talking,” Valya growls.
“Valya says this song is called ‘Yulia.’ Coz it sounds like the thoughts in your head. What a borscht-for-brains. I mean, he’s such a…” Sergei’s words slur together as he leans, exaggeratedly, toward us. “Phony. Who says things like that? No one, not unless they want something from you.”
“I told you to shut up.” The music halts with a clatter. Valentin stands up, eyes burning like lit oil. His hands cock fists at the ends of his frayed suit sleeves.
“What? A failure like you doesn’t belong with her. You must be working your scrubbing magic to get her to so much as look at you. I mean, even if she did slip on the ice and bang her head and somehow liked you—you’d just run away and abandon her like poor Anastasia.”
The piano bench screeches against the marble as Valya leaps up and seizes Sergei by the collar of his shirt. “This is nothing like Anastasia.”
Larissa steps between me and the boys, like she can shield me from the truth. But it’s too late. I stagger back from the piano as if I’ve been punched. “The—the girl who went crazy?” I ask.
Larissa squeezes her eyes shut and nods. “She and Valentin were planning an escape, then he went without her…”
Valya pulls away from Sergei. “Listen, Yul, it’s not what you think—”
“Don’t.” I whirl away from him and totter toward the ballroom. My arms are electric with Anastasia’s memories: her bed, her teddy bear, her razor blade finding release on the soft interior of her arms. In one brief stretch, a lift of hope, only for it to crash down catastrophically afterward. He’d abandoned her. Promised her a way out, then ran on his own.