The icon. That was what he wanted. We should have just given it back the first day. I could have brought it downstairs when we met to go to the Hermitage and said, “Look what I found on the floor,” or “Look what Peter brought back from the dean’s office. He thought it was a present. He’s not all that bright.” And then we could have bonded and become good friends. They probably already figured Peter had some kind of mental issue because of his urban bowler, so it wouldn’t have been hard to convince them that he had been included in our group via some type of special program.
But for some reason I couldn’t wrap my brain around at the moment, I had insisted that we hide the thing instead. And pretend we had no idea how or why it had disappeared.
And now I was going to die.
Not that it mattered. I mean, I’d been expecting that my whole life.
The catastrophe was finally here.
It was all over.
I thrust my arm into Pretty Putin’s.
“We’re best friends,” I said. “BFF.”
I could tell he thought I was becoming psychotic, and everything pointed to his being right. My mind reeled and I saw glowing spots on the street ahead of us. They were jumping around like little fairies. It was beautiful to watch.
“What are you talking about? You’re like a—”
“A what?”
“A parrot! You talk and talk and make it impossible for other people to think. Can’t you be quiet for two minutes?”
I hardly heard him. His voice was like the whistling wind.
“Quiet?”
“Be quiet? You? For two minutes?”
“Don’t give in to hate,” I said. “Order and chaos.”
28
The others were still waiting in the lobby when we arrived at the opera house, so there was no way we were as late as Peter had made it sound. But I didn’t have the strength to get into it with him. I made do with noting that they had, in fact, each walked right into their own honey trap. Peter was chuckling at something Irina had just said, while Ingvill was watching Ivan with rapturous eyes. He was looking down into a glass of wine.
“Ah, the Mariinsky Theatre,” Peter said. “I’ve spent so many lovely evenings here.”
“You’ve been to Saint Petersburg before?” I asked, surprised.
“Well . . . ,” he began, but stopped and took a sip from his glass. “At any rate the opera we’re going to see is wonderful. I’m sure I’m not far off if I say that this is the two hundred thirtieth time it’s been performed?”
“That’s right,” Irina said with a nod. “Many people believe it is our foremost national epic.”
“Prince Igor,” I said, flipping through the program. “I can’t recall ever having heard of it.”
Ingvill laughed and tried to roll her eyes. It made her look like a constipated cow.
“Have you heard of it?” I asked, irritated.
“Of course.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“It’s about Prince Igor, obviously.”
“Prince Igor? Yes, and . . . ?”
She just smiled vacuously. She’d bought herself a glass of white wine. I thought about the cough syrup I had put in my purse and wondered if it would be a good idea to take another swig, but decided that it wasn’t. Either way, it didn’t taste good and it burned in my throat. Although the effect was good.
“Prince Igor is about men who go off to fight in a meaningless war, while the women stay home to do most of the work,” Irina said.
I laughed and nodded my head knowingly, but Irina didn’t seem to have intended any sarcasm. She gave me a scornful look and then took Peter by the arm and started pulling him down the hallway. She mumbled something about wanting to show him some interesting carvings.
That arm grab made me nervous, but there wasn’t really any acceptable way for me to follow them. Besides, I wasn’t feeling so good. I started flipping through the program to find out how long this epic was meant to last. Four hours, it said.
“I think I’ll buy a glass of wine,” I said.
“I’ll join you,” Pretty Putin said.
He led me up some stairs and into a narrow hallway, to a little bar where people were conversing quietly. I bought two glasses and handed one to him.
“Here.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Are you sure?”
He took it, anyway, while I pulled out the cough syrup and poured a few drops into my glass.
“Do you think that’s wise?” he asked.
“We can’t always be wise,” I said, giving it a stir with my finger. “Sometimes you just have to step on the gas to survive the turn.”
“Why do you keep opening and closing your hand all the time?”
I looked down at my hand.
“Have you seen Reversal of Fortune?”
“No.”
“It’s about Sunny von Bülow, who was in a coma for twenty-eight years until she died in 2008. True story.”
“And . . . ?”
“I’m kind of wondering if I’m in a coma right now.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. Everything is so strange here.”
“Typical Europeans. You make everything about yourselves.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think all this”—he gestured around with his arm—“is something you made up? That it only exists in your imagination? What an ego!”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“Peter says you just bought a new house?”
“That’s right.”
“A very expensive house, if I’m not mistaken? You spent more than you’d planned?”
“Quite a bit more, yes.”
“And you could use a little extra?”
My body went cold. He could tell, because a little smile appeared on his lips.
“May I give a little sage advice?” he said.
I nodded.
“Behave like a guest. Respect the host. Don’t reach for more than your share.”
The room started slowly spinning. I tried to find something disarming to say, but there wasn’t anything.
Pretty Putin took a long drink from his wineglass, placed it on a table, and moved closer. To the people around us we surely looked like lovers. Just like in that James Bond movie where he falls in love with a Russian agent. Who got shot and died.
“You know,” he whispered into my ear, “that we have special prisons for women here in Russia.”
“I see,” I said shakily, trying to make it sound as if we were discussing everyday touristy sorts of things, but it was hard for my thoughts to keep up when he was standing so close to me. Besides, I suddenly felt really hot. I opened and closed my hand.
Fist.
Flat hand.
Fist.
Flat hand.
Pretty Putin took my hand and held it in a firm grasp.