Their exchange had become a wilted echo of their earlier conversation. From the other side of the bedroom door came moaning sounds and a hacking cough. “I need to go,” she said. But his hand reached out for her wrist.
The compulsion to work, to be useful, to escape futility’s grip—maybe these things foretold a deeper wish to be used up. Eradicated. Maybe the pleasures of being backed up against the wall, of having your head wrenched back by its curly hair until you puffed shallow breaths, perhaps these satisfactions and others came from the same obliterating impulse that made the soul search for a cause worthy of consuming it. The varied delights of being lifted and flung across a sofa bed, and having your raw backside pressed into its scratchy fibers while a man pinned back your fists and crushed his erection into your thigh, and washed the dusty residue of your thoughts away with a roughly stroking tongue on your nipple—maybe it all arose from a primordial yearning to be completely spent.
Sergey’s face, hovering over her, was deadly serious. No jokes now. None of the outlandish, hick excitement of the foreigner. His claim over her body was that of a man who might have been her lover for years. When he came, his back broke out in one fierce sweat. But in that very instant he was off of her, for even in this paroxysm of passion he had the foresight, or experience, to pull out and roll down onto the floor. He lay there in his gorgeous natural state for several minutes while Florence stretched out lengthwise on the cushions and let her head fall back. In her ears was the unexpected loudness of birds at dawn. The soreness between her legs brought curious fulfillment, if not exactly pleasure. She placed her hand between her thighs and confirmed the loss of her innocence with the ferric smudge on her fingertips. Sergey was lying on the floor, his eyes still shut. He seemed to have noticed nothing. Her head was pounding from sleeplessness, she had bits of egg white in her hair, her breath very likely stank, and she was shivering as if from a chill. And yet she had never felt so light-headed in her own desirability, so awakened to herself, so animated and frightened by the awareness of her own freedom. Despite her veneration for Emma Goldman, with boys her age she had never done anything more than neck. Only five hundred miles from home could she have allowed this to happen. She tried to summon up some sense of solemnity for the loss of her prolonged girlhood, but came up with nothing but a bird’s song.
Through the upside-down window Florence could see the first pale prairie light entering the sky. She got up and found her bloomers, a big cotton pair that suddenly mortified her. She watched the movement of his chest, the rise and fall of the soft dark hair on his belly, and the thicker hair around the impressive but now harmless member that Sergey, his eyes closed, displayed with uninhibited candor. She had an overpowering urge to cup her fingers around it, to test its reality with a touch.
Her hand did not get a centimeter past his stomach before Sergey cracked open one eye. He peered up at her like a smiling Cyclops, then abruptly curled himself up and planted a kiss between her collarbones.
“Your smell—what is it?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. Eggs? I should go.”
“Why?” he said, trailing his prickling cheek down her sternum.
“I don’t want him to find me here.”
“Don’t worry. He will be sleeping until noon.”
Quickly, she slipped her dress on over her arms and head. “What was Fyodor going on about last night?”
Sergey had found his trousers and put them on without bothering to look for his underwear. “He doesn’t believe half of what he says, and the other half he can’t remember.”
“I mean about you coming back with lint in your pockets?”
Sergey took a thoughtful breath and buttoned his pants. “McKee is still refusing to change the mill plans. We cannot agree to the terms that make us buy all the steel they require. They claim there isn’t enough time to make the changes we want.”
“Will it really take that long?”
“Maybe for them. For me and Fyodor, we could do it in three weeks—while we have original plans to work from.”
“Then they ought to let you do it. They complain that you sit around doing nothing.”
Sergey gave her an indulgent smile. “Flora, you lovely girl. It is not enough to have blueprint. We also need manuals.”
“What manuals?”
“With specifications—strength, density, material properties.” He sighed. “For conversion.”
“McKee’s got a whole library of technical manuals on the sixth floor.”
Sergey sighed again, as if communication was impossible. “But who will let us on the sixth floor?”
“It’s not classified material. Just ask permission.”
“It is easier, I find, to ask for forgiveness than for permission, Florence.”
“What are you saying?”
He touched his temple. “I should not have said anything.”
The sober, reasonable part of her mind told her not to pursue this any further. She watched Sergey button his shirt over his splendid chest.
“Wait,” she said. “Tell me.”
Sergey rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “They do not want to lose their commission from Burlington Steel. They do not want to admit the plant can be built from cheaper materials. There is only one way to defang their argument, to show them—yes, it can be done!” He’d gotten to the top button of his shirt. “So you see now—our difficulty.”
The difficulty, as Florence saw it, was that the Russians needed desperately to industrialize, while McKee and Burlington were conspiring to inflate the costs and squeeze them out of their last kopek. “It’s hardly fair to you,” she said.
Sergey shrugged. “?‘Business is business’ is the expression, no?”
“I suppose I could obtain those manuals for you,” she heard herself say.
He looked up at her with an almost loving surprise. “You would really do this?” He seemed unsure suddenly. “No, I cannot ask you….” But there was in his imploring eyes already that joyful mix of gratitude and admiration that some part of her seemed to need like oxygen.
“We’d have to be careful,” she said.