The door opens and a burly bald man comes in with bags. He smiles as soon as he sees me, so very happy. He addresses me in Russian—“It’s you. It’s really you.” He hands the paper bags he carries to Tito, not taking his eyes from me. “Tanechka—remember me?—Mischa?” He searches my eyes with a smile so huge and crooked it makes me feel fond of him. He can’t believe I don’t recognize him. “C’mon, Tata…”
I shake my head. “I’m not somebody you know anymore. Please, bring me back to that place. If you think you’re my friend, if you have any feeling for me, Mischa—bring me back.”
Mischa looks torn, troubled. Tito shrugs.
“Blank slate, folks,” Nikki says.
I turn away, so unsettled.
“Tanechka…” Mischa says again, then pauses, as though there’s so much he wants to say.
“Viktor’s on his way,” Tito says.
Mischa unpacks the bags and arranges pastries on a plate—vatrushkas with curd cheese in the center and lemon wedges. He steals glances at me. “Viktor thought you might be hungry.”
“Hungry?” Tito asks me.
I shake my head.
“Well, you’ll go sit at the table and eat the snack Mischa brought, or I’ll tie you there,” Tito says.
Mischa glares. “I have this. I’ll watch her.”
“Fine,” Tito says.
I sit, but I don’t eat. Mischa stands by, a strong, silent presence, like a tree. “It’s good to have you. So good,” he says after a while.
Nikki eats everything in sight. Afterwards, she snatches a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of a nearby jacket and lights up. Tito slaps it right out of her mouth. “Not in Viktor’s place.”
She stands up and goes for him, and he simply pushes her back down. She laughs. “Punk.”
Nikki would be a lovely young woman if only she’d brush her dark hair out of her eyes and sit nicely. Instead she sits with one leg thrown over the arm of the couch. The men in that place dressed her in a short white frock and white knee socks, and sitting like that, her undergarments show.
“Nikki—your—” I gesture to convey my meaning.
She simply sneers. “Yeah, you can’t get me out of these fucking clothes fast enough.” She smirks over at Tito. Tito pretends not to notice, but he notices.
“There are women’s clothes above,” one of the guys says.
Tito shakes his head. “Everybody stays in a holding pattern here until Aleksio or Viktor gets back.”
“Come on, Tito,” Nikki says. “You like me in this getup? Yeah, I think you love me in this pervy getup.”
Tito gets a dark look, then he tips up his chin. “Carlo, you take her up there and let her put something decent on. No messing shit up. Got it?”
The guard brings Nikki up.
I scan around the home, which has pleasing colors, a pleasing arrangement. I won’t stay, though. “It is his?”
“Viktor’s? Yes,” Mischa says.
“I do not know him.”
Mischa exchanges glances with Tito.
“And I will not stay.”
Mischa just stares at me. You’d think I’m a talking rabbit, the way he stares. Then Nikki comes back down in jeans, sneakers, and a torn black T-shirt that shows her belly button. Mischa widens his eyes and watches me with renewed intensity.
“Metallica for the win.” Nikki makes a hand signal of some sort, showing me two pointer fingers, two pinkies.
Mischa continues to watch me, as though I might react to Nikki in these new clothes. Why? I’m happy she has a new outfit. The old outfit was for the men, not for her.
Footfalls outside the door. I know it’s that Viktor, the one who plucked me from that place. I know it before he enters.
The door flies open.
He pauses, framed in the doorway. He wears a black suit, tie askew. He’s shed the stuffing that made him look large. His face is hard and square, but his chocolate-brown eyes sparkle. A little dent forms in his chin as he smiles.
He looks so happy, and somewhere deep down inside me, the thought that he’s beautiful rises up. But then, the devil is always beautiful.
“Tanechka.”
“You’ll take me back to that place, please.”
Viktor closes the distance between us. He kneels down at my feet, clutching the thick fabric of my nun’s robe, looking up at me from under inky lashes.
I don’t know what to do with a man kneeling at my feet like this. It’s far too familiar. I don’t recognize him, but he stirs emotions in me, like the air after a rainstorm—fresh and a little bit like tears.
“Lisichka,” he says. Little fox.
Something tugs at the edges of my mind. I steel myself and address him in Russian. “I don’t know you.” I try to back up. He won’t let me. “Take me back.”
He presses his forehead to my thighs through the coarse dark material. I feel his heat, his electricity. “I’m so sorry, lisichka.”
A strange sensation flows through me and I push him off me—with more violence than I should—and he lands on the floor. “I’m not that one,” I say urgently. “Return me.”
“Tanechka,” Nikki says. “Sister—whatever—I think you should reconsider, because this guy’s pretty fine. IMHO.”
“What the fuck do are you wearing?” Viktor barks at Nikki. “Those clothes belong to Tanechka.”
“No, they don’t,” I say.
Viktor turns to me. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“The first thing, do you mean?”