Thea Greenberg (greengroweth) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-02 22:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | denethor, katherine of aragon |
Who: Svetlana and Alexander
When: Wee small hours of the morning
Where: In the lobby of Passages Hotel
What: The two meet up to see if you can play one section of the Russian mob off of another
Warnings: Mild profanity and reference to violence against children
The lobby to the hotel was dimly lit with faintly, valiantly glowing lamps near the dusty front desk. The mirrors bounced the light, refracted it, and gave it a bit more power than the old lamps could have produced on their own, but all the same, Svetlana was a shadow all in black as she waited, leaning against a dusty couch. She wore a simple, long-sleeved black dress and heels, a black coat overtop of it, and the only colour she wore was her red lips. Even her bright red hair was severe, twisted sharply away from her face and held firmly in place, no sign of escape possible. Her expression was drawn, too, as she waited, resisting the urge to look at her phone and stare at the time -- late, 1:25 in the morning, the time she usually went home, took off those aching heels, and collapsed into bed -- and instead she twisted the plain band on her left hand, silent and otherwise still.
At 1:32, the main doors of the lobby opened. The man who limped through was dressed plainly, in dark jeans and a long-sleeved dark blue t-shirt, and he leaned heavily on an unadorned medical cane as he dragged his right foot slowly along. He would have been six feet even, if he hadn’t hunched to use the cane, which seemed mostly to be for balance. He moved nervously, but slowly, though seemed to relax when he caught sight of Svetlana, sitting on the couch, for then he straightened, nodding to her. “Svetlana, I presume,” he said with the slightest smile. His heavy-lined face was handsome when he smiled.
“Usually,” Svetlana replied, straightening to her feet. Oh, they ached. She smiled, and didn’t let it show. “Alexander, I also presume. So long as no-one’s actually Dr Livingston, all our presumptions are quite safe.”
“Only Mr Berenger, I’ve never been a doctor,” Alexander assured her. He limped his way across the floor to stand in front of her, offering his hand. “Sorry about the time, I know it’s late and inconvenient, but I thought some things were better discussed without a textual record.” He turned his head to look around him. “I’ve never been here before, it’s just the address that came with my book. What do you know about it?”
Svetlana shook his hand and smiled. “It is, as improbable as it sounds, a gateway to other worlds, apparently. You have your key. It fits a door in this place, and when you step through it, your passenger gets to be driver, and you’re the one riding shotgun,” she explained. “I ended up here on Christmas Eve. Not exactly my idea of a good time. But I’m finicky, I suppose, and hadn’t intended to do anything on Christmas Eve, let alone that.”
“Improbable is one word for it,” Alexander agreed, “but it’s all so improbable, that’s just the icing on the cake. I believe you,” he added, quickly, “it’s just so... well, you understand.” He rolled his shoulders a little. God, he was tired. But this was more important than an hour or two of sleep. “Is there a private place to talk or shall we just speak very softly out here?”
“I don’t know,” Svetlana admitted, glancing around. “But if this is a grand old hotel, then there might be lounges and such upstairs. And there’s an elevator that works. It’s rickety, but it works. Willing to give it a go?”
“It’s got to be better than the stairs,” Alexander said with a sad laugh. “Lead the way, if you would? Or you’ll be stuck behind me and fall asleep waiting for me to get on with it. I’m afraid I walk pretty slowly these days.” He felt quite self-conscious of his limp, as he often did when he left the house, but at least she wasn’t staring. It would have been unbearable if she’d stared.
Svetlana shrugged. “It’s no big deal, believe me. I’ve worked with plenty of guys worse off,” she said casually. “Besides, these heels are killing me, I’m not going to be setting land speed records myself, here.” All the same, she strode off towards where she remembered the elevator to be, even if her pace was indeed hampered by the shoes. They were fabulous, but they were good for six hours and no more. After that, she regretted her life and all her choices. But the casino and the men who frequented it expected a certain kind of woman to be there -- the kind that wore expensive black heels with red soles, and smiled when they made passes at her.
When they were standing in the terrifying elevator, Alexander leaning heavily on the cane, he watched the old-fashioned grate doors close nervously. To avoid any appearance of discomfort, he asked, as casually as possible, “so, you translate in the casinos?”
Svetlana smiled. It was frighteningly false. “As of last month, yes,” she agreed. “It was an unexpected change in careers.”
“Ah,” Alexander said slowly. “Where was home, before that?” It was, perhaps, the world’s slowest elevator, which made its rickety, creaking movement up the floors utterly terrifying. He gripped the handle of his cane as the metal creaked at him. The sooner he was out of the claustrophobic metal can, the better. It was late, after all, and the light passed through the grate eerily and unevenly, and not even his antidepressants slowed down the strange pains in his chest when it was late and metal creaked and the light wobbled just so.
“Chicago,” Svetlana admitted. Was it foolish? This was all potentially foolish. Alexander had a kind face. That meant nothing. Leonid’s face had seemed kind once, too. Alexander had children that he was obviously devoted to, daughters he clearly loved. Did Leonid make a fuss over Lena and Valya in public, too? This could be the death of her. But the faint fear that passed over Alexander’s face as the elevator creaked and rattled made her suspect that no, perhaps it was not. Sometimes, Katherine whispered helpfully, a pause in the litany of Latin, you have to trust, with care, and find the aid you need. You cannot do this alone, no matter how much you think you could.
“I’ve never been out that way,” Alexander said. His voice was surprisingly steady, for all that he seemed very pale. “But I’m a California native and never really made it east of the Rockies.” He exhaled with some relief when the elevator shuddered to a halt. He pushed his way forward to open the elevator door for Svetlana. As he held the grate back for her, he added, “it must be hard to be away from your children, you seem fond of them.”
“I miss them every day,” Svetlana said sincerely. “But some things can’t be helped.” At least, not yet. She walked through the door, and looked up and down the darkened corridor. There were a few double doors ajar -- lounges, she supposed, or reading rooms. They’d do. She led the way again, trusting he was behind her.
Alexander was grateful to see an oversized, plush couch, awkwardly floral, but which had with it the promise of stretching his leg out. “I am supposed to be at home taking my medication right now, please forgive me if I’m not the best conversationalist,” he said honestly enough as he lowered himself onto the couch, barely paying attention to his setting as he gently pulled his leg up. “But I wanted to see if I can help you, that seemed like it shouldn’t wait.”
“I appreciate it, really I do,” Svetlana said, sinking into a chair opposite and crossing her legs. “I can’t quite decide why you’ve decided to help me. After all, we could be at cross purposes. Russian women are dangerous, you know.” It would have been a joke if it hadn’t been delivered so flatly, a statement of terrible fact.
“I have no purposes,” Alexander admitted. “I live to raise my daughters and maybe help someone through my work. I guess when the pieces started to come together I felt... I don’t know.” He wished suddenly, adamantly, he was medicated. Maybe this had been a mistake. What was he supposed to say to her, now that he was looking at her? That he felt sorry for her? This woman didn’t want his pity. “My life would be over if I lost my girls, I guess, is what it comes down to. And I get stupid ideas in my head, and if someone was coming between me and my children, I sure as hell would wish somebody offered me help. I...” Alexander swallowed, his expression saddening. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but one thing I do know absolutely, no child should be taken forcefully from a mother who loves them and isn’t hurting them.”
“I would cut off my hand tomorrow to have them back,” Svetlana confessed, and the words were painful to say aloud. “But I am effectively banished, and if I make the wrong move ... God, how cliche, but the consequences will be dire. For them. He can do anything he wants to me, but it’s them I worry about.” Be brave, Katherine whispered.
Alexander nodded slowly, his expression sad with sympathy. “I have... friends... who can probably help you. I’m pretty useless, obviously,” his smile bittered, as he said it, “but children should never have to go through this sort of thing. And I suspect my friends and your problems are natural enemies.”
“I get the feeling you are less useless than you seem,” Svetlana said frankly. “I don’t know who your enemies are. But I know the tech firm. And I am not someone they would appreciate, I don’t think. I admit to being on the periphery of all of this. But that doesn’t mean I’m not damned by association.”
Alexander pressed his lips together for a moment. “Here’s the truth,” he said, suddenly, the words a rush with the spike of pain traveling along his leg, white-hot like a sudden nausea, “I’m the half-adopted son of the Zaytevs who operate out of Sacramento. They are the closest thing I have to family. And if you have work here, that means somebody’s paying you, and it’s not their guys, because Chicago is not their stomping ground. If helping you means their favorite casinos and gathering places aren’t swarming with spies and rivals, they’ll do it. Because it was me, and I asked, and it’s about children, and it serves their aims, too. But I’m not in the business, I am nobody, I’m a dispatcher, I just know things I shouldn’t.”
Svetlana was very still and very quiet, watching him warily, the colour drained away from her face and it left her eyes a peculiar and striking shade of grey-green. She looked like a cornered lioness, and it was impossible to say what she would do -- whether she would bolt or bite. “I know of them,” she said at last, her voice quiet with strain, and she lapsed into Russian without thinking about it. “My husband’s involved with Solntsevskaya Bratva. He is holding my children hostage so that I won’t divorce him and try to take them from him, shame him in front of his associates, dishonour him. He’s threatened to kill them if I try. So you see, I have every reason to want him dead, but I cannot take any risk that he will know it was me and hurt them. I cannot.”
Alexander nodded slowly, sadly. Well, it made perfect sense. He knew he was in over his head, but... but. She hadn’t asked for help, he had volunteered. And his heart tightened in his chest at the thought of her children, never seeing their mother again. He knew what that did to children, after all. “Your children could be rescued,” he said after a moment, “and you could go into hiding, but to make this problem go away your husband will have to die eventually.” Nothing she didn’t know, to be sure. “But the timing would need to be very precise, and you will need friends you haven’t made yet.”
“Which is why I’m kept under tight watch. Everything I do is watched. Why do you think they put me in the casinos here? To make sure I don’t get in touch with my contacts who could help me,” Svetlana said, shaking her head. “I despise being a good little girl. I’m terrible at it. And that’s all he wants. So that he can have his mistresses and his honour, and I pay for being ...” she searched for the word, and all that came to her was in English: “uppity.”
“Well, they didn’t count on this, did they?” Alexander asked. His expression was grim, and yet there was an unexpected lightness about him. He seemed so much more than the sum of his parts, like he might, perhaps, actually have some plan or be able to help. “They might be tracking everything you do but there are ways of tricking them. They can’t come here and they can’t follow your conversations in the books. There’s a whole network of people who can hide you, cover for you, provide you contacts and tools. Surely through the right combination of discretion and bribery we can find help for you, even beyond my resources.”
“I don’t have resources beyond what is controlled by my husband. My means to bribe anyone are limited,” Svetlana told him, but she felt a small spark of hope licking at the air, trying to become a flame. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart, old poetry that came back to her unbidden.
You see? Katherine asked somewhere in the back of her head, and Svetlana swore she sounded smug. There are always good souls who will come to the aid of a lady in need.
“There’s got to be something,” Alexander protested. “You don’t have any friends outside his circles? No family? No surprisingly useful skills? Right now all I know about you is your problem and who it’s with, I need more than that. What about the person you hear? Don’t they have resources or contacts that might help you?”
Svetlana hesitated. In for a penny, she thought. “I used to work at the State Department,” she admitted. “I was a translator and analyst. I have a cousin here in Vegas, I don’t think Leonid knew she was here. My grandparents are out in the countryside, they have a ranch, but I don’t want to get them involved. They’re old, it would be too much for them. I ... have a very nice voice, but I don’t know if she’s useful.”
“Well,” Alexander stumbled in English, genuinely surprised by her old line of work. “Well, uh... that might help.” He wished, suddenly, he was not quite so alone. He could trust Sevastian, but he wasn’t in the country, at the moment, and it would be dangerous to make phone calls. And he couldn’t just up and tell Sevastian’s parents without Sevastian’s guidance. God. What would Alys have suggested? Alys, who was so fearless? She’d have started with the practicals. Making life bearable for Svetlana until help could actually arrive. That’s what Alys would have done. “How often do you think you can come here without suspicion? If I leave things for you here, like a prepaid cell phone nobody is tracking, will you be able to use them?”
“I think so,” Svetlana said, shifting back to English easily, no hint of an accent at all. “I can hide things fairly well. It’s just getting them that’s difficult. I can probably get here once a week or so. Especially if I play nice and don’t give anyone any reason to suspect that something’s going on. That will help. I can play the contrite, pathetic wife if I have to.”
“My main points of contact aren’t in the country,” Alexander admitted, “and I am of limited use in most things until they return. But I can bring you methods of contacting the outside world, a phone, maybe a cheap computer. If you still have friends in the State Department they might be able to get your children to safety by coordinating with their schools, and if they can do that part, I think when my contacts return I can hide you here in Las Vegas, where it will be more work than it’s worth for people to try and harm you. It’s not a great solution, but your children would be safe.”
“I don’t care about the work. I’ve never cared about the work. What’s effort in the face of all of this?” Svetlana said, shaking her head. “We just have to go slow, and avoid making obvious, stupid mistakes. Having a means of contacting people outside of the book or my monitored phone and computer will help. It’s a start. And even if your aid began and ended there, I would be beyond grateful to you.”
“I can bring you a phone,” Alexander promised her. “And probably a little netbook you can keep with you so nobody steals it to install tracking software. And I will see what my friends can do for you. I don’t think it’s nothing.” His expression softened, very kind. “No one should have to go through this. I know we are strangers, but I do promise you this, you do have one friend in Vegas. I will help you as much as I can.”
For a long moment, Svetlana was quiet, her face thoughtful. Then, she said, half-jokingly, “I really hope your voice isn’t some kind of Bond villain, here. You so don’t deserve that.”
“I really don’t think there is a voice,” Alexander admitted. “I really don’t. The book came to me by error, but I guess for a purpose. I’ll keep the book and key if this is what it means, that some help came to you in your hour of need.” He smiled, a thin, strained thing, as his leg made another spasm of pain, his whole leg going rigid and jerking slightly as the muscles involuntarily tensed. He had to drive home on this. He should have been home an hour ago, falling asleep to the hazy fever-dreams of codeine.
“I guess we’ll see,” Svetlana said, but she hadn’t missed that spasm, the tension in his face, and her own expression softened. “You should get home. Take care of yourself. You can’t wear yourself out on my problems when you’ve got kids at home with stuff of their own to worry about.”
Alexander laughed, but the sound was strained, as if he was laughing so as not to cry, and his eyes shut for a moment. “It’s light traffic at this hour, I’ll get home just fine, a few minutes won’t make a difference.” He smiled again when he opened his eyes, but he seemed old and weary. “Besides, I can’t get up until the leg stops seizing. I crushed nerves in my leg about five years ago when my knee relocated up my leg, if I try to stand up right now I will be on the floor till dawn. It’ll pass in a little.”
“Jesus,” Svetlana breathed in horrified sympathy. “That’s impressive in all the bad ways. What can I do? Anything?” She suspected the answer was no, but it was the right thing to do, to ask.
“Would you sit with me?” Alexander asked, his voice soft. “If you can, I mean, if you have to go back to avoid questions, do that instead. But there’s something kind of awful about the prospect of sitting in this creepy old place alone. Old hotels kind of give me the creeps anyway. My wife thought they were atmospheric, but she also loved horror films. I’ve seen this movie, the lights are going to go out and something sketchy will come through the doorway, and it’s goodnight Shura, the cripples never survive horror films.” Why was he talking about Alys? He shut his eyes again.
Wife, past tense. Svetlana stayed where she was, and only shifted to recross her legs, letting one of her shoes dangle from her toes, a hint of relief. “It’s all right, I can sit a while,” she said softly. “They are kind of creepy, aren’t they? It’s the transitory nature of hotels. Nothing is permanent, and how easy is it for a soul to get lost in transition here, endlessly wandering corridors, unable to find a way out? It’s the fear of dying away from home and loved ones, I think. In the midst of strangers, et al.” She was rambling. She closed her mouth sharply, embarrassed.
“You’re not helping,” Alexander said, opening one eye, squinting at her, but his mouth was curling towards smile. “I promise when the rampaging ghost bursts through the door I’ll hit it with my cane, giving you time to escape. Apparently there’s a door somewhere in here that opens for the key that came to me.” He paused a moment, before pulling the ornate black key out of his pocket and tossing it at her. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, myself.”
Svetlana caught it, snatching it out of the air, and turned it over in her palm, peering at it. “It’s beautiful,” she said at last. “I wonder where it goes. The key only opens one door. You just kind of ... feel it. You know where yours is, even if you’ve never seen it before. They go together, pulling like magnets and steel.” She tossed it back, and withdrew hers from the neckline of her dress. The chain was gold and long, and the key glittered in the dim light -- gold, the hilt set with dark garnets set to form a rich pomegranate in the hilt. “Since I believe in share and share alike.”
“I don’t really want to find out,” Alexander admitted, as he caught the key and shoved it back into his pocket. “My girls have been through enough, God knows, their lives are bad enough without me adding strange burdens. I am already gone peculiar hours. Yours is beautiful, though. Do you know where it goes?”
Svetlana shrugged. “Kind of,” she admitted, letting it drop to rest against the black of her dress. “Christmas was weird -- goyische holidays are, sorry -- and I felt ... I don’t know. Pulled. Like I had to go. I ended up in what I think was a weird reenactment of It’s A Wonderful Life, it looked like the same set -- don’t judge me, I always worked weird shifts around Christmas for the feds and we watched odd things at odd hours. But she’s ... she’s not from there. She’s a queen. Which sounds crazy, but there you go. I think she’s from The Tudors, but she acts like the real deal. Which is one hell of a shotgun rider to have, really.”
Alexander was quiet, taking it in. “So you got stuck in a snowed-out version of the hotel, waiting for bumbling angels to get their wings, and a queen from sexy history tv gives you her opinion on the modern world? Well that’s...” he searched for a word, coming up with nothing. “God your life is special.”
“Tell me about it,” Svetlana sighed. “She’s Katherine of Aragon, another woman with a mega-asshole husband who can’t keep it in his pants who’s happy to screw over their kid to get what he wants. So I really, really sympathise. A lot.”
“...yeah, I see why,” Alexander said after a moment of trying to decide what to say. “I’ve never understood how anyone can be total assholes to children. But I guess I wouldn’t. My girls are the only reason I’m not dead, and if those two nightmares mean so much to me how much must other people’s kids mean to them?” He paused uncertainly before he asked, “do you want to see them? I have pictures on my phone.”
“Of course I do,” Svetlana confirmed, getting up to come crouch by the couch where he was. “I bet they’re gorgeous.”
“Just like their mother,” Alexander agreed, reaching into his pocket to draw out his phone. The background image on the phone when the screen flickered to life was of a red-haired, smiling woman, hand in hand with two girls, the oldest no more than six or seven. Alexander stared at the phone for a moment, before he smiled awkwardly, but there was an odd tightness in his voice. “My girls on a trip to California,” he said softly, “to visit their grandparents. Years ago.”
“They look very much like their mother,” Svetlana said softly. She recognised this for what it was -- impossible to miss, really. Poor man. Poor girls. She wondered how it had happened, and was willing to bet it had to do with the leg. He wore that disability like armour, and the reasons made sense when put together that way.
“Lucky things, they could have looked like me,” Alexander said, without any sharpness, as he opened up the albums of pictures on his phone. “Here we are at Christmas,” he continued, showing her recent pictures, “there’s Alya,” he said, his tone warming, “for some reason she’s decorating the cat, Fluff Machine. No I didn’t name her.”
Svetlana laughed softly. “We had a hamster named Lobster. I have no idea where Lena got that name, she’s never eaten a lobster in her life. So I feel your pain.”
“Here’s Melanie,” Alexander said, laughing as he warmed up to his topic. “She’s showing off the new earrings my best friend sent her from Russia. I thought the book was a Christmas present, at first, it arrived right around that time. I couldn’t figure out why somebody would send me a blank book with drawings. It turns out the real answer isn’t any more sensible.”
“That’s the way of reality, I think. In fiction, everything has to make sense,” Svetlana said, a touch wryly.
Alexander smiled at her. It was a more true smile than the other tight, strained expressions the night had contained. There was something about his kids that always managed to make him relax, in the end, even knowing they were at home, fast asleep, and had no idea he was worlds away sitting on a couch in a hotel that was a doorway to other worlds. The picture tour of his children went on; at least his girls were as pretty as he had boasted. Frequently, a dark-haired man about Alexander’s age appeared in the pictures; playing with the girls, in the middle of frying something for breakfast, a few pictures clearly taken by his children, of the dark-haired man sitting beside Alexander. “God, I’m sorry,” he said after a moment staring at an “artistic” photograph by one of his daughters, the fluffy cat filtered through many, many filters. “I must be so late. We should probably both get out of here.”
“Are you feeling good enough to make the drive?” Svetlana asked, setting to her feet. Oh, they ached. But she didn’t let it show. What use was there in complaining about something so small as aching feet?
“I’ll be fine,” Alexander promised her, sliding his phone into his pocket as he reached for his cane so he could start the arduous process of standing. “Pain’s a funny thing, knowing I have somewhere to be, and that when I get there medication is waiting for me, I’ll hardly feel it. Well, I’ll feel it, but it’ll hardly matter. It’s an odd thing, really. Don’t worry about me.”
“Jewish,” Svetlana said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. Carefully, she tucked away the key and buttoned up her coat, her car keys reassuringly solid in her pocket.
Alexander pushed to his feet. It hurt, everything hurt, cascades of white like a feverdream of pain, but he smiled anyway, as if smiling would change something. “I’ll leave you a note in the book when I can drop a phone off for you.” He began to make his way slowly towards the door. Another round with the World’s Creepiest Elevator. Wouldn’t that be marvelous.
“Thanks, really,” Svetlana said, leading the way again. It was easier to lead the way, shepherd him around a bit, but that was always her tendency. A mother hen from the womb onwards, really.
Alexander leaned on the cane heavily as he waited for the elevator. Why wasn’t it where they’d left it? He would not have thought anyone else would be wandering around this godforsaken place. “Does it disturb you at all,” he asked softly, “to contemplate that someone else used this elevator after us, but before now? Do you wonder at all who else is in such strange circumstances that they needed the elevator at 2? I’m still not convinced this isn’t a horror film. Maybe I should stand in front of you in case it’s horror all the way down once the door opens.”
“People come and go, I presume. Some voices are demanding, if one can take the books at face value,” Svetlana said with a shrug. “It could be horror all the way down, or it could be that somebody else got off the nightshift and Superman had to go save Gotham or something.”
“God, that would be awful,” Alexander said. “There’d better not be any saving-the-world nonsense expected of me. It’s going to seriously cut into family time, and I refuse to go on a guilt trip about how the time I spend making dinner could be spent saving known civilization. How are you supposed to have a life when your alter-ego is a self-important hero with supervillains to punch, anyway?”
“Son, I live with the Queen of England,” Svetlana said dryly, “so ask me that question again.”
Alexander laughed. It was a pleasant sound, and his face lit up with amusement. “All right, all right, I take it back,” he replied warmly, looking directly at her as he spoke. Still, when the elevator arrived with a screech of metal, he jumped, unexpected, not away from the noise but towards it, sliding forward between Svetlana and the dimly lit elevator as it creaked to a halt, an instinct he had no time to process. “Jesus,” he said uncertainly, his hand on the cane trembling, just a little, “that thing scares the piss out of me.”
Because that was so the reaction of a man scared shitless, Svetlana thought. “It’s okay,” she said aloud. “No big thing, really.” Fearlessly, she edged around him and pulled open the cage door.
“It’s hilarious,” Alexander said, in the tone that suggested anything but, “I’m an emergency responder with claustrophobia so acute I cannot ride in an ambulance, and I’m scared of loud noises. I guess there’s a reason I never leave the office.” His heart was pounding in his chest, and his blood racing in his ears, but he remained steady as the grate shut and the elevator started its creaky descent downwards.
“You are obviously made for your job,” Svetlana said dryly. “Don’t feel bad. I went to the State Department afraid of speaking in groups and terrified of talking to people over the phone. I recovered, at least.”
“I hate talking on the telephone too, actually,” Alexander said, “I don’t have the world’s best hearing, everything turns into the teacher from Charlie Brown if I don’t have the right earpiece. And I’m the dispatcher. I could have thought my job through better.” The elevator creaked its way downwards, and he watched the shadows in the elevator grow and shrink. This was the kind of nightmare he hated; waiting, everything moving so slowly, in a metal case that had no power to save him if something went awry, only to explode magnificently. He reminded himself thousands of people had ridden the elevator. Unhelpfully, that only served as one in a long list of reasons it was prime for mechanical failure.
“We’re both such happy, normal, well-adjusted people,” Svetlana said, tapping her foot on the elevator floor. His tension was infectious, and she wanted out of the steel cage promptly. Finally, the elevator lurched to an unsteady halt, and Svetlana yanked open the door as soon as she was able.
“I am extremely well-adjusted for my psychological history,” Alexander quipped wryly as he hobbled out behind her. “I have never contemplated a large string of serial murders or a violence-based revenge bender without regard for collateral damage. I believe in rewarding my adherence to relatively low standards of sanity.”
“Well, hell, a day without contemplating murder is a day that earns a cookie,” Svetlana replied, just as wry.
“Oh, so you do want the fortune cookies after all,” Alexander said, managing to smile. It was a sly, handsome expression. “I’ll let you have one even if you only got through work by imagining your clients choking on their diamond-dusted caviar. Why stop at one. A half-dozen.”
“Please, it is in fact gold-dusted caviar, diamond is gritty and that would offend our clientele's delicate and refined palette,” Svetlana replied imperiously, tossing her head in play-haughtiness. It broke a moment later with a grin, just this side of wicked.
Alexander laughed again. She was so very pretty when she was smiling. Not that he should notice those things. “Oh, I beg the pardon of your clients,” he replied lightly as he limped along, “I am only a stupid American, I wouldn’t know the difference between gold leaf and tin foil left on my dinner if someone didn’t tell me.”
“All I know is all that shit ain’t kosher,” Svetlana said with a shrug and a laugh, keeping easy pace with him. He was strangely easy to talk to. “It’s a fantastic excuse to get out of eating obnoxious food when offered. And it usually works, too.” She paused by the door, and her face sobered. “I should leave alone. Just in case someone is watching. I doubt they are, but I’m prone to paranoia.”
“Please be careful,” Alexander said softly, lowering himself into a chair by the door, to indicate she ought to leave first. “Maybe you could put a note in the book when you are safe at home, or wherever it is you’re staying. I’m nervous for you, now.”
“Don’t be nervous for me,” Svetlana said with a smile that was hardly a smile at all. “It’s kind of easy, to be in danger myself. I can handle that. It gives you a kind of fighting gall, keeps you focused. It’s when they’re potentially in harm’s way that I can’t handle it, that I get scared and angry, and I make bad choices. So don’t be nervous for me. They can’t scare me on my own behalf. It’s the kids I worry about. Worry about them.”
“I’ll do better than worry,” Alexander replied, “I’ll do my best to help. Just... be careful, please. It’s late, not every driver is going to be paying as much attention as you will.” There was something sad in his face at the words. “I’ll let you know when I have a phone for you.”
“Thanks,” Svetlana said. “Really. Thank you. I hope it all works out, God, I do. I really want to think there’s good people in the world, here. So don’t disappoint me, please?” Her hand was on the door handle, and her expression had an unexpected streak of vulnerability to it as she looked at him, half-shadowed.
Alexander swallowed hard, suddenly unsure what to say. “You’ll have to decide for yourself if I am a good person, or just an impulsive one,” he said at last. “I would like to think maybe there is a bit of both, but that’s not for me to decide.”
“I guess we’ll all find out, won’t we?” Svetlana said. She smiled, that same sad expression. “I hope I’m right, though. Goodnight, Alexander. Drive carefully. You’ll have a note from me directly.” And with that, she opened the door and slipped out into the cold with only the sound of her heels on the neglected pavement to mark her going as the door swung shut.
Alexander sat in silence for a while. He took the strange key out of his pocket, looking at it, considering it. It fit some door in this place, didn’t it? After a moment considering it, though, he tucked the key back in his pocket. Cars were going by the street. One of them must have been Svetlana’s by now. All he wanted, suddenly, was to go home, and see his daughters fast asleep. And codeine. He really wanted codeine.
The key and the book were a mistake, he thought, for the thousandth time. I’m not the person they’re meant for. I’m alone.
But he was not so sure, not as sure as he once had been, as he limped his way back to his car. He wasn’t sure of anything.