Who: Alexander and Svetlana What: phone delivery and morbid humor Where: The Doors Hotel, where all shifty Russians meet When: After Alexander contacts Svetlana on the journals.
Svetlana was dragging by the time she got to the hotel. Exhausted didn’t quite cover it. And she looked it, too -- no makeup, her hair a messy knot that was just getting messier, and she didn’t have that sharp point of being pulled together like she’d had the last time. She hadn’t made any effort. She wasn’t switched on for work or for anything else. It was mostly hard to give a damn. Bundled in a black sweater, a black puffer vest over top of it, she just flopped on one of the couches in the lobby area and waited. She was grateful. She had to remember that. She was grateful for Alexander and his help. And honestly, she was -- it was just hard to remember that right now.
Alexander was slower than usual coming in. The headlights of his car were turned off for almost twenty minutes before he pulled himself along by his cane through the main doors of the lobby. He was pale, in the way of sick men, all of his movements so very small, his foot barely leaving the ground as he moved towards her. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, trying to smile at her.
“You look awful,” Svetlana burst out in Russian before she thought about it. She had the good graces to look embarrassed immediately after, however, and continued on in English, struggling for her manners as she got to her feet. “I’m sorry, that was ... it’s been a long few days, no excuse, but ... just sit down, please?”
Alexander laughed, a tight, strained sound. “Sorry,” he said, like her comment had been some kind of criticism. “I take it things haven’t been so good? I’m sorry it took me so long. I...” he dragged himself over to the couch, lowering himself down gingerly. Even through the trouser leg of his jeans it was obvious something was wrong with his leg, his knee pointing at an angle different from his lower leg. “I’ve been trying to take care of somebody with bronchitis, and then with the... explosion... I didn’t want to do anything that might get you in trouble in case that had impacted your end of the world. But I should have left the phone for you to pick up sooner.”
“It’s okay,” Svetlana assured him. “Really. It’s okay. I haven’t been available much, myself, honestly.” She frowned in sympathy, settling down near him, some stark kind of shadow in the darkness of the lobby, half a ghost with her wild hair.
Alexander hesitated a moment, before venturing, “I see things haven’t gotten better for you.” It was a gentle remark, offering sympathy, if she wanted it. He reached into his jacket pocket, holding the mobile phone out to her. “I set it up for you, so if you had to make a call when you walked out of here it’d be ready.”
“Oh, hell, things don’t ever really get better, do they? You just have periods where you can handle the load of shit more effectively than others,” Svetlana said. She took the phone and smiled a little. “But thanks. Really. This ... this will help. A lot.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner,” Alexander said, again. Had he said that before? He had, hadn’t he? He decided to try for honesty. “God, I’m sorry, I said that already. I fucked up the leg at work, and I’m not completely with it. Please excuse my horrible manners tonight.”
“It’s okay,” Svetlana said, her voice somehow gentle. She’d been set on gentle auto-pilot for days now. What was a little bit more? “You should go home, get some rest. Take care of bronchitis boy. Is that your boyfriend?”
“Uh....” Alexander’s expression was frozen, awkward, uncertain. He had forgotten entirely that Svetlana would know of Sevastian. Sevastian hadn’t exactly been silent in the journals, after all. “You know,” he said carefully, slowly, “he’s a Leningrader, they didn’t pass out feelings in the breadlines of his childhood, so he never got any, and I have no idea.”
Svetlana snorted. “Fair enough.” She paused. “You realise that there are all kinds of people on there. Including Italians. Which might be cause for concern, all things considered.” She shrugged a little. “I read it a lot. I realise a lot of people don’t.”
“He does live with me, I guess we’re heterosexual life mates or whatever they call it when your best friend moves in and is never moving out,” Alexander offered, but his expression sobered. “Yeah,” he said softly, “I noticed the Italians.” He hesitated, but the whine of pain made discretion hard, and he went for bluntness instead. “I was concerned the recent violence in the city had to do with the people you’re trying to get away from.”
“If it does, then either they’re scared or they’re sloppy,” Svetlana said, equally bluntly. “Just ... be careful, huh? And pro tip, if someone’s in your house, raising your children, they’re probably something other than just your best friend. But what do I know, I’m a cranky Jewish matchmaker in the making.”
Alexander flushed, the color odd in his drained face. “Yeah, I guess,” he said awkwardly. “But he’s Russian and I get mistaken for one, there’s not a lot of... it’s all just been kind of...” he stopped himself. “God, who cares? I can tell things have been rough for you. Is there anything I can do, aside get that computer up and running for you?”
Svetlana shook her head. “No. No, I’m really afraid there isn’t. My problem right now is so out of everyone’s hands, it’s not even funny.” She paused and sighed. “I meant what I said. Wrote. Whatever. I think I’ll just check out for a little bit. Let her go run the show. Go back in the morning. I just need ... time, I guess.”
“...be careful,” Alexander said softly. “I hope it works out for you, but if it doesn’t, if something goes wrong, if the world is stricken with plague or there’s a war or something... well, don’t die, I guess.” He drifted into awkward, uncertain silence. “Sorry. I’m just... sorry.”
“I’m trying really hard. Other people aren’t cooperating,” Svetlana said. It was almost funny. She tucked the phone carefully into her jeans pocket. What else was there to say. “Thanks. For everything.”
“If you need help, I put two numbers in there,” Alexander said. “One is mine. The other is Sevastian. If you can’t get a hold of me, just... tell him you’re a friend, and I promised someone would come help you.” It was awkward and earnest and uncertain all at once. “If you think anyone might be going through your phone though, you don’t want his number there, that will probably upset people.”
“Honestly, I will crush this thing if I think anyone’s going to get a hold of it that isn’t me,” Svetlana said bluntly. “I’m sorry. But it’s true.”
“I didn’t pay that much for it,” Alexander said, and he smiled, almost laughing. It was a painful sort of expression, without real amusement. “It’s prepaid, I tinkered with it a little so nobody can track it back to me, so throw it under a bus, drown it in a bathtub, give it to a stripper to run off with it, I don’t care, just let me know it’s gone and I’ll get you another one.”
Svetlana smiled a little. It was just a tiny thing, really, but she tried. “Okay. I can do that. You’re pretty good at this whole business.”
“I lie awake at night and think about all the ways I might die, it’s a weird side-effect of my meds,” Alexander said honestly, “and my own very close connection to elements of the Russian mob is one of the top contenders for things that aren’t caused by medical incompetency. So I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I would keep my girls alive if someone confused me for someone who’s actually important. We are barely scratching the surface of my deep paranoia about being followed, tracked, or watched.”
Svetlana looked at him for a moment, stifled a giggle, and shook her head. “Oh, God, and I thought I was the only one,” she said, unable to tell if it was funny, or if she was just relieved. Why pick, she decided in the end. Gallows humour had its place, and she was staring at the platform with the noose waiting, just swinging in the wind.
“No,” Alexander said, and he smiled, actually smiled, “no, I lie awake thinking about disease vectors and car accidents and trying to decide if it is statistically more likely for me to get in another car accident or for my meds to cause sudden heart failure. And this whole... door, key, voice thing has thrown a wrench in my usual calculations because I’m not sure what all the possibly-fatal risks are. I feel like the court of Henry Tudor is probably extremely dangerous, but that’s because I’m pretty sure I’d offend somebody and they’d chop my head off.”
“Only if you’re nobility,” Svetlana said blandly. “If you’re a commoner, then you’d be drawn and quartered.” It was almost funny. How little she cared. She ought to care, she ought to care deeply, but she couldn’t muster it, not tonight. We’ll go and pray, Katherine whispered. We’ll go to a shrine, ask the Holy Virgin for strength for both of us, and our children. You have children, beautiful children to live for. The Blessed Mother will help you keep living for them. This I know.
“Oh, how reassuring! They’d cut me into four parts, instead!” Alexander said, sounding somehow as if the whole thing was funny. “Good luck,” he said, sobering. “I mean it. If you get back through the door and something’s gone wrong and you need help, you just call. Whatever time of day or night it is.”
Svetlana smiled, and it was wry and sad and awful, all at once. “Everything’s gone wrong. But it’s not something a phone call can fix,” she said, and she got to her feet. “Take care of yourself. And bronchitis boy.”
“I’ll let you know when the computer is ready,” Alexander said, and he was frowning now. “If you think of something else you could really use, let me know.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m going to go upstairs. Tell you what, if in 48 hours, you’re still worried, drop me a note on the books.”
“I’ll still be worried,” Alexander assured her. “The codeine makes the whole world seem like its on the verge of impending doom, and I have actual reasons to worry something bad might happen to you. But I’ll wait 48 hours to ask after you anyway.” He pushed himself off the couch slowly, leaning heavily on the cane. Something made a terrible grinding noise as he rose, but despite a momentary wobble, he was on his feet all the same.
“You should worry after yourself a bit, you know,” Svetlana returned. “Just saying. Anyway, I won’t lose my head or anything. Katherine’s story, well. We all know it, don’t we? Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. She’s number one. I don’t think my neck is going to be in any danger.”
“Well, then,” Alexander said softly, conceding her point, it seemed, and he sighed. “Goodnight, Svetlana.”
“Goodnight, Alexander. Take care of yourself. And bronchitis boy. And those two girls,” she replied with a faint, passing smile, something impossibly sad in it. She turned towards the elevator, then, vanishing into the hotel’s murky interior like a spectre into the mist.
Alexander waited in the lobby until he heard the elevator ping at some distant upper floor. Only then did he turn to hobble his way back out to his car. How was he going to explain this one to Sevastian? Sorry, I had to help the wife of a Chicago mobster get a hold of an untrackable cellphone so she can get the FBI to take her children away, and now she’s off to be Henry Tudor’s first wife? He’d have to come up with something better before he got home. Something. Anything. He had a whole thirty minutes to come up with a good lie.