Page 54 of Vasily the Nail

Artyom is holding his hands up, not surrendering to me but gesturing for others to stay back. His eyes water, and I see blood on his teeth when he says, “Never. I had no idea what she looked like, not until that video you made. And then it all clicked.”

I see the honesty and the concern, the love that we rarely act on but feel for each other, written on his face. With a deep breath, I drop my arm and allow him to embrace me. “She doesn’t look like Brooke,” I mutter as I stare at the wall and swallow against the dryness in my throat.

His words are like a curse, though. Immediately, I have to wonder if that’s why I’ve been how I am with Ana this whole time. She’s the same age Brooke was when she died. Brooke was slender, too, just beginning to blossom after her gangly teenage years. A late bloomer, her mom always said. Curly black hair that had been short in middle school but then she only ever trimmed in high school at my insistence. She would have grown it down tothe ground for me if she could, but it stretched down to the small of her back, and there was so much of it I’d happily drown in it.

That’s where her similarities with Ana end, though. She had a longer face of more average proportions. Everything was symmetrical and positioned just right that she was never less than beautiful, but she wasn’t intriguing the way Ana is. We also fought constantly, and I would never say it was a bad thing — Brooke was passionate, and I adored that about her even when it had us butting heads — but she never soothed me the way Ana does, even when it’s me hurting her.

No, she’s not Brooke, and I’ve never thought they were similar in any way.

“Do you mean that?” Artyom asks as he heads out the front door and I follow. He leads me a few feet away, just far enough from the door to avoid offending anyone when he spits out a mouthful of blood and uses a pristine handkerchief to wipe his lips clean. “This thing you’re doing now has nothing to do with Brooke?”

The air is cold this early in the morning, but the sun is already warm on my face. I close my eyes and let its rays soak into my skin. “Not in any way that matters.”

“You have feelings for her, then.”

“Not in any way that matters,” I repeat.

“Vasya.”

“Artya.”

Artyom groans and tips his head back. “If you want to keep her, I will work something out with her brother.”

I bristle at the way he says that. Ana is not a possession. I cannotkeepher, because I don’t own her, and if I did want to have her in my life beyond next Saturday, that conversation would not be between Artyom and Tony. It would be between Ana and myself and no one else.

It is pointless to argue the semantics, though, because I’m not changing my mind on the timeline. Our time works together because we know it must end.

“I told you already, I will not let another person suffer because of my curse. If you’re getting some idea in your head that I love her, that should be reassurance enough that I’ll be returning her to the people she’ll be safe with.”

Artyom wants to say more, but he abstains. The parking lot is filling up as people finally begin to file in for Liturgy. We need to go back in before it gets too crowded and we’re separated from our women.

“You call her your starlet,” he says as we join the line, shaking our heads to those who offer to let us skip ahead simply because of who we are. In this house, we are but humble servants of the Lord. “It seems cruel, like you’re poking fun at her, knowing she won’t understand it in Russian. But the men, they know of the video if they haven’t seen it themselves already. They hear that, and it’ll be worse than calling her a . . . sex worker.”

Awhore, I’m sure he wants to say, but the couple in front of us is ancient and behind us is a family with young children.

“I call her that because she studies theatre. She says she doesn’t want to be a star, but I’m taking her to an auditiontomorrow, and I may have to break a kneecap if she doesn’t get the role she wants.”

Artyom chuckles dryly and motions for me to enter the church, where his wife and myzvyozdochkaawait.

Ana’s happiness comes in shades I don’t know the names of but I treasure equally, like a pristine box of crayons on the first day of school. There was her aroused, intrigued excitement last night as I gave her that impromptu lesson on my cock, a lesson I think I’ll still be smiling about on my deathbed.

There was her post-orgasmic mindless bliss I drove her to so many times last night. There was her sated, pliable ease this morning.

Her time with Niko gives her a radiance that I could never take offense to, even if it was another man who gave her this joy.

I know that at her church, liturgy comes with calisthenics, a dance of sitting, kneeling, and standing, but we stand through this service, and never once does she seem bothered by it. She’s not bothered by the fact that neither the Bible nor the sermon are in English, either. She simply observes quietly, sometimes with closed eyes, like the voice of my native land alone is enough to take her where she needs to be.

When Artyom escorts her to the line for Communion, both Jana and I stay behind. “Kseniya adores her already,” Jana says with a smile. It took eight years for Jana and Artyom to tie the knot; it was years before Artyom made it clear that she was anything more than a casual hook-up, that he’d actually been monogamous with her from the beginning, but they’ve sincelived together so long it was easy to forget they weren’t married until now. “It seems Kseniya isn’t the only one.”

“Artyom just met her yesterday,” I clarify. “They’ve barely spoken.”

“Not Artyom. You! It’s good to see you smile again.”

“I smile.”

“But not like that.”

So Artyom hasn’t told her the truth about why Ana is here today. Not surprising. And he makes it clear he doesn’t plan to when they return and Jana invites us to lunch. Before I can decline, Artyom says they need to go to the hardware store so they won’t be doing lunch, and that’s that.

---