Boy on the Bridge (16 page)

T
he engagement had to be kept secret until they were safely married. Professors Stein and Durant would try to talk her out of the marriage for sure. And if university officials found out, they might expel her and send her home before she had a chance to marry Alyosha. Talking to her parents was out of the question, and anyway, she’d already used up her two allotted calls home.

But she had to tell someone. She was getting married!

“You said yes?” Karen shook her head in disbelief. “Are you crazy?”

Laura had asked Karen to go for a walk with her to give her best friend the big news — in case — in the near certainty — that their dorm room was bugged.

“I knew you’d be skeptical, but I hoped you’d be at least a little happy for me. Don’t you like Alyosha?”

“I love Alyosha. Alyosha’s great. That’s beside the point.”

“Is it? Because I kind of thought being great was a requirement for the person I married.”

“Laura, you’re nineteen. You’re still in college.”

“I know.”

“How are you going to support him?”

“What do you mean? He can get a job —”

“Doing what? His English is sketchy at best, and his only skill is painting movie signs. That job doesn’t exist in America.”

“He’ll be able to do his real art. He can sell that.”

Karen stared down Laura until she felt uncomfortable. “You’re serious? You think he’s going to make a living as an artist in the States? Do you know how hard that is? Do you know anything about the art world?”

“No —”

“Does he?”

“No, but —”

“Neither do I, but I know this much: It’s practically impossible to break into, especially when you’re a rube from Eastern Europe who’s barely even seen any art made after nineteen twenty-five.”

“He’s smart. He could learn to do something else.”

“He’ll have to. And until then, you’ll have to support the both of you. You’ll be legally responsible for him while he learns about banks and checking accounts and credit cards and all these practical things he’s never heard of. He doesn’t know how to drive.
He’s never seen a traffic jam. He doesn’t know what to say in a job interview, how much things cost —”

“I don’t know much about those things, either,” Laura protested. “Well, I know how to drive. And how do you know so much about it?”

“From living in the States, watching my parents, growing up there. You know more than you think about it, too. That culture is familiar to you, comfortable. To him it will be another planet. He is going to freak out. And you will have to take care of him as if he’s a child.”

“I don’t care. I love him. Besides, he’ll learn fast —”

“And what if you get pregnant?” Karen nearly screamed at the thought. “Then you’re stuck with him and a baby?”

“I won’t get pregnant,” Laura assured her. “I’m careful. I’ll keep being careful.” She moved closer to her friend, trying to make her see. “You don’t understand. Think of what his life will be like if I don’t marry him. What will his future be?”

Karen was silent and Laura knew they were imagining the same scenario, because only one was possible: year after numbing year of painting signs for movie theaters and nothing else. A dull, colorless life of shortages, drudgery, waiting, pretending, paranoia … He deserved more. They all did, everyone who lived in this messed-up country. But she couldn’t help everyone. She could only help him.

“He’s the love of my life,” she said. “How can I abandon him here? I couldn’t live with myself. I’d regret it forever.”

“Maybe.” Karen looked sad. Laura knew she’d gotten through to her. “But if you marry him and it doesn’t go well, you might regret that forever, too.”

“I won’t regret it. How could I? He’s Alyosha!”

Karen shook her head. “We can’t read the future. If only we could.”

* * *

She let herself in with her key, the one he had given her. There was no Olga, thank goodness. The only surprise was the sound of water running in the shower, and Alyosha singing “Only Love Will Break Your Heart” in his adorable accent.

“I’m here!” She popped her head into the steamy bathroom. He peeked out from behind the shower curtain.

“
Rebyonok!
” He gave her a soapy kiss. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

She took off her coat and went into the kitchen. A vase of red roses decorated the table. She couldn’t help but notice the very small package on the table beside the vase.

He came out of the shower all warm and damp, his hair spiking out as he rubbed it with a towel. He grabbed her and kissed her. She pressed against him and kissed him back. He was already naked, his skin damp and warm and smooth, so stumbling over to the bed and falling down onto it was the natural thing to do.

She peeled away her clothes — sweater, turtleneck, corduroys, bra, panties, socks — until they were both naked on the
cool sheets and under his scratchy blanket. He kissed her over and over, gently and softly. His skin felt springy, almost rubbery, resilient. He had a dimple on each hip, where the muscle cupped inward, and she rested her hand there. She wished she had a muscular dimple like that, wished her hipbones jutted like his, but he seemed to like her pillowy softness, so it was okay.

After a while, they lay side by side in bed, watching the darkness deepen outside the window. He held her hand. She thought,
Soon this man will be my husband
. The word
husband
sounded strange, too adult. But she’d get used to it. And after a terrible year or so when they must be apart, he’d come to her and they’d be together forever.

She couldn’t imagine a day when she wouldn’t feel happy about that.

“Stay here.” He got up and padded barefoot into the kitchen. The light went on; she saw a yellow square of it against the bedroom door. In a few minutes, after some shuffling, he returned with a glass of water and the small box.

“I bought this for you. I hope you like it.”

She unwrapped the box and opened it. Inside was a plain silver ring. Engraved along the inner rim were the Russian words
To Laura with love from Alexei
.

“For our wedding,” Alyosha said.

She slipped it over her ring finger. “It fits.”

“Good.” They kissed again to seal their pact.
We are married now, whatever happens
, she thought. She didn’t know why those words came into her mind —
whatever happens
— but they did.

He put the ring back in the box, to save for their wedding. They dressed and started fixing dinner. While he cooked, Alyosha explained what would happen. As soon as possible — tomorrow, if she could — they would go to the Palace of Weddings to register and set a date for the ceremony. This had to be done at least two weeks before the wedding, so there was no time to waste. Then, in about two weeks, they’d return to the palace for the ceremony. She could bring Karen as her witness, and he would invite Olga and Roma. “Afterwards we’ll go to a restaurant and have a little party, with champagne.” He’d ask his father to come, too, but Alyosha doubted he’d respond.

Laura thought of her own parents with a stab of regret. They wouldn’t see her get married. They’d be sad about that. Once Alyosha arrived, surely they’d throw a big party for the new couple. It wouldn’t be the same as a real wedding ceremony, but there was nothing to be done.

“If my father met you, maybe he’d change his mind about me,” Alyosha said. “He would take one look at you and fall in love, like I did. How could anyone not fall in love with you?”

“Believe me, it’s possible.” But she laughed, not caring who loved her, as long as Alyosha did.

I
knew it from the beginning.” Olga met Laura outside the Passage department store to help her shop for a wedding dress. “From the first time I met you, I knew you were the one for him.” She grabbed Laura and kissed her cheeks three times. “I’m so excited! Perhaps someday Roma and I will come visit you in San Francisco!”

“I hope so.” They went inside and Laura eyed the dresses in the shop windows skeptically. They were so shiny and cheap-looking. She didn’t want to wear a traditional wedding dress, just something nice, and the two baggy dresses she’d brought with her weren’t appropriate for a wedding.

A wedding.
The nerves were beginning to get to her.

“I think you should wear blue,” Olga said. “With a matching corsage.”

A corsage. It sounded like prom wear. They walked into Dress Shop Number Three — how it differed from Shops Two and
One wasn’t clear — and looked at a blue polyester dress on a mannequin. “Here it is.” Olga pulled another dress off a rack. “Go try it on.”

A salesgirl led Laura into a dressing room. She sat down on the bench and sighed at herself in the mirror. This wasn’t how she’d imagined her wedding preparations, when she’d bothered to imagine them. Her marriage would be witnessed by three people she’d known only a few months. They were lovely people, but they weren’t part of her history, her real life. Her parents wouldn’t be there to see her get married. Or her brother, or her roommate, or any of her friends from high school or college. They wouldn’t even know about it until she got home. Surprise! She wondered how they’d take it. It wouldn’t matter anyway, because the deed would be done.

None of that matters
, she told herself.
What matters is that I’ll get to be with Alyosha again. Someday.

She tried on the dress and twirled in front of the mirror. She’d never wear this normally. She stepped out of the dressing room to show Olga.

“Gorgeous!” Olga and the salesgirl clapped when they saw her. Olga had taken off her vinyl coat and draped it over a chair. She was wearing a tight pair of Calvin Klein jeans — the first pair Laura had seen in Leningrad.

“Where did you get them?” Laura asked as Olga modeled them proudly.

“From Alyosha, of course.” Olga kept her voice low, one eye on the salesgirl. “For my last birthday.”

“From Alyosha? But how did he get them?”

“How do you think he gets any of his stuff?” Olga stopped to look at a frilly orange chiffon dress that Laura wouldn’t be caught dead in. “The records, the books, the clothes? From his American friends.”

“What American friends?” Laura asked. She’d never seen him with any Americans other than Karen and Dan.

“You know,” Olga said. “Like you.” Laura blinked at her. “Every semester, when a new group of American students arrives, Alyosha makes a new
friend
.”

Laura flinched.

“They come and they go,” Olga said with studied casualness. “We’ve been hoping he’d find a girl to marry him and take him away from here, but none of them would do it. Until you! Lucky you!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, every semester, when the new students arrive, he waits outside the university gates and … you know … picks one out.”

“But — we met by accident —”

Olga laughed, but her laughter slowed when she saw that Laura wasn’t joking. “Sweetie. You don’t believe that?”

Laura sat down. “No!” the salesgirl shouted. “You can’t sit down in that dress until you buy it.”

Laura stood and walked stiff-legged back into the dressing room. Whatever else she did that day, she would not be buying a wedding dress.

She slowly unzipped the blue dress. The zipper snagged. She pulled the dress over her head anyway.

The gypsies. That first day, he had rescued her from the gypsies. It had been so chivalrous, so lucky. Fate.

Or so she had thought.

Olga’s words sank in like a punch in the stomach. Alyosha loved her! Didn’t he? Had it all been a lie?

Was he just like Lena, the cold-hearted ballerina, after all?

Scenes of the past few months replayed like a movie in her mind. She watched those moments — when she’d been so happy — and was overwhelmed by waves of sadness, enough to drown her.

She’d been foolish. Really, she hardly knew him. She’d met him in January, and here it was, May. She was living in a foreign country where she didn’t understand everything people said, why they did what they did, it was all so strange to her, and she didn’t know what she was doing….

Why was she getting married to a stranger?

She was at his mercy. She was lost.

She put her own clothes back on and walked out of the store without looking at the salesgirl or speaking to Olga. She just left.

“Laura! Wait!”

She ignored Olga’s shrill, birdlike call. She walked through the department store and out onto the street. She hardly saw where she was going. The people who bustled in front of her barely registered. That was why she bumped right into him.

Alyosha.

“Laura! Have you found a dress yet? Don’t show me; I want to be surprised….”

She couldn’t speak. She looked at his face, the eyes she loved, trying to see evidence of the truth she now knew. Where was it? Where was the hard-heartedness that would allow him to lie to her, use her, deceive her for his own gain? She couldn’t see it.

“What’s the matter?” He held her by the shoulders, looking into her face. His eyes moved beyond her to someone on the street. Someone who she knew must be Olga, looking horrified or at least embarrassed. “What happened?”

He released her and something snapped.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said quietly. “I’m one of a long string of American girlfriends, the dumbest one of all, because I fell for your tricks. Or almost did. I know I mean nothing to you. Soon you will mean nothing to me.”

She broke away and ran up Nevsky Prospekt. Alyosha shouted and chased her. She saw the Astoria Hotel up ahead. As she’d done so many times to avoid pesky Russian harassers, she flashed her passport and went inside, went to a place where he couldn’t follow.