Skandal (23 page)

“Mister Tibs.” Valentin shakes his hand. “Can I get you on my dance card?”

“That’ll be up to the Big Daddy.” Mister Tibs jabs his thumb at the greaser, who’s looking me over like he’s trying to sear my image into his retinas. I cross my arms and shrink back.

“That depends, cats. You gonna mesh me that doll of yours, Val?” the greaser asks.

The English words are spreading out in my head like a strange buffet—each word on its own, I grasp, but I can’t make sense of their composition. I look at each of the men in turn, trying to read them. Mister Tibs has stopped drumming on the podium; the greaser’s smile turns a little darker with every second that passes, like he’s savoring our unease. Valentin’s hand curls into a fist around mine.

“What’s your name, babydoll?” the greaser asks me. When he leans in toward us, he stinks of cigarettes and minty Brylcreem hair gel—a little dab’ll do ya, the ad says, but he used the whole tin, just to be safe. “I’m a lot more fun than Red Square here.”

My eyes start to water—maybe it’s the reefer and clove smoke—but then I feel that familiar scrubbing itch, skittering like a bug across my skin. “Valentin,” I say, dropping his hand. “Don’t.”

The sensation fades. But the greaser is watching us like the last minute has eluded him. “Oh … Oh. Hey, look, cats, it’s Red Square. The coldest Cold War cat I know.” He flicks the pencil to Valentin. “You and Mister Tibs gonna finally cook it together?”

Now it’s Mister Tibs’s turn to eye us—all of us—like he’s not sure what alien spacecraft we just stumbled off of. “Uh … yeah. That’d … that’d be a blast.” He cocks one eyebrow at the greaser behind his back.

“Looking forward to it,” Valya says, and shoves the sign-up sheet back at them.

“What did you scrub him for?” I hiss at Valya as he drags me away from the platform, weaving us through the thickening swarm and billowing smoke.

He clenches his jaw, expression darkening. “
I
didn’t.”

I glance over my shoulder at Papa—he’s been so uncharacteristically quiet, I’d almost forgotten he was here. He gives me a wink and turns back to the cluster of beatniks who have enveloped him like old friends.

Valya and I reach the bar, which looks like it was carved out of the caverns, though all the hollows have been lined with mirrors and turned into shelves brimming with liquor bottles. The bartender slides Val two drinks without even asking him what he wants.

“You don’t usually drink,” I say.

Valya grips his glass so tight I can hear the ice rattling. “I don’t usually improvise in front of a hundred jazz aficionados,” he replies.

We both take an oversized swig from our drinks.

“I know we have a lot going on, but I’ve been thinking,” he says slowly. “A few weeks ago, you’d offered to help me … And I wondered if you’d be willing to try again.”

Helping him heal from his past. I lean in closer. The dark smudges under his eyes have only gotten darker. “I can try. But you heard what my father said…”

“I have endless faith in you, Yulia. You’re my guiding star. I know you wouldn’t hurt me. I worry more about my own power.”

I run my thumb over the ridge of his knuckles. “You’re not like my father, or Rostov. You don’t go out of your way to hurt people with it, or use it to your advantage.”

“But I could, don’t you see?” He uses his hand to draw a circle around the club. “I don’t have to give a great performance tonight. I don’t have to perform at all. I could make every single person in this room believe I’ve just given a show better than Duke Ellington. Why would I bother with the hard work of trying to win the normal way, when I already have the keys to the kingdom?” He shakes his head. “For as long as I’ve been aware of my curse, that temptation has always been there, digging its claws into my shoulder.”

His curse. My powers have been many things to me—a danger, a burden—but I don’t know if I’d ever deem them an evil spell I had to break. I squeeze his thigh, wishing I could take away that pain with just a touch. “It’s admirable that you don’t use it that way. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”

Valya laughs dryly. “Your father thinks it’s foolish. Anyway, that’s not my point. What I’m trying to tell you is—this memory. The one that wakes me up at night. If I could be rid of my power, if there was any way for me to shed it … I would.”

His eyes are wide and pleading behind his glasses. I don’t doubt him for a minute. But if I can learn to manage my own powers, then surely he can make peace with his own. I just need to show him that he can.

“
So,
Yulia,” Winnie says, as she sidles up to us. “Enjoying yourself? Feeling lost yet?”

I clink my glass against hers. “Doing well so far.”

“Yeah, that’s because you’ve been talking to Valya all night.” She crosses her arms. “I think it’s time to play your favorite game.”

“
All
your games are my favorite,” I say with my best attempt at caustic American sarcasm. Valya grins behind his glass as he takes another drink.

“Tonight you’re going to talk to at least five different strangers here—
in English
—and I want to hear about five new slang terms you learn.” Winnie narrows her eyes. “Val’s group goes on stage second, so you’d better get a head start if you don’t want to be working during his set.”

Five new slang words? Not my favorite task, but it’s better than translating an entire movie for Winnie, especially weird political ones. “What will I win?”

“The satisfaction of a job well done. Oh, and let me know if you find any cute men my age.” She rolls her eyes. “I need a nice, uncomplicated man in my life.”

I raise one eyebrow, wondering who has her so disgusted. “I’ll do my best.”

I start with Mister Tibs, since he already knows Valya and I like his easy smile, and there’s a sharp, percussive, rhythmic patter to his speech that hints at his drummer’s blood. “‘Jive,’” I shout at Winnie as I pass her and a gaggle of what must be some of her off-duty friends—Motown-coiffed colored girls in pastel gowns who smell like roses. She gives me the A-OK sign with a wink and a rounded finger and thumb. Maybe I can get Valya to introduce the two of them later.

The greaser rounds up the first set for open-mic night, cobbling a quartet out of the random entrants—saxophone, trumpet, bass, and drums. Their first number starts shaky, but turns into a real “barn burner”—another new term I have learned from Chin Soo, a Korean man in a golden tux with a round face and a martini in each hand who lords over a cluster of scrawny white beatnik girls who laugh like howler monkeys at everything he says. Valentin relaxes when the group’s next number fails to incite revolution and thunderous applause, and in exchange for teaching me more phrases, Chin Soo bolsters his girls’ waning interest in the mediocre music by goading me into saying various phrases in my thick accent:

“We have ways of making you talk.”

“Workers of the world, unite!”

“Your papers, please.”

“Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live again!”

As Valentin and I start to wander away, one of the girls splays her clawed fingers across my arms and looks into my eyes, her gaze glassy with earnestness. “I just wanted y’all to know,” she drawls, “I don’t think y’all Russians are as evil as they say. And even if you are,
I forgive you
.”

I thank her for her generosity and follow Valentin to the platform.

He’s so nervous, he’s buzzing like a live wire. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but I can hear it on his skin. Taste it in the air. The air in the cavern—did I think it smelled too sweet, too stale before? It’s just right, shimmering with green and purple lights and the clouds of smoke, like the jazz music itself has congealed around us. Valentin beside me and Papa at the far end of the room—two magnetic poles of scrubbery noise, tearing my molecules in different directions. I should be used to this noise. I shouldn’t feel it prying me apart like the claw-end of a hammer is easing out the nail that holds me in together.

The greaser announces the next improv set. Valya on piano. Mister Tibs on drums. A big, burly man on clarinet, and Chin Soo on upright bass.

Papa and Winnie join me and in solidarity, we stake a seat right at the edge of the stage. Valentin draws his other three musicians around the bend in the piano for a solemn conference, his face long and his tone as urgent as when we plan spy operations. They have three songs in which to win over the reeferheads and beatniks and greasers and rowdy boys and mod girls, all of whom grow more drunk, more stoned, more horny, and more impatient as the evening progresses. Three songs, and they can be invited back to the Caverns to play closed events, get signed by one of the label suits, or sink into the oblivion of unknown artists at large. Valentin wants this, more than almost anything he has ever wanted in his life.

At least, more than he has ever wanted anything in America, now that we are free of Rostov’s grasp.

Their conference concludes. The crowd quiets, but the noise of a scrubber’s brain flip flops inside my head; it rings like too-abrupt silence. I glance toward Papa, but his eyes are on the stage.

Valentin plays the four notes of a major chord, softly, helping the other musicians find the key. The clarinetist counts to four with a swing of his arm.

Three syncopated chords. Then three more. They’re thick, they punch me in the sternum. Maybe I’m a little high because I can see the chords’ colors shifting with the music’s mood, following the bright, ostentatious spins of the melody. People are cheering and rocking back and forth and snapping their fingers to the beat. Winnie leans forward, hands clasped together, already prepped to burst into wild applause. Even Papa, draped like a wet noodle in his chair, has a blissful grin on his face.

This is my family now, I realize. Me and Papa and Winnie and my Valentin. This is home, right inside these syncopated, jewel-colored chords, and that thought plucks me like a piano’s string. For one moment, I cannot imagine bringing Mama into this life of jazz clubs and Paris missions and greasy diners on the avenues. Where would she fit around the table? How would she react to such a crowd?

Then I hate myself for the thought; the emotion rises up in me on a tide of alcohol and whatever other substances I’m soaking up tonight. How could I think such a thing? How could I let myself even entertain the thought of leaving things the way they are, when there is so much more they could be?

Mama should be there—and there, and there. I feel all the places in my head and my heart that Mama should fill. All the negative space, in the eaves of one of the false stalagmites or in the gap left on a bench that must have been left for Mama and Zhenya.

I watch Papa as his fluid arm scoops up his drink and he sips it with a carelessness I could never achieve. How could a man react so strongly when he thought I would hurt myself the other night, trying to help Valentin, but feel nothing at all when it comes to the painful emptiness that Mama has left?

The clarinetist finishes his solo and fades out to triumphant applause—now it’s Valentin’s turn to shine. I shove thoughts of Mama deep down, back into their box, and let my emotions ride on the clattering, shimmying piano chords. Valentin’s fingers roam up and down the keys, they hush, they shout, they turn bitter and hateful as he bashes the keyboard, they sing with praise. Mister Tibs is watching Valentin play with a rounded O for a mouth, keeping up only the barest of rhythmic clicks and cymbal snaps. Chin Soo seems to have forgotten how to play as he watches, eyes wide. The whole cavern holds its breath like one great bellow deep in the earth.

Finally Valya’s solo ends and he slumps toward the piano, crushed under an avalanche of claps and snaps and cheers. My palms burn as I applaud like a maniac for him. Papa puts two fingers into his mouth and whistles with delight. Chin Soo and Mister Tibs take their turns at solos, and they perform wonderfully, but I’m still drunk on Valya’s sounds and the crowd and this whole wide wonderful world into which we’ve been set free.

Finally, all four musicians recombine for the last frantic iteration of the main melody, and when they finish, the cavern is nothing but noise, frantic noise. Slapping on tables and popping bottles of champagne. Noise scratching at my thoughts with its sharp claws. For a moment I think it’s a scrubber again, but I must be losing myself on the wave of chaos. How could this moment be anything but perfection?

Valentin and the others take a nervous bow. They confer on song number two; I hear Valentin whistle something under his breath, though it’s too rowdy around us for me to make it out. He settles back down on the piano bench, then turns to the audience, face carved from granite.

“This next song is called ‘Yulia Takes Flight.’”

Winnie giggles and kicks her legs, then jabs her finger toward me from above, as if to announce to everyone,
This is Yulia, here she is, watch her fly!
I stare, stunned, as the first delicate piano notes threaten to swallow me whole. They feel like sticky quicksand slurping me down. He said I take flight, but there’s no mention of what I’m flying to or from.

To Papa. Away from Mama and Zhenya.

To freedom. Away from fear.

To a perpetual state of confusion, of unknowing, of helplessness. From routine, from mastery of all the Soviet system’s games and all their thousand rules.

To our future. Away from our past.

But if that’s true, then why is our past still carved, unhealing, into our brains?

Valya’s song for me is as delicate as lace, neither happy nor sad, but instead full of sly, creeping jazz chords from the clarinet and bass and filigree trills from the piano. It flies, but it sinks as well. There’s no solo rotation this time; it ends with a watery, eager spread of piano chords as the drums dissolve into juicy cymbal rolls.

Everyone around me is screaming and hollering and pumping their fists, but I am pinned in place, cemented to my chair. My cheeks are wet; I swipe at them, leaving a trail of mascara along my arm. Valentin stares at the keys as if he means to burn a hole through them with his mind. Finally, slowly, as if forcing himself to, he looks up to meet my eyes.