The Faces of Strangers (12 page)

On the third day of his illness, Nico awoke to Mari peeking under his covers. He'd just been having a dream about her, in fact: he was crouching in his wrestling singlet on a runway, while on the other side of a wide chasm, Mari was walking sultrily on a wrestling mat, the points of her stilettos poking holes in the foam padding. In the dream, he had shouted at her to remove her shoes, as only rubber soles were allowed on the mat. It was always unsettling to see the person about whom you had just been dreaming in the flesh, as your mind attempted to unhinge itself from subconscious and reality, and doubly unsettling when the said person was reaching under the blankets for his feet. He startled, and curled his legs into a pretzel.

“That's completely unhelpful. Mama asked me to change you,” Mari said, holding her hands out expectantly. She gestured for him to extend his legs and he did so cautiously, watching her every move. She grabbed hold of his socks with two disdainful fingers, stripping them off and tossing them to the floor.

Mari attended to Nico with a strange tenderness; in a moment she was a cat placing its jaws around the tender fur behind her kitten's neck to move it to a safer place, but the next, she could tear a mouse apart with the same razor-sharp canines.

“It was only a matter of time before the cold got to you. There's a pretty pathetic joke we have,” Mari said. “Did you enjoy the summer in Estonia? No, I was working that day.” She tugged another soggy pair of socks onto Nico's damp feet.

“What is that? Why are the socks so wet?” Nico rasped, speaking for the first time all day.

“Vodka socks,” Mari said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. They help draw out the sickness.”

“Does this really help?” Nico asked, pushing himself up on his elbows and trying to peer at his feet. “It sounds like an old wives' tale.”

“Ask me that when you're feeling better.” Mari cocked her right eyebrow at him and smiled her Cheshire cat grin.

“Isn't this kind of work beneath you? You're a big model now,” Nico said, stretching his legs back out under him.

“Oh, is that what you think?” Mari asked. She pulled the blanket back over his legs.

“Aren't you? I've seen the billboards around the city.”

“When my mother asks for my help, I give it. It's the Estonian way.”

“So what's the point?” Nico asked. “Of all the glamour, all the pizzazz?”

“What's the point of my career?” Mari asked, disgustedly. “Thanks a lot.”

“No, I mean, you have to get some perks out of it, right? Otherwise, you may as well rely on your high honors achievement.” Nico bolstered himself with another pillow so that he could see her better.

“How do you know about that?”

“I have my ways,” Nico said, arching his own eyebrow at her as though in reflection. “You're not just a dumb blonde after all.”

Mari made a face at him.

“But seriously, what are you doing here anyway? I thought you had a big runway show in Riga.”

“Canceled,” she said.

“Again? Didn't that happen last month?”

“Mind your own affairs, Nico. And next time, change these yourself.” Mari threw a pair of socks at him and stalked out of the room.

* * *

A few days later, Nico's head stopped throbbing long enough for him to close up the sofa bed and abandon the supine position he'd been in for days. He sat back into the couch, his bones slack as gelatin, and summoned all his remaining strength into his thumb to change the channel on the remote control. He settled on a football match where the ball was being passed and passed and passed.

Paavo sank down next to him. “Glad you're feeling better.”

Nico nodded but didn't lift his eyes from the screen. “What'd I miss at school?”

“Not much. Heigi was asking after you. He practically followed me home to see you. I brought you some more assignments. They're in the car.”

“Oh. Why?” Nico shifted on the sofa and placed the remote between them.

“Papa dropped me to school. And brought me home.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why, Nico?”

“We usually take the bus. Why'd you take a ride with your dad?”

“It's just easier this way.”

“It's not, Paavo. Tell me the truth. Why do you come with me to school an hour earlier than you have to be there?”

“I like having the company.”

“Then why did we run from those boys on the first day after school?” Paavo remained silent. His pupils were the only things that moved as he watched the soccer ball being passed.

“P-Train. Level with me here. What's going on?” Nico searched Paavo's eyes. They weren't quite as volatile as Mari's but a steely blue that Nico still couldn't read after all these months.

Paavo sighed. “I just feel better with you there. In case.”

“In case of what?” Nico sputtered.

Paavo pushed his hands between his legs and squeezed them together. “Just this group of guys that was hassling me last year. Bullies. They haven't bothered me since you came here, and I don't know whether it's because you're a wrestler, or because you're new or American, or what...”

“Who the fuck are these clowns? What the hell is their problem picking on you? Did you do something to piss them off?”

“You don't have to do anything specific to get on the bad side of neo-Nazis.”

Nico's eyes widened. “You're being threatened by neo-Nazis? Like skinheads? That's serious, Paavo. You should report them.”

“It's really not a big deal. They dropped out of school last year, and now they just hang out on the streets trying to get others to join their gang and causing trouble. What is the expression—their bark is worse than their bite? It will be fine. It's just easier when you're around. I know that's stupid.”

“It's not stupid, Paavo. It's just not practical. I can't go with you everywhere you need to go, not to mention that I am not going to be here forever. And you can't hang out with your dad all the time. We have to figure this out.”

“There's nothing to figure out. I'm a coward. Happy?”

“Not in the least. I'm fuming. We have to deal with this.”

“I don't think you understand. These people, they don't fight fair. It's not that simple.”

“You don't have to fight, Paavo.”

“It's six guys. And me. What else am I supposed to do? I can't keep running away.”

“Fighting would be stupid,” Nico continued. “The first rule of wrestling is that you only begin fights you know you can win. You don't wrestle outside your weight class. You don't take on anyone who's not a fair match. You just need swagger. I can teach you swagger.”

Paavo looked at the screen, where one of the players was being shown a yellow card. “I don't know, Nico.”

“Look, when we get back to New York, you'll come with me to wrestling practice and Coach can teach you some things so you feel a little more confident. I can start showing you some holds now if you want. And you just need to know a few tricks. Like, if you have to get in a fight, always hit in the nose. That way you get enough time to get the hell out of there because the force creates tears to momentarily blind your opponent.”

Paavo sighed. “Can't we just continue going to school together?”

“Sure. But at some point, I'm going to go home and you're going to come back here without me and you're going to have to go it alone.”

LEO

Tallinn
December 2002

Leo had been going it alone for nearly twenty years. He had been singled out, his gray passport held out at border control like a penalty card at a football match. He had stumbled over Estonian conjugation at each and every grammar lesson Vera held in their kitchen as his children tried to quiet their snickers over his pronunciation. He could understand every iota of Estonian that was uttered on ETV, but he couldn't orchestrate the words to align in a cohesive sentence. It was as though he was living a life on one side of the country watching his family over a border partition on the other. And then this morning, he'd had to endure an additional insult for the fourth time.

Leo heard the door bang open in the kitchen. He replaced the hand that had been supporting his forehead with a tumbler of ice and vodka and let the cold crash against his skin. The house had been silent; the only sound he heard was Kunnar on his back porch as he tossed feed to his birds, the seeds chattering against the ground. There were footsteps in the kitchen, but Leo left the glass pressed against his forehead, letting the cold seep into his brain. He clearly had one. So why had he failed yet again? Why was he doing this to himself? The drudgery of shame was starting to feel old. What was the point of making him feel insignificant? Estonian was a useless language with extraneous vowels and redundant tenses. It didn't matter outside the boundaries of this insignificant slip of land, whereas Russian was spoken in a huge country, one that spanned millions of acres from ocean to ocean. He transferred the vodka to his other hand and stood up, the shame draining from his face. He walked down the hall to the kitchen, where Nico was sitting at the table, his own head in his hands.

“You're home early,” Nico said, raising his head from his arms.

“I had to pick up my citizenship results from city hall this afternoon.” Leo's voice was like gravel.

“Oh, right,” Nico said. “How'd it go?”

“What you think?”

“Sorry, Leo. That sucks. Was this the third time?”

“Four.” Leo swallowed what was left in his glass and poured another.

“Well, you can take it again, right?”

Leo snorted out his nose and took a large gulp.

Nico unzipped his bag and pulled out a roll of paper and tossed it on the table between them. Leo unfurled it and raised his eyebrows.

“You fail your Estonian exam, too, eh?” Leo tossed the paper back at Nico, the red number one glaring up at him. “Yes, but you are new. It's all right for you. It doesn't matter. Soon you will be rid of this language. This language is useless anyway.”

“That's exactly how I feel,” Nico said, turning to face Leo as he leaned against the sink. “Everyone here speaks English. Even the signs are in English. Estonian is completely ruining my grade point average.”

“But for me,” Leo continued as though Nico hadn't spoken, “I am worse. I'm old. It is too late. I've live here most my life, and still I am a second-class citizen. So what? I can't speak Estonian. Am I not a man?”

“I think you're just as much of an Estonian as everyone else here. You pay taxes, you work here and you've raised your kids here. I don't understand why they're making you jump through hoops to prove something to yourself.”

Leo let out a large sigh and opened the liquor cabinet. He extended a bottle of Viru Valge toward Nico. “Drink?”

Nico glanced at the clock, in what he hoped was a furtive motion. It was just after four in the afternoon. “Maybe not,” he said.

“Vera's not home,” Leo said. “Don't worry.”

“No, it's just that I have homework. Have to keep my wits about me.” Nico smiled. “And isn't it bad luck to drink alone?”

“Not in Estonia.” Leo poured himself a tumbler of vodka and leaned on the back spindles of his chair. He gulped down his vodka as though it were cold lemonade on a blistering day. “Tell me about Paavo.”

“What about him?”

“He is so afraid these days.”

“Yeah, he's a little tense. He needs to relax. I've told him that.”

“But what is problem? He was not like this one year back. Once I had son who wanted to kick football, not speak riddles all day.”

“He just needs to build up his self-esteem. He's going to come to wrestling practice with me when we go home to New York.” Nico saw Leo's gaze wander toward the vodka bottle. “Listen, I was thinking of hitting up Kadriorg Palace. Do you want to come?” The Baroque-style palace lay just a few blocks away from where the Sokolovs lived, a sprawling country home that Peter the Great had gifted his wife Catherine out of love. Only after it had been built did evidence that she'd had an affair with another man surface.

“No, you go on.” Leo drained his glass.

“Come on. It might make you feel better. What puts things into perspective more than a cuckold?”

“A what?”

“You know—Czar Peter builds his wife a huge palace to prove his love, and then he finds out she cheated on him?”

Leo made a noise like a cat. Had that been a laugh? “Yes, it will remind me who was boss in Estonia for many years—Russia. I haven't been to Kadriorg in years. Come. I will get my coat.” Once Nico heard the galumphing of Leo's footsteps overhead, he replaced the bottle of vodka in the cupboard and walked toward the front door. Two months ago, the prospect of spending time alone with Leo would have made Nico nervous. Perhaps he was finally making some progress.

MARI

Tallinn
December 2002

Mari's leg jittered against her desk. At an open call in Tartu a month before, she'd overheard a model say that fidgeting sped up the metabolism and helped her stay trim. But now Mari wasn't sure if she had always had this habit, or if she'd subconsciously picked it up upon learning of its effects. She picked at the edge of her desk. The laminate was peeling away from the wood. The curl of plastic seemed to mock her, as though it was corroding from disuse. When was the last time she'd sat here, other than to pore over proofs from a shoot? When had she last read a book, or anything of substance? During her first few calls she had brought along a battered paperback to pass the time, but after she realized that the models only toted glossies, she ditched the book and made it a point to pick up a few magazines before each call.

She silenced her leg by settling her free hand on top of it. Her skin was mottled and rough; there were stubbly patches she'd missed with the razor and her calves badly needed moisturizing. She shifted the phone to her other ear. She was still on hold—the third hold she'd been on since she'd called Viktor's office. She remembered a time—it felt like generations before—when her phone calls received precedence. Viktor would snap his fingers aggressively to silence his secretary when she entered the room during a coaching session. He turned his phone off when Mari was in the office, or ignored the other lines when she was on the phone. Mari had once captivated his complete attention. He had been laser-focused on making sure she wasn't heading to any call or shoot with the slightest hesitation or concern.

Everything seemed worn now, including herself; she felt as though her modeling career had been through the wringer, and was developing that gray pallor that was cast onto garments over time, tiny little threads pulling away from woven cloth. She sighed and stretched both legs out in front of her now, and something cracked in her pelvis, her lower back, she couldn't be sure. Her ligaments felt loose, as though a meat hammer had pounded and tenderized her joints like a slab of pork. It was true what was said about prodigies who skipped grades and were catapulted into classes ahead of their age; about army brats who traveled the world with their parents, clinging to the wisdom that the wide world had so much to teach them, but they didn't have a solid foundation on which to grasp ahold. It was true, too, of child models. While she'd only been modeling for the past year, Mari had missed out on her formal
saja päeva
ball, on being taken out by boys, on obsessing for hours over stupid details with her friends. Instead, her obsessions had been redirected toward booking shows, the arch of her foot, the circumference of her waist.

She sighed
. I'm hanging up by the count of ten
.

“Sorry, darling. Been utterly hectic.” Viktor certainly didn't sound in the least bit harried or stressed; his voice dripped, as though he were midmassage. Maybe he was. “Where were we?”

“Next month's schedule.” Mari began picking at the laminate again. She'd succeeded in lifting the entire upper right corner; she might as well finish the job now.

“Well, you've got Dove on the third, and then...then...” Mari could hear his fingers drumming against his own massive custom-made artisanal desk, which was most certainly not peeling. “I'm working on the rest.”

“That's all? That Dove ad doesn't even call for models. It's an open call for real women. Dove doesn't discriminate.” Mari pulled furiously at the laminate; a large strip of it ended up in her clenched fist. “What, am I not good-looking enough for the clients you're working with?”

“Oh, don't throw yourself a pity party, Mari. It's not becoming.”

“Viktor, we're on the brink of a new season. I should have been cast in Spring Fashion by now. I should have had to turn down houses, because I couldn't handle the work.”

Viktor chuckled. “Someone's been doing her homework.”

“I'm not trying to be cute over here, Viktor. I'm trying to be indignant. I
am
indignant—you and Eva have to
book
me.”

“I'm working on some really exciting things for you, Mari. You have to be patient. Let's talk at the end of next week. I think you're going to be pleased, and then you're going to be falling all over yourself in apology.”

“I will come and polish your toilet in penance. But I'm getting bored and when I get bored, I eat.”

“Don't you dare,” Viktor said. It was the first time during the whole call that Mari had heard any emotion in his voice.

“Just do your job,” Mari snarled, and hung up. She hadn't ever hung up on anyone before, but it was strangely satisfying. She stood up, stalking back and forth, kicking shoes out of her way, feeling steam mount in her nostrils. If she were a man, she would punch the wall. But she was a model.

Ha
, she scoffed to herself. Some model. A failed model was more like it. She had promised her parents that she would try this for two years, and if her career hadn't taken flight by then, she'd have to return to school, return to life before the day in Freedom Square had changed everything. What's worse was that she would have to slink in sheepishly to a high school class two years below hers, leaving all that she'd learned about modeling behind by keeping her head down and her back hunched so as not to draw attention to herself. She needed to take control of her life, and if that was out of her hands, she needed the ability to control something else.

Was she not pretty enough? Could she not compete with the likes of Carmen Kass? If she wasn't as good-looking as her, Mari knew she worked at least as hard. She'd heard the story of when Carmen was just starting out in the industry at age fourteen and had her passport taken away from her in an effort to make her work cheaply. She'd threatened that agent with a knife until she'd gotten her way. That was a bit extreme, Mari admitted. But maybe she needed to up her game. Maybe she just needed more confidence to achieve what she wanted.

She heard a noise from downstairs. She'd thought she was the only one in the house, but she tiptoed down the back stairs and inched her way into the den. There, as though she were living a scene in backward time, Mari stood in the mouth of the den, watching Nico as he plucked his folded clothes off the ground in the same, meticulous way he had placed them there when he first arrived. This time the room was washed in the golden light of the late afternoon, and his hair was lit from behind, giving him a halo that followed him with each movement. Nico straightened up when he noticed her there. She liked the effect she had on him; his body had tensed in self-awareness from the moment she'd stood outside the den. He selected a pile of T-shirts from the floor and gingerly tucked them into his duffel bag.

“I feel like I've lived this scene before,” she said. “Déjà vu.”

“I was thinking the same.”

“Shouldn't you be down at the football pitch?” Mari asked.

“I'm just finishing up here, and then I'm meeting Paavo and your dad in town for a beer. Paavo can't believe your dad allowed me to get away with not having had a Saku until now.”

“I can't believe my brother had the balls to go to the football pitch by himself without his bodyguard by his side.”

“Mari, you don't even know what you're talking about.”

“I know that Paavo has been hiding in your shadow since you arrived. Come on, Nico, give me some credit. Not all models are airheads.”

“I never said you were.”

“So what, are you packing already?”

“Looks that way, doesn't it?”

“But you have a week here. You're not leaving for a week.” Mari felt suddenly desperate. She'd known that Nico would eventually be going home, but like the end of her modeling career, or what felt like it, she hadn't realized it would come so soon. She watched him as he tossed in socks, and laid pants flat against the floor of the bag.

“Admit it. You're going to miss me.” Nico raised his eyebrows and threw a sock at Mari. She grabbed it, giggling. What was she doing? She didn't giggle. She didn't flirt. She stayed on the periphery; at least, she used to. Now, of course, she was center stage, plastered across buses and billboards wielding a brown bottle of Vana Tallinn in front of her chest like an AK-47 and wearing a tiny little sarong as though Estonia were a tropical island. She was making eye contact from behind last month's cover of
Kuula
, one of the very glossies she had purchased to bide her time in hundreds of waiting areas.

Standing there, watching Nico pack, all the thoughts in her head moved and shifted like puzzle pieces. Nico leaving marked the passage of time; a year and a half had passed since she had committed to modeling, to surrendering her childhood to Viktor and fasting and water and fidgeting. She had given her parents her word, but moreover, she had made a promise to herself. She could not go out of the modeling world being the face of a second-rate liqueur. She was bigger than that. She needed to leave a legacy. She would have to act fast. Mari broke her own reverie.

“When you're done, come upstairs,” she said. “I have something for you.”

Nico smiled. “I knew I'd wear you down. You're not the ice queen you try to be.”

“Just remember which one of us freaked out when we first met,” she said, turning on her heels.

“That's not fair,” Nico sputtered. “You snuck up on me in the dark, in a place I didn't know.” But Mari was already gone.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Nico stood outside her closed door. Soft music with vaguely French lyrics emanated from behind it. She opened it before he'd even finished knocking, smiled at him, hooked her two fingers into the collar of his crew neck T-shirt and pulled him inside. Mari hadn't turned on any lights in her room, allowing the floodlight that Kunnar had installed over the henhouse to cast long cants of broken light against the carpet, broken up into individual rectangles by the vertical Persian blinds. She shut the door softly behind him and leaned against it. Nico stood in the center of the carpet, bathed in the slatted light. He'd flinched at her touch; his face contorted as though he were awaiting torture. He looked stricken, but mostly he looked confused. Mari placed her finger in the hollow where his collarbone dipped. She continued the line down his chest, feeling the goose bumps that dappled upon his skin before her finger even reached there. She heard the breath catch in Nico's throat as her finger paused at the button of his jeans. He hadn't been undressed since he was a child, when Stella made all his decisions for him. The sensation was strange, as though he should have been taking over in order to voice his autonomy. But he stood mute, like the metal wand at the airport, watching as Mari's hands traveled all over him, unbuttoning and sliding cloth from his skin, waiting to see if she would set off an alarm. His entire body was tense and buzzing, as if she had released a hive of bees within it. As soon as she leaned forward and placed her mouth against his, his body went slack like that game of Trust that Coach had made the team play during practice, where you put your arms out, close your eyes and fall back into the arms of the person that you pray is there to catch you.

* * *

It felt like hours later that he emerged from a conscious slumber, but Nico knew it was only twenty-two minutes from the large red digital numbers blinking like a witness on Mari's desk. The clock was placed atop her towering stack of modeling papers, as though to remind them of the dwindling aspect of time, that she couldn't stay forever young with taut skin stretched over her cheekbones like a fresh canvas, that the sinews in her muscles would one day atrophy and her hips would one day lose their flexibility.

Nico would have been lying if he said he hadn't imagined this before. In fact, he had imagined it many times over as he lay in the cold little pullout bed in what felt like the banished part of the house as the rest of the family slept upstairs. He straightened himself up from the bed, propping himself on one elbow. His chest was tacky with sweat, and his temples pulsed with adrenaline. Next to him, Mari was asleep, her body heaving up and down as though in distress. He poked her to make sure she was all right, and she turned away from him toward the wall, pulling the blanket over her shoulders. The house was still; their bodies hummed with the two lights that combined and settled over them: the blue haze from the floodlight and the orange glow of the setting sun. He felt caught within the sheet's clutches, everything all crunched together like a trap. Nico felt a conflicted tide rise in him, the ebb of wanting to stay by her side. Moving from the bed would be criminal. It wasn't like leaving her with a full sink of dishes. And yet he felt the flow of wanting to disappear, especially if she was faking it and giving him an out, allowing him to slink out of the room in order to minimize the drama that comes with the aftermath of such an act.

He edged his head toward her moist shoulder and brushed his lips against it. No response. He pulled himself out of bed in a single motion. She still hadn't moved. He wanted to tell her so many things, that she was so much better looking without all that makeup, that the whole thing was so much better than he could have ever imagined, that he wondered how long she'd been planning that... Instead, he closed the door with a gentle click. He stood outside her door, naked, pale and shivering.

The lower part of the house was unaware of what had transpired overhead. But as soon as Nico got to his room, waves of panic overwhelmed him. It was as though he had dreamed the whole thing, or had an out-of-body experience. A swarm of questions hung around his head like pesky gnats. Was that it? Sex? It was over, just like that? Why was there so much buildup? Had he been any good? Was Mari's response positive? Had they used a condom? Would it happen again? Was she his girlfriend? How should he behave when he saw her again?