The Faces of Strangers (13 page)

With all the rush of emotions and hormones, he couldn't help but feel like a walking cliché. Of course the big American jock had traveled to a foreign country and slept with the gorgeous, foreign, exotic girl. Wasn't that practically written in the stars by some bad made-for-television movie? Perhaps, but at the end of the day, Nico was a cliché who had slept with a model. And as far as bragging rights went, they spoke the loudest.

His clothes were still in the six piles for each remaining day of the week he had left in Tallinn, but the ones he was wearing were still caught between the claws of the tangled sheets. He picked up the stack for the next day and somehow managed to fold his body into them. He passed his hands over the vodka for his father, the matryoshka dolls for Nora, the crocheted tablecloth for Stella and nestled them all carefully back within the folded clothes, padded by sweatshirts. He had to remember to return the down jacket he'd borrowed from Paavo before he left.

Paavo. Shit. But he didn't necessarily have to find out. Nico certainly wouldn't tell him, and he couldn't imagine Mari wanting to, either. Nico closed his eyes and breathed in and slowly out. He mumbled his wrestling incantation—Defend Until the End—under his breath and counted to ten. Then he shoved his feet into the sneakers that lay askew on the mat and jogged out the door, slamming it behind him so that even Mari in her repose with her labored or feigned breathing would be sure to hear him leave.

NICO

New York
City
December 2002

The changes in Stella's son were striking, not subtle. His face had clearly changed: more angles, fewer instinctive smiles. Even his writing seemed more blasé, as though he couldn't be bothered to form a complete sentence. It was strange how dramatic changes seemed when you couldn't see them happening in front of you, the way you didn't notice a plant growing when it was in your own living room, but when you came back after a vacation, it had suddenly sprouted six inches. Stella couldn't pinpoint it, but Nicholas seemed different somehow, including his name.

“Nicholas,” Stella had called as soon as his face turned the corner from the arrivals ramp and he made his way to the baggage carousels. She'd leaped up and run toward him in a manner she might have scoffed at had she been watching another parent. She couldn't help it. She wanted to drink in her son, remember what his hair smelled like, what his body felt like in her embrace. But everything was off somehow—even his name.

“Hi, Mom,” he'd said, slightly breathless after she'd released him from the hug. “Can you call me Nico now?”

“Oh,” she'd said. She could feel her face flushing as though someone had pointed out that her zipper had been down. “Why?”

“It's just what everyone called me over there,” he said. He shrugged and straightened his shoulders, his eyes focused on the conveyor belt.

“I guess I could try that,” Stella said. She observed her son as though he were behind a glass case, the way his fingers flexed and his jaw tensed.

“I can't place what's different about you,” she said on the drive home. “Was it the fact that you maneuvered your way around a foreign country? Were you popular? I bet everyone wanted to be friends with you. I bet you were a total star, the cool American kid. It was a girl, wasn't it, some pretty Russian doll? Sorry.” She'd caught herself. “STD.”

“That's not technically an STD, Mom,” Nico said. “A doll is what you call a pretty girl, so that's not wrong.”

“So, was it?”

He shook his head and went back to staring out the window. Even though she could reach out and touch him, she sensed a deep schism between the two of them, as though Tallinn had been planted between them and was growing subterranean roots that would eventually strangle them from below. Her son had been swapped in a KGB maneuver; the real Nico had been left behind and a stand-in had been sent in his stead.
STD
.

“So what
is
it?” she asked. Perhaps being straightforward was the best approach.

“What's what?” Nico asked, leaning his head against the window and looking up at the sky.

“What's different?”

“Nothing. I don't know—maybe I'm worldlier or something.”

“That's not a word.”

“I don't know what you're looking for, Mom.”

“I'm not looking for anything.” Stella blanched and looked back at the road. “I guess I just missed you. Look, I took the whole afternoon off. Do you want to head over to City Bakery when we get home? They have this new chocolate-caramel-doughnut-cookie thing that absolutely must be shared.”

“I thought I'd meet Toby and the guys this afternoon. I haven't really talked to them since I left. I only have like, a week before Paavo gets here.” Nico hadn't turned his head from the window the entire time. It was as though he was taking in all the sights whizzing by for the first time.

“Oh, okay,” Stella said, turning on her left blinker. “Well, I'd like to spend some time with you, too. Hear some stories, just catch up.”

“Maybe this weekend,” Nico said. “I missed a whole semester of wrestling. I want to catch up, too.” Stella pursed her lips. She'd formed this child, his very flesh and bones within the caverns and contours of her own body. She'd been responsible for creating the curls and synapses of his brain matter, for stacking the sinews of his musculature within her womb. She knew it was silly to feel proprietary toward him after all these years, but when she reminded herself of the pure and simple biology of Nico's existence, it was difficult to let him go when he'd just arrived. Stella longed to grasp Nico and squeeze him like a sponge in order to learn everything he'd seen, thought and experienced since he'd been gone.

* * *

Nico wished he could preserve the encounter with Mari in much the same way. But when he began to realize that the occasion was over and done with, he began to distance himself from the encounter in stages.

Immediately afterward, standing in the pale twilight of the Sokolovs' den, the act had felt nefarious.
He
was culpable for having stained Mari's sheets with his sweat, for having bitten her top lip until it was pink and swollen, for leaving little crescents in her skin from his fingernails. What's more, Mari was Paavo's sister, a sister who may as well have been his own for the four months he'd spent in Tallinn. As skittish and timid as Paavo was, Nico had no idea how he might respond if he ever found out. He found himself lurking around the house almost as anxiously as Paavo himself; slipping in and out of the bathroom like a thief, and trying his ultimate best to be quiet when he was in his own room.

The next week, as Nico packed up the vodka, the dolls and the tablecloth for his family, he remembered that he'd only gone up to Mari's room because she'd said she had a gift for him. The guilt dropped off him like a cloak and he felt suddenly duped and naive.
Mari
had been the seducer, luring Nico up to her dimly lit lair when the entire family was absent from the house. It was Mari who had lined her eyes with kohl so she resembled that cat stalking him on his very first night, a wild feline who would ultimately get what she wanted. It was Mari who had begun touching him, in a way she had never touched him before; in fact, except for when she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder in the car or when she'd changed his vodka socks, he didn't think that she had ever touched him at all. Over time, he began to feel like the victim; Mari had taken advantage of
him
. She had initiated every touch, every breath, each flicker of her tongue. She'd known exactly what she was doing from the start. Nico wanted to feel indignant, but he knew exactly what his friends would say if he complained: “So what?”

So he let himself shift to the next step. He accepted it, embracing the action fully as Barbara would have wanted him to experience everything he was exposed to in Tallinn. He relived it. He recalled all the actions, the touches and the shivers. For those twenty-two minutes, Mari was a star that he had reached out to with his bare hands and caught as it sailed across a crystal clear sky. She sparkled, stretching her taut calves, presenting him with her elegant but accessible breasts and a belly button chasm that Nico hadn't realized was an irresistible body part until he was lost in it.

He began to wonder if sex upon returning home would be completely different. There hadn't been any expectations in that cloistered room in Tallinn. There had been hand placements that had prompted soft coos. There had been awkward tracings over skin, kissing in unerogenous areas, crevices explored with tentative fingers, soft blowing in an ear, which had been subtly turned down by a shake and a turn of the head so the ear was out of reach. There had been guidance, as though the entire act had been planned out from the start. There had been unease at the start, which had quickly translated into hunger, a brave recourse for the seduced, he who had scarcely been expecting such an invitation. High school sex was sex for sex's sake. It was sex for bragging rights, for the ability to cross over from one side of a deep divide to the other, entirely for the intention of feeling smug. No one was experienced or possessed a skill set that made sex worthwhile, meaningful or even pleasurable. High school sex was a deed that was done so that it could never be undone. But of course, once the act was over between Mari and Nico, it was as though nothing had happened, and the two retreated to their own quarters, much like mating lions that had completed their biological business and now would embark on the matter of pretending the other one didn't exist.

The fact was that he hadn't seen much of Mari in his last few days with the Sokolovs. She had been out of the house before he awoke, and came home late in the night. Vera reported that she was out on calls and auditions; Viktor had redeemed himself and business was really picking up for her. On Nico's last day, as Leo was about to return him to the airport from which he'd collected him four months before, she sauntered casually into the kitchen.

“Just wanted to say goodbye,” she said, her hands deep in her pockets. “All the best.” Nico felt a pang in his side. His body was responding physically to her nonchalance. Mari's hair was tied back in one of her signature knots, but her fringe spread across her forehead like a windshield wiper, clearing her face of emotional clutter. Her dungarees were frayed and pale from washing and her T-shirt rode over the rise of her pelvic bones as she loitered in the doorway.

“Thanks,” he said. He slid his chair back opportunely, hoping it might encourage her to come and touch him. He would welcome even a chaste exchange now: a hug, even a handshake. But Mari remained loitering by the doorway and finally leaned against it, establishing her station there. “Come visit us in New York sometime. Maybe they'll send you out there for a job.”

She smiled. “Maybe. Keep in touch. And good luck with wrestling.”

He ducked his face behind his mug of steaming tea. There didn't seem as if there was anything else to say, and simultaneously as if there was everything to say. But none of it could be said with the audience of Paavo, Vera and Leo. With the lengthening of the silence, Mari stepped backward into the hall. And then she was gone.

Nico wondered if he'd played everything all wrong. That perhaps Mari's nonchalance and standoffishness had been the foreplay, the dance she had choreographed in order for Nico to step up his game and try to seduce her again. But it was too late. It was time for him to leave Estonia. Resigned, as Paavo and Leo packed the car, Nico had stolen into her empty bedroom and helped himself to one of her head shots and a handful of comp cards. He knew no one, not any of the team or even Toby would believe him unless he brought physical evidence.

It wasn't that Nico was unattractive or undesirable. He had heard that girls thought he was cute; he had even dated the preppy Charlotte James, in the first few months of sophomore year. After a few weeks of dating, she'd told Nico that she liked him because she could imagine him turning out very handsome when he was older. He'd been rather startled by her declaration. Did that mean he wasn't handsome now? Did she mean that she would stay with him until he was adequately handsome? Or that she wanted to stay with him until they grew old? In the juvenile fashion that serves all high school students, Nico broke up with her at the end of the fourth week without asking her what she had meant. She stood opposite him in the empty hallway that had been cleared out instantaneously by the last bell of the day, her large eyes quavering and rolling around in their sockets in an attempt to avoid eye contact with him and not spill the tears that had gathered. He'd been surprised at the pinching feeling he felt between his own eyes when he saw her holding hands with Wilson—his own teammate!—later on that month, but he didn't mind because he was a stronger wrestler than Wilson anyway. But Charlotte James was no Mari Sokolov.

Before that afternoon with Mari, Nico had been looking forward to his return home, to his bed that held his body's indentation, to a room with an actual door that closed, to the brutish camaraderie of his teammates and the wise tutelage and gruff bark of Coach's orders. He'd found himself trying to remember the scent of the laundry detergent that Stella used, the slip of a MetroCard through a turnstile, the heady aroma of the hot chocolate at City Bakery. He'd even missed squat thrusts during wrestling practice.

But now the desire to return to all that was familiar seemed to disappear as he found himself only yearning to be with Mari. He pictured the two of them walking down a street but whether they were in Manhattan or Tallinn was unclear; the only sharp edges to this daydream were the two of them together, fingers linked, inhabiting the comfortable silence that only lovers can maintain. He imagined the faces of other men in a restaurant as he pulled a chair out for her to fit her slim body into, faces filled with abject jealousy and remorse that this stunning woman had chosen this ordinary man. He imagined the hours that they would lose simply just lying in bed side by side, because their connection had to be more than sex; it was kinetic, set in motion from the moment Mari happened upon him in the early morning of his first few hours in Estonia. The daydreams were harmless, or so he thought. When he realized that Mari and thoughts of being together were occupying his every waking moment, and sometimes his subconscious when he slept at night, he told himself to get a grip. He was turning into a needy, desperate being, pining over a woman who lived on a completely different plane than him. What was that hormone that was released during sex—oxytocin, was it? The intimacy hormone, they had called it in biology, that bonds you to your mate. He shook his body, as though he could rid himself of it. Maybe Mari's body hadn't produced enough to make her feel the same way. It appeared that the seduction had really just been all about the sex.

In the mirror in his childhood bedroom, he looked the same, now with a slight hangdog expression from thinking unrequitedly about Mari. He had to snap out of it and move on. He couldn't pine after her in his bedroom like a brooding teenager in a John Hughes movie. But it felt disingenuous to return to his world without a nod to what had happened. After a while, he began to wonder if their tryst had accomplished the opposite of what he'd felt initially. Had she actually succeeded in setting him free? One thing was for sure: he'd been changed. Mari had changed him.