“I don’t know. We need time to think,” I said, although there was nothing to think about. We either played or walked away.
I tried to picture the music room without the piano. From the look on his face, Russ was trying to imagine the iridescent silver Mustang shining lustily and growling noisily in his carport.
Across from us, Alex Mackenzie hummed the theme to Jeopardy irritatingly off-key, and then said, “Come on, David. It’s clear they don’t have the balls for real stakes.” He stood with a squeaking of chair and a groaning of dog.
“Wait,” I said and took a sharp breath.
I pictured Russ driving the Mustang out of the Mackenzies’ drive, and I pictured Colin beating the ever-living crap out of Alex for losing the car. Those were both visions I could get behind.
Then I closed my eyes, said a prayer of apology to my dead father, pushed the cards toward Alex Mackenzie as if saying “yes” was the easiest thing in the world instead of the most difficult, and said, “You deal.”
* * *
I cracked my neck to try to loosen it and stared at my cards, which hadn’t gotten any better since the last time I’d stared at them. Next to me, Russ was clenching his teeth. This wasn’t going well.
Across from us, David was coughing as he had been through the whole game. Alex seemed oblivious, and neither looked as happy as they should have, given that they were wiping the floor with us.
How was that even possible?
“Okay, I’m taking pity on you,” Alex said. “I call.”
I looked down at my hand again. The cards still hadn’t changed. “I fold,” I mumbled, afraid to even glance at Russ.
“Oh, me too,” David said, coughing into his hand again.
“Okay, guess that leaves just you and me,” said Alex, looking at Russ.
I felt Russ shift in his chair next to me. He sighed in a way that sounded desperate, and it made my stomach tighten. I knew before he even flipped his cards over—a measly pair of fours and an even measlier pair of twos—that we’d lost. Lost the piano, lost the Mustang. Lost any hope I had that in gaining Russ the car of his dreams, I could assuage my guilt about leaving. Now, I would have to face it all. Plus the wrath of Harriet and Laura’s disappointment. There was nothing left for me to hide behind.
“See ya’ soon,” Alex said flippantly as he and the dog and David got up and turned to leave. Neither of us replied, and when I looked over at Russ, he looked pale and empty, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all my fault.
Chapter 5
Annie
“That’ll be two dollars and sixteen cents,” the man behind the counter said. I dug into my favorite flowered bag, which I had purchased at a San Francisco street fair. Or maybe it was New York. Or London. Yes, it was London. Maybe.
Well, wherever I got it, there was no chance it contained money. I had been traveling internationally since I was six, and exchanging cash took time, and converting it with fluctuating rates and countries merging and seceding and joining and leaving unions, took more. Time, Dmitry taught me, was not something to be wasted.
I pulled a credit card out from one of the bag’s many hidden pockets and handed it over as payment for the tea.
“Sorry, our card reader has been off-line all day,” the man said, wiping down an espresso machine in rhythm to the music of the wheels. The train lurched and a good inch of tea sloshed over the edge of my cup. I watched, shocked, as hot water burned its way across my hand and the skin began to redden. My first thought was that my hands were insured for a massive fifty million dollars. Was it possible that each hand was then worth half that amount? If so, was I liable to someone for all that money?
The man behind the counter held out a cool cloth for me to place against the burn. “I’m sorry about the tea,” I said. “But I don’t have any cash on me. Is there somewhere I can mail a check, maybe?”
The man grinned and patted my unburnt hand. “That’s okay,” he said, winking. “I’ve got you this time.”
I thanked him and took the tea and cloth back to my seat.
The train that ran between Washington, New York, and the Canadian border was an old black antique, wider than modern-day trains, which necessitated special tracks. The ticket salesman told me this was the only route that could accommodate it.
My seat resembled all the others on the train, with black armrests and red and beige cloth-covered seats. That fact made me happy in a way that flying first class never had. There, I was grateful for the chairs that became beds, and the endless supply of magazines, and the chance to catch up on the latest movies. But I always felt a pang of guilt watching families with children, elderly women, and people on crutches creep by on their way to the crowded coach section of the plane.
The train was far more democratic. Far more interesting. Far more relaxing now that the boy across the aisle had left. Outside, the green of the fields of corn gave way to the brown of the wheat, and the red of the summer-weary grapevines. I indulged in listening to the lengthy conversation between the girls across the aisle about a party and the photos that surfaced online afterward, and watch the older couple in the seats diagonal to me who had fallen asleep, heads leaning together, hands intertwined. I wondered if I would ever be able to stay in one place long enough to put down roots, fall in love, and find someone to ride a train with when I was eighty.
I sipped what was left of my tea while the conductor announced the name of a stop in the crackly garbled way of train conductors everywhere. There were hours and hours left in my trip, and, never having been to a funeral, I needed to prepare myself for what lay ahead.
Dmitry’s death wasn’t completely unexpected. He had threatened suicide in dark and angry moments and had never hidden the overwhelming physical pain his arthritis caused and the equally overwhelming emotional scars that resulted from his slow descent out of the public eye. Dmitry was someone who needed to be loved, not by one person, but by millions. Easy to do when you are on the cover of Rolling Stone, being interviewed on all the late-night shows, and photographed with starlets on red carpets. More difficult when you are in constant pain and unable to do the one thing that you love: play the piano.
He always told me that he wanted more for me and hoped that someday I might find one person to love. Possibly, I could build a family of my own, even if I could not seem to connect with my own parents, who were still in the same small town in Russia where I had been born and where I sent them monthly checks to supplement their salaries.
But I loved Dmitry. He had been my teacher since I was six and my legal guardian since I was eight, so his death left me not only teacher-less and friendless, but guardian-less. I was sure that, at seventeen, I might not need a new guardian. I had my agent, manager, and publicist. Someone would step up to be the one to tell me what to do and where to be, but it would not be the same.