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“Ilya, what the fuck are you doing?”
Ilya grunts and sets down the one-hitter he’s packing. “Baking a quiche, what does it look like I’m doing?”
Svetlana gives him an unimpressed look, the same look she’s been giving him for two months now. He’s immune to it, an impressive feat for any mortal man, given that Svetlana is both beautiful and scary—a very Russian combination.
“God, you have to stop this, Ilya.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he lights up, careful not to blow weed-smoke towards her hair. She looks too beautiful, and he respects her too much. More importantly, if she gets smoke in her hair, she’ll have to rewash it, and it’ll take forever to dry. Meaning she won’t leave him alone for several hours. Fuck, he wants to be alone. He wants to get high, he wants to drink, and he wants to be alone. He loves Svetlana, but it’s easier to be miserable by himself. “Stop what?”
She doesn’t look impressed. “Moping doesn’t look good on you.”
“I’ve never moped in my life.”
She doesn’t even bother responding to that. Instead, she throws a shirt at him. Silk, black, expensive. Then something harder—a necklace. Not the cross he always wears, but something flashier, with tiny stones. The metal settings bite into his skin as they collide with his collarbone.
“Ow,” he says, running a finger over his skin to inspect where the necklace made impact.
“These need to be on you in the next twenty minutes, or I'll call your father and tell him you’re smoking weed.”
Svetlana would never, because besides the fact that his father would disown him, getting caught with weed is a serious offense in Russia. America is so loose in comparison, Ilya thinks. All these stoners with their wide jeans and their weed and Kurt Cobain on their Walkmans, and not a single care in the world.
“Where are we going?” Ilya asks, knowing he’s lost the battle.
“We’re going to a party. And we're going to get so fucking wasted that we forget that we’re in the middle of nowhere, at a school for children and idiots in khakis.”
*
Harvard is not the middle of nowhere, but it’s hard to tell that to the daughter of a Russian Oligarch.
They walk down Broadway side by side, Svetlana’s face twisted in a way that makes it look like she’s smelling something bad. Ilya can’t blame her. He’s shocked that she’d actually managed to drag him out. He didn’t want to be here either with these American jocks, drinking American beers, listening to American songs. Fuck. The Backstreet Boys, Tupac, or worse, something they think is edgy—Pearl Jam, or some similar drivel.
He wishes he were anywhere else. It’s New Year's Eve, and he should be in a Russian club, drinking decent vodka with hot girls—hot boys too—forgetting the past several months.
“I’m not leaving until you get some action,” she announces as they walk past several rotting pumpkins, left over from Halloween. The whole area is Harvard spillover, or, if not that, MIT, which is even worse, a bunch of college kids who don’t know how to pick up after themselves. “It’s the New Year, you should kiss somebody for luck.”
Luck—he needs some of that.
Ilya is already smoking his second cigarette. “What about you?”
“You think I want to make out with any of these… Ёбушки-воробушки?”
“We could just make out with each other,” Ilya suggests.
She raises an eyebrow at him. “Cute, but if that was working, we wouldn’t be here.”
He lifts an eyebrow at her. “Svetlana.”
“Ilya. See? We both know each other’s names.”
They walk on. A couple of drunken students meander past them. Ilya pays them no mind, just takes another drag of his cigarette, watching it dissipate into the night air. God, he fucking loves smoking. Almost as much as he loves fucking, or playing chess. Or some combination of all three. And she’s right. He hasn’t gotten any action in a while. He glances sideways at Svetlana, but she’s not looking at him. She moves forward on her stilettos like a boat cutting through smooth water. Too fucking good for him.
“I don’t need to make out with someone, especially if there’s no one good to make out with,” he says, finally.
No, what he needs to do is be better. He needs to be good enough to beat that asshole, Hollander. He can picture their game again in his head. Where had it gone wrong? Well, he knew where, but how had it snuck up on him. In chess, there is linear thinking, and then there is creative thinking. Hollander’s move that set up the fishing pole trap had been ingenious. Ilya hadn’t seen it coming. And to be beaten by an American! And an MIT student, too, who already thought he was superior because of that…
“You’re sulking again, stop. Besides, we’re here.” Svetlana stops before a set of stairs stacked unevenly, like a dog-eared book. Painting is chipping off their sides. “Come.”
He follows her up the stairs, and then they are inside.
*
Svetlana is off whoring-it in the other room. Not that Ilya begrudges her for it. He likes to be a whore, too, on his good days. Today is not a good day.
In any case, she’s sitting in the center chair of the dining room, a gaggle of men around her. Of course, none of them is as handsome as her, but at least she’ll be entertained on New Year's. She can flirt with all of them and end up with none of them. He won’t begrudge her that.
But, he’s bored. There’s no one to talk to. Well, there are tons of people, and several women have approached him, but there’s no one he wants to talk to. No one interesting.
He takes a sip from the Bud Light in his hand. Someone had handed it to him earlier, and he hadn’t bothered to decline. It tastes thin, flat, and watery. Not at all what he wants. He shakes his head and resolves to find a different drink before making his disappearance. They’ve already been here for an hour, and his mind keeps drifting back to chess. To the game that Svetlana told him not to think about.
He wanders into the kitchen. Opens the freezer, looking for liquor, but sees nothing. Then he spies some leftover Svedka. God, these Harvard students are cheap, despite being from privileged. He wrinkles his nose at the bottom-shelf liquor, but still pours it into a glass before wandering out toward the back porch. He kicks the screen door open and stands in its entrance, lighting a fresh cig.
“You’re smoking.”
Ilya turns to the person speaking. It’s fucking Hollander of all things. For a second, Ilya feels like he’s having a stroke. Perhaps he’s been so fixated on the chess match he lost that now he’s hallucinating too. But no, it’s definitely him.
Hollander seems out of place at this party. Like a kid allowed to sit at the adult table. His black hair hangs in front of his eyes. His hands are in his hoodie pouch. Ilya takes a drag of his cigarette and only barely bothers to avoid blowing smoke in Hollander’s face.
Hollander coughs a bit. Performative fuck. “You aren’t supposed to smoke indoors.”
Ilya looks at his feet. Then, slowly, he moves a single foot outside the doorway without moving the rest of his body. He turns to stare at Hollander as he takes another, slow drag. “Okay.”
Hollander looks at his foot, then at his face, then back to his foot. “That’s… look. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No, I’m fucking idiot,” Ilya says.
Hollander turns pink; he shifts a bit from side to side. Ilya can’t even say he’s totally irritated by him anymore. Somehow, out from behind a chessboard, Hollander looks like… what is the American expression? A deer in the headlights? A fish out of water? There’s something soft and vulnerable about him that makes even Ilya want to scoop him up and hold him in his palm. Or poke him. It’s hard to choose.
Hollander wets his lips and stares at the ground, then back at Ilya. Ilya finds his awkwardness fascinating to watch. Energy seems to shimmer, strictly contained under Hollander’s skin, searching for release.
He doesn’t leave.
Ilya holds up his glass of vodka in offering. “Drink.”
Hollander blinks, turning red. He has freckles, Ilya notes. They look better here, in the dim lighting of the house, rather than when he played against him in November, underneath bright fluorescents. “I don’t drink.”
“It is a party.”
“Yes, but I have ginger ale.” Hollander gestures to the drink in his hand.
Ilya doesn’t know the word Hollander says, but he can tell from the can that it’s non-alcoholic. It’s the mixer they’ve used for him on the plane when he flew into Logan this September. So, Hollander is a teetotaler. Figures. He probably thinks it increases his game. Well fuck, given what happened, maybe it does.
Ilya stares at Rozanov. He is no longer scared of the idea of him. Not when he stands in front of Ilya at this party like a wounded animal. An image of Hollander, glassy-eyed and flushed, comes to mind. He would look good drunk. Hollander is the type of person who is fun to corrupt.
“Tastes better with vodka,” Ilya suggests.
“I’m eighteen,” Hollander insists. Ilya rolls his eyes—these American rules.
Ilya shrugs. “Okay. I guess, you are not worried about dying tonight, then?”
“What?” Shane asks, raising his eyebrows.
“From… what’s word… death by many computers?”
Shane shakes his head, but Ilya sees it: he’s struggling not to smile. “You mean the Y2K bug? My mom told me not to worry.”
“And you’re a good boy? You listen to your mother?”
Shane looks up, startled again. He stares at Ilya. Ilya decides he likes Hollander looking at him. “Fuck off.”
They stand like that for a second. Ilya waits for Hollander to leave in a huff, but for some reason, he doesn’t. Ilya takes another puff of his cigarette and then a sip of the terrible Svedka.
“Okay,” Hollander says all of a sudden.
“Okay?”
“I’ll drink. Just a sip, because I—” Hollander turns pink. The color matches his lips, and Ilya stares at them. “—I get drunk easily.”
“I can tell.”
Hollander shakes his head. “You’re an asshole.”
It’s not untrue. Ilya shrugs and passes Hollander the Svedka.
“Do you know where the cups are?” Shane asks.
Ilya doesn’t. He shakes his head and watches as Hollander returns to the kitchen and roots around for some cups. It seems like all the cabinets have been raided, and there’s no kitchenware left. However, red Solo cups are scattered across a table draped with a plastic, flowered tablecloth, but they are all sticky with residue.
Hollander returns. “No glasses.”
Ilya surveys Hollander and then slowly takes a long, meaningful swig from it before passing the bottle over.
Hollander blinks and takes the bottle before holding it up to look at it, like he’s deciphering a tricky math problem. Finally, he tilts his head back, bringing the bottle to his mouth. The action instantly results in a coughing fit. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand; his eyes are watery and red-rimmed. “Fuck.”
“You never drink before?” Ilya asks.
“Not this. Wine, yeah.”
“Have more. It gets better.”
Hollander barks a laugh. It’s the first time Ilya has heard him do so. It’s an interesting sound. Short and contained, like the person.
Then, he takes another sip.
*
“Why didn’t you stay and go pro, then. In Russia? Instead of applying to college here?”
They’re kicking their heels back and forth on the porch. Somehow, they’re alone out here, while the rest of the party hums and thumps behind them. Their view looks out onto the backside of another house. Victorian style, just like the one they are in now.
“Hmmm. My father thinks… bad idea.”
“But you’re so good!” Hollander sounds looser now, and his cheeks are red from the booze.
Ilya takes the compliment for what it is: the truth. A part of him still puffs up, though. Afterall, Hollander is his equal.
“Yes. But. In pro chess, not everyone makes money. Good school? Anyone can become… what is the word?”
“Successful?”
“Yes.”
Hollander is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Me too.”
Ilya tilts his head.
“My mother thinks I’m good… but she says a backup plan is better than just doing tourneys and hoping to make it big. Most people don’t make it as professional chess players, obviously.”
“Yes.”
Hollander barks a laugh. “Isn’t this where you should say: you’re so good, too?”
“You want lie?”
Hollander shoves him in the shoulder, and Ilya shoves him back. Then he starts chuckling, and Hollander starts huffing this awkward, aborted laugh. Not quite a giggle. Ilya has never heard anything like it before. He’s never met anybody like Hollander before.
That’s where Svetlana finds them.
“Ilya—oh.”
They both turn around to look at her, backlit by the kitchen lighting. Her black sequin dress is falling off one shoulder. She’s glancing back and forth between them with a look of surprise that is quickly covered up by one of smug awareness.
“They’re doing the countdown in three,” she says in Russian, before turning around. She could always read any room.
“Okay.”
The door swings shut behind her.
“What did she say?” Hollander asks.
“Three minutes until New Year's.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
They stare at each other. Ilya itches to do something to Hollander that he’ll probably regret. Corrupt him. It’s like everything about Hollander is begging for it to happen. But he can’t tell how it will be received. He’s almost ninety-eight percent sure Hollander wants it too, but…
Well, there’s wanting it, and knowing you want it. Hollander doesn’t seem like the type to know.
“Do you want?” Ilya gestures towards the door with his head.
“To go inside? Um.” Hollander looks like he’s not so sure, and suddenly Ilya wonders if Hollander actually does know what he wants. Shit.
“We can stay here,” Hollander finally says. “See the fireworks.”
Ilya highly doubts they will see much of anything from the back alleyway between two houses in the middle of Cambridge, but he lets Hollander make the excuse for them both.
“Do you have a New Year's goal?” Ilya asks.
Hollander cocks his head. “A resolution?”
Ilya nods. “Yes.”
Hollander seems to consider it. “To win all my chess matches. What about you?”
Ilya surveys Hollander’s face. It’s inspecting him so precisely, with the sort of intelligence that makes Ilya feel like the version of himself that Hollander sees must be more real than any other version. He likes it.
“The same as you.”
Hollander snorts. “Well, one of us won’t accomplish their goal, I guess.”
Ilya ignores him. “And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“To kiss someone this year. Maybe I start early?”
Hollander’s cheeks start pinking up. Cute, so cute. Ilya feels proud, like he just won a chess match. Then, from inside the house, he hears the countdown begin.
“Five.”
Ilya glances at Hollander’s lips, still wet and pink. He glances back to his eyes, searching them for permission.
“Four.”
Hollander’s eyes flutter open and closed for a second, like they’re anticipating what is to come.
“Three.”
Ilya thinks about the other reason he came to America, besides just school.
“Two.”
Hollander flips his hand over and reaches for Ilya’s. His palm is sweaty, like he’s nervous. It’s cute. Did Ilya ever really hate Hollander?
“One.”
Ilya leans in. Hollander’s lips taste like Svedka. But it could be worse.
*