Friday afternoon, back to back meetings with finicky clients that could not have gone better. The sun slams down Lesnaya, and I'm heading back for the metro when I call N.
"Just walk." She tells me, clever woman that she is.
And I do, past Bellorusskaya and down Tverskaya with a light wind on me, dust kicking up in the street. Everyone is outside now, smoking cigarettes and staring at the traffic, parading the sidewalk in new shoes. I smell diesel and a hint of grass growing. There are tall women - like magnificent horses passing me. Grotesque heels, lifeless eyes. There are men with thousand-mile stares and long cigarette ashes. It's remarkably quiet.
I pass the zoo, the US embassy, cross the river and feel the earth disappearing beneath me. I take E from school early and we act like birds on the backstreets on the way to the european shopping center where I buy her a ciao bimbo ice cream cone every Friday. Half pink, half baby blue - - both bubble gum flavored - - her favorite. I always have to beg the server to give her some sprinkles, not the decorative flower made of plastic. Her hand in mine we ride the elevators for a while and then home to the clean apartment.
On Saturday N enters the place with the second set of keys I gave her. The sound of the lock turning is very comforting.
We drink coffee from the new orange pot that makes two cups, and then to the photography biennale close to Red Square. Bumping into my freckle-faced assistant Sasha and her visiting Italian boyfriend we stand for some time making jokes in various languages, especially about the Russians who insist on getting their picture taken in front of the pictures, arms folded across their chest with deep satisfaction in tight sweaters and shiny shoes.
And then we're late. but not late after all to see a foreign film, feeding each other nuts and various candies I find in my pockets for a long time. Her head on my shoulder, my arm around her I realize I haven't sat in a movie theater in almost 10 years. We are starving and it's mutual - the Starlite Diner close to Mayakovskaya. Sharing the cheeseburger and fries, we eavesdrop on the conversations around us. And then home to the little world we build every time we are together, and lost hours that become Sunday and long naps and somehow making dinner.
Monday morning brings a light rain. I miss New York. I miss the cherry blossoms around the reservoir. I miss the dancing clock in the Central Park Zoo. I miss Eisenbergs and Katz's, Russ & Daughters and Bereket. I miss getting phone calls from friends playing impromptu shows at The Living Room and being there in two minutes. I miss going to parties on rooftops and knowing no one there. I miss the Mermaid Parade and cold beers on the splintering boardwalk.
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