the night of the impossible

It was on an August night ten years ago that I saw the moon caught behind clouds, perfectly close to an ornate tower of red brick. Standing on a bridge with the silhouette of Red Square behind me, stuck in some sort of fairy tale, I tried to relight the cigar in my hand. I had no idea what I was doing, swept up in the moment and the prospect of a real Cuban to tell everyone about back in New York. It burned my throat, and I did not draw on it correctly.  

Pulling my coat around me, I went back to the Rossiya, where $50 a night got you a simple room draped in aging pink velvet. They say the radios set into the walls were actually intercoms that could be used to eavesdrop on guests. In the elevator two girls were pressing their hands inside the jacket of a drunken man, all laughing in slow motion, the grotesque light of the tiny space etching their bad skin and the frayed edges of their jackets. I exit on the third floor, the corridors dim and narrow, a labyrinth of old wood and worn carpets. The same old woman sits at her desk. I give her my passport as she hands me my room key. She says nothing. I turn back, pulling 50 rubles from my pocket to buy a beer from her tiny refrigerator. 

The halls are full of prostitutes. Tall, thin, wearing nothing but leopard spot lingerie and heels, with some kind of robe or coat draped across their shoulders. I stare at my feet and try to avoid their eyes, the corridor a gauntlet of perfume, naked thighs, whispers of broken English. It takes me some time to find my room this way, but I fumble inside, sipping at once from the beer, cracking the windows open. That moon is still there, bright and pale behind the storm clouds. I struggle with the cigar a bit more, enough to slump into the lumpy armchair by the window and gaze out at the rooftops, to sip some warm, soapy Soviet beer, to stare at the torn threads and warped poles around the window.

The phone rings, as it does every time I return to the room. I let it ring for a while.

"Do you want massage?" A woman asks in a flat voice.

"No thanks." I say.

She breathes for a moment, and does not hang up.

"Wish I could order another beer." I say.

She clears her throat, then hangs up.

The room feels very quiet now, as I place the receiver back in its cradle. 

I give up on the cigar that has gone out again. It feels fat and damp in my hand. 

There is a messy pile of pages on the bed that I will edit tonight long after the moon has passed out of sight. My precious first novel sits in fragments that cannot be sewn back together it seems. 

I sat on a boat landing on the edge of the river a few days ago, a line of yellow buildings stretching past me into the distance. In the roar of traffic, I had an epiphany, scribbling as pages flipped in the dust and wind. I don't know if the ending will work better now, after the solution has had some time to be absorbed. Something about an ant crawling across the carpet of a cheap motel room, something about a chance run-in with an old love. 

It all seems so impossible.

The snow kicks up, turning the air thick and white. You cannot see out the windows as it tumbles down, then drifts back up in cartwheels that make E jump and shout. It looks like night outside, a strange white night.

She asks if we can make a snowman. I dress her warmly, wrapping a giant scarf twice around her tiny neck. We go outside, our feet making perfect prints on the sidewalk.

I look out at the river, and a set of stairs that lead down to a landing.