Lights All Night Long - Lydia Fitzpatrick Page 0,10

secondary school, and his new English teacher, Maria Mikhailovna, was a tiny woman with enormous glasses and a prodigious amount of hair that she wore in a thick, schoolgirl braid. Her husband was a policeman, so everyone regarded her with a bit of suspicion, but she herself was soft-spoken and sometimes seemed surprised to find herself at the front of the room and the center of attention. After Ilya’s first week in her class, she asked him to stay behind and said, quietly, “You have a gift.”

Ilya’s eyes fell like sinkers. He was used to hearing things like this by now, but still he never knew what to say in return. “Take the compliment like a boss,” Vladimir always told him. “Just say, ‘No shit.’” But, as always, Vladimir’s advice was only applicable if you had Vladimir’s balls, and Ilya did not.

“Thank you,” Ilya managed.

Maria Mikhailovna handed him a piece of paper. “Ask your mother to get what she can, and if it’s any trouble, tell me.”

He nodded. There was a Russian-English dictionary on the list, a book of idioms, a tape player, a set of tapes, and corresponding workbooks. He estimated the costs on his walk home, and the total was close to a week’s groceries, but his mother smiled when he showed it to her. She handed Vladimir a stack of rubles and told him to take Ilya to the bookstore on Ulitsa Snezhnaya, which was the more expensive of Berlozhniki’s two bookstores.

When they walked in the door, a tiny bell shook above them, and the shopkeeper looked at them and said, “Money on the counter.” The shopkeeper was a sour sort, with permanently pursed lips, and Ilya could feel Vladimir bristling next to him, could feel how badly Vladimir wanted to slam the door, head across the square, and spend the money on a dozen VHSs at the Internet Kebab, but instead he cleared his throat and showed the man Maria Mikhailovna’s list. When the total was more than their mother had given them, the shopkeeper allowed a smile.

“If I cancel the tapes you’ll have enough,” the man said.

“We’re not canceling the tapes,” Vladimir said.

“It’s OK,” Ilya said. “Maria Mikhailovna—”

“We’re getting the tapes.” Vladimir reached into the waistband of his jeans and plucked out a bill that was rolled thin as a straw. He handed it to the shopkeeper. “You do the math,” he said.

“Of course I’ll do the math,” the shopkeeper said, and, once he had, he said, “It’ll be two weeks at least.”

Vladimir nodded, and Ilya followed him out the door. When it had closed behind them, Vladimir said, “Did you see his mouth? He looks like he’s been sucking cock nonstop for a decade.”

Ilya laughed, but Vladimir was not joking. His eyes had gone narrow and sharp. “You’re not going to get anywhere, ever, if you let people like that push you around.” He was walking fast toward home, his steps making a staccato rhythm of his words. “That guy wants the whole world to fail. You. Me. Himself even. Just so he can say he saw it coming.”

“OK,” Ilya said.

“Not OK,” Vladimir said, ahead of him.

“Where did you get the money?” Ilya asked. He knew for a fact that Vladimir had spent his name-day money within an hour of receiving it, but Vladimir didn’t answer.

Two weeks later, when they returned to the shop, the shopkeeper hefted a box out of the storeroom and slid it onto the counter. Ilya could see that everything was there. The tapes in a cellophane stack. The books pristine, their pages so bright and white that Ilya could feel the way they would cut his fingers.

“Thank you,” Ilya said, but Vladimir, who lost his homework on a weekly basis, unearthed Maria Mikhailovna’s list from his pocket.

“I’ll check it,” he said, and he began to match the books’ titles to the ones on the list. Ilya knew that Vladimir meant to make a point, but his reading was a work in progress, his English abysmal, and it took him a long time to sound out each title. His lips moved, slow and labored, as though he were giving birth to each word. The shopkeeper pulled a toothpick from his pocket and began to flip it, end over end, between his teeth. He was watching Vladimir too.

“I have to piss,” Ilya said, because he could feel the shopkeeper practicing insults with each flip of the toothpick.

“Hold it,” Vladimir said. He moved his finger down the list and began sounding out