a trainer wondering whether his fighter has the stuff to go the distance. “Has Leonid come home for good?”
“No.” A cold spot in the pit of her stomach began to spread out. “He’s trying to get transferred to Yakutsk.”
Alexey’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t prepared for such a conversation, and the prospect of it certainly gave him no pleasure, so Anna came swiftly to the point: “I don’t want to lose him.”
Alexey picked up his glass and made the liquid sparkle in the light. “Looks to me as though your captain doesn’t exactly yearn to come back to you.”
He made the remark jokingly, but it went through her like a knife. “For a year, Petya’s had no father, and I’ve had no man.”
“No man.” They exchanged a brief glance, and Bulyagkov nodded. The lack of physicality in their relationship had never been an issue for them; now they were both thinking the same thing.
“We both knew we couldn’t last the way we were. Something had to change one day.” She put her hand on his.
“And now it’s over?” Was his weird calm due to exhaustion?
“My love, my dearest,” she said sadly. His sallow face, his disordered hair, the old eyes, and the melancholy that filled them combined to take Anna’s breath away. “We were a good team.”
“Are you breaking off our friendship, too?”
“Our friendship, never,” she answered vehemently. He’d understood what she meant; why didn’t she confess that she’d come expressly to break it off? “But I don’t know where that will lead us. We were never what’s called a couple.”
“I suppose not.” He leaned back with a look of serious consideration on his face. “I love you, Anna. Maybe I love you so much because we were never able to spend much time together. Maybe things were good for us for so long because there was always the temptation of thinking something more might come of them.”
She thought about Kamarovsky, the other creator of this relationship, and about Leonid, who, this one time, knew where she was spending the evening. Alexey’s woefulness overcame her, too.
“I’ve been saddled with taking a trip,” he said in a different tone of voice. “I’ll have to leave very soon.”
“A trip? Where?” The change of subject had rattled her.
“Please let everything remain the same between us until I get back.”
“Why? What’s the difference if we say good-bye now or then?”
“A big difference, as far as I’m concerned.” He rolled his wineglass around on its base. “Could you do that for me?”
“My husband’s back at home, playing with our son. I want to straighten everything out.” When he said nothing, she went on: “I can’t do what you want me to do unless you tell me the reason for it.”
Cautiously, as though he were afraid of breaking it, he placed the glass to one side. “I wouldn’t like to cause Comrade Kamarovsky any unnecessary concern.” The eyes of the Arctic wolf gazed at her.
The hanging lamp suddenly seemed to Anna like a sun shining in her face. Her mouth went dry. She stared at Alexey as though, in that instant, he’d been transformed into a dangerous predatory beast.
“Since when … ?” she whispered.
“Since when have I known?” He reached for her hand; she jerked it back. “Since before you knew, Anna.”
In the silence, the room seemed to dissolve. “But then … everything was a game, a setup from the start?” She shook her head several times, as though trying to get an unpleasant sound out of her ear. “How could you love me, if you … ?”
“That’s what’s so marvelous.” He reached for her hand a second time. “That first time, when I saw you on the ladder, in your overalls, with paint on your nose—that first time, you conquered me.”
“Stop making jokes!”
“When it came to you, I was always serious.” He kissed the base of her thumb. “At our second meeting—you remember, your father’s reading—my heart was beating in my throat when I spoke to you. I was just an old guy, fat and worn out, and I had my eye on the beautiful, married house painter. I was in love for the first time in years, for the first time again, full of longing, and I felt so young it was mortifying even to me.” With every sentence, he drew closer to her face. “Do you know how much I desired these lips, these eyes, your hair, every inch of your neck? It was childish and maybe unreasonable, but wonderful, too.”
“But why …” She