Londongrad

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

The car was coming closer. We were still sitting in the kitchen. I still had Tolya’s sock in my hand along with the box of lens brushes.

I got up and looked out the window. I could barely see the car, its lights out. Somebody was coming. Somebody who didn’t want to make a lot of noise, and I thought: it’s Tolya. It has to be. Who else could it be at this time of night, the weird purple sky heavy with rain, the humidity rising from the grass and coming down from the sky, so my skin was slick with sweat.

I blew out the candle.

“What’s happening, Artie?”

“Somebody just drove up to the gate.”

She rubbed her eyes. “You think it’s my dad?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t we go out of the back door, and through the back gate just in case it’s not him. How far is it to your mother’s place?”

“A mile, not far.”

“We can walk. I don’t want you riding your bike at night, there’s too many crazy drunk drivers out there. Stay on the side of the road.”

“Who do you think it is?” she said, taking the box of brushes from me and shoving them into the bag.

I thought about the man in the seersucker jacket. I thought about Grisha, or maybe it was just Ed, the Georgian taxi driver. Maybe Ed, the good Georgian, had come for me.

“It might be the taxi driver,” I said.

I had to take care of Molly. I had promised Tolya I’d look after Val, and I didn’t and he never blamed me. All that was left was her twin sister.

I pushed on the metal gate in back of the house, and it clattered with a rusty iron noise. We went through and stood together on the empty road that ran behind the Sverdloff dacha, and Molly pointed to the left. Her mother’s place was down the road. And then she stopped dead still.

“What?”

“I left my bike out front. They’ll see it.”

“Leave it,” I said. “We need to go.”

“What if it’s my dad?”

“We’ll walk a little, and then we’ll wait. Okay? You can go to your mother’s place, I’ll walk you most of the way and then and I’ll go back and see who it is.”

“I want to go, too.”

“No,” I said, “I can’t do that. I can’t let you. Just go back to New York, tell Bobo Leven. Take the brushes back to New York. First you go see my friend, Sonny Lippert. Right away, give him the brushes. Put them in something safe, wrap them up good, okay?”

She nodded.

“If you get stuck in Moscow, go see this guy, Viktor,” I said.

She held out her arm. “Write it here, so I don’t forget,” said Molly, and I scribbled the numbers with her red pen.

“Come on, we have to go,” I said, but she hesitated.

“Listen, I have to tell you something. In case I don’t get another chance, or whatever.”

“Of course.”

“Val told me she liked you for real. She told me that if you weren’t our dad’s best friend, she would have… never mind.”

“Thank you.”

“She called me the day before she died, said she had spent the night with you. She sounded really happy.

“I’m glad you told me.” I took her hand and we started down the road together, listening for the noise of a car, or footsteps.

I walked with Molly until we were within sight of her mother’s dacha, and she kissed me on the cheek, and I watched her run up the path until she got to the front gate.

I watched her go, swinging her arms, looking like Valentina from behind, only turning to give a jaunty wave, before she disappeared behind the gate and the stands of white birch trees.

I turned around and walked back to Sverdloff’s dacha. It took me fifteen minutes, maybe more. From the road, I could see a small light on the porch that might be somebody lighting a match.