Chapter Text
She only ever played chess in her underwear, black panties and black bra, and only ever after the sex. Part of Alfred wondered if it was a tactical choice; it was hard to concentrate on some black and white squares when you could see your cum drying on her inner thigh.
“Knight to f6.”
She didn’t shower in Alfred’s home. Alfred was semi-glad. She already complained enough about the Nicholas Cage cardboard cutout in his room staring at them whenever they did it; he didn’t have the bandwidth to hear about the Buzz Lightyear themed 3-in-1 shampoo.
“You always do this move,” Alfred muttered, forcing his eyes to stare at his own pieces instead of the creamy breasts encased in dark lace. The sweat was still drying on his skin, her scratches on his shoulders, his thumb prints bruising purple on her hips, “Don’t you want to try something new?”
“It’s called Petrov’s Defense,” She explained as she leaned back, lighting a cigarette. The smoke plumes danced around in the low, blue lighting of his room, “Part of the Soviet Hegemony style. 1800s, long before your time.” 1800s or soviet? confusing
He rolled his eyes, moving his own piece in the same place he always did, “Probably isn’t that good if it’s not relevant anymore. Anything worth lasting tends to…y’know… last.”
“Said with the confidence of a newage brat,” she sneered. Her leg was warm and soft on his own, “let’s see you last a few more hundred years and then we can talk.”
“Sure, dude,” a sigh, another move. He could beat her easily if he wanted to. Did he want to? “The bad thing about this move is that you’re focusing too hard on capturing the center of the board and then I can easily scale you with the periphery. What matters is the King.”
“What is a king without an army?” she blew out some smoke, “you throw your pawns away as if they are fishbait, but a kill is a kill. Every piece on this board is worth something. And who knows? That pawn you tossed might’ve become a queen in six easy steps.”
“And in those six steps I could win the game flat out.”
She shook her head, “you do not understand the philosophy of chess.”
“You know,” he said with some irritation, “Arthur did teach me how to play different schools of strategy. I learnt a bunch; Hypermodern, Romantic, English, whatever, until the monotony of it got boring for me. Arthur used to drag me out to the front porch everyday after my daily bureaucracy and civil government lessons and we’d play. He’d say the same stuff you do, he’d tell me I was missing out on something fundamental, that this was the greatest game of human civilization, that across it’s 1500 year existence it had never been ‘solved’ but that didn’t make sense to me because there was nothing to solve. It’s a game with two people. Your opponent makes a move, and then you adapt.”
“Then what happened?”
“And then I won.”
“And then?”
Alfred adjusted his glasses, confused and frowning, “What to do you mean ‘and then’? I won. What else is there?”
“Oh Alfred,” as if he'd forgotten the right lines.
Alfred wasn’t sure when this started. Maybe it was a century ago or so, during one of his first meetings when he was still slightly shaky on his feet, itching to get away from England’s grasp, a century ago? from all those taxes and laws that his people hadn’t even voted for, when he’d seen her.
She was taller than Arthur, than Francis, a waterfall of blonde, the colour of a pale sunbeams, an elegance, a coldness, how her violet eyes barely even looked at him, that whimsical smile, the ricocheting laugh that made Alfred’s caretaker wince.
Maybe it was five years ago, after a particularly bad meeting when he’d caught her drinking martinis in the seductive lounge area of the hotel bar.
She’d offered to buy him a drink, and when the vodka came, Alfred struggled not to throw up at the smell of straight spirit. He was used, he said, to less… intense alcohol. Like Bud Light. She’d laughed. Then she put her hotel card key on the table.
Several meetings after that and it was almost a routine. She arrived at alarming times, pushing past the door to kiss him.
“What happened hi, hello, how are you doing?” Alfred joked, breathless against her lips.
“Hi, hello, how are you doing?” she responded, dragging his hand to her the waistband on her long skirt. Alfred appreciated the direction.
“Are you okay? What about this? Or this?” The pants had fallen quickly to the tiles, and both of them nearly tripped over them in their haste.
She’d only groaned, yanking him closer, “just follow my lead.”
They hadn’t even made it to the couch.
“How about I make you some dinner before you leave?” he asked hopefully.
“I’m not sure how my digestive system would react to the average amount of grease in an American hamburger.”
“Nothing but fear mongering,” he insisted, then remembered that his fridge was chiefly rRed Bull and cupnoodles and a block of cheese that was probably not meant to be blue. He should really throw it out at some point, “...how about some pizza?”
“You really embody the stereotypes, America,” she deadpanned cheerfully, her accent thick on his name, clapping her hands together, “I really would like to try one of your famous cheesecakes from your factories. I’ve heard there is one that amounts to 2,500 calories! Absurd!”
“Do you mean The Cheesecake Factory? I mean sure, I guess we can get that…” he trailed off, opening up UberEats quickly, anything to get her to stay a few more minutes, an hour, the night, “but what about real food?”
She waved her hand in dismissal, “anything that isn’t stale cardboard smeared in grease and tomato sauce will be fine.”
“High standards,” he commented brightly, ordering four different flavours of pies just in case before sitting down next to her and grabbing the remote. Was this domestic? Almost marital? “You know this might be news to you, but they’ve actually invented colour movies now. With sound!”
“And they’ve made them worse in doing so,” she told him, dry, not moving away but not leaning into him either. This was the closest they’d ever been without fucking, and her body was warm and impossible, like the heat death of the universe, “I don’t know what the point of that is.”
“You don’t know what the point of… audio…in a movie…is?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and refused to elaborate. It was like a metaphor for their relationship; Alfred asking for clarification and her vague, one word answers, the meaning of the two inches of distance on the couch.
When the food came, she ignored the pizza and went straight to desert only to dissect it with her fork and knife, seperating the layers of frosting and vanilla sponge.
“This was called the Celebration Cheescake,” he told her, watching her like she was an alien discovering toothpaste for the first time, and with a vague sense sense of unease.
“I didn’t know this colour existed in food,” she said blankly, almost disappointed, “its so…pink.”
She crushed a bit between her fingers, but it was creamy and not the gritty-sugar texture she’d expected. She put a little in her mouth, and Alfred paid attention to the dainty tips of her fingers against the rose of her lips. Her expression changed slowly, the way one realizes they’re about to crash their car, that there is no space for recourse on the road.
“What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously.
“I think I like it.”
She didn’t show up for a month.
Alfred had many houses; one in New Orleans, in El Passo, in New York, Syracuse, Salt Lake, Portland, Idaho. A laundry list of separate places, separate adventures, a new ethos necause he couldn’t stand being in one place too long, because going to the same restaurants was boring, playing basketball with the same exact fratboys, the same old clubs and house parties.
But he stayed in the one in Chicago that entire month, waiting for her. Because it was the only one she ever visited, and he didn’t want to miss her. He kept the bathroom door open in case he failed to hear a phone call, a text, and whenever he heard the classic ringing, he ran out, soapbuds falling listly to the hardwood floor, a towel barely clutched around his waist.
Invitations, celebrities, inaugural ceremonies, politics, politics, politics, a long winded email from Arthur demanding that he call more often, a message from Mathew with Stranger Things spoilers that he promptly deleted. Asshole.
Nicholas Cage stared at him, statuesque, from his place on Alfred’s wall. Alfred took it down.
It wasn’t that Alfred was lonely. There was always a carousel of people coming in and out of his house. People whose names blurred, whose features he didn’t remember, or maybe he did, from this or that picture on instagram. His crowd tended to run young, university going, Alfred’s ID said that he was twenty three, but maybe he should change that soon.
He wondered if he could pass as an aggressively unwrinkled thirty year old that was religiously addicted to retinols. Anne Hathaway existed, afterall. Anomalies in nature. He then wondered what Anya’s ID card said.
Time slipped.
He did his daily routine. He threw out the expired cheese. He went to a viewing of The Idea Of You, and a girl he used to flirt with kissed him shyly on the mouth in the dark, pale sparkly pink lipgloss residue. He didn’t kiss back.
If you kiss a girl and no one sees, did it happen? If you love someone and never say anything, did it happen?
Mathew did weed with him one day and asked in that lazy, intimate way one does when they’re high what’s wrong, what changed, what happened to you?
She did, he thought.
The frost was coming.
Alfred drove his truck over the barely there road, his google maps glitching slightly, but it was fine, there was no where to go but straight, the wheat fields flanking him on either sides. Window down, the cold bit at his face and fingers. He remembered Anya in her black bra and panties even in December and felt warm again.
Rural Russia rushed at him, open acid blue sky, inconceivable emptiness. Every so often he’d see a lonely farmhouse, half in ruin, dilapidated church cresting distant hills, all empty. No hospitals.
When he saw her, she was on her hands and knees, overalls, sunflower tucked into her pockets, rubbing at the dust on the floor with an old cotton rag. She didn’t run into his arms like he’d expected. Instead it’s: “How did you find this place?”
“Natalya told me,” he stuffed his hands in his pockets, faux jovial confidence, he grinned at her, “Wasn’t easy, you know. It took approximately three hours of begging and one trade in of a Michael Jackson autograph for her to say anything.”
“Of course she did.”
“Don’t be too resentful, plenty would kill for the signature of The King Of Pop,” his eyes wandered around the house. It was like a faded photograph, everything tinged slightly with grey, the ornamental rosary, the painting of Jesus, pioneer hankerchief. A bookshelf, “Madame Bovary?”
She flushed red, tucking a silky strand behind her ear, “Not mine. I stole it from France’s bedside table during a night together. I sometimes,” a pause, correcting herself, “I used to take things from my lovers. I needed proof that it happened because often the next day they’d pretend that it didn’t.”
For once, Alfred imagined her as an insecure young woman, her hair shorter and in braids, hugging her naked legs to her chest on Francis’ bed.
“Oh,” he frowned, fighting not to let the jealousy show. A forced smile, “Ever take anything of mine? Maybe that’s where my limited edition Baby Yoda went.”
“I never needed to. Not with you,” the vulnerable sincerity in her voice made them both a little uncomfortable.
She made him sit down on her old wooden table as she worked. She tugged on an apron, “I’m not sure why you are here. But you will eat before you leave.”
“Actually,” he shifted a little bit. His red Adidas shoes look incongruent against the rustic floorboards. How old was this wood? He could see stains, food spills, grooves worn away by steps and by the chair. How many others had sat here. “I brought you….something. Canned soup. A truckful.”
Only aloud did he realize how stupid it sounded.
“I don’t need your food,” she said, immediately defensive, crossing her arms and huffing, “as if it would even have the appropriate amount of bayleaf...”
“No! No, it’s your favorite brand. A Russian brand. I, uh, asked Natalya. I promise it has just the right amount of bayleaf. Three hundred cans, in the truck, all for you.”
“I can afford my own cans of soup, Alfred.”
“That isn’t the point!” He got up, the sound of the chair scratching at the wood, his hands slammed down on the table. There was no outside to hear them, for miles and miles it was just golden wheat fields that trembled slightly at the idea of the incoming winter.
“Then what is the point, Alfred.”
“It’s supposed to be the big dramatic gesture,” he explained desperately, “At the end of the movie, after everything’s gone wrong and there was unrealistic miscommunication, and the hero’s own hubris has bitten him in the ass because he’s forgotten the real meaning of music or who his best friends are or whatever- and I don’t even know what my hubris has been this time because I thought we were, y’know, having a pretty good thing- the big gesture is what fixes everything. The hero earns his forgiveness for being an asshole because how couldn’t you forgive a guy who flies across the Atlantic and drives six hours to give you a truck full of soup?!”
Anya stared at him, unreadable. Maybe pitying, Alfred wasn’t sure.
“Okay,” she said, still expressionless as she put a hand on his, “I’ll take the canned soup. Sit down for me while I get you some tea.”
The teacup felt ancient and expensive, a glit edge that was slowly chipping away, chrysanthemums painted on the side. Anya stirred the opaque liquid absently as she stared out the window. It was an old design, wooden, and it, too, shook with the wind. The sun was setting, glazed donut of light.
“We are supposed to have a snow storm tomorrow,” she told him, “it’s going to be bad.”
“The sky is clear.”
“Yes. But snow in this house is going to be very different from your pretty, insulated condo in Chicago.”
“You have a fireplace.”
“I do.”
“That’ll be enough,” he told her firmly. He had absolutely no idea how an old fashioned fireplace was supposed to work.
She raised her eyebrows at him, “What is freedom to you?”
He was stumped by the question, “This sounds like the prompt from my college application essay.”
Wrong answer. He knew it before the words were out of his mouth.
“Democracy, I guess. Rule of the majority. Or maybe it’s just…To be able to do as I please.”
“To do as you please,” she repeated, as if tasting the words in her mouth like honey, “I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t think my people do either. We just know how to die for freedom. It’s very Eastern Orthodox, you know, Martyrdom. That’s why we love our saints. Why we fast. Suffering is a type of absolution.”
She had lines on her hands and on her shoulders. He wondered if it meant something, if they were the result of a cut, of a friendly accident, or the scar of a war that killed millions. With nations, it was always hard to tell. What part was human and what part was the unforgiving molecular mimcry of historical fact.
His own body was blemishless.
“Once, soon after the fall of the union, driving through the Smolensk region, I stopped at a gas station and asked the man at the register what freedom was. You want to know about freedom? He said, Have a look around our general store. There’s vodka, any kind you like: Standard, Gorbachev, Putinka; heaps of cold cuts and cheese and fish. We even have bananas. What more freedom could you ask for? It’s enough for us.”*
“So you suffered. What’s that got to do with me, with us? Is it wrong to be happy?” He wanted to reach over the table and grab her hand, but already he was feeling woefully juvenile. He wouldn’t be able to take it if she rejected him again.
She shook her head despairingly, as if he didn’t get it, that there was this divide that he could not cross, “it is not so simple. Especially given what we are.”
“But I love you.” he whispered, “Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” she responded sadly, “though I wish it was.”