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America tastes like coca-cola.
Artificial flavor and fizz bursting on Ilya’s tongue, so much sugar it makes his teeth ache. Bright red cans with a giant logo splashed across them. Loud, too—hissing when he cracks it open, and then a staticky whirr of bubbles that goes on buzzing as the cold aluminum sweats on the counter.
And that’s America: bright, loud, full of sugar and caffeine and chemicals. Pure junk that kisses back when it hits his tongue and sparkles down his throat. Once he moves to Boston, Ilya orders it everywhere. He cannot get enough.
And if America tastes like coca-cola, of course home tastes like good Russian vodka. Cold as a snowy morning when it fills his mouth, crisp and clean and barely sweet at all, but burning all the way down his throat. Best to drink it fast, throwing back shots in clubs with pounding music and Sveta by his side. A cigarette and a stranger’s tongue down his throat is his favorite chaser.
No matter how many times it sours in his stomach or stabs an ice pick through his brain the morning after, he keeps coming back for more. It doesn’t matter that the vodka does not love him back. That it’s always too much in the end. He keeps downing shots because what else is there to do in Russia?
The American stuff is not the same. Either too much sugar or an aftertaste that comes on too strong. A cheap imitation of burning-bitter home, reminding him of what he left behind.
They don’t drink like that here. At galas and awards ceremonies, old men in ugly suits swirl their glasses and discuss the wine like it’s a girl, complicated and sexy and all wrapped up in layers you want to undress. They use words that make no sense to Ilya, not when they’re talking about a drink instead of sex. Legs. Full-bodied. Silky. Soft. As far as he can tell, wine is none of these things. But then he’s never cared that much about wine, no matter what language he’s speaking.
After the NHL awards, Ilya ends up with Shane in his bed and a glass of vodka in his hands. They’re both hockey royalty now, and the hotel penthouse is a palace. Even more impressive than the view of the city skyline is the bottle of real Russian vodka, the kind he can never find in America. There are no proper vodka glasses, but that doesn’t matter. As he sprawls on his throne watching Shane follow his commands so sweetly, he tastes home for the first time outside of Russia.
And that’s a problem. Shane—Hollander—shouldn’t taste like home. These moments they steal together are little vacations. This is not a place he can rest his head.
So Ilya sips vodka and makes himself chase it down with a cigarette instead of Hollander’s lips. Once he gets the taste of Shane Hollander in his mouth, he’ll never get it out.
Before Montreal plays Boston, Ilya unpacks a whole case of ginger ale and stuffs them all in his fridge. He has to stack his yogurt on top of the pickle jar to clear up space, but he makes it fit.
The brand Shane likes best is called Canada Dry. Of course it is. Canada’s perfect hockey player has to drink the Canada soda. Nice simple drink in a polite green can. Good for stomach aches and the hangovers disciplined golden boys like Shane Hollander never get.
English is a very stupid language. Ilya laughed when he learned the word dry can mean four different things. It can be dry as in not wet, dry as in lots of alcohol and, somehow, dry as in no alcohol at all. But there is also dry as in boring.
Boring like Shane Hollander. The best kind of boring.
After Ilya fucks everything up and Shane disappears, Ilya shoves the ginger ales to the back of the fridge, behind the milk where he can’t see them. They wait there for months. Sometimes, when he digs around for something he can’t find, a little drunk and desperate for a midnight snack, his fingers brush against a can.
At the all star game, Ilya needs something stronger than coca-cola to face Hollander again. He is afraid to see what passes for vodka in Florida, so he orders a beer. Corona is a nice, casual beer to drink in a bar by the beach when you are wearing a Hawaiian shirt and enjoying yourself and not worrying at all about hockey players with pretty freckles.
When Shane does come over, he doesn’t order his favorite drink. He sits down next to Ilya, and he orders a Corona, too, and they drink the same beer, side by side.
The next time Ilya takes a sip, his mouth is full of hops and sunshine. If he kissed Shane now, his mouth would taste just the same.
After his father dies, the vodka tastes different. He picks up a note he couldn’t name before. Russian vodka tastes like despair. No wonder America can’t get it right. America has heartache of its own, but no country has perfected the art of despair like Russia.
He is sick of this place. There is nothing more Russian than drinking vodka alone and half wishing you were dead, but Ilya doesn’t want it anymore. So he picks up the phone, and when he hears Shane’s voice on the other end of the line, he thinks maybe it would be okay if he never tasted good Russian vodka again.
But he does taste it again. Shane loves him, and Shane has a plan. Ilya will never go back to Russia, and he doesn’t mind at all because he would give up his home, his country, the whole continent if it meant he could be with Shane.
Then Ilya takes a sip of whatever David Hollander poured him, and his whole world turns sideways. For a second, he doesn’t know where he is. His senses are full of his homeland. Crisp and perfectly cold. Barely sweet, with that clean, familiar burn going down. The wave of nostalgia is so strong it turns his vision blurry, makes him ache with a longing buried deep in his gut. Home. Right here in Ottawa.
Ilya wants to ask a hundred questions. Why do you have this? How did you know? All he can manage is, “this is good vodka.”
“I try to buy the Russian stuff,” David Hollander says, like it’s nothing, and Ilya is so stunned he can’t think of a single thing to say.
So simple. How long has this bottle been waiting for him in the Hollanders’ cottage? Where is the despair, the empty ache like an aftertaste he can’t wash away? When has home ever tasted like something that could love him back?
He slides his foot against Shane’s under the table. He is safe. He is across the sea from Russia, and he never has to go back again. Home is here, sitting next to Shane eating pasta with the sunlight streaming in.