Archive of Our Own

I

He smelled it from the front hall.

Shane Hollander could identify a lot of things by smell. Fresh ice from yesterday’s. His own locker room from the visitors’. His mom’s miso soup from any other miso soup on earth. And—unfortunately, deeply unfortunately—McDonald’s fries from any other fries in the universe.

He shut the door behind him and set the bag of containers on the hall table. His mom had sent food “for Ilya” again, and again she’d labeled every single lid. Shane had learned from the best, apparently.

The TV was murmuring in the living room—something old, in Russian, with jaunty music and someone yelling, very indignant. And the rustle of paper. That bag. Shane would have known the sound anywhere.

Ilya wasn’t lying on the couch. Ilya was arranged on the couch, the way only Ilya could be: feet on the coffee table, one arm behind his head, an enormous cup of pink milkshake in the other hand. Next to his bare heels sat a paper bag with the yellow M, already half gutted: a crushed burger box, napkins, fries spilled right across the unfolded paper. On the screen, a bearded man in a brocade robe and a tall fur hat was rushing around some Soviet apartment.

Ilya was wearing Shane’s hoodie. Again.

“Again,” said Shane.

Ilya didn’t even turn his head.

“Hello, Hollander. I missed you too. How was your day? How is your mother?”

“You promised.”

“I promised ‘not every day.’” Ilya held up one finger, shiny with grease. “Yesterday, nothing. So today is already not every day. Is logic.”

“That’s three times this week.”

“You are counting?”

“I find the receipts.” Shane crossed his arms. “There are more McDonald’s receipts in your car than there’s paperwork for the car.”

“Paperwork is boring,” said Ilya. “Receipts are memories.”

He took a long, loud, slurping pull on the straw, looking Shane dead in the eye.

“Do you know how much sugar is in that?”

“Yes. A lot. This is why it is good.”

“You’re a professional athlete.”

“I am a professional athlete with forty-one points.” Ilya balanced the cup on his knee. “How many do you have, Hollander?”

Shane said nothing.

“How many?”

“Forty-three.”

“Forty-three.” Ilya nodded like a professor at an oral exam. “On broccoli. And I have forty-one—on fries. Difference is two points. And broccoli is more expensive, by the way. I did the math.”

“You did not do the math.”

“I did it with my heart.”

Shane sat down on the arm of the couch—not because he wanted to be closer, but because standing over someone in the middle of your own living room was stupid. Ilya immediately offered him a fry.

“No.”

“One.”

“No.”

“Is still hot. Still crunchy. In five minutes it is too late, Hollander, this is tragedy. Like a faceoff: the moment is there, or it is gone.”

“You’re comparing fries to a faceoff.”

“I compare everything to faceoffs. You taught me this.”

He ate the fry himself—slowly, eyes half closed, with the expression other people wore listening to Rachmaninoff. Shane’s eyelid twitched.

That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that Ilya—barefoot, salt on his fingers, in Shane’s hoodie, stretched out across the shoulders—looked so good that Shane couldn’t manage to be properly angry with him. Shane was about sixty percent angry. The other forty percent wanted to sit down next to him.

He focused on the sixty.

“And you know what is saddest?” Ilya shook his head mournfully and fished out another fry. “In Canada there are no cherry pies. Only apple. Barbaric country.”

“Canada cares about your health.”

“Canada knows nothing about pies.”

Ilya’s phone lay on the coffee table next to the bag, face down. Shane nodded at it.

“You didn’t pick up. I called after lunch.”

“Ah.” Ilya waved a hand. “Moscow called. Long call, in Russian. Documents. Boring.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing.” He crunched a fry. “Paperwork.”

Shane looked at the bag. At the milkshake. At the fries strewn across the paper, and at the grease stain already spreading over the coffee table—the coffee table it had taken Shane six weeks to choose.

“Ilya,” he said. He was honestly trying to say it gently. “I really don’t get it. You can order anything you want, from any restaurant in the city. If you want, I’ll make something greasy once a week myself, properly, with real meat. And you eat this. It isn’t even food. It’s garbage in a nice box.”

Ilya stopped chewing.

Just stopped—for a second, no more—and looked somewhere at the screen, past the bearded man in the robe, past everything.

Shane figured he’d taken offense on behalf of the fries.

Then Ilya grinned.

“Tsars eat whatever they want, Hollander.”

“You’re not a tsar.”

“Today, I am tsar.” He jabbed a fry at the screen. “You see? Tsar. Best movie in the world. Is about a tsar who ends up in an apartment in Moscow, and then… you won’t understand. You are Canadian.”

“I understand humor.”

“No,” Ilya said fondly. “You don’t.”

Shane rolled his eyes and went to unpack his mother’s containers in the kitchen.

“Mom sent you curry,” he called. “And something with tofu. And a note.”

“Yuna is a saint. What does the note say?”

Shane unfolded it. His mother’s handwriting was so even it might have been done with a ruler.

“‘Ilya, honey, this needs to be eaten by Friday. Don’t give any to Shane, he already got his.’”

“I am going to marry your mother.”

“She’s married.”

“I will wait,” said Ilya, and crunched another fry. “Curry tomorrow. For breakfast.”

“It’s dinner.”

“Tsar decides.”

Shane put the containers in the fridge—on the shelf with his own, labeled “Thursday, lunch” and “Thursday, dinner”—and closed the door a little harder than he needed to.

Laughter drifted in from the living room. Ilya was howling at his movie—head thrown back, probably loud enough for the neighbors. The bearded tsar on the screen was yelling about something. The bag rustled.

Shane stood there a little longer, looking at his neat row of labels.

He didn’t get it. He really didn’t.

Not yet.

II

Svetlana landed Friday around midnight, and Ilya went to pick her up himself, even though Shane offered to call a car.

“Can’t,” said Ilya, already in his jacket. “Tradition.”

Shane found out what the tradition was the next morning, when he opened the trash and discovered two paper bags with the yellow M.

He stood over the bin—sneakers still on, still sweaty from his run—and stared at those bags as if they’d personally wronged him.

“That’s my fault.”

Shane turned around.

Svetlana was standing at the stove. His stove, in his kitchen, where in all this time nobody but him had ever cooked. She was in a silk robe, and her hair looked like she was due at a magazine cover shoot in five minutes. Nobody would have guessed she’d just spent half a day on planes. Something was sizzling in the pan. It smelled like butter, vanilla, and something warm Shane didn’t recognize.

“We always go to McDonald’s from the airport,” she said. Her English was more correct than Ilya’s and her accent softer, and somehow that only made her scarier. “As long as I can remember. He flies in—McDonald’s. I fly in—McDonald’s.”

“Tradition,” said Shane.

“We’re Russian. Everything is tradition.” She flipped something deftly in the pan. “Sit. Do you want syrniki?”

“What are syrniki?”

“Like pancakes. But made from tvorog.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “You don’t know what tvorog is.”

“I know what tvorog is.”

“No,” said Svetlana.

Exactly the way Ilya said it. The same tone, the same fond, immovable certainty. Apparently it was a national trait.

Shane sat. A plate appeared in front of him at once: three golden rounds, a little bowl of sour cream, and a jar of some dark jam.

“Is it healthy?” he asked.

“It’s delicious.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the best answer.” Svetlana set down a cup of tea he hadn’t asked for. “There’s tvorog in it. Protein. You’ll like it.”

“How much protein?”

“Enough.”

“And sugar?”

“Shane Hollander,” said Svetlana, “don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

The syrniki turned out to be hot, crisp on the outside and soft inside, and Shane ate the first one before he’d had a chance to estimate the calories. By the second he’d stopped trying. He dipped it in the sour cream, then, after a brief internal struggle, in the jam, and Svetlana watched the struggle with deep satisfaction.

He hadn’t forgotten the bags in the trash, though.

“He eats that stuff like a teenager,” Shane said, nodding at the bin. “Like he’s fifteen.”

“Seven,” said Svetlana.

“What?”

“Not fifteen.” She turned off the burner and faced him, one hip against the counter. “When he eats McDonald’s, he’s seven.”

Shane didn’t understand. That must have shown on his face, because Svetlana looked at him for a long moment, eyes slightly narrowed—the way you look at ice before you step onto it—and came to some decision.

“He never told you,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Told me what?”

Svetlana sighed. She put two more syrniki on his plate, poured herself some tea, and sat down across from him, one foot tucked under her.

“Eat,” she said. “This will take a while.”

***

“On the thirty-first of January, 1990, the first McDonald’s in Moscow opened,” said Svetlana. “On Pushkin Square. You know this?”

“No.”

“Of course not. You’re Canadian.” She sipped her tea. “The line was… My mother says you couldn’t see the end of it. Thousands of people. Freezing cold. People stood five, six hours.”

“For a hamburger,” said Shane.

“You don’t understand.” Svetlana shook her head—not offended, just stating a fact. “Here, McDonald’s is for when you’re in a hurry. For us, back then, it was a restaurant. People dressed up for it, like for the theater. Empty shelves in the shops, and here everything is bright, everything smells good, everything is like in a movie. Like someone opened a door to another world.” She paused. “Our mothers stood in that line together. Mine and Ilya’s. Friends since school, same apartment block. They were twenty-something. They took the day off, put on the nicest things they owned, and stood there until it got dark.”

Shane tried to picture his own mother in a six-hour line for a hamburger. He couldn’t. His mother had never in her life stood in any line for longer than five minutes: five minutes was all she needed to have a word with the manager.

“My mother still remembers what a Big Mac cost,” said Svetlana. “Three rubles seventy-five kopecks. She doesn’t remember what her wedding dress cost. But that, she remembers.”

Shane smiled.

“But that wasn’t the important part.” Svetlana turned her cup between her palms. “My mother says that when they finally got to the counter, the girl at the register smiled at them. Just like that. They were told to smile there—an American thing, nobody did it at home. In the shop they yell at you, on the bus they yell, at the clinic… And here—they smile. For nothing.” She paused. “And Ilya’s mother burst into tears. Right there at the register. Not because of the burger. Because someone smiled at her.”

Shane stopped chewing.

“She took the paper cup home. Washed it and put it in the sideboard.” Svetlana caught his look. “The glass cabinet where you keep the crystal. The most beautiful things in the house. And there, between the crystal—a McDonald’s cup. It stood there for years. I remember it.”

She smiled with one corner of her mouth.

“Ilya didn’t exist yet. Not even in the plans. Well… maybe in the plans.”

Shane decided not to ask.

“And when he was turning seven, she decided he would celebrate there. At McDonald’s. In the party room, with a host, with balloons. Back then it was the coolest thing you could imagine. Like…” Svetlana searched for a comparison. “Like if for your seventh birthday someone threw you a party on the ice. With Gretzky.”

For his seventh birthday, Shane’s mom had baked him a cake shaped like a hockey rink—icing lines, tiny plastic goalies. He still considered it the best cake of his life. He nodded.

“It cost…” Svetlana waved a hand. “For them—a lot. She saved for months. A little from every paycheck, into an envelope. And she hid the envelope in a volume of Pushkin.”

“Why Pushkin?”

“Ilya says—because the McDonald’s is on Pushkin Square. For poetry.” Svetlana snorted. “I think it’s because his father would never in his life open Pushkin.”

Before he could stop himself, Shane glanced through the open door into the living room. On the shelf there, between his books on hockey and sports nutrition, stood a single Russian book—old, with a worn dark cover and gold lettering long since flaked off the spine. Ilya never read it. But he never put it away, either.

Shane didn’t know what book it was. He’d never asked.

“All the kids at the party got party hats,” Svetlana went on. “You know, the pointy paper ones. But Ilya got a crown. She made it herself. From a cake box and gold foil from candy. She saved the foil from New Year’s—from every single candy. Smoothed it out with her fingernail, like this…”

She showed him: ran her nail along the edge of the table, quick and practiced, back and forth. There was something so childlike in the motion, something from another, long-ago life, that Shane suddenly saw it very clearly: a small kitchen, a yellow lamp, a woman’s hands, a thin crinkling square of foil under her nail.

“…and she kept it between the pages. Collected it for months.”

“In Pushkin,” said Shane.

“In Pushkin.” Svetlana nodded. “The crown came out crooked. One point taller than the others, glue sticking out. And it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was six, I wanted one so badly I cried. I was even in love with him. For a whole week.”

“A week?”

“Then he spilled a milkshake on me. Strawberry.” Svetlana took a sip with the air of someone who had forgotten nothing and forgiven nothing. “On purpose.”

Shane laughed before he could stop himself.

“He always gets strawberry.”

“Always,” Svetlana agreed. “Ever since.”

She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was softer.

“When the food came, she put the crown on him. Right there at the table. And she said…”

Svetlana said something in Russian—a little singsong, with a particular warmth, as if she were repeating not her own words but someone else’s, heard many times and carefully kept. Then she translated:

“‘Today you’re the tsar. And tsars eat whatever they want.’”

Shane went still, fork in hand.

He’d heard that. A hundred times—in English, with his mouth full, with a smirk, with a fry Ilya waved practically in his face. Tsars eat whatever they want, Hollander. Shane had always thought it was just another one of his stupid lines. Ilya had a lot of them.

It had never once occurred to him that the line might have an author.

“He ate a Big Mac,” said Svetlana, and smiled. “The whole thing. It didn’t fit in his mouth, he held it with both hands and ate it for maybe an hour. And a cherry pie. Inside it was hot like… like lava. He burned his tongue—badly, he had tears in his eyes, I saw. But he didn’t cry.”

“Why not?”

“Because tsars don’t cry.” Svetlana shrugged. “He made that up himself. He was seven.”

“In Canada there are no cherry pies,” Ilya had said last Thursday. “Barbaric country.”

Shane had told him Canada cared about his health.

“And we took the metro home,” said Svetlana. “A long way, with a transfer. His mother had worked the night shift and came with us straight from it—no sleep at all. And on the train she fell asleep. Leaned against him and fell asleep. And he sat there and didn’t move. Forty minutes, maybe. The crown slid down over his ear, and he didn’t fix it—he was afraid his mother would wake up. He sat so straight, like a little soldier. The whole car was looking at him and smiling.”

She went quiet.

“You know what I remember best?” she said at last. “Not the burgers. Not the balloons. How he sat.”

Shane found he couldn’t swallow. A piece of syrnik was stuck somewhere in his throat.

He could see it. As clearly as if he’d been sitting across from them in that same car, to the same rattle of the wheels: a little curly-haired boy in a crooked gold crown slipping down over one ear—motionless, serious, terribly proud—and a tired woman asleep against his shoulder.

“She died a few years later,” said Svetlana. “You know.”

“I know,” said Shane.

He knew. He knew it the way you know a line from someone else’s biography: Ilya Rozanov’s mother died when he was a child. A fact. One line.

He hadn’t known she cried at a cash register because someone smiled at her. That she hid money in Pushkin. That she had hands that smoothed out foil with a fingernail.

He’d never asked.

“And after…” Svetlana started, and stopped. She shook her head. “No. That’s for him to tell. If he wants.”

She got up and went back to the stove to slide the last syrnik out of the pan.

“You think he doesn’t know it’s bad for him?” she said without turning around. “He knows. He isn’t stupid, Shane. It’s just that for him, it isn’t food.”

Shane heard it—and recognized it.

It isn’t even food.

His own voice. Last Thursday: the phone face down, the call from Moscow that Ilya had called nothing, the pink milkshake, the fries on unfolded paper. And Shane himself, standing over him with his labels and his grams: garbage in a nice box.

And the way Ilya had stopped chewing for a second.

Shane had figured he’d taken offense on behalf of the fries.

He blinked. Then again. The kitchen had started to swim—the stove, the pan, Svetlana’s silk sleeve—and something hot was sliding slowly down his cheek. Shane only understood what it was when it reached his chin.

Svetlana turned around.

“Oh,” she said. “No. No, no, no. Don’t. If you cry, I’ll cry, and I’m wearing mascara.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Good.”

“It’s the onions.”

“There are no onions, Shane. These are syrniki.”

“Then it’s the tvorog.”

Svetlana laughed through her tears and dabbed the corner of one eye with a fingertip, very carefully, so as not to smudge.

“God,” she said. “You two are the same. And I thought nobody could be worse than Ilya.”

She came back to the table, put the last syrnik on his plate, pushed the jam toward him, and was quiet for a while, giving him time. Shane was grateful.

“Don’t tell him I told you,” she said eventually. “He’ll kill me.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.” Svetlana sighed. “It’s all over your face. Same as his.”

A key turned in the lock.

Ilya tumbled in from practice—loud, flushed from the cold, hair still damp from the shower—dropped his bag, shouted something cheerful to Svetlana in Russian, got something back, came into the kitchen, kissed the top of her head, and stole a syrnik right off Shane’s plate.

Then he saw Shane’s face.

“What?” Ilya said through a mouthful. “What did I do?”

“Nothing.”

Ilya turned a suspicious look on Svetlana. She sipped her tea serenely.

“What did you tell him?” he asked in Russian.

“That you snore,” Svetlana answered without blinking.

Ilya turned back to Shane.

“She said I snore?”

“I don’t know what she said,” Shane said honestly. “But you do snore.”

And then he got up, came around the table, and hugged him.

Just hugged him—in the middle of the kitchen, at ten-something in the morning, in front of Svetlana. Hard. Face pressed into Ilya’s shoulder, into a cold jacket that smelled like outside and a little like the rink.

Ilya froze. Then, carefully, as if afraid of scaring something off, he put a hand on Shane’s back.

“Hollander?”

“Mm?”

“You are okay?”

“Yeah.”

Ilya waited. Shane didn’t let go.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ilya asked quietly over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” said Svetlana. “He just loves you, you idiot. Eat your syrniki.”

***

That night, when everyone in the house was asleep—Svetlana in the guest room, Ilya on his side of the bed, sprawled across three quarters of it as usual—Shane sat in the kitchen.

In front of him: an empty box of no-sugar-added muesli, a roll of foil, scissors, tape, and a ruler.

The foil was silver—there wasn’t any other kind in the house. Shane wondered whether to buy gold tomorrow, and almost immediately knew he wouldn’t.

He looked at all of it for a long time. Then he picked up the ruler.

III

The bad day started the way all bad days start—completely normally.

Morning skate. Lunch. Nap—one hour exactly, because Hollander had somehow trained him into napping, and Ilya still didn’t understand how that had happened.

Then: Boston.

Overtime. Ilya gave the puck away at his own blue line—right onto an opponent’s stick, like a gift, minus the bow—and four seconds later it was over. Marlow scored. Of course Marlow. After the game Marlow texted him “sorry bro” and a sad face, and somehow that made it worse.

Then a reporter asked whether he regretted leaving Boston. Ilya said something that made the team’s media person stare at the floor for a very long time.

And then there was the parking lot.

A boy, seven or so—a pom-pom hat, a jersey with Ilya’s number hanging almost to his knees. His mom beside him. Ilya signed the poster, the hat, and, when the boy solemnly held it out, the mitten too. The mom laughed. She said, “You’re his hero, he screamed the whole game.” Then, without looking, in passing, she fixed her son’s hat—it had slid down over one ear—the way you fix something you’ve fixed a thousand times already and will fix a thousand times more.

Ilya smiled. Said, “Thank you for coming.”

Then he got in his car and sat there for twenty minutes without starting the engine.

***

Hollander was home. Of course he was—he’d watched the game, Ilya could tell right away: from the way he got up off the couch, from the way he opened his mouth.

“Don’t,” said Ilya.

“I was going to say hi.”

Ilya was quiet for a moment.

“Hi.”

He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge—just to have somewhere to look.

On the second shelf sat a container: “Thursday, dinner (I.R.)” At some point Hollander had started labeling his food too—initials in parentheses, as if there were some other I.R. in the house he might be confused with. Chicken. Rice. Broccoli—of course, broccoli.

Ilya closed the fridge.

Took out his phone. Opened the app—red square, yellow M. His thumb found “Order again” on its own: Big Mac, large fries, strawberry shake. He knew that order by heart, like the multiplication table.

His thumb hovered over the button.

He pictured Hollander’s face. That face—like Ilya had just eaten a live pigeon in front of him. And the voice, soft, patient, horribly reasonable: it isn’t even food.

He couldn’t take that face tonight. Not tonight.

He closed the app, went into the living room, and lay down on the couch without turning on the light. Didn’t arrange himself—just lay down. Face to the cushions.

Hollander stood in the doorway for a while. Ilya could feel him behind his back—the way on the ice you feel someone coming up behind you. Then footsteps. The rustle of a jacket. Keys.

“I’ll be back soon,” said Hollander.

The lock clicked. Very quietly—as if someone in the house were asleep.

Ilya knew that sound. He’d listened to it for years—in hotels, in strange cities, at six in the morning: the soft click of Shane Hollander leaving. He always left first. Carefully, politely—so as not to wake anyone. And Ilya would lie there with his eyes closed and pretend to be asleep, because that was easier for both of them.

Well, fine, he thought now. Who would want to sit with this.

He lay in the dark, staring at the back of the couch. A car went by outside, and headlights crawled slowly across the ceiling.

***

He must have dozed off. He didn’t know how long it had been.

The smell came first.

Ilya would have known it with his eyes closed—on the other side of the world, in any year of his life. Which was, more or less, how he had always known it: on the other side of the world, in every year.

He opened his eyes.

Hollander was standing in the middle of the living room—snow on his shoulders, ears red from the cold, a paper bag in one hand and a cardboard tray with an enormous cup in the other. A clear plastic document folder was tucked under his arm.

He didn’t say anything. He turned on the floor lamp, came over, and began laying everything out on the coffee table. One thing at a time. Neatly, in a row—the way you lay out tape, spare laces, and a mouthguard before a game.

“Big Mac,” he said. “Large fries. Strawberry.” A pause. “Pie. Apple. No cherry. I asked at three.”

Ilya sat up slowly.

“At three,” he repeated.

“At three.”

“You went to three McDonald’s. At night.”

“It’s not night. It’s 10:40.”

“Shane Hollander,” said Ilya. “Three McDonald’s. 10:40.”

“At the third one somebody asked for my autograph.”

“And you gave?”

“On a receipt.” Hollander shrugged. “There wasn’t anything else.”

Ilya looked at him. At the snow melting on his shoulders. At his ears. At the paper bag with the yellow M sitting in the middle of the coffee table it had taken Hollander six weeks to choose.

He didn’t get it. He really didn’t.

Meanwhile Hollander opened the folder and took out something flat, silvery, and long. Smoothed it out. At either end it had a slot and a tab; Hollander fitted one into the other, and the flat strip became a circle.

A crown.

A silver one—foil stretched over cardboard. With points. The points were identical. Perfectly, impeccably identical—Ilya would have bet his salary they’d been measured with a ruler, down to the millimeter.

Hollander stepped closer and put the crown on his head. Carefully. Adjusted it a little so it sat straight.

And then he said, in Russian:

“Segodnya ty tsar.”

He said it slowly. Painstakingly. Terribly.

Segodnya came out letter by letter, with a hard, honest g, exactly as it’s spelled—nobody actually says it that way; it’s sevodnya. That’s how first graders read, following the line with a finger. Ilya had read it like that. At seven. Tsar came out without the soft sign, short and flat, like the tsar was Canadian and played defense.

Ilya opened his mouth to say so. To make a joke. He had always had a joke ready for anything—his whole life; it was the one thing that had never failed him.

There was no joke.

There was a red-and-yellow room, a roar of voices, balloons against the ceiling. The smell of fries—the same smell as now. His mother’s hands, which for some reason smelled of glue—he only understood why years later. Cold paper against his forehead. And his mother’s voice right by his ear—cheerful, tired, hers: “Segodnya ty tsar…”

Ilya covered his face with his hands.

“Ilya?” Hollander dropped into a crouch in front of him. His voice had gone scared. “Did I say it wrong? Sveta said it was right. Well. Almost. I practiced. In the car, in the McDonald’s parking lot, like fifteen minutes. A girl in a uniform knocked on my window to ask if I was okay…”

Ilya made a sound. He didn’t know what kind himself—maybe a laugh, maybe not a laugh at all.

“You said it terrible,” he got out through his palms.

“Sorry. I—”

“Say it again.”

Hollander went quiet. Then—softly, even slower, even worse:

“Segodnya ty tsar.” And then in English: “And tsars eat whatever they want. So eat.”

Ilya lowered his hands.

The crown slid down over his ear. He didn’t fix it.

Hollander fixed it. Reached out and fixed it—without thinking, in passing, as if he’d done it a thousand times already and would do it a thousand times more.

“Sveta,” said Ilya. His voice was hoarse, not his own.

“Sveta,” Hollander agreed.

“I will kill her.”

“She said you’d say that.”

“When?”

“Three weeks ago.”

Ilya stared at him.

“Three weeks?” He looked at the folder. “It was with you three weeks?”

“I was waiting.”

“For what?”

Hollander hesitated for a second.

“A bad day.”

“You were waiting for me to have a bad day?” Ilya didn’t know whether to laugh or what. “Three weeks you walk around, waiting for me to feel bad?”

“I wasn’t waiting.” Hollander frowned, the way he did in video review when someone misunderstood him. “I was preparing. That’s different.”

Of course. Of course he was preparing. This was Hollander. Hollander had a plan for faceoffs, for the power play, for flights, for meals by the day of the week—why wouldn’t he have a plan for a crown.

“You kept it in a sheet protector,” said Ilya.

“So it wouldn’t bend.”

“In the car?”

“Under the seat.”

Ilya took the crown off and turned it in his hands. The points were even, so even. On the inside, if you looked closely, you could still see faint pencil lines. Measurements.

“You used a ruler.”

“Yes.”

“Is silver.”

“Silver,” said Hollander. “Second place. Suits you.”

And Ilya laughed. Really laughed—for the first time in that whole long, stupid day: loud, ugly, head thrown back. Hollander looked up at him with as much relief as if he’d just killed off a five-minute major.

“You jerk,” Ilya said, wiping his eyes. “You Canadian—”

“The gold one was hers,” said Hollander.

Ilya went quiet.

Hollander was looking at his hands.

“I was going to buy gold foil. And then I thought…” He lifted one shoulder, awkwardly. “That’s her crown. I didn’t want to copy it. It wouldn’t have been… mine. I just wanted you to have another one.”

Ilya was silent for a long time.

Then he got up, went to the shelf, and took down a book—old, with a worn dark cover and flaked letters on the spine.

“Is that—” Hollander started.

“Pushkin,” said Ilya. “Yes.”

He sat back down, set the book on his knees, and opened it somewhere in the middle—where it fell open on its own, because it had always been opened in the same place.

Between the pages lay a crown.

Folded in half, and pressed over the years as flat as a postcard. The foil had dulled and gone finely rippled, like water in the wind; the cardboard had frayed at the edges. One point had torn off at some point and been stuck back on with a bit of tape—the tape had yellowed and turned brittle as a dry leaf. The dried glue really did stick out.

It was crooked. One point taller than the others.

Hollander looked at it and didn’t seem to breathe.

“My father didn’t like things that remind,” said Ilya. “After Mama, not much was left. Sveta always says he would never in his life open Pushkin. She is right.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I took the book when I left. He didn’t even notice.”

He carefully unfolded the crown. On the inside of the cardboard, in blue ballpoint, were a few words in big block capitals. And next to them a heart, crooked and hurried.

“What does it say?” Hollander asked quietly.

“‘Happy birthday, tsar.’” Ilya ran a finger over the letters. “Block letters. I was only learning to read. She wrote so I could read it myself.”

He laid the two crowns side by side on the coffee table, on the unfolded Big Mac wrapper. The gold one—crooked, faded, old. And the silver one—straight, as if done with a ruler.

Though why “as if.”

Hollander looked at them for a long time.

“Hers is better,” he said finally.

“Is gold.”

“I know.”

“Yours is straighter.”

“I used a ruler.”

“I know, Hollander. I can tell.”

Hollander was quiet a while longer.

“She can have gold,” he said.

Ilya turned his head.

“You?” he said. “Shane Hollander? Giving up first place?”

“For her? Yes.”

Ilya couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Second time that night. He seemed to have forgotten how altogether—how to joke, how to talk—and could only sit there and look at this impossible man whose ears were still red from the cold.

At Shane.

***

“Can I ask?” said Shane.

“You went to three McDonald’s. Ask.”

“Why still?” Shane nodded at the coffee table. “It was one time. One birthday.”

Ilya picked a fry off the table. Held it between his fingers. It was still warm—Shane must have driven back from the third McDonald’s like the place was on fire.

“When Mama died,” he said, “I went there alone. To Pushkin Square. Every year, on my birthday. Sat at the same table, if it was free. Ordered the same things.” He shrugged. “I never told anybody. Sveta, maybe she guesses. She always guesses everything.”

Shane was quiet. He was good at that—being quiet in a way that let you keep talking.

“Then I came here. First night in Boston. I am eighteen, in English I know ‘hockey,’ ‘thank you,’ and bad words. Everything is different. People different, money different, food different. Even snow is different—wet, somehow. And I went to McDonald’s, because I didn’t know where else.” He paused. “And there, everything is the same. Same fries. Same milkshake. Everything. I sat there eating and thought: well, at least something.”

He looked at the fry between his fingers.

“It is the same everywhere, Hollander. Moscow, Boston, here. Everything changes, and this does not. I walk in, and I am seven. And it feels like she…” Ilya faltered. “Like she just stepped away. For napkins. And she is coming back.”

The living room was very quiet. A car went by outside, and headlights crawled slowly across the ceiling.

Shane didn’t say anything.

He reached out, took a fry off the table, and ate it.

Ilya stared at him.

“Hollander.”

“What?”

“You are eating fries.”

“I know.”

“From McDonald’s.”

“I know, Ilya.”

“Is fried. Deep-fried. There is salt. There is—”

“Ilya.” Shane took another one. Chewed. Considered. “It’s good,” he admitted, like a man signing a surrender.

“Of course is good,” said Ilya. His voice had gone somewhere again. “Is not for health, Hollander. Is for joy.”

Shane nodded—slowly, seriously, like he was taking notes. Then he picked up the silver crown, put it back on Ilya’s head, and pushed the Big Mac toward him.

“Eat,” he said. And then, after a moment’s thought, in Russian—flat and hard, no soft sign whatsoever: “Tsar.”

Ilya ate. In a silver crown, by the light of the floor lamp, at eleven-something at night, after the worst day of the season. Shane sat next to him, shoulder against his, and every so often—silently, with a perfectly straight face—stole a fry from the table.

The gold crown lay beside them on the unfolded paper. As if someone had just stepped away for a minute.

For napkins.

***

On Monday a new label appeared on the fridge.

Not in the main row, not between “Monday, lunch” and “Monday, dinner,” but on its own, a little lower. In neat, even letters. Ruler-straight, almost certainly:

“Bad day — McDonald’s (I.R.)”

Hollander had, of course, remembered the apostrophe.

Ilya stood in front of the fridge for a long time. Then he took a picture of the label and sent it to Sveta. No caption.

The reply came a minute later:

I told you. He loves you, you idiot.

Ilya looked at the label. At the “(I.R.)” in parentheses—as if there were some other I.R. in this house.

I know, he wrote.

And made it his lock screen.