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Ilya read something that said that twenty five is the age when your brain finally finishes cooking and you become a real stable adult. He thinks that's unlikely because he's twenty five and he already feels like he's spent half his life being an independent adult. He hopes that's not how it works because suddenly dropping dead into someone mature and boring — god — sounds awful. But also. He keeps making stupid fucking decisions that are constantly ruining his life, and being the best — oh god — at hockey really only does so much when you've fucked up everything else.
Ilya runs out of gas.
Ilya never runs out of gas. Never in his life. His cars are his babies, he would not let them starve. Evidently he would. He steers the dying sluggish body of it into the shoulder of the interstate and lets it rest in park there, and gets out. In the dead of night, wandered off into absolute-fuck-off-middle-of-nowhere, possibly in the state of Vermont based on a sign he half remembers passing, thick in the throes of winter, it's cold as hell out there, so he gets back in the car. Ilya's not above small irreverent prayers to God or whoever when he really needs it, because it's better than the alternative, so he thinks: holy fuck, please tell me I brought my phone, because he can't quite remember if he did.
He remembers the deciding to leave but not the details. It was a brief spark of life in his barren chest, making a decision and acting on it and seeing immediate results. Getting what he wanted. He'd been sleepless in bed like always thinking for hours how he'd rather be anywhere but here, and then he'd gone and done it. The engine purred to life under his touch and this, machinery and speed, was under his control.
He pats his pocket — wallet, thank fuck. No phone though, not in any of his pockets, or door compartments, or under the driver seat, or, hang on, okay, good, it was under the passenger seat. Doesn't really matter how it got there as long as he can call for the thing, the car insurance thing, where they come help. He had not been very concerned with those kinds of details when he bought the insurance policy because he never fucking ran out of gas but he's pretty sure there was something like that, or some kind of service he could pay, anything other than having to call Cliff, or god forbid Sveta, and explain why he was wherever he was. Even the train tracks he passed were marked as not in service, and he lamented not for the first time how this country refuses to just use their railways like normal people.
His phone is dead. He clicks the button a few more times like that will change anything.
Ilya buttons his coat all the way up — oh, sure, you remember a coat and gloves but not to charge your phone, you piece of shit — and tries to force his brain to hold onto thoughts when all he wants is to bash it against the steering wheel. Okay. Fine. He tucks his hoodie sleeves into his gloves, gets out of the car — take the keys take the keys do NOT lock the keys in the car — and puts the keys in his inner coat pocket after locking it. He starts to walk.
The stars are fucking blinding out here. There were small portions of his youth spent in dachas away from the city were the stars came out like this, but not frequent, and never after his mother died, and his childhood memories all kind of have the consistency of damp newspaper, so skies like this are mostly a thing he catches glimpses of on road trips between real cities. They cast a strange light on the omnipresent woods. Dark as total fuck out here with no streetlamps, but a strange glow that serves more to set a mood than illuminate the road. He walks in the shoulder.
Maybe he is getting old and boring because he starts to wonder if there's a way to estimate the time based on the movement of the crescent moon in the sky, that's how they used to do things right, because his plan is to walk until he finds a gas station and he could not say how long he's been going so far. He walks backward for a few steps and can't see his car, but with the way these roads curve, that could mean it's miles away or just obscured by trees. Not worth backtracking just to start all over again counting his steps this time. Not when it's so fucking cold.
With his gloved hands curled into fists in his pockets so the fingers are tucked away, they're okay enough, but his sweatpants aren't doing much for his body temperature. He tugs his hat down — look at that, he's wearing a hat, how wise of him to remember that — further down over his ears and shoves his hands back in his pockets. And then he goes somewhere else while his body keeps walking.
It's confusing when it happens without him meaning to, like while driving earlier, but otherwise it's a good skill he's worked hard to hone. You just need to take yourself and put it elsewhere. As a kid he would imagine putting himself on the balcony of their apartment and shutting the door. With that out of the way nothing can touch you. It's useful for being stuck out in the cold, or playing through an injury, or missing someone like it's trying to kill you. Ilya would come back when he is somewhere warm again.
The gas station is only slightly warmer inside, but it has a big blinking 24-HOUR sign and a girl at the register who looks up from her phone at him and then back down at her phone without any further reaction. He takes an empty red plastic gas canister from a crate of them by the door, and then fills a big styrofoam cup with burnt-smelling thousand-degree coffee from a machine, and brings them both to the counter to pay with cash. He fills the canister with a few gallons of gas at the single pump and fills his stomach with some of the coffee and turns back.
Ilya stands by his car for a while. Impeccably shiny and completely out of place. Kind of an absurd car to be driving through the forest like this. He kicks the rear tire and feels bad about it and kicks it again.
The dead frosted grass crunches when he sits down. His hands move on muscle memory and are delighted at what they find even when he hates himself for it: of course you bring cigarettes and a lighter but don't charge your phone or fill your tank, you've never taken responsibility for anything. He lights up. A — oh, what is it called, everybody has different names for it here and they're all stupid — a tractor trailer drives past. He finishes the cooling coffee and drops the butt of the cigarette in the cup and lights another.
The image is so shockingly beautiful it feels cruel not to bring it to life: the gasoline shaken across every surface of the car's interior, the lighter tossed inside, the smell of burning leather, the impossible brightness and heat of it in this complete emptiness. It would be breathtaking.
For the most part, all the worst decisions Ilya's very nearly made were not avoided because he'd made a better choice, but because at the peak of its energy, at the precipice, everything slipped out of his grasp and all he could do was think if I fall, I fall.
Ilya sits with five gallons of gas and a lighter and his work-of-art car and his own self, and feels the heat of a fire that does not yet exist, but it could. The fire would cause a whole new group of problems. He certainly wouldn't be making it back in time for the morning skate he thinks he has but can't check his calendar to confirm. But it would be warm. Ilya isn't sure that he cares as much about his car and his career as much as he needs the warmth.
There's nothing, there's absolutely nothing out here, but it is an interstate, and people would drive by eventually, in theory. Or someone would spot the smoke. Someone would come and say hey, what the fuck did you do that for, and he wouldn't have an answer other than can't you see it, I had to. And then he'd miss practice, and someone would find out he missed it because he'd been in Vermont setting his car on fire in the middle of the night, which would have some kind of consequences probably. He's too much of a coward to face that conversation and too much of a coward to set himself on fire too.
He lays back against the grass. Nothing but the dull ache of cold through his hat and coat but where the hot skin of his neck touches the frost it melts bitter against him, soaking the tips of his hair. So far away it might as well not have been real, the blinking lights of an uncaring airplane come and go. Wisps of pink. Pink?
Ilya sits up. The suggestion of color begins to appear at the horizon, rapidly approaching. Morning feels like a laughable surprise. The sunrise doesn't laugh back. Yeah, right, fuck. Fuck. He scrambles to his feet and marvels at the unsteady balance of standing on legs this numb. It takes a full minute to untwist the cap of the gas canister before emptying it shakily into the tank.
He and his styrofoam cup of cigarette ash get back in the car and blast the heat. He holds his hands over the vents so the moment they wake up enough to handle the gear shift he can move. He might have to get more gas on the way home, depending on how far he is. Grab Dunkin for breakfast somewhere on the way, straight shot to the rink, and he'll probably make it. With consideration for the early morning speed traps that are sure to be hiding. The sun rises so late in the morning this time of year.
He pulls a U-turn straight across the middle of the interstate and drives.