The UnAmericans: Stories Read Online Free Page A

was enormously important. I sat on a sofa and watched them, but after a while I gave up trying to understand their conversations and wandered into the gift shop. There I found all the presents I needed to buy without ever going outside: a matryoshka nesting doll for the baby, a set of bath towels with the hotel name stitched in Cyrillic for the fool, a scalloped wooden jewelry box for Beth.
    Back in the room, Sveta was still on the phone, wrapped to her chin in blankets. She nodded at me and cradled the phone to her cheek, suddenly responding to the other end in only nyet’ s and uhuh’ s. Her voice was low and wavery; I knew not to mention the hotel’s long-distance rates. I sat beside her on the bed and opened up the matryoshka doll. A smaller doll was tucked inside. I opened up the next one and the next one, until there were five little dolls lined up on the bedside table.
    Sveta placed her hand over the mouthpiece. The look she shot me made me swallow, hard. “Go enjoying the day,” she whispered. “I think I’m wanting to stay in.”
    I sat there, staring at my wife, with her short rumpled hair, bare toes peeking out from the heap of blankets. I wanted to ask what that look was for. It was even worse than the one I’d gotten in the bathroom: it was the terrified look you’d give an intruder barging into your hotel room. But I had a feeling I knew the answer, and the last thing I wanted to hear Sveta say was that she had made a mistake. I knew it was ridiculous to be threatened by a dead man, but I couldn’t help it. Nikolai had been the kind of man, I decided, whom people in America had never referred to as Nick. The kind of man who would have seemed ten times more charming and intelligent than I did, simply because of his accent. A man who would have looked dashing in his white radioactive gear, wandering the Chernobyl countryside while women fell at his feet. A man who made love like a pro, a man who was probably—oh, God—the original big bear.
    And yet I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t only him. It was the way Sveta had closed into herself this morning as we passed that department store. It was the bewildered way she’d looked out the taxi window, as if her city had gone into hiding. It was the fact that she’d called her cousin when she felt this bad, rather than turning to me. I hadn’t even had time to mess up in the ways I’d anticipated, ordering stupidly in a restaurant or bumbling in front of her friends. That moment in the taxi earlier, when apparently I’d said something embarrassing I still couldn’t pinpoint—those sorts of things I had worried about, of course, but had believed they’d all seem inconsequential once we returned home to New York. But this felt different. As if the moment the plane landed in Kiev, Sveta was no longer certain I belonged in her life.
    All at once I felt crowded and dizzy and nauseous. I took in some air, what felt like all of it left between us, and said, “How about showing me your old school?”
    “Not now.”
    “Later, then. When you’re off the phone we can go.”
    “Howard,” Sveta said, “I’m not wanting to give tours now. Why don’t you go seeing some sights yourself?”
    “It’s fine, I’m in no rush.” I sensed I was talking my way into a hole, but I couldn’t stop. I never fucking could. “Relax now and we’ll go out for an early—”
    “Stop, please.” She muttered something to Galina, put down the phone and led me to the door.
    “Listen,” I said, reaching for her arm—but as I said “listen” she said “have fun” and closed the door. I stood outside the room, noticing, for the first time, the view of a soccer stadium from the open hall window. Amid the bleats of horns below I could hear the faint cheers of the crowd in the distance. I leaned against the wall and said “No” out loud.
    Then I knocked, twice, and Sveta opened the door.
    “You’re my wife,” I said. “Just tell me. Did I do something, anything,