Chapter Text
Interlude – Igor.
When they find out – and they will – he's going to be in huge fucking trouble.
(There's nothing like walking on the edge of the abyss to make a man move forward.)
Water is dripping somewhere in the night. His flashlight briefly illuminates the docks of Port Newark, and the tall stacks of containers between which he walks briskly. Behind him, the other men hurry too, the husher of their voices like a gust of wind in the darkness. They slip in the shadows of the containers, in dark clothes and hoods pulled down. When he raises a hand in warning, they quiet down.
The port is a silent labyrinth of metal, dotted here and there with cranes on which lights flash. At the mouth of the bay, in the misty waters, a huge container ship waits to make a stopover. The oil tanker leaving the port at the same time salutes it with two blasts of its fog horn. Usually, customs officers patrol alongside ships and containers. Usually.
Everytime he takes a turn, Igor counts the containers under his breath. Один, Два, Три, Четыре, Пять .
When he reaches the edge of the docks, he stops and crouches in the shadows. His men do the same. During a painfully long minute, nothing moves. Then, when he listens carefully, he hears the sound of a boat gliding on the water.
Two Zodiacs with their engine turned off emerge from the night, and gently bump against the dock. The few men on board are also dressed all in black, with hoods hiding their faces.
Garnick is easy to recognize, because he is the last to get off the boats, and the largest of them all. He pulls up his hood to reveal his wide dumb grin in the middle of his dark beard, and clamps his large palms around Igor's hand when he reaches him.
“My friend ! Such a beautiful night ! We are lucky men.”
Like most Armenians, Garnick is a superstitious man. He believes that his God pushes aside the clouds for him, and he worships his mercifulness and his wisdom. He goes to church every week, and sometimes Igor finds him clutching his chotki , praying for their success.
Even though he was raised Orthodox, like him, Igor has no such creed. In the end, a man's worth is not measured by the strength of his faith, but by his willingness to stand up for his values. Any man can pray. Few men have the humility to do what is good , through shame and hardship.
Too often men repent by their words, rather than by their actions.
(Igor has been repenting for a while now.)
He leads his men to a seemingly innocent shipment container, bolted shut, among those he was counting. Someone hands Garnick a bolt cutter, and with a long grunt, he cuts open the lock, his arms straining with effort. The metal rods that bar the door turn, and with a loud metallic squeal that echoes in the night and makes Igor wince, they get the door open.
Igor turns on his flashlight again and steps into the darkness inside the container. On his hip, he feels the reassuring weight of his gun. He shines his light on dozens of stacks of pallets, wrapped in plastic.
With his free hand, he unfolds his switchblade – not the one his father gave him, Anora still has it – and cuts open the plastic wrap. He quickly pushes aside the bags of rice stacked on top of the pallet, with their flashy red packaging and the Pakistani flag printed on the side.
His hand stops on a packet of white powder underneath.
"All good ?" Garnick's voice asks in Russian from outside.
Igor nods in the darkness, then remembers he can’t see him.
“All good,” he answers.
He pushes aside more bags of rice, revealing dozens and dozens packs of white heroin, waiting for him.
When he comes out of the container, he throws one to Garnick, who inspects it closely by the light of his phone, then grins.
“Our friends in Pakistan,” he says, “they do good work.”
Igor gestures to his men, who immediately head towards the container. Within minutes, they all unload the pallets and bring the heroine aboard the two Zodiacs, with the ruthless efficiency of habit. As they work, their panting breaths leave white clouds in the cold night air. Once the kilos of heroin are loaded onto the boats, they jump aboard and sail away as silently as they came.
Amidst the stillness of the bay, on the dark waters, Igor's stomach tightens with the deep unease he always feels on the sea, with the drugs sitting just a few feet away from him, and the waves lapping gently against the hull of the Zodiac – no matter how many customs officers they have on payroll, or how many times he has done this.
The tension only leaves his body when they reach the shore again, far away from Port Newark. Trucks are already waiting for them, engine running, and Igor salutes the drivers with a nod as he jumps out of the boat.
The heroin is unloaded again and transported in the back of the trucks, in a much less tense atmosphere than at the port. The drivers are smoking, and the men chat between them as they carry package after package.
As Garnick counts the kilos of heroin, Igor checks the time on his phone. He opens a text from Anora, a blurry selfie with one of her friends with their heads close together, their wide smiles the only thing he can see clearly in the darkness of the club. The picture is punctuated with a dozen pink emojis, as usual.
He looks at it fondly, running his thumb on the screen like he can reach her through it. A girl at the club convinced Anora to get teeth gemstones, and the little fake crystals shine like stars in her smile. She looks happy, goofing around on a picture for him.
Something warm blooms in his chest, like every time he thinks about her. And he thinks about her a lot.
Lately, she's his north and his south, the sun he wakes up to and the moon under which he goes to sleep. He has grown attached to girls before, but never anything like Anora. It's the most comforting and the most intense thing he has ever felt.
This morning he woke up to her asleep on his chest, her long black hair tickling his nose. She was warm and heavy, and she had drooled all over his pillow, and he could have stayed all day in bed watching her sleep.
"Is that your girl again ?" Garnick teases, leaning toward him to catch a glimpse of his screen.
Igor immediately turns his phone away from his prying eyes, his heart beating fast.
“None of your business,” he grunts, and slips his phone back in his pocket.
Garnick snorts with laughter and bumps their shoulders together.
“She’s got you smiling at your phone like a teenage girl. You make it my business.”
Igor takes out his crumbled pack of cigarettes and struggles to light one, his hands shaking a little. Blood is pounding in his ears and cheeks, but Garnick mistakes it for a blush of embarrassment. He bursts out laughing.
“Women, my friend. They’ll make you do anything.”
Igor only wants one thing: to end this conversation as quickly as possible. He offers a cigarette to Garnick, just to shut him up, then walks away under the pretense of talking to the drivers.
“Come on, Igor” Garnick calls behind him. “Tell me about her, at least ! Is she pretty ? Is she Russian ?”
Even with his back turned, Igor can picture the sly smile on his face. He flips him off without looking, triggering laughter from the men working for them, who immediately stop when he glares at them.
Secretly, Igor is terrified. Anora is the best thing that ever happened to him. At the same time, she may also be the worst thing. If his boss learns what he’s doing, he’s fucked.
He was never supposed to see her again, let alone go find her. After the disaster of the divorce at Vegas, he was supposed to take her home, give her the money, maybe threaten her so she didn’t try to contact that little shit of Ivan again, and leave.
Instead, he fucked it all up immediately with the wedding ring, and then with everything afterwards.
He had not been told explicitly not to contact her again, because only a fucking idiot would keep in touch with the prostitute-turned-ex-wife that spoiled cunt of Ivan Zakharov divorced. But Igor could not help himself, because she did not deserve that .
She did not deserve to meet Vanya Zakharov and his world-famous immaturity, she did not deserve the hateful contempt of Galina Zakharova, she did not deserve Tolos’ words, no matter how true they were. She had been tricked into a marriage built on lies, in a world she did not understand. And no one even apologized to her.
So of course Igor had to see her again. He had to make sure she was okay, especially after their last encounter.
He's not a particularly empathetic person, no matter what his grandmother tries to make him believe. The world isn’t fair, and people suffer every day. But he understands all too well the feeling of being treated like less than nothing, like he’s not even important enough to be considered a human being. So he went to her, simple as that.
In a perfect world, he would have invited her to lunch, he would have let her come to him of her own accord, whenever she liked. Instead, because Igor's an idiot and incapable of thinking, he almost fucks it all up again – once in the car wasn’t enough, apparently.
That night, he took some of his guys, and in one of the many russian-owned nightclubs of Brighton beach, they cornered one of their new recruits, a distant relation of Toros’ brother-in-law, who wanted to tie up his loose ends. The boy still had a baby face, and a tendency to talk too much to the wrong people. As it happens, this time the wrong people were the Feds.
The orders Igor got couldn't be any clearer : the boss wanted them to stop sniffing around their business. There couldn't be no weak link.
So they take him to an abandoned warehouse near Coney Island, and Igor does what he does best. With his fists, he teaches the boy the importance of keeping his mouth shut. By the time he’s done, there’s not much left of him.
The boy sobs and calls for his mother, in the end. Igor watches the shell curled up in front of him, his bruised face, his broken jaw and the blood seeping from his mouth, and imagines the middle-aged woman who will have to identify the destroyed corpse of her son, if it's ever found.
He feels very cold, very removed from himself.
It’s not the first man he kills. It won’t be the last.
When he comes back to the busy night of Brighton Beach, where drunkards stumble out of bars and most of his people know who he is – or at least who he belongs to –, Igor leans against a streetlamp to smoke. As he brings his lighter to his cigarette, stuck between his lips, he catches sight of his hands, still covered in blood.
He feels very calm, like often when the adrenaline drops. He does not really think.
She’s just here, suddenly, in his mind. The bruises on her skin when he tied her up and the shattered glass in the living room of the mansion.
He still remembers where she used to work, so he goes. On his way, he picks up Chinese food because it’s late and he’s hungry and she might be, too.
The strip club hasn’t changed much since the one time they picked up Ivan Zakharov getting a lap dance from a stripper that wasn’t his wife. It still reeks of sweat and despair, of unfaithful men and brave girls who dress up every night to entertain them and earn their living.
But Anora has changed. The shadows under her eyes are very dark, the bones of her face sharp enough to cut him open. She looks smaller, too, and he wonders if he looked the same when he started losing hope.
She doesn’t seem surprised to see him. Pissed off, yes, but it seems to be her default mood every time she remembers his existence. She notices his hands easily.
"Bro, what the fuck ? Did you kill someone or something ?"
It almost makes him laugh. Almost.
Anora has a funny way of taking down his walls, of leaving him vulnerable and unsettled. He’s quiet and level-headed, a man of few words, but with her he often feels awkward like a teenager and the words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them.
“I came to take you home,” he tells her when she yells at him in the snowy street.
What else can he do ? She doesn’t need him, doesn’t want his pity or his kindness. The night is dark and lonely and she looks small, bundled up in her puffy coat. Her face has turned red in righteous anger, and Igor feels helpless.
Igor's just killed a man, because it's his job. Crusty blood dries on his fists. He will go home tonight and wash it away, and then do it all again tomorrow. If there are people to get rid of, he will do it. If his boss decides on drugs smuggling, or money laundering, or extortion or arms trafficking, he will obey and do it. He’s of no help to Anora. Whatever kind hand he wants to extend to her, it would be useless.
He almost turns back and leaves her alone. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t. There’s something there he can’t give up. Even now, even now, he can’t give up on her.
They both spent their lives enduring the hardships the world threw on them. Life is unfair and hard, but there’s happiness blooming in the space between their hearts, and if there’s one thing Igor knows, it’s that Anora deserves this and he does too, no matter what anyone says.
He has a white scar, on the side of his stomach, where he got stabbed. Anora traces it sometimes with her fingertips and the tightness of the skin tingles a little, like a phantom pain. He thinks she does it mostly to tickle him when he’s bare chested.
She likes to touch him a lot. She counts the freckles on his back he got after too many summers in the sun in Russia, she scraps his scalp with her long nails in a move that makes him want to purr like a cat, she runs her hands flat against his chest like she's trying to memorize him just by touch.
It feels different, those touches. It eases a knot of tension he didn’t know was inside of him. They're still toeing the line with intimacy, but tenderness comes easily.
Anora has a tightness in her shoulders, after a long night, and on her bed he massages her muscles until she’s all relaxed and pliable under his hands, making little sighs of contentment. Sometimes, she comes back with bruises from the pole, because her skin marks easily, and Igor helps her put cream on the back of her legs. Their bodies fit together naturally when they nap together, his face burrowed in the crook of her neck, her body wrapped in his arms. When his eyes blink open in the afternoon sunlight, they find hers, watching him sleep intensely.
They have sex sometimes, and it always takes him by surprise when it happens. He’s used to the feeling of longing, to the warmth of her body next to him. Sometimes he craves more, but it feels like he would crawl under her skin and make his home there, if he could.
One late morning, Anora’s sitting on the counter of her kitchen, wearing an oversized tee-shirt and kicking her feet in the air as she eats cereal. Igor is freshly out of the shower, and the bathroom smells of nail polish, from the night before when she painted her toenails purple and convinced him to let her do his feet too.
When he comes out of the bathroom looking for his t-shirt, Igor catches the way she stops eating to stare at him, taking in the way his jeans ride low on his hips and his arms outstretched to dry his hair.
“Good morning,” he says in Russian. “Have you seen my shirt ?”
He makes his way to her, drops the towel he was using to dry his hair on a chair, and leans over her to grab a coffee mug on the counter. As he does, he feels the ghost of her fingers trailing on his chest.
“You don’t need a shirt,” she replies cheekily, and he raises an eyebrow.
“Really ?”
He takes a step back to drink his coffee, and her smile is teasing over the rim of his mug.
“No, you’re with me.”
“I should not wear a shirt with you ?” he asks, playing her game.
Anora shakes her head and sets down her bowl of cereal.
“Huh-huh, no. I just said so.” she smart-mouth in that Brooklyn accent of hers he can’t get enough of.
He can’t focus on what any of them say next, because Anora grabs him by the belt loops of his jeans and pulls him towards her, spreading her legs so he can lean between her thighs against the counter. She rises a little until she's right on the edge, pressed flush against him and keeping him in place with her thighs.
Igor has trouble swallowing, suddenly. His hands settle on her waist, and he follows the shape of her bones through her tee-shirt.
“Anora–” he starts.
She hums back, one arm wrapped around his neck while her other hand plays with the silver chain around his neck. She doesn’t say anything else, so he leans in her embrace, resting his forehead against her shoulder.
When his lips find the skin of her neck, she lets out a little noise of contentment, and his arms tighten around her waist, pressing their bodies together like he can make them become one. He leaves a trail of kisses on her neck as she strokes the back of his head with her long nails.
The pressure of her thighs against his hips is almost painful, but when he scrapes her skin with his teeth, her hips buckle and she wraps her legs against his waist, and he finds himself growing half-hard. When she starts to move up and down against him, grinding against the growing bulge in his jeans, he has to stop his kisses to pant against her skin.
His hands move down her body, and he holds her in place, stroking the smooth skin of her thighs. When he raises his head, Anora is flushed, frowning through heaving breaths. He hushes her by brushing a kiss on her cheek.
As he reaches out to cup her face, his other hand slips into the narrow space between them. He caresses the inside of her thighs, which spread under his touch, and watches the frown on her face be smoothed away.
His hand moves up her thighs, towards the heat at her center. She makes a little noise of pleasure when he reaches it, and he swears under his breath in Russian as he discovers that she’s not wearing any underwear.
He keeps looking at her, at the bliss on her face when he slips a finger inside of her and finds her sleek with wetness. Her mouth rounds in a little “oh” of surprise, then she closes her eyes and throws her head back. He adds another finger, and she rolls her hips to meet his strokes.
Her nails are digging in his back, and he’ll probably have red marks for the next few days. He slips his fingers in and out of her, and her moans rise, until she’s panting and tightening around his hand.
Igor feels her hands fumbling to find him, and then she's pulling at his belt loops, trying to undo his jeans. Together, they manage to open his fly, stifling their laughter in each other’s skin.
He’s not laughing anymore, when Anora slips a hand into his boxer and her fingers wrap around his dick. He remembers her doing the exact same thing, when they were in his grandmother’s car, in front of her house, right after the divorce. Something heavy rises in his throat, and her touch is good, so good, but he needs to know she’s doing this because she wants it and not because she wants to keep him.
He manages to call her name, but she doesn’t seem to hear him. Her free hand is tracing mindless patterns on his skin, and her mouth runs on his neck.
“Relax,” Anora says, her lips tracing the shell of his ear. “I’ve got you.”
The heat climbs inside of him, and he’s rock hard in her hand. She lets go of him right before he can come, and Igor almost groans in frustrated relief.
A cheeky smile plays in Anora’s lips, and it widens as she removes her shirt, leaving her completely naked in the morning sunlight that streams in the kitchen. She looks like a siren, with her long dark hair tousled around her face and the milky paleness of her skin. Rusalka , would say his grandmother, and Igor could only agree with her.
Igor leans his forehead against hers and he sighs, breathing in her scent.
You’re going to kill me , he wants to say.
You’ll die happy , she’d promise right back with her cheeky smile, and she would be right.
“Anora,” he simply says instead.
She relaxes too, brushing his nose against his, and she moans his name back right as he sinks into her. He moans too, and it’s so fucking hot, so fucking good he can barely remember his own name, let alone where he is. All he can think about, all he can focus on is Anora, the noises she makes as he moves inside of her, the way her body responds to his touch.
They roll their hips together, meeting each other in that one point where their bodies are joined. With her arms laced around his name and her fingers caressing his back, Anora moans his name again, and it sends a thrill through Igor – she does not say it often.
My love, my love, my love, he keeps repeating in Russian. He’s not sure she understands, but it doesn’t matter. He wants her to understand, wants her to know how deeply he feels. Through the barrier of their skins, his heart beats against hers. It feels like the beginning and the end, the way their bodies as one like waves rolling upon the shore.
She comes first, with her legs locked around his waist and her heels digging into his back. He watches her get washed away by pleasure, eyes closed and mouth open, and he comes too, with her name on his lips.
That same day, she kisses him for the first time, and her lips taste like sugar.
They’re sharing churros as they walk on the windswept pier of Brighton Beach, preparing to say goodbye before they both head back to work. Anora is holding the paper cone filled with churros in one hand, and her vape that weirdly smells of caramel in the other.
They’re debating food options for their dinner, and she keeps calling him a pussy because he doesn’t want to try anything spicy. Igor can’t help it if he’s used to Russian cuisine rather than the chili peppers the Mexicans like to put in everything.
Igor relents, only because she's ranting animatedly about a dish she tried in Miami when she visited her mother, and he likes hearing her talk about herself and her family. He likes hearing her talk, period.
She might be the most foul-mouthed person he has ever met – and he works with Toros on a daily basis, who seems to have sworn an oath to be the only priest God has to forgive for the sin of vulgarity. She has that ridiculous New York accent every time she speaks and her russian is shit, but Igor would take her insulting him any day as long as she keeps talking.
The wind sweep her hair in her face despite the knitted hat she wears, a gift from his grandmother she told him was ugly as fuck but still puts on every time she can. Her hands are full, so Igor reaches out to put a lock of hair behind her ear.
Anora, halfway through eating a churros, immediately stops walking, and turns toward him, gaping. She shakes her head like she can’t believe him.
“You’re so fucking cheesy, dude,” she says with her mouth full.
Then she rises on her tiptoes to kiss him.
It takes Igor's brain quite some time to realize what's happening and start working again. It's not his brightest moment.
When he understands, he leans into the kiss and catches her by the waist, pressing her flush against him so quickly he lifts her off the ground. It’s only their first kiss, but it might just be the best. She giggles into his mouth and her lips are covered in sugar that he licks eagerly. Her hair is swept in his face too now.
He’s pretty sure the churros are getting crushed between them. He doesn’t really care.
Igor has to leave New York for a job.
The order comes unexpectedly, but it’s not unusual. It’s a quick job, deep in Azerbaijan, near the border with Iran. After an uncomfortable flight in an old soviet plane that rattles with turbulence, he lands in Armenia, where Garnick is waiting for him in his family home.
Together, in a beat-up jeep that smells like cold cigarettes, they suffer the long drive to the highlands, until they reach Nakhchivan, a bleak city stretching under gray skies. Some of their men greet them there, but they don’t linger. They drive up into the mountains, close to the border with Türkiye and Iran.
Igor sleeps fitfully in the car, jolted around by the bumps of the road. A rifle sits on his lap, with his hand clenched around it. When Garnick and he switch seats to drive, they drink bitter black coffee to keep themselves awake and turn up the turkish songs playing through the radio static.
Garnick complains a lot, as always when they do jobs like these. As he drives, he grumbles in his beard about the people, the food and the weather, switching from Armenian to Russian to English in the middle of his sentences.
Igor ignores him, used to his moods. When they finally arrive at their destination, he feels like he's trapped in the car with a dog stuck in a bear trap, gnawing on its leg to escape.
It is a small crossroads lost in the middle of the mountains, which barely deserves to be called a town. Black trucks are waiting for them, along with men he has seen once or twice on his jobs in Europe, and they nod respectfully at Igor and Garnick. The locals remain mostly hidden inside the few houses.
Everyone, including Igor, walks around with rifles in their hands or strapped to their backs. They're moving arms, loaded in crates in the back of the trucks, through the border. It’s for some Kurdish nationalist group, but he honestly doesn’t bother with the details. The less he knows the better.
He is familiar with arms trafficking, the usual routine of bribes and border crossings around militarized countries. The Russians have entries in every place where there's a means to do business. Garnick and Toros have a saying, in Armenian – anywhere in the world, where there are troubles, there are Russians. It makes them snigger a lot.
Jobs like this one usually go smoothly, but the wait manages to kill any enthusiasm he could have for it. It's excruciatingly long, to wait for the right time to move the trucks, and the long hours of driving through the wilderness with no soul to be seen.
This time is not different. He checks their cargo, plays cards with Garnick and some of the men, and eats the shashlik an old woman of the village cooks for them. Garnick gives up on their cards halfway through the game to take a nap, and Igor is overwhelmed by boredom again.
When he finally gets the call that they can move, he gets in the beat-up car again and escorts the trucks through the border, deep into Kurdistan. Their buyers are waiting in the dry woods of the mountains, dressed in military garbs. Their leader doesn’t seem particularly happy to see russian men delivering rifles and grenades to him, but Igor couldn’t give less of a fuck of what he thinks.
He feels dusty and dirty, and he hasn't slept properly for a good forty-eight hours. He finishes off the deal quickly and signals everyone that they're leaving just as the sun is setting on the horizon.
Back in the village, on the other side of the border, in the small house where he sleeps with Garnick, Igor toys off his boots and collapses on his bed. He’s sleeping before he can even realize it.
Because jet lag is a bitch, he wakes up a few hours later in the middle of the night. Garnick is still snoring loudly on the other twin bed in the room, but Igor stares at the ceiling, eyes wide open.
He hesitates, barely.
Then, he pulls out the burner phone he uses on his jobs, and dials a number he knows by heart. Anora answers at the second ringtone.
“Hello ?” she sounds groggy, far away through the phone, like he just woke her up, and maybe he did. She always has a weird sleep schedule.
“Hi,” he answers back, low so he doesn’t wake up Garnick.
“Igor !”
Anora immediately sounds more awake. He hears her shuffling around through the phone, and he can picture her moving around in her bed, settling comfortably under her covers. She's on the other side of the world, far, far away from him, but it feels as if she's right next to him.
“How was your flight ?”
Igor told her he had to travel for a few days, but he didn't tell her exactly where or what he was doing. She didn’t push to know. It’s one of the things he likes about her. Anora is loud and foul-mouthed, but she doesn’t force him to tell her about what he does. Probably because she doesn’t want to talk about hers too.
“Good. Long. How are you ?”
Anora does that little noise she makes by sucking her lip through her teeth, and starts to rant about a girl at her club named Diamond, and her sister who keeps bothering her with groceries, and Lulu's toddler she helped babysit. She visited his grandmother too, while he was away.
It makes Igor think of his brother in Russia. It's been a long time since he has been so close to Misha, despite the thousands of kilometers that separate them.
Soon, Anora's voice lulls him, and sleep starts to wash over Igor again. He yawns. On the other end of the line, Anora's voice fades, until it dies out.
“I miss you, Ani,” he says in russian without thinking.
There is a long silence on the other end of the phone.
“I miss you too,” Anora finally says back hesitantly, in that terrible russian of hers.
He's about to apologize, but she speaks again, back to her usual confidence.
"You said we were the same, you and I."
Igor remembers. It feels like it happened a very long time ago. He shifts his pillow, and pictures her in the bed next to him.
“I did.”
“Why ?”
It is not an easy thing to explain.
Anora’s one of the few people he speaks English with. Garnick, Toros and the other guys naturally speak Russian, and his grandmother can barely remember his own name sometimes. English is both great and awful – great, because he can imagine someone else is speaking instead of him, someone american like her and better with words than him ; but awful, because it will never ring as true as the words he pictures in his heart.
“You understand how it is. What we have to do.”
They are workers, her and him. They are not on top like the Zakharov, and probably never will be. They have to spend their days hustling and struggling to survive, they have to accept the shit that nobody else wants to do. Garnick and Toros are like that too. It’s an endless cycle of gritting your teeth and enduring because there’s just no other choice.
Toros tried to explain it to her, how Ivan was, how the people they work for are, but Igor is not sure she understood it at the time. Sometimes they spend so much time touching that golden world it’s easy to forget they’re not actually part of it. He thinks it might have been what happened to her.
In the end, however, people like him and her will always be insignificant in their eyes, worth keeping around as long as they’re useful, but not any minute longer. And it’s alright, even though it’s really not. Anora and Igor don’t have any other choice than to be alright with it.
That’s why Igor doesn’t mind what she does every night at the club. They all have to do what they can to pay the bills and keep on eating. Sometimes it’s simply not pretty.
It wasn’t different for him too, when he started working for his boss. He built himself up, made himself into someone men would respect, into a rumour the others would fear. He’s done worse than her.
“Yeah,” Anora says, her voice weak. “Yeah, I do.”
When he finally lands back in JFK, the next day, tired and sore, she’s waiting for him in the terminal. Her hair gleam with glitter under the harsh lights of the airport. Igor hasn’t actually expected her to pick him up, but here she is.
Anora raises on her tiptoes to kiss him. He wraps his arms around her, kisses her back, and he forgets who he is, who he belongs to.
If a man is to be called good, then he must do good. Igor is not a good man, and he does not do good.
But he tries. Oh, how he tries.