During her last two years in Moscow and her first year in Leningrad, she has yearned for Andrei every single minute she was not onstage, despite her promise after their night in Suzdal that she would not allow him to enter her life again. But the moment his face shone out of the crowd, the smoldering pain exploded into a fire, reminding her how much she still longs for him, tossing all her promises out the window. In the darkness, with their fingers on the buttons of each other’s coats, desire bumps against resentment, challenging it to a brief duel where desire promptly fires a fatal shot straight into resentment’s heart. It is fast and simple, and it is the only thing that matters. They are together again, fused by a force that seems bigger than anything they could control, a force that flows from Andrei’s eyes and enters her directly, without words, which penetrates her every nerve fiber, as if he’d never left her on the threshold of that Komsomol hotel room, as if he’d never promised to write and then failed to do so, as if she were still in the provinces, still innocent of life.

Afterward, Andrei sits across from her in her Leningrad kitchen, in her mother’s chair, his hands folded on the yellow oilcloth worn out to patches of dirty white. It is two in the morning, and the January darkness outside is like tar, the light in their window on this Wednesday a challenge to the decency and order of all those who, like her mother, hold serious jobs. Sasha is glad she is away, or else she would deliberately shuffle to the bathroom, her hair, mussed by sleep, slithering down her back in a skinny braid, to remind her that she shouldn’t be with Andrei, or anyone else, at this hour, that it is the middle of the night when all decent people are asleep in their beds.

They are drinking the Armenian cognac Andrei has brought, five stars imprinted on the label, the best cognac that never reaches their store counters. He has also brought a stick of hard salami called servilat she has seen only on the tables of theater banquets. They are slathering butter on slices of white bread, gluing to it the glistening dark-red circles pocked with white to make open sandwiches, which they devour in three bites because they are both starving. If her mother were here, shuffling down the hallway, she wouldn’t like what her senses would reveal: Sasha is wearing Andrei’s shirt over her naked body, and they both reek of the sweet, sweaty smell of sex. They chew on servilat and reminisce about Ivanovo, the only chunk of life they still have in common, the life when they were innocent, the life whose scenes still roll before her eyes like an old, beloved film.