The Imperial Wife (31 page)

“I'm also thinking of starting a gallery. What do you think, Tan? You and I leave our auction houses and go into business together. The pressure of auction is exhausting, no? With our contacts and your expertise, we can do private business for ourselves. I can get us nice modern space in Chelsea, maybe near Pace.”

Momentarily, I'm flattered. I even allow myself an image of it, the hush of a gallery on a weekday morning, the bare white desk, the walls waiting to be arranged to my taste. No meetings with Marjorie, no ominous fruit bowl upstairs. No consignor kickbacks or corporate machinations. Of course, now's hardly the time for shaking up my life but the idea is tempting.

“I really like my job.”

“Well, think about it,” Nadia says, returning to her texting. “We'd make a good team.”

Pyotor turns up the music and the entire backseat vibrates with the swirling of hips.

We pull up in front of a darkened department store and Nadia spills out, dragging me up the steps behind her. The place is shuttered, but Nadia punches into her cell phone and the door swings open. A man ushers us inside. One by one, the floors erupt with a brilliant radiance. I'm greeted with a museum of clothes organized by color, sloping racks of draped garments in blues and reds and pinks, on the walls paintings of dogs in bathing suits, chandeliers low and ripe, recamier chairs piled with scarves. Under the gaping skylight in the back of the store hangs a row of silks and jerseys and corsets, white as winter.

“Isn't an empty store the only way to shop?” Nadia says, combing through the white Martin Margiela section.

“Are you kidding? I'm not going to buy new clothes for this one party.” I avoid not only the topic of money but even glancing at the exorbitant prices. But Nadia is flinging hangers onto the chair, crinkled blazers and silk pants and a white bustier.

“Quick, they're waiting. Try this on.” Nadia shoves me behind a velvet curtain.

I stand among pants and bustier, half in, half out of the clothes. Outside the dressing room, Nadia and the man are exchanging friendly inquiries about one another's family and beyond them are floors of emptiness, piles of unseen clothes. A kind of rabid energy overtakes me. I start to frantically try one thing after another. A hand reaches in to me behind the curtain and I follow its directions until I'm zipped into some complicated Comme des Garçons thing, a Marie Antoinette–type gown to the knee, a silk blazer of white flowers draped over my shoulders. I look like some bold projection of myself at twenty-five, convinced I would have time for multiple reinventions.

“Perfect,” Nadia says, giving me a quick survey.

I finally read the tag. “It's over four thousand euros!”

But I'm swept out of the store with the same stealth, my own clothes draped around an elbow, and the man in the sunglasses waves and tells us to have a nice time. In the backseat, my hoop skirt engulfs all the girls, and they're all giggling, pinned by my taffeta.

“Now you look like somebody,” they say with approval.

“She
is
somebody,” Nadia says. Her tone, to my surprise, seems sincere.

We climb the steep staircase to the roof. In front of me, there's only night, only the flash of white leather leggings, a buffed heel at my nose. Each window is murky, exploding with light and flesh. The bouncer hurries us inside to avoid photographers. “Have good time,
devushki.
”

The club is a series of windowless rooms with bursting music and a bald DJ swaying to his beat. A fuzzy drink that smells of peaches appears in my hand and next time I look down, it's gone. There are clumps of men standing around the fringes of the dance floor watching Nadia and her friends undulate. The women are whispering to each other, pointing their phone cameras at Nadia. In the whirl of the strobe, they're a sea of colorless creatures dipping in shades of blue. This is the new Russia: technology and hair and the frisson of danger.

Onstage is a woman who looks like Medovsky's Marina, a blaze of red hair, bony limbs flailing. They call out to me, drag me inside their circle (“All hail the queen!”), and I shock myself by being capable of this still, sweaty gyrations to a mindless beat, hands electric in the air among the socialites of Moscow whose toothpick bodies hide mine from the onlookers, open only to the cool white lights of Krysha, the DJ at his turntable, cuing the awaiting track on his headphones, waiting for it to burst out onto the speakers.

*   *   *

“Great news, my dear,” Regan says. Her voice seems grainy and far away. I jump up in bed, my mouth sandy, dry. I manage to separate myself from the white taffeta but not my corset. What time is it? My head feels like a bowling ball but fragments of memory are coming back. Yes, there was the ride home from Krysha. I was belting “When You Believe” with Pyotor, whose voice turned out an impressive Mariah Carey alto. I don't remember the last time I had that much fun.

“What is it?”

“We heard the final word from Natasha's Catherine historian. He says that sources assumed it was lost sometime before she actually became empress, but he agrees with Natasha that the other orders from that period are spoken for and the period matches. Plus we've got the catalogue from Wanamaker's. I think we're good to go.”

I leap up. “Really? Oh, thank God.”

“I know, right? It was cutting it close.”

I turn on the light to the cool hotel room, the tan sheets, tan wallpaper, elegant writing desk, a black bowl of lemons on the counter meant to remind guests of an alternate, civilized home. How beautiful it looks now, how safe.

“What an immense relief.”

“Better to have covered all our bases,” Regan coos. “Now we can go into that auction and not worry.”

I look at my watch. Tonight, I'm supposed to meet Igor at the new Bulgari store. I pour a glass of water, guzzle the entire thing, and stare at the invitation.

Gerri Halliwell and Igor Yardanov invite you to a special opening.

“Thank you, my dear. See you on Monday.”

I feel porous. I didn't realize how the question of the Order was weighing on me, pulling me down. Reaching over to part the curtains, I am sprayed by the Moscow morning sunshine. To press my head against the pane of the glass, to absorb it most fully. For a long time, I don't move. It feels so good, for a change, not to move.

*   *   *

Gerri Halliwell is strutting around in thigh-high boots, giving the impression of fellating the microphone. She's wearing too much of everything but clothes, awash in makeup and bleached hair. Pale skin folds around her middle, her breasts are pressed into a bouquet of her leotard. An oversized replica of a chunky diamond engagement ring rotates behind her.

The Bulgari shop would be a strange place to meet with a client, but this is Moscow we're talking about. Most of the crowd's engaging in some kind of deal closing, the passing along of business cards. Women older than me lurk with sharp slits in their skirts, vertiginous silver heels that match their purses too precisely. All that effort reminds me of how American I truly am: Russians never tire of considering every detail of their appearance, from nail polish to pattern of stocking to shape of earring to shade of mauve.

“You're from where? Sotheby's?” a man asks me, screaming over the music.

“Worthington's,” I correct him.

Igor escorts a tall brunette into the room, and the crowd parts as if for monarchs. The woman looks down at us all, regal and icy in her beauty. Her pouty lips and long, feathery tresses brush against an arm lightly entwined around Igor's. A man I faintly recognize as a guest at a recent client dinner is whispering in my ear, “Is that Igor Yardanov?”

And we're all a bit in thrall to him, that faint mole imprinted right below his eye, not an ounce of excess fat. He floats and pauses, kissing Gerri Halliwell on each cheek and shaking hands with Moscow's mayor and a flock of Bulgari executives.

“Toast, toast,” the crowd chants, and the microphone is handed to him. I tune out his speech—something about being honored to partner with such a prestigious brand once again, opening another location in Moscow proves the city is one of the most cosmopolitan in the world—and wait the proper amount of time for the well-wishers to disperse.

“You missed the preview. And I've got a plane to catch in the morning,” I say when it's my turn to step in front of him. The nervousness from our late-night meeting at Worthington's returns. He really is unblemished, like a canonized actor in his prime. His gaze is unwavering. If Medovsky wants everyone else to feel relaxed in his frantic presence, Yardanov is the opposite.

He holds up a finger. Wait, wait. Until the flow of supplicants in front of Igor completely ebb and Gerri Halliwell stops singing and the flashes of cameras recede. The revolving diamond ring glints against the dimming crystal of the chandeliers. The lights are dimmed into nightclub mode.

Igor pulls out his phone. “Bring it around,” he says.

I follow him outside where the air is fresh and bright with recent rain. The line at the velvet rope snakes around the block. A group of flashy women are being turned away by the bouncer and their cajoling and name-dropping is failing to gain them entry. Karaoke? one of them suggests to the others, resigned. They're not getting in here.

Igor is leading me to a waiting BMW town car, one that looks like many of its neighbors, the streets clogged with unmoving, identical black bulletproof vehicles. The field of parked cars is so wide, it's as though people dropped their cars off in the middle of the street and abandoned them.

“Why don't we take the metro?” I suggest, but Igor finds the idea preposterous.

“Metro?
Ty shto?
What for?” He looks so offended that I give up, having long ago stopped arguing with my clients on the issue. In Moscow, if you have a car, you use it no matter that you squander years of your life in traffic. The whole point of massive wealth is the luxury of amnesia that you ever rode the metro next to people just like you, whose futures were equally drab once, whose clothes were bought at the same state-owned stores, who had only their pensions to look forward to. Miraculously, the car makes it down an entire city block before finally being stilled by traffic. I rack my brain for suitable topics of conversation, the intimacy that will earn me his trust. I settle on his parents.

“Igor, you never mention your family.”

There is a tranquility to Igor that contrasts with Medovsky's frenzied nature, a self-contained ability to watch, to listen. In the car, away from the crowd, he appears to relax. He pulls at the knot of his tie.

“Why should I mention family?”

“I was just wondering how you get along. If they live here or in the States.”

“You are not first person to ask me this. Why is Igor Yardanov not married? That is thousand-dollar question.”

“Oh, I didn't mean that.”

Or did I? Igor, famous for his shifting array of beauties, never a repeating face, the rumor that he hires them for functions where he will be photographed.

“I like women. I'm not family man,” he says, annoyed. “What more do you need to know?”

“That's not what I was asking, but okay.”

The car's come to a complete stop; the driver lets out a series of terse blasts. I'm aware of staring at the same statue of some long-dead writer for twenty minutes now. Suddenly Igor says, “Let's get out of here,” and we're out of the car and rushing through a park. I'm trying to keep up in heels and the restrictive dress, past pensioners on benches and teenagers in punk attire peeling the skin of smoked fish and tossing beer cans on the ground. Packs of dogs that belong to no one follow our path with interest. The sun is still high in the air, and it occurs to me how rare evening is here this time of year, this land swabbed in eternal daytime. I can imagine Igor as a Soviet boy here once, with Medovsky, the two best friends with their satchels, their Lenin pins, the city crumbling inside yet orderly on the surfaces around them. The two of them racing after school just like this, socks pulled up to their knees.

“Wait, slow down,” I call after him, out of breath. The air is stinging my cheeks. I feel utterly free, the vista refreshingly clear. Maybe there was something in the Nadia night that woke me, a portal to a world I was overlooking. For the first time since Carl left, I can see beyond the two of us as individuals, the individuals the two of us thought the other was, each of us entrenched in where we came from and where we thought we were going. If it weren't for the heels, I'd run like this forever. And scream with joy.

Then we're in Lavrushinskyi Pereulok in the magnificent courtyard of the Tretyakov museum complex. I've never paused to examine the actual structure of this grand edifice, but now I feel like a princess dropped into a Russian fairy tale. The red façade calls up ancient Rus', a time of wood sprites and Rusalkas and witches roaming among enchanted birch trees. The intricately carved doors are beckoning us into a gingerbread house.

“Have you ever been here after dark?” Igor says with a wide smile, a boyish exuberance. “It kicks Worthington's ass.” He holds my hand tighter in his and I feel that nauseous sensation of vulnerability that could be the thrill of forgotten desire.

He makes a phone call and the red doors spring open. A chiseled man, every starched detail in place, bars our way. “This is Sergei,” Igor says, and the man appears to bow only with his eyebrows. He has silver-white hair and a dancer's physique, the proud neck, regal head, muscular legs. The tuxedo, white silk bow, cravat, cummerbund, all fit him perfectly. He steps aside, the two men exchanging a particularly long glance. A hallway explodes with light, then another, then the one after that. The three of us are alone in the temple of Russian art.

The Tretyakov Gallery's selection anoints the canon of Russian art; it's the final arbiter of what's truly national and what is foreign. My favorite galleries display portraits of the female rulers of the country—the plump figures of Empresses Anna and Elizabeth, regal in their flaring skirts. There's Empress Anna standing stiff and erect, wrapped in ermine and surrounded by the attributes of her power. Nearby, Empress Elizabeth stands ornate and resplendently bejeweled, the fun-loving twinkle in her eye. Then the portrait that appeared on Carl's book cover—young Catherine the Great as grand duchess, the Order of Saint Catherine pinned to her side. I like the future queen's direct glance at the viewer, the intelligence inscribed in her long, oval face.
I'm smarter than all of you,
it seems to say.