five minutes until the next train.
A mural in gilded tiles celebrated Soviet labor, and on the ceiling-for those with rubber necks-spread a gallery of patriots. The rush of air through tunnels seen and unseen and around the columns sounded like a respiratory system beneath the earth.
She was peeved as he came around the last column, as if her concentration had been broken. Or a private moment violated. To himself he said, 'This is fucked.'
Sitting cross-legged, the girl pressed a razor against her wrist but not hard enough yet to pop the vein. Double-edged. She might have outraced the lieutenant minutes before. Now she looked catatonic. As she raised her eyes he understood that at any moment he could be standing in blood.
'Do you have my baby?'
'I can help,' Zhenya said. He drew her leather jacket out of his backpack and showed her that the money and other contents were still in the jacket pockets, but she wouldn't take her eyes off his.
'You don't have my baby?'
'But I can help you. No one knows Three Stations better than me. I'm here all the time. Every day.' He talked fast with his eye on the blade. 'I'm just saying if you want, you know, I can help.'
'You'll help me?'
'I think so.'
'In exchange for what?'
'What do you mean?'
She let a pause build. 'You know what I mean.'
'No.' Zhenya's face went red.
'It doesn't matter.' Keeping the razor poised became tiresome and she let her arms relax. 'Where are we?'
'The Metro under Three Stations. You've never been here before?'
'No. Why aren't you in school?'
'Bobby Fischer used to say school was a waste of time, that he never learned anything in school.'
'Who is Bobby Fischer?'
'The greatest chess player in history.'
She gave him a blank look. Zhenya had no experience with girls. They treated him as if he were invisible and he returned the favor. He didn't modulate his voice in public and he was a disaster at conversation, yet he thought he must have said something right, because she slid the razor into a cardboard sleeve and got to her feet. With the tinkling of chandeliers and a buffeting of air, a train entered the station along the near side of the platform. If she had asked, he could have told her to avoid cars marked with a red stripe because of cracks in the undercarriage. He knew all sorts of stuff.
She asked, 'How old are you?'
'Sixteen.' He added a year.
'Sure.'
'My name is Zhenya Lysenko.'
'Zhenya Lysenko, Zhenya Lysenko.' She found the name uninspiring.
'What's yours?'
'Maya.'
'Just Maya?'
'Maya.'
'I saw you outrun the lieutenant. That's typical. You go to them for help and almost get arrested.'
'I don't need them.'
'Do you have family in Moscow?'
'No.'
'Friends?'
'No.'
A train arrived on the other side of the platform and the din of passengers made speech impossible. By the time the train closed its doors and drew away from the platform, Zhenya had added it up. All she had was him.
Zhenya and Maya pushed through the amorphous mass that was a Russian queue, past biznesmen whose business fit into a suitcase, Uzbek women swathed in color, babushkas draped in gray, soldiers on leave sucking their last beer dry. Most of the trains were elektrichkas, locals with overhead cables, but some were destined to cross mountains and deserts to exotic locales thousands of kilometers away. An express left Platform 3. Halfway across the station yard the train met heat waves, entered a lagoon of semaphores and signals, sank and disappeared. The Platform 3 conductor, an energetic woman in a blue uniform and running shoes, fanned herself with her signal paddle and thought that if the two teenagers coming her way had missed their train there was nothing she could do about it now.
Zhenya and Maya had switched. She wore his sweatshirt open but with the hood up to conceal her red hair and he, in turn, had pulled on her leather jacket, even though the sleeves rode high on his skinny forearms. Out the corner of his eye he admired the way Maya boldly marched up to the conductor.
'You're not the conductor who was here this morning.'
'Of course not. Her shift is over.'
'And this morning's trains?'
'Back in service. Why? Did you lose something?'
'Yes.'
The conductor was sympathetic. 'I'm sorry, dear. Anything you leave on a train is probably gone for good. I hope it had no sentimental value.'
'I lost my baby.'
The conductor looked from Maya to Zhenya and back.
'Are you serious? Have you been to the Search Department?'
'Yes. They don't believe me.'
The conductor lost her breath all at once. 'Good Lord, why not?'
'They want to know too much. I just want my baby. A girl three weeks old.'
'Is this true?' the conductor asked Zhenya.
'She thinks it was stolen by someone called Auntie Lena.'
'I never heard of her. What is your name, dear?'
'Maya.'
'Are you married, Maya?'
'No.'
'I understand. Who is the father?' The conductor gave Zhenya a significant glance.
Maya said, 'Not a chance. I just met him.'
The conductor thought for a moment before asking Zhenya, 'Have you seen the baby?'
'No.'
'Then I'm so sorry. It's a criminal matter if a baby has been abducted. The Search Department is the proper authority. I wish I could help.'
'She has a faint birthmark on the back of her neck. Almost like a question mark. You have to lift her hair to see it.'
Zhenya thrust a piece of paper into the conductor's hand. 'This is my cell-phone number. Please call if you hear anything.'
A man with a suitcase in one hand and a toddler in the other arrived at the platform to find that their train was gone. As the man slowed to a standstill the toddler slipped to the ground and cried.
Tears escaped from Maya's eyes. Worse, to her fury, was how her breasts ached.
Zhenya steered her off the platform. Now that the crying had begun, she couldn't stop, as if at that moment her baby were being wrested from her hands. Not sobbing but bent over and racked. Zhenya prided himself on his lack of emotion and it was frightening how her crying knotted his throat.
He said, 'This is fucked, this is really fucked.'
