Chapter Text
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
“Suzanne” - Leonard Cohen
San Francisco, 1967
She remembers that the holding cell they put her in smelled like piss and weed.
The iron bars of the cell were rusted at the base, the blue-gray paint chipped beyond decency, and there was a vent in the ceiling just outside of it that blew air so cold Alina was left to shiver uncontrollably in the thin nightgown she was wearing.
Her cellmate Sue had leathery skin and dirty fingernails and took up the entire length of the only bench, but Alina was too intimidated by her to complain. The bench was immobile, having been bolted to the floor with obnoxiously large screws. Annoyingly large screws. Really, excessively large screws. She couldn’t stop thinking about how large the screws were.
It was unlike Alina to devote time to such useless, depressing thoughts. But she hadn’t been feeling much like herself lately. And there wasn’t much else to think about.
Sue’s occupation of the bench meant Alina had to hunch over in a corner instead, where soggy cigarette butts clustered together, like maggots on some rotting carcass. From the few snippets she’d overheard from the overseeing officers, Alina knew Sue had been busted for solicitation the night before and due to clerical delays and no family relations, had been stuck there all day.
Alina thought of Sue like a creature. Something that had withered and died and become something else. She vainly hoped the officers saw some difference between the two of them, despite where they’d both ended up.
She really just hoped someone would come and get her.
No one at the house her group was living at had picked up the phone when she’d spent her one and only call hours ago. This might have been because no one had paid the phone bill. But Alina knew she had made eye contact with Nina as the cops had dragged her away in the raid, so she could only hope the other girl was busy collecting bail money.
“Knew I sucked the wrong dick,” Sue muttered to herself.
Or the wrong twenty, Alina thought, stomach growling.
A middle-aged cop with tawny hair rattled the bars with his baton then, scaring them both.
“You,” he said, pointing the thing at Alina. “Come with me.”
Alina scrambled to her feet as he unlocked their cell door.
He pulled her out into the hallway by her arm, rounding the corner on the way to the main office where she’d first arrived.
“Am I going to see a judge?” she asked. “Do I get a lawyer?”
“Pipe down,” the cop grunted, grip tightening.
Upon their entrance, the first thing Alina noticed were her meager belongings. They sat in a plastic bag on the clerk counter. Her denim jacket, a few bucks and her lucky button, was all. More or less everything she’d arrived in San Francisco with in the first place.
The second thing she noticed was the man.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone so thoroughly assembled. He stood in a suit and tie, a tweed jacket draped over one arm and the hand of the other buried in the pocket of his trousers. The watch on his wrist was unassuming. His shoulders were stiff and his brow set seriously, furrowed in a way that seemed incohesive for someone his age. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her. His hair was dark and neat, gelled in a fashion that was a decade out of style. He looked like a model out of a catalog. A genuine square.
Alina narrowed her eyes at him. He looked like someone who’d have had no qualms about ratting her out to the cops.
“This is her?” the cop asked when the man was directly in front of them.
The man’s eyes passed over her for only a moment, flashing to where she was being gripped, before returning to the officer.
“This is her,” he said.
Alina squinted, trying to place him. He was too buttoned up to be one of her kind. A flower child, a runaway, or a degenerate, depending on who you talked to. One of the many aimless youths crawling Haight-Ashbury, regardless.
“And you say she didn’t bring the illegal substances?” the officer continued. “The marijuana or the LSD?”
The brute force of San Francisco’s bluest had burst into Mal’s apartment earlier that evening claiming they’d been tipped about a fire safety breach, but they’d gone straight for the dime bags and sugar cubes. And Alina along with them. It figured.
The man shook his head. “I was at the party the whole time. It must have been one of the others.”
He’d been there the whole time? She hadn’t noticed him.
In truth, Malyen Oretsev’s parties were usually hazy in her memory and, on occasion, completely lost to her. Lying on his musty carpeting, blotter dissolving on her tongue, eyes rolled back into her head, a lot of things escaped her notice.
Then again, that was exactly why Alina had decided to abstain for once in her life. She was innocent, for god’s sake.
“Which one?” the cop pressed, hoping for a lead, but the man only shook his head again.
“I didn’t see who brought it, I just saw her,” he bit out, sparking with the hint of a temper that intrigued Alina. Clearly the square wasn’t as nice as he was pretending to be.
And surprisingly, he’d relayed the same story she’d told the handsy officers who’d brought her in.
“Fine,” the officer grumbled. “We’ll drop the charges.”
“Thank you, sir.” The man nodded solemnly, adopting his I-respect-authority guise again.
“You can take your stuff and go, girl,” the cop said, releasing her. She massaged the place where he’d held her, working out the soreness. “Don’t let me catch you with that crowd again.”
Alina saluted him. “Aye, aye, captain.”
The officer scowled as he left.
She turned her attention to the square, though his eyes remained locked on the retreating form of the cop for several long moments.
“Thanks,” she initiated eventually, intruding into the path of his stare.
“Yeah,” he returned distractedly, still watching the cop.
“I didn’t see you at Mal’s party,” she said.
The man deigned to look at her then and immediately Alina wished he hadn’t. She felt like a little green bug under his gaze. A specimen he’d extracted from its natural, delinquent habitat, now under unpitying study. Despite having taken the time to stage something of a petty bourgeois jailbreak on her behalf, he didn’t seem to regard her with anything but mild distaste.
“I know how to blend in,” he said slowly.
“You don’t even seem like the kind of person Mal would be friends with,” she added.
This irritated him further. “I’m not the kind of person who’d want to be Malyen’s friend.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Not quite.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to—”
His eyes moved to something above her head, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
Alina decided not to bother with this any longer. She grabbed her belongings off the laminate counter and stalked towards the exit, shoving out into the night.
The streets outside the precinct were dark and empty. They’d taken her all the way to Outer Richmond. Further down Balboa Street she could see restaurants and shops, signs with Cyrillic and Hanzi, all with entrances barred and locked for the evening. The apartments above them were dark too, residents long asleep. She almost expected to see ZZZ’s floating out of windows and chimneys. Buses wouldn’t be running this late, so she’d have to walk.
It’d be over an hour before she reached the house. And it was cold too.
The door to the precinct swung open behind her while she shrugged on her jacket.
“That wasn’t—” the man started, through what Alina assumed were clenched teeth. “I apologize. I’ve had a long night.”
“No need. You can say whatever you like,” she replied, breezy. Fuck you and fuck this fucking night—
“Just not to you,” he said, taking up beside her.
“Wait,” she said, turning to him. “Did you just say that you had a long night?”
He stuck out his hand, unconcerned. “I’m Aleksander.”
Alina stared at it until it returned to his side.
“And yours?” he asked.
“The cop didn’t tell you?” she shot back, suspicious.
“He did,” Aleksander admitted, shameless. “I was trying to put us on equal footing.”
Alina just stared at him, utterly bewildered. “I’m leaving now.”
She began the long walk home. He followed.
“Alina,” he said, not as if he was trying it out, but as if he’d said it countless times already. “This is my first time in San Francisco. What would you recommend I see?”
Alina pointed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, which happened to be just a handful of blocks west. “Start swimming and I’ll let you know when you get there.”
“Funny,” he observed, unaffected. Be affected, she thought.
“Why are you in San Francisco?” she asked.
“I was assigned to a story.”
“You’re a reporter, then. For what paper?”
“For the Washington Post.”
“Congratulations. Are you going to leave me alone now?”
“How are you getting home?”
“Nothing’s running this late. I’m walking.”
Aleksander stopped, which in turn made her stop for some reason. “It’s not safe.”
“Has someone told the buses that?” she said.
He shook his head. “Very funny. C’mon, I’ll take you.”
<+>
“You didn’t need to do this,” she mumbled on their way down sloping streets. Apparently the Washington Post paid for rental cars for their reporters.
“I’m a saint,” Aleksander said wryly. “How old are you?”
“Twenty. Checking to see if I’m legal?”
“Checking to see if you’re still in diapers.”
“Har, har. Left here,” she said. “You’ll be on this street for a while.”
“Where did you grow up?” he asked, following her directions.
“Bakersfield. Why did you bail me out?”
“There was no bail, they dropped the charges. Why aren’t you in Bakersfield?”
“How old are you?”
He glanced over, making sure she knew that he knew she was avoiding the question. She also knew that he was avoiding hers.
“Twenty-seven,” Aleksander answered.
“A bit young to be reporting for the Washington Post.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “Why aren’t you in Bakersfield?”
Alina shrugged. “You wouldn’t be asking if you’d ever been.”
Aleksander considered that. “Why are you in San Francisco then?” he asked instead.
“To be with like-minded individuals,” Alina said.
“The kids at the party tonight,” he concluded, unimpressed. “Those are your like-minded individuals.”
“More or less,” she bit out. The urge to explain herself to him was like an itch. An ordinary kind of unbearable.
“And what do you and your like-minded individuals get up to on a day-to-day basis?” he asked casually.
Alina frowned, then gasped.
“Are you interviewing me?”
“I told you I was on a story,” he argued immediately. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Her nose wrinkled in contempt. “You want an exclusive. That’s why you’re doing this.”
Aleksander’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. But he didn’t say anything.
Alina turned to look out the window, a traitorous disappointment settling under her skin uncomfortably. “Whatever, man.”
They spent a red light in tense silence. Then—
“Because no one else was going to.”
“What?” Alina said.
“That’s why I bailed you out,” Aleksander told her. Unflinching, but not unkind. “Because no one else was going to.”
Alina dug her nails into the car seat.
“And what exactly is the story you’re chasing?” she asked, voice harsh.
Aleksander scratched his neck. “Something about young people moving to San Francisco. The music they’re listening to, the drugs they’re taking.” He didn’t seem particularly enthused by the subject. “You, essentially.”
"Me?” Alina said.
“That’s the angle of the piece. Narrow in on a single person, one entrenched in the culture around here, and get them to show me the ropes.”
“So you do want an exclusive,” she grumbled. They were almost at her place. Freedom from this conversation and this person was imminent.
“The dream festival, or the magic party, or something—”
“The Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival?” she guessed. Everybody was going to that tomorrow.
Aleksander snapped his fingers in confirmation. “I’ll be covering it both days, so—”
“Here!” Alina blurted, pointing to the dumpiest Victorian on the block. The windows were boarded up and if one looked closely, they could see shit stains courtesy of the doves and seagulls that liked to nest in the eaves. “This is me. I can just jump out, you don’t have to—”
Aleksander parked.
“Hang on,” he said, touching her arm as she reached for the door handle. Alina knew where this was going.
“You know about the festival,” Aleksander prompted. “Are you going?”
“I didn’t buy a ticket,” she said. “A shame. Well, thanks for ride—”
“You’re going anyway,” he deduced. Alina scowled. He grinned, and her stomach turned at the sight of his teeth. For whatever reason.
“And here’s where your good deeds pay off,” she said, eyes cast to where her fingertips crawled along the center console. He was watching them too. “Now you think I should give you anything you want. Now I owe you.”
She’d given men everything they wanted for much less. The path of least resistance was well-trodden by her. But everything about this stranger screamed push back.
“I don’t think you owe me anything,” he said, and Alina reared up short.
“It’s a request, Alina,” Aleksander continued, staring right through her like a mirror reflection. “I want to speak to you, but I can find someone else. I will find someone else, if I have to.”
“A request,” she repeated. He’d already put all this time and effort into her, so Alina was pretty sure this was all for convenience's sake. Why chase after another girl when you’ve already picked one up from the city jail?
Alina hated herself for being so flattered by the attention anyway. She thought back to Sue, who was likely still sprawled atop the bench in their shared cell. With those colossal screws, it wasn’t so hard to imagine her and that bench as permanent markers of a cautionary tale, time ebbing and flowing around them. Buildings would rise and fall, zombie apocalypses would come and go. Time was like a dial Alina could turn in her mind, Sue remaining firmly rooted to that one spot. Too far one way and all that was left was bones on a rotted board. Too far the other, and a girl who looked remarkably like herself.
But Aleksander didn’t look at her like that. Like she was a lost cause confined to a sad fate. He looked at her like she was something worth writing about.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Well…fine. I guess.”
“Yes?”
She moved to open the door again and this time he didn’t delay her. “I just said so, didn’t I?”
Aleksander angled himself out the window of the station wagon as she took the steps to the house’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at 9 then? In the morning?”
“No, I’ll see you there!” she tossed over her shoulder, ripping open the door nobody bothered to lock.
“Wait, where should I meet you—”
Alina slammed the door behind her. But she held her breath until she heard him drive away.
<+>
Mount Tamalpais had redwoods, yes, but Mount Tamalpais had oaks.
Alina and two of her roommates Nina and Matt had been stuffed into one of the smelly vans chartered to deliver attendees to the site of the festival when she’d first noticed them. Everyone was passing around a joint, Roger McGuinn’s soft voice tumbling out of the dash, unaware of Alina’s inability to remove herself from the window.
She couldn’t honestly say she’d ever gotten used to the redwoods, not even in the two years since she’d moved up north. She wasn’t sure there was any getting used to them, not in all their majesty. Once, she’d stood next to a giant sequoia over 2,000 years old and felt utterly insignificant. In the best way possible.
But what Alina saw on the drive up the mountain looked a lot less like proof of God and a lot more like Bakersfield.
“It’s snowing!” Nina exclaimed, shivering under the sunlight that bore down on them and the rest of the crowd at the Fantasy Faire and Magic Mountain Music Festival. Their small group was several yards behind the densest clumps of festival-goers, caressed by the noise of whichever band was on the stage rather than trampled by it.
“It’s 86 degrees,” muttered Matt, reclining on the stone steps of the venue’s amphitheater. His greasy blonde mane caught the light, so it looked like he was wearing a platinum halo. Without a shirt, the angelic effect was amplified tenfold. Unfortunately, that was where the similarities ended.
Nina didn’t seem to mind the snark, sticking out her tongue to catch imaginary snowflakes.
Alina was flat on the grass beside her, thinking about oak trees and Bakersfield and the 10-foot-tall inflatable Buddha that stood near the entrance.
“Nina,” Alina said. “What color is the snow?”
“Pink,” Nina responded.
“Far out.”
Matt sat up abruptly, huffing. “We can barely hear anything from back here,” he grumbled.
“Chill out, man,” Alina said. “Just take in the vibes.”
“Don’t tell me to chill,” he snapped back.
“Have you dropped any today?” Nina asked, playing with the fabric of Alina’s skirt.
Alina had woken up earlier that day groggy and disenchanted by her brief foray into sobriety. Now, at 3 PM, she could safely say the experiment had been a miserable, if educational, failure. What’s the point? asked the seedy little voice in her brain. What indeed.
“No,” she told Nina. “Not yet. Just a few hits of weed.” The half-smoked joint from the van was tucked inside her bra for safe-keeping.
“That explains it,” Matt said, stretching. “You’re so much more of a frigid bitch like this.”
Whenever I’m not so high out of my mind that I’ll let you do whatever you want to me? She thought that, but didn’t say anything.
Matt stood. “Are you two coming or what?”
Alina and Nina did as well, Nina a bit more unsteadily, and gathered their things.
There were at least a few hundred people attending the festival, all dressed similarly in frocks, blue jeans, brocaded vests, fringe, and very few bras. Colorful banners lined the perimeter, decorated with patterns of what Alina assumed were meant to be psychedelic Qi orbs, but more closely resembled the marbles she used to steal from dusty drawers in her grandfather’s house. Along with the musical entertainment, the organizers had invited vendors to set up stalls. They sold everything from candles to beaded jewelry, sage, and sandwiches. There were craft stations and portable bathrooms and, of course, the familiar, glorious oak trees.
They arched in every direction straight from the earth, as if their trunks had already been swallowed up by an insatiable, ancient hunger. Oak woodlands were everywhere in Southern California, valleys full of native grasses and herbs and dotted by the occasional live oak.
She used to think they were ugly when she was still in Bakersfield. She longed for more green, and she’d gotten it in the Bay, everything lush and rich and vivid. But the oak trees were here too apparently, and suddenly the idea of anything more beautiful existing seemed completely ludicrous. Seeing them made Alina’s heart ache, unbidden. What are you doing here? She asked them. They asked her the same question.
“Hey,” Alina said, ducking towards Nina’s ear while they followed Matt deeper into the crowd. Their first chance to talk semi-privately today. “So what happened last night? After I got busted.”
“Oh, hm…” Nina said, blinking guilelessly. “We all went back to the house and hung out. Smoked a bowl, messed around.”
This was more or less a summary of their daily agenda.
“You guys were at the house? Didn’t you get my call?”
“Call?” Nina asked, frowning. It smoothed out quickly, as though no unfortunate thought dared to crease her face for too long. “You didn’t call.”
Alina winced. “Nina. I called.”
“Oh.”
While they’d lagged behind, Matt chose a small clearing right in the thick of everything. He called them over, plopping down before either of them could object. No one could complain they couldn’t hear the music because you could barely hear anything else.
Nina sat too, and that was the end of it. No explanation, not even a lame excuse. They’d all been completely unconcerned that she’d been carted away by the fuzz with their drugs. Completely unconcerned about her, period.
Alina remained standing, almost frozen. It was one thing, to be generally aware of your friends’ shallow, if amiable feelings towards you. It was another to be confronted by their total disregard.
“Alina!” a voice shouted. Distantly familiar, masculine, assertive.
Alina turned and saw him. Stomach dropping, she turned back around.
“Hey!”
She crouched, grabbing Nina’s crocheted bag and dumping out the contents.
A thin sheet of paper with a vibrantly shaded mandala floated down amongst daisies, wadded up bills, and a pair of gas station sunglasses.
With something like guilt and panic turning underneath her ribs, Alina ripped off a corner of LSD-soaked blotter paper and put it on her tongue.
Soon after, Alina felt a shadow overcome her.
“The prodigal daughter herself.”
Slowly, Alina turned to gaze up at him.
If Matt looked like an angel in the sun, Aleksander looked like a man .
Sweat beaded along his brow and the slope of his neck. His black hair was almost a shock, deepening and darkening in the sun rather than relenting to a rich but predictable brown. His eggshell button-up and tie was entirely unreasonable, only redeemed by how he’d loosened the tie and rolled the sleeves past his elbows, revealing tan forearms dusted with hair. He’d traded the trousers for a pair of old jeans and in addition to the leather bag he was carrying over one shoulder, there was a camera slung around his neck.
He looked real. And it wasn’t until she found that word to describe him that she realized how poorly it described everything else. Including herself.
She tried to snap herself out of it. Not a good way to start a trip, Alina.
“You found me,” she mumbled.
His eyes narrowed into slits. “Against all odds.”
Alina smiled nervously. “Well. Now we know this article really is meant to be.”
“Article?” Matt leaned back on his palms beside her. “Alina, who the fuck is this?”
“Aleksander Morozov, Washington Post. We met last night,” Aleksander said briskly. Right. He didn’t like her friends. “I’m covering the festival.”
Matt shook his head, disgusted. “You’re the square that was hanging around. Man, you’re everything that’s wrong with our society.” He overcompensated for the volume of the music, drawing the attention of onlookers with his obnoxiously loud voice.
“Matt,” Alina groaned. “Please don’t start—”
“Nah, I can already tell he’s not with it.” He pointed one dirty fingernail at her reporter. “Everyone here has opened their minds to new realities. They’re seeing colors, feeling sensations you’ll never experience. Because you’re too scared.”
“Please,” Aleksander said. “Tell me more.”
Matt did not register the sarcasm. “Nah man, you don’t even deserve to hear it.” He turned to Alina. “I hope your morals were worth the lay.”
Matt, ever the charmer, then proceeded to shove his hand down her blouse.
“Where’d you put the goddamn joint?” he grumbled, handling her tits roughly, shuffling around her bra.
Alina’s eyes went straight to Aleksander’s. His peeled away from where she was currently being groped to meet them. For a moment they just stared at each other, Alina’s cheeks reddening with mortification, Aleksander’s stare growing harder and harder.
“There it is,” Matt grunted, pulling out of Alina’s shirt with the joint in hand.
There was silence then, or something with the weight of it.
Alina cleared her throat and got up. “Ready?” she asked Aleksander, not giving him much of a chance to respond before retreating with what was left of her dignity.
She wasn’t even sure he was following until she risked a glance over her shoulder to find his gaze cast downward, looking about as serious as he had the first time she saw him.
Alina led them nearer to where they’d been sitting earlier, towards the back of the amphitheater where the music was quieter and the crowds were thinner. She took a seat on the edge of a stone step, waiting for him to join her. He didn’t.
“You’re kind of blocking my view,” she tried to joke. He didn’t laugh either.
“I can imagine what you’re thinking,” she said. "Maybe she’s more trouble than she’s worth."
“I have questions,” he said, sequestered somewhere high and mighty. “I’m going to start asking them now.”
She scoffed, resentful suddenly. “You don’t waste a second, do you?”
“You haven’t given me many, no,” he bit out. That temper again. “I’d like permission from you to go on the record first.”
“You didn’t ask permission last night.”
“Last night was background. It wasn’t on the record. Do I have your permission?”
“Do you have my—I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Just answer the goddamn question Alina—”
“Yes!” she snapped. “You have my permission!”
Aleksander took out a moleskine and pen, scribbling things down before he even opened his mouth to ask the questions. He placed one foot up on the stone step beside her, like he was about to run a race.
“Your name is Alina Starkov, yes?”
“Yep.”
“And you grew up in Bakersfield, yes?
“Yep.”
“And you moved to San Francisco when?”
“About two years ago.”
“You’re twenty, yes?”
“Yep.”
It was all ground they’d covered already, now with her professional sign off. Alina thought it probably would have felt professional with anyone else, even at the rapid speed he was firing off questions. But with Aleksander, there was something raw, something unbalanced, about even the simplest of questions. Alina knew archaeologists had to be exceedingly careful when digging up bones and things, using small brushes to unveil vessels of the past.
Aleksander was on his hands and knees, recklessly scraping through her history with his fingernails.
“Why did you move to San Francisco?”
“To be around people like me.”
“Right. And what is it that makes you so alike?”
“I—what?”
He stared her down like a pair of headlights. “You say you wanted to be around people who were more like you. What are you like?”
Alina ground her teeth together. “I…care about things.”
He laughed unkindly. “You care about things? No one in Bakersfield cares about things?”
“You know what? Just forget it.”
“I’m trying to understand—”
“You’re not,” she snapped. “You’re making judgments.”
Aleksander quieted at that. He twisted his pen shut and sat down beside her, every move measured.
“You’re right,” he said, low and grainy and to himself. Aleksander pressed the heel of his hand into his brow. “Fuck. You make me—”
“What?” she asked. “I make you what?”
Aleksander’s hand dropped. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.” He twisted his pen open. “What do you care about?”
Alina looked out at the crowd. He was supposed to be the odd one out today, but it felt like they were in that together.
“Birth control,” she told him. “I care that women can get safe abortions when they’re needed or wanted. I care that people can love who they want to love without being criminalized for it. I care about civil rights and I care about Vietnam. I care that America is getting involved in a war we have no business being involved in. I care about oak trees, but I don’t know why. I thought I didn’t.”
The light breeze whistled through them, on its way to somewhere else.
“And…do your friends care about those things?” he asked finally.
Alina hugged her knees up to her chest. “I thought they did. I hoped they did.”
Almost reluctantly, Aleksander began to write again.
“Matt,” he started, then broke off. Clearing his throat, he continued. “He’s your—”
“He’s not my anything,” she said, turning toward him. She rested her head on her knees, dizzy all of a sudden.
Understanding dawned on him. “The flower children…some of you practice alternative relationship structures.”
She raised one daring eyebrow. “We all sleep with each other, yes.”
Her blunt honesty seemed to inspire the same in him. Aleksander unconsciously leaned into her.
“How big is your…group?”
“We’re just roommates, really. There’s six of us right now, two boys and four girls, including me.”
“And you’ve been in others?”
“Whoever I’m living with I’m usually sleeping with. I’ve been in communes that were bigger and smaller.”
He hesitated slightly. “Is sex mandatory?”
She hesitated too. “Not…in the way you think.”
Aleksander put his pen down. “Alina—”
“Wait. You’re judging again. Just listen for a second.”
Gritting his teeth, he nodded.
“We all have similar views about sex. It’s not so much that sex is mandatory, it’s not forced, but it’s like…it’s like if you weren’t into having orgies or whatever, you wouldn’t even be there.”
Aleksander was not yet convinced. “If your housing depends on your willingness to have orgies, that’s coercion—”
She shook her head. “It’s not black and white like that. They’re not gonna dump me out on the street if I’m not in the mood one night. They haven’t—”
“And if you’re not in the mood for three months?” he pressed. “What then?”
“Then…then that would be indicative of something else strained in the relationship and I’d probably want to move out anyway.”
She didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. She wasn’t a victim and she wasn’t clueless.
“It’s a little bit fucked up,” she admitted. She had noticed that the young women almost always seemed to outnumber the men. Sometimes it felt like they were getting the better end of the deal, if she was honest. “If it makes you feel better, this hasn’t been my favorite situation.”
“Why the fuck would that make me feel better?” Aleksander asked, an indignant crease having taken up between his eyebrows.
“I just meant that you’re partly right,” she quickly clarified. “It was supposed to be a compliment but if you…”
Alina trailed off. He was growing antlers. Fuck, she’d forgotten about the acid. Shit.
“What kind of compliment is that?” Aleksander asked, truly offended. “You think I care enough about being right to wish you into bad situations—”
“Aleksander,” Alina said, as he changed colors in front of her. “I’m going to say something and you’re going to be pissed at me.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What.”
“I…may have dropped some acid twenty minutes ago.”
He frowned, then started writing again. “I’m not going to help you find it, if that’s what you’re wondering—”
“No, not dropped like—I mean I took some.”
At that, he stopped. His eyes slotted towards her again. Yep. He was pissed.
"Why —”
“That can wait,” she hurried out. “Look, it’s just starting to kick in and so I don’t have much time before I’ll be completely useless.”
Aleksander sobered significantly, shutting his moleskine. He took a deep breath before focusing on her.
“What do you need?” he asked.
<+>
The next time Alina was awake, well and truly awake, it was the middle of the night.
The room was mostly dark, everything made up in shadows. She was in a bed but on top of the sheets, not completely sure of how she got there. An alarm clock on the table to her left read 1:42 AM in blazing red.
She could hear the occasional car cruising outside from the open window, curtains shifting fluidly in front of it. And there was a mechanical tapping, one she could trace to a lone figure at a desk with a typewriter.
Under the light of one dim, flickering lamp, Aleksander was writing.
Alina could only see the back of his neck, but in the lines of it she could trace his focus. His fingers typed away, but he was always stopping and starting. Not distracted, but constantly pulling his hands back from the typewriter as if to let only the perfect word or idea draw him back to it.
“Hey,” she called, somewhat disappointed to disturb him.
He twisted in her direction immediately, work entirely forgotten.
“Hey,” he said, hands gripping and then releasing the back of his chair. “You’re back?”
“I’m back,” she said, stretching like a cat. “This is your—”
“Hotel room,” he said. “You asked me not to take you back to your house. We stayed at the festival for as long as we could because it seemed to be a positive environment for you, but when they closed for the day I brought you here. You’ve been on the bed and I’ve been writing the whole time, I swear it. I left the door open for an hour or so to make you more comfortable, but the staff asked if I could close it. I ordered some room service but you didn’t seem interested in eating much. It’s still here if you want.” He gestured to a plate of charcuterie on a coffee table. “You seemed to be drifting in and out of sleep and I didn’t know if that was normal or not but I called my stoner friend from college and he said—”
“Aleksander,” she said. Now that he’d laid it out, it was all coming back to her.
His shoulders deflated, hours-worth of stress and tension leaving him at once.
“Yes?” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Did I at least say anything funny?” She remembered talking trees and floating musicians.
“None of it was very funny to me.”
No, she didn’t suppose it would’ve been. Not with the look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Today was not the day for a trip. That was a shitty thing for me to do.”
He neither confirmed nor denied.
“You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.”
“I’m glad I did,” he told her, quietly insistent.
She bit her lip. “You’re a good person.”
Aleksander turned back around, pausing a moment before getting up. He crossed over to the bed and sat down near the foot of it.
“Is the interview over?” she asked.
“It can be, if you want,” he said. “I still have a few more questions though.”
She had questions too, but wasn’t sure if she’d asked enough of him already.
“Go ahead,” she told him, sitting up.
She expected him to go and fetch his moleskine but Aleksander didn’t move at all.
“Why did you leave Bakersfield?” he asked. “I know why you came to San Francisco but…why did you leave?”
“It’s not particularly exciting,” she said.
“Not everything has to be.”
She smiled a little at that. Alright then.
“I was young,” she said. “That’s really it. And I felt alone, even though I wasn’t. I thought where I grew up was the worst place in the world. It wasn’t.”
Aleksander frowned. “So San Francisco—”
“—is definitely not the worst place in the world,” she said, shaking her head. “I love San Francisco. Just—I was running toward something. Somewhere along the way it just started to feel like I was running away.”
She pulled at a loose thread in the bedding, waiting for him to say something.
“I got kicked off my story,” Aleksander blurted suddenly. Alina’s eyes darted to him, widening. “That’s why I’m in San Francisco.”
“What?” she asked. Then more accusingly, “What did you do?”
“My job,” he snapped, then took a breath.
Alina waited for him to regain his composure. She watched his chest rise and fall, back hunched over where his forearms rested on his thighs. You’re ashamed of that temper, she thought. That’s something I know about you.
“I’ve been on assignment in Alabama the last four years,” Aleksander told her a few minutes later, noticeably calmer.
Alina blinked. “Alabama?”
Everyone knew what had been going on in Alabama the last few years. The little black girls who were killed in Birmingham, the Selma marches and the ensuing violence.
“My mo—my editor, thought I was taking too many unnecessary risks,” he said, agitated.
She didn’t want him doing things that would get him hurt. “Was she right?”
“I’m a journalist, I can’t do my job if all my time is spent worrying about whether or not I’m going to need a band-aid by the end of the day.”
Aleksander’s voice took on a new seriousness. Urgency, even. “The people there risk their lives everyday for what’s right,” he said. “How can I refuse to do the same when all I am is the messenger?”
Alina was struck dumb. There she was at age twenty, complaining about how she hadn’t managed to achieve much other than getting high and screwing and there he was, actually making a difference. Her respect for him surged.
“My editor didn’t see it that way,” he continued, irked and oblivious to her admiration. “She sent me back to D.C. for a few months. Then she sent me here.”
“But you’d rather be in Alabama,” Alina said.
“I think…I think I was meant to do this story,” he said. “But I also think I have to go back.”
Alina nodded, understanding entirely. “You care about things too.”
Aleksander smiled. “I care about things too.”
And it felt then that she’d found exactly what she came to San Francisco looking for years ago.
Someone like her.
“You must be tired,” she said, voice softening. She could imagine how his nightly routine might go if he was back in Washington. He’d push open his bedroom door, loosening his tie at the same time. His mind would be occupied with whatever story he was chasing that day, his movements instinctual more than purposeful. His watch set neatly on the dresser, his moleskine on the desk so he could write down any thoughts that came to him in the shower—
“I am,” Aleksander responded, voice equally as soft and returning her to the present. “I can drive you back to—”
“What if I stayed?” she asked hastily. She could practically see his earlier suspicions about her living situation reignite behind his eyes.
“It’s not because of anything bad,” she insisted. “I just…don’t want to leave.”
It was a risky proposal. Sleeping over almost definitely violated one of his journalistic clauses of morality. He’d agree in an instant if he thought she needed it for safety reasons, but she’d just admitted to wanting it for selfish ones. Alina had decided on her own story to chase.
This one, with him, and whatever became of it.
Aleksander straightened, clearing his throat. “I don’t know if—”
“It could be the new angle of the story!” she added with an edge of desperation. “24 Hours with a Real Life Hippy. My Day with the Hippy Girl I Picked Up From Jail. The Hippy Chronicles: Learning to Grok. To Trip or Not to Trip: What Was the Question Again?”
“Stop,” he begged.
“C’mon,” she badgered, clutching his arm and shaking it. “I know you know how big this could be. I fucked things up today, but I’m in this now. We’re in this now. Let’s be in it.”
Alina couldn’t remember the last time she’d been legitimately excited about anything. She believed in this project, believed in what it could do.
Aleksander watched her. She could feel him reading her, cross-referencing the look on her face against his good intentions, his better judgment, and what Alina hoped were his own selfish reasons.
You don’t have to want me, she thought. But you have to want this.
“There’s only one bed,” he warned.
She grinned. “That’s never stopped me before.”
<+>
Alina and her roommates had taped newspapers to most of the windows in their house.
Everybody slept in well past noon, slow to crawl out of their stupor of choice from the night before. The newspaper helped with that, barricading against the brightest beams of sunlight.
Yesterday she’d had to get up earlier than normal in order to catch one of the vans tasked with carrying festival attendees up the mountain, but even then it had been Nina who’d shaken her awake. Alina couldn’t remember the last time the sun had any say in that decision.
In Aleksander’s hotel room, a meddlesome break between the curtains cast a sliver of glaring sunlight directly into her eyes.
She winced into consciousness, averting them to the weight slumbering on her chest.
Sometime during the night—or more accurately, the early morning—Aleksander had slung an arm over her torso and followed it until he was practically draped over her, face warmly tucked into the crook of her neck. She could feel his breath there, slow drags of air that came evenly and one after the other. He was still dead asleep.
After agreeing to let her spend what was left of the night in his room, he’d insisted on showering.
“Aren’t you tired?” she’d asked.
“I won’t be able to sleep otherwise,” he’d said.
Then he strode inside the bathroom and shut the door. But not before telling her she could have her pick of shirts to sleep in.
She’d changed into one of his lighter flannels while he showered, mindless of where her blouse, skirt, and bra ended up on the floor, and crawled under the covers.
She waited with a fluttering heart to hear the water shut off. She’d turned the desk lamp off, so when the time came for him to pad out of the bathroom and then into the bed, it was only the shape and sound of him she managed to catch.
He didn’t speak and she didn’t either. His eyes no doubt needed time to adjust from the harsh fluorescence of the bathroom, so he couldn’t see her watching him. He probably thought she was asleep. There was the muted crinkle of the sheets being pulled back, the squeak of a cheap mattress, and then the smell of clean, wet man. He settled in on his side, providing her an intimate view of his nape. She felt like a stowaway in his bed. Her eyes had soon drifted shut.
She imagined what his reaction would be at their position now. In one scenario, he’d jolt away from her, apologizing profusely for advantages taken unconsciously. In another, he’d awaken with a scratchy sigh, slotting his thigh more snugly between her legs.
“Can you get off like this?” he’d murmur.
“Yes,” she’d whimper, grinding against him.
Alina glanced at the alarm clock. Fuck. They’d slept in.
She touched Aleksander’s side.
“Aleksander,” she whispered, shaking him. “Aleksander, wake up.”
He inhaled sharply, then lifted his head. His hair was ludicrous. “What,” he said groggily.
It didn’t feel like she should be allowed to see him this way, which of course made it all the more delightful.
“You have to get up,” she told him, biting down on her lip. “We’re gonna be so late.”
<+>
“Shit,” Alina breathed, stomach dropping as they took in the van-less parking lot before them. “We missed them.”
After the quickest shower of her life, Alina had thrown on her clothes from yesterday (minus the bra which seemed to have sunk into oblivion) and raced down the hotel stairs to where Aleksander had pulled around the car.
“Go, go, go!” she’d cried once she’d shut the door, feeling like a bank robber. He’d just nodded towards the giant blueberry muffin and cup of murky coffee in the console between them.
“From the hotel buffet,” he’d said. “I drive, you eat.”
“It’s a deal,” she’d said around a mouthful of muffin.
It had been about an hour’s drive from the city to the Mount Tamalpais Ranger Station, the designated van pickup spot for festival attendees. While Alina scarfed down her breakfast, Aleksander drove as fast as he could while still minding traffic laws, anxiously re-checking the time on his wrist watch every few minutes. Her exhilaration from the morning’s mad dash receded to caffeine-charged nerves over what the hell they were going to do if they missed the vans. Both of them were too occupied with their own thoughts to hold much of a conversation.
The last van was scheduled to leave the Station at 11:30 AM. By the time Alina and Aleksander arrived, it was 12:07 PM.
“Goddammit,” Aleksander cursed, pulling into a parking spot. They’d both filed into vans here only yesterday (Alina a little more duplicitously), but without all the fuss of festival organizers making queues and checking tickets, it felt distinctly undiscovered, almost grotto-like.
Everywhere was saturated with green. The Ranger Station itself was sturdy and wooden, more of a cabin than anything. One of the park’s campgrounds was nearby and wooden signs staked to the ground signaled in which direction one could find restrooms, water, and a general store. It felt lonely and quiet in the way that all state parks did; the illusion of isolation went hand in hand with the illusion of wilderness. They got out of the car and looked around.
“I never sleep in,” Aleksander muttered to himself, mystified at his own irresponsibility. Alina cringed. Little did he know it was actually hers.
“We could drive up with your car anyway?” she tried.
Aleksander shook his head. “I saw them turning away people who drove themselves yesterday. There’s nowhere to park the cars up the peak.”
“Shit,” Alina said, guilt tugging at her. If she hadn’t kept him up late the past couple nights, first when he’d picked her up from jail and second with the involuntary trip-sitting, then he probably wouldn't have been tired enough to sleep in. He would’ve arrived punctually and been driven up the mountain in a smelly van and interviewed a different, less ruinous subject. She’d screwed everything up. Again. “Aleksander. I’m so sorry, I—”
“Hold on a second,” he said, squinting into the distance. “Do you see that?”
Alina turned in the direction he was staring. At the far end of the parking lot, near where the road took a sharp incline up the mountain, three burly looking men stood talking around their shiny Harleys.
Alina squinted too. “Are those...Hells Angels?”
“I heard they were running security for the festival,” Aleksander noted with interest. “But I haven’t seen them until now.”
Alina bit her lip. “Do you think they’d give us a ride?”
Aleksander looked at her, a gleam of something that looked a lot like mischief in his eye.
“Only one way to find out.”
<+>
“Let me do the talking,” he insisted as they strolled over.
“What?” she said. He didn’t have any experience with the Angels, but Alina had seen them at parties at least. Their headquarters was just down the street from her house. “No way.”
“There’s a certain way you go about these things,” he continued, chin high. “I’ve had to deal with my share of sketchy characters as a reporter. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
“If you say so,” she mumbled, letting him gain a short lead.
“Excuse me,” Aleksander called to them, morphing into the same square she’d met at the precinct just two days ago. Alina wasn’t entirely sure that was the right way to go about this.
“Are you heading up to the festival?” he asked them.
The Angels glanced at each other amusedly before one of them, the burliest, responded.
“What’s it to you?” he spat. Alina almost rolled her eyes. When you’re a Jet , she thought.
“My colleague and I are reporters for the Washington Post,” Aleksander said. “We’re covering the festival but missed the vans.”
“Yeah, no shit,” the shortest Angel said, sending the bunch of them into uproarious laughter.
“We were hoping we could hitch a ride” Aleksander interrupted, when it became clear they weren’t stopping anytime soon.
“What’s in it for us?” The goldilocks Angel countered.
Alina watched Aleksander grit his teeth. He represented the Post, so it wasn’t like bribes were on the table. And none of these men would want their names and the words Hells Angels together in the papers. Not with J. Edgar Hoover running things.
“Free beer?” Aleksander tried.
“Fuck off,” they all told him.
Aleksander returned to her with a tight jaw.
She patted his arm. “It was a noble effort.”
“Guess we’ll have to figure something else out,” he exhaled. “Fuck, I wanted that to work.”
“Maybe it still can,” Alina said, peering around him. “Can I try?”
“Good luck,” he offered, stepping aside. “They’re pretty surly.”
Alina strode up to Angels, swallowing a twinge of intimidation. She introduced herself and laid out their dilemma.
Then she lifted her shirt and showed them her tits.
<+>
Aleksander was grumpy the whole way up.
Alina couldn’t stop laughing, tightly clutching Saul, the Angel whose bike she’d been hoisted on.
She stole a glance at Aleksander behind her. He was holding on just as tightly to Buddy, the Angel he’d been assigned to. When he caught her looking, he shook his head in exasperation. She laughed some more.
Don’t count me out yet, she told him silently. And maybe she told herself that too.
<+>
It was almost like they’d never left.
Acid-heads and yo-yo’s alike were swaying to the music on the second day of the Fantasy Faire and Magic Mountain Music Festival. They were doing everything that the flower children of Haight-Ashbury were purported to do, before it had become such a cliche for them to do it.
“Bye!” Alina called to the bikers who had kindly (hornily?) escorted them up the mountain. In the time it had taken for Alina to express her thank yous, the yard or two between her and Aleksander had become several. She began to zigzag her way through the bodies and back to Aleksander’s side.
The lunch rush was in full force. Vendors selling anything even remotely edible had lines curving around their stalls, tangling with lines for the others. Some attendees had thought to bring food from home; they sat on blankets on the ground, laughing and talking. Alina couldn’t tell if there were actually more people than the previous day or if the sense of liveliness, of irrepressible activity, had more to do with the feelings her reporter inspired in her. Either way, the sun was still shining and the inflatable Buddha was still standing.
Aleksander was fiddling with his camera when she found him. In their brief separation he’d slid on an old Red Sox cap he must have been keeping in his messenger bag. Affection bloomed instantaneously.
He reminded her of the boys she’d grown up with. Ruddy and trim, always chasing after something. A momma’s boy, if her hunch was correct. But there were also things about him she had never encountered in a person before. East coast erudition, but laced with a real distaste for injustice. He probably went to Harvard or something. Unceasing curiosity. A goodness. He was good like no one she’d ever met.
I like you so much, Aleksander Morozov. You should be worried.
Alina called his name. He turned in her direction and almost instinctively lifted the camera to his eye, snapping a picture of her en route.
“Is the Post too cheap to hire a photographer?” she asked with a sideways smile once she’d reached him.
Aleksander shrugged. “I like taking the pictures myself. Makes it feel more personal for the reader.”
“Ah.”
An awkward lull spawned from nothing.
“What now?” she blurted.
“Whatever you want,” he said.
Alina scoffed. “I mean what do you need for the story? Interviews? Angles, for your photos? I can carry your stuff if you—”
“Alina,” he said, warm. “This piece is about you. Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Got it.”
“Good.”
Alina thought about it. Then stuck out her hand.
“Alright. Follow me.”
<+>
With a few sharp elbows and a complete disregard for other people’s personal space, Alina fought their way into the center of the crowd.
They watched what remained of the Grateful Dead’s set, and the next two acts as well, Dionne Warwick and a local band who Alina had seen play a few shows around San Francisco before.
It was dizzying even for Alina to be so tightly packed amongst all the festival-goers, a contact high in more than one sense.
If Aleksander was uncomfortable amongst the riffraff he didn’t show it, seeming perfectly content to split his attention between her, the performers, and the crowd. He snapped photos of the goings on and jotted notes down in his moleskine. On a discreet glance she could see bullet points with numbers and band names alongside clever turns-of-phrases he was definitely saving for later.
Alina found herself checking on him frequently. She was enjoying herself thoroughly, which felt beside the point, no matter how much he tried to convince her otherwise. It was too loud to hold a conversation—and too crowded for it not to be overheard—so she contented herself with small, questioning looks when she managed to catch his attention.
All good? Her eyes would ask.
I’m working, his would respond. Then he’d squeeze her hand.
Eventually, Alina’s meager breakfast and the heat of the crowd caught up to her. Her attention was drawn from the local band to their neighbors in the crowd. She thought she was being subtle, scanning for a flask or canteen she could borrow. But before long a callused hand was weaving into her hair, pushing it back from her ear.
“Thirsty?” Aleksander asked, lips against her ear. It wasn’t so hard to hear when he was right against her like that. Alina shivered and steadied his hand with her own.
“I want to see the end of the set,” she explained somewhat sheepishly, on her tip-toes to get closer to his ear. “But I don’t know if I can make it.”
“Ah,” he said. “I’ll go get something to drink.”
“No, it’s okay, I can wait—”
Aleksander pulled back so she could see the decision made all over his face. “You got us up the mountain, Alina. The least I can do is get you some water.”
Before she could argue he was pulling away, leaving her alone in the horde.
“Wait!” she called, a tad panicked. Aleksander took back the few steps he’d managed, frowning. Onlookers shot them annoyed glances. She tugged on his shirt collar until his ear was by her mouth.
“I think we should stick together,” Alina told him, wringing her hands. “There’s so many people, we could lose each other if we split up.”
Aleksander straightened and met her anxious gaze.
“Don’t worry,” he said simply. “I’ll find you.”
<+>
When he returned to her fifteen minutes later with new sweat on his brow and a plastic cup of cold water, the relief was inimitable.
He watched her gulp it down, a few stray beads dripping down the column of her throat.
Alina wiped her mouth clean, watching him right back.
“Now we know it was meant to be,” he murmured. Alina couldn’t hear the words, but knew the shape of his mouth as he formed them.
“Now we know,” she mouthed back. Aleksander didn’t smile, but he softened.
<+>
With the local band’s set and the lunch craze over, Alina and Aleksander wandered away from the stage and back into the clearing with the vendors.
The lines were shorter but the options slimmer, and so Aleksander handed over a few dollar bills for two jam sandwiches and two cups of water, which they brought to a quiet corner of the amphitheater with views of the state park below.
There were trees for miles. Redwoods and oak trees and other flora that Alina had no names for sprawled without modesty or apprehension. The green deferred only to the blue, the Pacific Ocean in its vastness and the bay that it filled.
“What is it about them?” Aleksander asked, after several minutes of quiet eating had passed. “The oak trees, I mean. You mentioned them earlier, and I can see you staring at them sometimes.”
Alina set aside the crust of her sandwich. “Have you ever seen something your whole life without ever really seeing it at all?”
“Yes,” he admitted plainly. “It’s human to take things for granted. We all do it.”
“I know,” she told him. “I know I’m young and I know I’ll eventually be grateful that I can still find beauty in things I used to find ordinary.”
“But now?” Aleksander asked.
“Now it just feels like I’ve been wrong.”
It was disarming, admitting something out loud that she hadn’t even admitted to herself. She needed more than newspapered windows. She definitely needed better friends.
“Well, what do you think is right?” Aleksander asked.
“I don’t have a clue,” she told him. “College? Moving back home?”
“I think those are good places to start,” he said encouragingly.
“Where’s home for you?” she asked, no longer interested in discussing the reorganizing of her entire life.
“Originally?” Aleksander said. “Boston.”
“Hence the cap,” Alina said.
“Hence the cap,” he returned, the corners of his mouth turning up. “Boston was just a place to me though. I always knew I would have to find my home someday.”
“Is that what Alabama is?” Alina asked, studying him. “You miss it.”
“I do,” Aleksander said, then thought about it. “Alabama is important to me. But it’s less about the place and more about the work I’m doing there. And the people.”
“What happened?” she asked, inexorably curious. “I know there’s more to it than you’re telling me. What got you sent back to D.C.?”
Aleksander stretched out his legs, hands propped on the ground behind him. “I honestly can’t remember.”
Alina frowned. “You can’t—”
“I woke up in the hospital the next day.”
Her stomach took a dive. “You what?”
“They say I was beaten,” he told her matter-of-factly, as if he was talking about the weather or something equally as banal. “Three assholes followed me home one night. Three broken ribs, a broken collarbone. A fractured foot. Two black eyes, if you can believe it.”
“Shit,” Alina breathed. “Aleksander. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “I’m not. Better me than somebody else. Somebody irreplaceable.”
“The fuck?” she said, frowning intently. “You are in no way replaceable. How can you even say that?”
Aleksander shrugged again. “I’m a messenger. There are always other messengers—”
“Okay, stop,” she interrupted. “I see now. You want to be a martyr.”
“I don’t,” he insisted. “But I can’t look at myself the next morning if I haven’t given everything I have the night before.”
Alina shook her head. “That’s totally insane.”
“Is it so bad to have high standards for myself?” he asked, genuinely taken aback. He’d expected her to take his side.
“It might be my favorite thing about you,” she admitted. “It’s certainly the only thing that makes your impossible expectations of me bearable. But I think your editor is probably right. The best thing you can do for the world is write and you can’t do that if you’re dead or exhausted. So you should probably start taking better care of yourself.”
Aleksander shifted, uncomfortable. Alina guessed he probably wasn’t used to being the subject of the microscopic analysis he subjected everyone else to.
“Alright,” he said nonetheless, seeming to take her words to heart. He nudged her with his shoulder. “But you make it sound like I’m some holier-than-thou prick, constantly measuring you up against my greatness.”
Alina bit her lip. “Well…”
“No,” he groaned. “Don’t even say it.”
To say Alina could sense his disapproval of her would be an understatement. She could feel every dimension of what he imagined for her against everything she knew herself to be capable of and all the places they didn’t line up.
“You think I’m an idiot,” Alina accused. She gestured generally to the hubbub of the festival. It wasn’t without its silliness or its darkness. But it wasn’t without its hope either. “You think all of this is so stupid.”
He shook his head. “You’re not an idiot. And I don’t think all of it is stupid. I just…don’t agree on everything.”
Alina’s face fell into her palms. “You’re gonna rip me to shreds in this article.”
Aleksander sighed, pulling her hands away.
“I would never,” he said gently. “You’re the very best of us, Alina.”
“You like me too much,” she warned, her wrists still in his clutches. “It’s clouding your judgment.”
“I do like you too much,” he told her, letting her go. His voice was somewhere between insistence and withdrawal. A wanting and a waiting. Alina’s breath abandoned her in a swift whoosh. “But I haven’t decided what I’ll do about it.”
She swallowed. “Well. You’ll tell me when you figure it out.”
Aleksander stood, then held out a hand for her to join him.
“You’ll be the first to know.”
<+>
I haven’t decided what I’ll do about it.
At the end of the Fantasy Faire and Magic Mountain Music Festival, those words looped in swirling, shiny letters at the front of Alina’s mind.
They were still hours away from sunset, stashed for safekeeping inside one of those long summer days that never end until they do. The sun was high and the sky turquoise, and yet Alina was awash in warm, buttery tones on the cusp of a great change. She felt different. New.
For his part, Aleksander seemed normal. She watched him, bewildered, as he continued gathering material for the article. He asked her questions on the record again, things like how she made her money (a part-time job at a café), what her parents did (owned a small nursery), what her ethnicity was (Chinese on her mother’s side and Russian on her father’s), and other things that made up a person and a life.
He was all business, sternly pushing her to honesty if she obfuscated, approaching other festival-goers for context or supplemental interviews, snapping pictures, and fetching cups of water for her at regular intervals.
When she wasn’t answering his questions, Alina was trailing behind absentmindedly and trying to understand what the hell had happened.
You up and fell in love with him , she thought, endlessly baffled.
What was his decision going to be? What was he even really deciding on? Had that been a confession of love? And admission of guilt?
When she tripped over an empty beer can for the second time, Aleksander pulled her over and tapped the side of her head.
“I need you with me, Starkov,” he said, leaning in close. He took up her entire field of vision.
“I’m here,” she insisted. But she wasn’t. She was long gone.
As the festival came to a close and the vans began taking people back down the mountain, the suspense became overwhelming.
It made no sense. Alina was no stranger to uncertainty. She had become intimately familiar with not knowing shit for the past two years. Not knowing where she’d be sleeping or with whom, not knowing what drugs she’d be taking and what effects they’d have, not knowing who she was or where she’d end up. But this not knowing, this lack of certainty when it came to her and Aleksander felt undoing. Fundamental pillars of herself were crumbling under the wait.
Circumstance was not on their side. Between the long line to board the vans, the uncomfortably crammed lurch down Mount Tamalpais, and the sleepy drive back to San Francisco, Alina couldn’t find the right moment to confront him about it. The fleeting nature of their time together had also dawned on her.
Aleksander did not live in San Francisco. He was attached to other places and other people. She wasn’t as firmly rooted, but it was just as impossible for her to imagine picking up everything and moving to the other side of the country. She wouldn’t fit in his life, that much was for certain. She was the square in this scenario and he was the round hole. Besides, she was a California girl at heart.
But where did that leave them?
Alina was too busy sinking into cynical waters to notice Aleksander driving past Haight-Ashbury and towards his hotel.
The passenger door opened and then she was on solid ground again. She had come up with nothing to hold onto, nothing to keep her anchored.
But then he took her hand and brought her up to his room.
When they were outside of his door he turned to her.
“You should know that if we do this,” he began, the words bursting forth, an act of destruction against what had been holding them back. “I’m going to lie and say we didn’t for the rest of my life.”
Confused, Alina frowned. “You think people are going to ask?”
Instead of answering, Aleksander pulled out his moleskine. He flipped through purposefully, looking for something. Any measure of time could’ve passed.
“I catch a lucky glimpse of her in the crowd,” he read, finally. “And what I experience when I see her is less of a feeling and more of a re-negotiation with myself and the world as I’ve known it. Anything can happen. Men on the moon. Equal rights for all. Nuclear war. The realm of possibility has expanded beyond my comprehension, tragedies and miracles in equal measure. I’ve found her and the world is ending. It’s also beginning. I’m also beginning.”
Aleksander closed the moleskine.
“People are going to know,” he told her.
Yeah, Alina thought, light as she’d ever been. They might.