Twenty-Four Hours

You wake up at seven with the black phone still in your hand.

The screen has gone dark, but you remember every line of last night's conversation, the way you remember the first column of a set of books that's going to matter. How short his texts were. How he waited. How he never once told you what you should want, only asked.

You lie there watching gray light come up over the lake and try to remember the last time a man asked you anything and actually wanted the answer.

Then you remember you're getting married, and you get up.

The Cook County clerk's office on Clark Street at nine in the morning is fluorescent lights, a number dispenser and a line of couples who look like they actually like each other.

Dari is waiting outside on the sidewalk in her work blazer with two coffees and the expression of a woman about to commit a felony on your behalf.

"Okay," she says, handing you one. "Okay. I've had six hours to process your text. My processing has concluded. Have you lost your entire mind?"

"Possibly."

"You met him last night."

"Technically the night before last. I met him for about forty minutes."

Dariela Lunsford has been your best friend since you were both twenty, broke and sharing an apartment in Rogers Park with a radiator that sounded like a ghost being strangled. She's a paralegal at a firm on Wacker, she owns more reading glasses than shoes, and she has never once in eight years let you get away with anything.

"Ava." She grabs your arm. "Blink twice if you're in trouble."

"I'm in trouble," you say. "That's why I'm doing this."

Her face changes.

You can't tell her about the ledger. Not here, not now, maybe not ever. You tell her what you can: that your father's business got tangled with dangerous people, that somebody broke into your condo last night, that this marriage is an arrangement with an end date and a lock on your bedroom door.

"And he agreed to that," she says flatly. "A man who looks like that agreed to separate bedrooms."

You follow her gaze.

Mikhail is getting out of a black car at the curb. Charcoal overcoat, white shirt, no tie, the lake wind pushing his hair off his forehead. A woman walking past with a stroller physically slows down. A bike messenger nearly hits a pole.

"Oh, no," Dari says faintly. "Oh, that's so much worse."

The license takes forty minutes. The clerk is a tired woman with a cardigan and a Cubs mug who looks at Mikhail, then at you, then at Mikhail again, and says, "Congratulations," in a tone of real sympathy.

It's effective tomorrow. Illinois makes you wait a day.

Dari corners him at the elevator while you're signing the last form. You can't hear what she says. You see her jab a finger at his chest, and you see him not move, not step back, not get angry. He listens. Then he says something, very short, and she stares at him for a long moment and lets her hand drop.

"What did you tell her?" you ask in the car.

"That you hold the key," he says. "Literally and otherwise. She can check on you any time she likes, and I'll never ask what you say."

Twenty-four hours later you're standing in a judge's chambers on the twenty-eighth floor of the Daley Center, in a cream silk dress Dari brought over in a garment bag at seven this morning with the words if you're doing this insane thing, you're doing it in something nice.

The judge is a cheerful man with a bow tie and a framed photo of a sailboat. He has no idea who Mikhail is, or he's a very good actor. Timo stands on Mikhail's side in his long-suffering gray suit, looking like a mountain that has been asked to attend a tea party. Dari stands on yours, holding your coat and glaring at everybody impartially.

It takes six minutes.

"Do you have rings?"

You don't. You didn't think of it. Your stomach drops.

Mikhail takes a small box out of his coat pocket. Inside, on old velvet gone soft, is a plain gold band, worn thin in one place, with the faintest engraving inside that you can't read.

"Is this all right?" he asks you, quietly, under the judge's cheerful patter. "If you'd prefer something else, I'll get something else."

"It's fine," you say. "It's lovely."

He slides it onto your finger. It fits like it was made for you. You look up, startled, and he's already looking away.

He hands you a man's band, heavy and plain, and you put it on his long fingers. Your hands are cold. His are warm and absolutely steady.

"By the power vested in me by the State of Illinois, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may..."

The judge stops, because Mikhail is looking at you.

Not leaning in. Not moving at all. Just looking, a question in those pale eyes, plain as if he'd said it out loud.

You give the smallest shake of your head.

He nods, once, as if you've told him the time.

"You may be very happy," the judge finishes gamely, and shakes everyone's hand.

Dari hugs you so hard your ribs creak and whispers, "He asked. With his face. I hate that I'm impressed."

The car is warm and smells of leather. Timo drives. The city goes past in streaks of rain and brake lights, the Loop's canyon walls, the river the color of old pewter.

You turn the ring on your finger. Mrs. Ava Zakharin. You don't say it out loud. You aren't sure it would come out as a joke.

"My father knows," Mikhail says.

You look up. He's watching the river, not you.

"He knew before the ink dried. He'd like us to come to dinner on Sunday. In Lake Forest. He wants to meet my wife." The last two words come out precise and strange, as if he's never had cause to say them before. "He'll be charming. He'll ask about your father. He'll offer you a drink you shouldn't finish."

"Okay."

"And before then," he says, and now he turns, "I need to know what you're holding."

Your fingers go still on the ring.

"Clause six," you say.

"I know clause six. I'm not asking you to give it to me. I'm not asking where it is." His voice is very even. "I'm asking you to show me what my father is afraid of. Because on Sunday he's going to look across a table at you and decide how much of a threat you are, and I can't stand between you and something I can't see."

You think about the pages you couldn't decode. The strings of capitals and numbers. Names that might have been boats.

You think about Taras at the bar, raising his glass.

You think about a man in your wrecked hallway, with someone else's blood on his cuff, asking May I?

"Timo," you say. "Do you know Chicago Avenue? In Ukrainian Village?"

Timo's eyes meet yours in the rearview mirror. "I know it."

You give him the number. Mikhail goes very still beside you.

"That's a banya," he says slowly.

"Yes." You turn the ring one more time, and then you make yourself stop. "It's in a steam room."