Archive of Our Own

“That’ll do it, I think,” she says.

Sergei nods. His eyes are still on the document in his folder. “Yes, I think so.”

“All right then.” Margo sets down her pencil and pushes her shoulders back into a stretch – though her back’s not doing that bad, all things considered. It’s their last day before the Soyuz team goes back to Moscow, and she’d figured they would be hashing out details of the docking process until close to midnight, but there’s still daylight coming in through the meeting room windows. It’s that time of the evening when the people sitting on the opposite side of the conference table start squinting; whoever designed the layout JSC didn’t seem to realize that people would be using these rooms after regular business hours.

“Very good.” Sergei composes his face into a small businesslike smile and closes his folder.

Down at the far end of the conference table, Bill Strausser has closed his own folder but is still sitting, watching her expectantly. Bill. He’s worked with her long enough to know better.

“I think that’s all for tonight,” Margo announces. “Good work people.”

Everyone stands. Rachel Hayes, who’s heading up docking mechanics, gives Margo a thumbs-up and a wave as she bolts for the door. Luarsab Sakashvili, Sergei’s second, reaches across the table to shake Margo’s hand. “It has been an honor, Miss Madison,” he says gravely in his heavy voice.

Margo tries to suppress a smile. “We’ll be seeing each other on the monitors in just a couple of weeks, all right?”

Margo finds herself taking a long time gathering up documents and drawings as the others file out of the room. There’s nothing keeping her from going back to her office. She’s been looking forward to clearing her paperwork backlog so she can finally start working through the draft plans for the next round of Jamestown buildouts. She can do that, or at least put a good dent in it, now that she’s got a free evening.

She sits back down again and gives the papers a tap against the tabletop.

It’s odd—it usually feels good, the little bubble of satisfaction in a job well done before the post-project letdown starts to seep in. She’s not sure why she’s not feeling that right now. She’s very confident in their design choices, and the two teams developed a good working process in the end, even though things were tense for the first day or so when the Soviets came back after the KAL crash.

There’s a rustle from the far end of the table. She glances over and sees Sergei, the last remaining person in the room with her, also shuffling papers.

Of course that’s it.

“Hey,” she says.

Sergei looks up inquiringly. His expression is still distant, even a little hostile. Margo looks past him to the open doorway, where a large man in a suit stands guard, just the same as he has for all of these meetings. Well, it might not be the same guy. But it might be. They all look kind of the same to Margo.

“Do you wanna go get some dinner?” she asks. “Since it’s the last night and all.”

Sergei’s face doesn’t change—not quite—as he considers. “Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, that would be nice.” He sets down his folder and steps close to the KGB man, and Margo hears the hum of conversation she wouldn’t understand even if she could make out the words. After a few exchanges, the big man nods and walks off.

Sergei watches dispassionately as the man rounds the corner into the hallway, then turns to Margo with a brilliant, mischievous grin. “Where shall we go?”

Margo hasn’t thought that far, but she’s sure she can figure something out between her office and the parking lot. That’s not what she’s worried about. She tips her head toward the doorway where the KGB guy was standing. “So he’s just gonna leave us alone?”

Sergei shrugs fluidly, expressively. He seems very happy. “It is his last night in America too.”

“Hmm. Okay.” Margo picks up her folder and heads for the door. “Lemme just go drop this off and grab my keys.”

“May I accompany you?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says absently. Not Fontano’s—that’s where the astronauts go when they’re looking to avoid tourists. And 11:59 is out; they’re closed Tuesdays. It’ll have to be Westie’s or the Desert Rose.

“Say,” Margo says, as they wait for the elevator to the 9th floor. “Is he really just gonna leave us alone for the night?”

Sergei nods. “It is not quite following the rules, but as long as I am in the car tomorrow on the way to the airport, there is no harm done.”

The elevator dings, and they step inside. Margo presses the button for 9.

“What makes him so sure you’ll be there?” she asks. She’s learned a lot about the way the Soviet Union works in the past few weeks, and none of it seems to run on taking people’s word for things.

“There would be… repercussions,” Sergei replies carefully.

“Like what?” Margo asks. “There’s not much they could do to you if you aren’t there.”

“Not to me, no,” he says. His voice is very even and his face is a studied blank. “But there are others who would suffer for my choices.”

“Ah,” Margo says quietly. Sergei hasn’t said anything about anyone back home—they’ve mostly just talked about docking module design, and a bit about how things work at their respective agencies. But he’s probably got family—a living parent, maybe siblings, maybe even cousins. Some families are close like that. Close friends, maybe. And the wedding ring is pretty hard to miss.

She shivers a little. The United States isn’t perfect, but she’s very glad she doesn’t have to worry about any of that. Not that there’s anyone she’d be putting at risk—still, it’s a relief that it’s not even a question.

Sergei is not looking at her, his face a pleasant impassive mask as he stares off into the middle distance. Margo feels a pinch of self-consciousness, thinking about how closely she’d been watching him a minute ago. Americans really are up in other people’s business, she realizes.

“Do you prefer burgers or Tex-Mex?” she asks.

Sergei’s brows come together. “What is Tex-Mex?”

Margo chuckles. “It’s what you’re having for dinner your last night in America.”

**

It turns out Sergei dislikes enchiladas, but Margo trades plates with him and watches him devour the nachos she’d ordered for herself with a mixture of delight and relief that her recommendation didn’t spoil his last evening in the States.

The Desert Rose isn’t what you’d call fancy—the walls are covered in garish cowboy-themed murals, and it seems like there’s always at least one kid having a birthday party every time she’s there. But it’s really good food, and you don’t have to worry about somebody breaking into your car while you’re eating. Sergei had looked around at all the murals as they were sitting down, but he hadn’t said anything.

“It is very good, I think,” Sergei remarks, pointing toward his plate with a chip. “Like a cracker, but with many things, not only cheese or caviar.”

“It’s messier than a cracker,” Margo counters, eyes fixed on the half-dozen soggy chips left on the plate. There was a little spot of salsa on his chin a minute ago and she can’t look at him.

“Yes!” Sergei says enthusiastically. “Also the meat and tomato and…” he trails off. “Smetana?”

She meets his eyes. The salsa’s gone, thank goodness.

“Onions?”

“No, I know onions. The, ah—“ he waves a finger at the plate— “the white…”

“Oh. Sour cream.”

“Yes. It makes sense. It is very good this way.”

Margo shrugs. “We like it.”

“You say ‘we.’ Do you eat nachos also in Alabama?”

Sergei’s eyes are warm and curious. All those long As make “Alabama” sound like a foreign word.

“Sort of,” she tells him. “You can—” Margo pauses haplessly as a waiter squeezes himself by their table, carrying an enormous tray. “You can get Mexican food pretty much anywhere. But Tex-Mex is kind of its own thing.”

Sergei nods. “It is like this for us also. There is food from all parts of the Soviet Union in Moscow, but it is not the same as it will be in the place it is from. We have for example shashlik, and I find it very flavorful, but Luarsab Iosebzdze tells me it does not seem very good if you have eaten it in the Caucuses.”

Margo remembers biting into that first slice of pizza when she was in New York City for the Astronautical Conference in 1977. It was the last day of the conference, and she was doing it because that’s one of the things you’re supposed to do when you’re in New York, but the way the crust felt between her teeth really wasn’t like anything she’d had before. Every day next time I’m here, she’d promised herself. But she still hasn’t been back, so the main thing it’s done is ruin pizza in Houston.

“Any chance you’ll ever get to taste the real thing for yourself?” she asks.

Sergei nods. “I would like to. The Black Sea is a very nice place to go for vacations for many reasons. Very beautiful. But if you are not a party leader, it is not so easy to go.”

“Right,” Margo says. She forgets that they have those kinds of rules there. Or not quite—she remembers about the Soviet Union in general. But it’s easy to forget that it’s true for the people who happen to live there, like Sergei.

“Are there places in the United States you like to visit?” he asks her.

Margo laughs at that. She’s the head of JSC and he knows that.

He gives her a smile that’s half-grimace. “Or would like to visit?”

She purses her lips. That’s a different question, one she hasn’t thought about in a long time. “I’d like to see the Mojave Desert,” she says at last. “Or the Badlands. Those are the places I always thought about when I was a little girl.” She finds that she’s smiling, thinking of the big panoramic photos in her dad’s enormous atlas, remembering the old sweet feeling of longing for faraway and exciting places. But no, there’s no room for that. She shakes her head. “Maybe someday.”

Sergei is watching her with gentle intensity. “Why do you not go?” He shakes his head before she can open her mouth. “Yes, you are busy, I know this. But…” Sergei pauses, like he’s collecting himself. Margo hadn’t even noticed that he was upset. He’s got a lot going on under the surface, she thinks again.

“I was once in Ruskaela,” Sergei says. “A place of many mountains. There is a park there, very very beautiful. It was…” he smiles and drops his eyes, shaking his head. “It changed my life, to be in this place. Even though I was there only a few days.” He meets her eyes again. “If these are places you wish to see, you should go.”

“I guess it…” Margo’s voice catches for some reason, and she swallows. “This way it’s still something to look forward to.”

Sergei nods, but his expression is troubled, like he’s working up to disagree with her.

“Well, now you can cross America off your list,” she says briskly.

“Perhaps,” he says, shrugging. “Though I have seen very little. Only Houston, and only a few buildings.”

It does feel like a waste, when he puts it that way, though Margo’s not really sure how it could have been any different. “At least Emma made sure you got plenty of burgers,” she says lightly.

“And these lovely nachos!” Sergei grins, plucking the last non-soggy chip from his plate and popping it into his mouth.

“And some sun,” she adds.

Sergei shakes a finger. “This is a misunderstanding you hold,” he says. “There is sun in Moscow. Particularly now, in summer.”

“Okay, okay,” Margo says, putting up her hands. “I withdraw.”

“But live jazz music,” he adds, his voice softer. “The very best I could hope to hear.”

Margo picks up her napkin and begins fiddling with it. “There’s better people playing almost every night of the week.”

“I doubt this.” She’s not looking, but she can hear the expression on his face, and Margo feels, she feels—in the docking module a few days ago, she had kept her eyes down then too. He’d been so close then. He’s all the way on the other side of the table now, but the memory of playing for him— knowing that he’s remembering it too—sucks all the oxygen out of her brain. It had been a good strategy to send him to 11:59, but it makes her feel a little shaky, looking back, how she just did that. She seems to keep doing that, with Sergei. She wonders if—

A plastic clack as their check lands on their table. “Whenever you’re ready,” the waiter says heartily. “No hurry, okay?”

Margo feels the noise of the place wash back in, half relieved and half annoyed. The Desert Rose is so noisy all the time that it ends up feeling like background to her, but now that she’s paying attention she can’t help noticing the whining toddler two tables over and the girls at the table on their other side who are talking like they’ve been drinking. Those people probably aren’t in a rush. Margo doesn’t want to be either, but dinner’s basically over and Sergei has to be on a plane tomorrow. It’s one minute to midnight, again.

And then the solution presents itself, simple and elegant and perfect like the interlocking-petal idea he had a few weeks ago.

“We could go hear some,” she says. “Music, I mean. If you’re not too tired.”

Sergei smiles radiantly. Then there’s a flicker of something in his eyes and his whole face goes blank.

“We, uh. We don’t have to,” Margo says, as casually as she can manage. “I can also just take you back.”

“Some music would be nice,” Sergei replies distantly. His voice is even and controlled. Margo glances behind them, but no KGB agents have wandered in; it’s just a room full of chattering families and drunk twentysomethings. “If you like.”

“I do like,” she says, catching his eyes. “So what do you say?” He holds her gaze and, after a moment, he nods. Good.

“Will we go to 11:59?” Sergei asks, his voice still formal.

Margo shakes her head. “They’re closed Tuesdays. But there’s lots of places.”

“All right, then. Let’s go.” Sergei nods solemnly and pulls out his wallet.

“Put that away,” Margo says, making a shooing motion with her hand. "This is on me.”

**

“Where to now?” Sergei asks, pulling the car door closed.

Margo slams her own car door—harder than she meant to—and forces down a grimace. It turns out Remington’s is closed for a private event, and Lott’s Emporium still has that godawful quintet on Tuesdays, which she forgot about until she’d hauled them all the way there. But now half the evening’s trickled away circling back and forth between dead ends.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of Houston’s highways,” she says sourly.

She should have checked in on Jack and Hector’s when they were still in West Houston. But the thought of taking Sergei to a piano bar, specifically—that didn’t sit right, for some reason.

“Anyway, I can drop you back at your hotel. It’s getting late.”

Sergei nods. “Yes, all right,” he says resignedly.

Margo rolls her shoulders and places her hands on the steering wheel. He’s disappointed too—that’s something, she guesses. She puts the key in the ignition and then sits there, not turning it.

“It is too bad 11:59 is closed,” Sergei remarks. “I think we are quite close, yes?”

She looks over at him, confused. “How’d you know that?”

Sergei points past her out the window. Margo follows his gaze to the wide-open sky above the city. A whole lot of nothing. Not even stars: too much light pollution.

“Those lights from the sports stadium,” he says. “I remember seeing them the last time. So 11:59, it is close?”

Margo shakes her head, chuckling. The good engineers—the really good ones—they pick up on the little details nobody else notices.

“Yeah, it’s just a couple blocks away.” She tilts her head, still smiling, considering. “I do have a key.”

Sergei’s face erupts into a brilliant smile. “So I can hear you play again.” He clasps his hands together. “It is good! It is what I really wanted.”

Margo ducks her head. “I won’t have a backing band.” She closes her eyes. “I haven’t even played since that show a few weeks ago.”

“I will be very forgiving,” he says. “I promise. And there will be nobody else to hear you but me.”

All the air goes out of the car.

Margo nods, swallows, turns the key in the ignition. It’s hard to turn it, hard to move her foot on the pedal, hard to move her arms to pull the car out into the road. Sergei is a warm presence in the passenger seat and Margo has forgotten how to move her body in space.

She’s played for a crowd and she’s played on her own, but she hasn’t played for just one person in years, not since she did her audition set for Jim in 1966. She remembers how it felt, resting her hands on the keys afterward, awaiting judgment. She’d stuffed all of her attention into playing so she wouldn’t have to think about the club owner at the front row table or worry about how he was taking it. She’d been nervous, sure, but it was a familiar feeling. She’d felt that way every time she played for Wernher, every time she took some kind of exam, when she’d first interviewed for NASA. But Sergei said he’d be happy with what she played no matter what, and she believes him, and this feels different, this feeling is—this is better and worse all at once.

She could turn left at the corner instead of right. They’re maybe three minutes from Gulf Way. It’s a straight shot south down to JSC and the hotel where the whole Soyuz crew is staying. She could turn left and then right and then it would be too late to go back, there wouldn’t be any more decisions, any more room for mistakes.

The turn signal ticks like a metronome, asking the question again with every beat as she waits for the light to turn. There’s nobody else at the intersection.

It’s a minute and a half, maybe less, but she’s asked herself the question so many times that it’s become a habit by the time she notices that she’s turned right and sees 11:59’s empty parking lot in her headlights.

The temperature has dropped a bit, and Margo shivers as they stand by the back door while she digs in her purse for the key. She drops it twice, fishing it out of her bag, and fumbles as she tries to fit it into the lock. Not too promising for playing later.

Inside, the club smells of the lemon oil Pete uses to rub down the tables. It’s stuffy, too, and Sergei wrinkles his nose. The lemon’s a little much on its own.

“Let me just get the fan on,” Margo says, hurrying behind the bar. Why is she being so fussy?

Meanwhile, Sergei seats himself comfortably on one of the velvet couches near the front of the house. The fan sputters to life and Margo comes out from behind the bar to find Sergei sitting and waiting. Patient but impatient. Gracious but brusque. He’s making the same face he made when they met, in their first day of meetings, when one of those KGB men was watching.

Margo seats herself at the piano and pulls the lid back, still unsure what she’s going to play. She glances over. Sergei is watching. Patient, mild, unimpressed. Not quite the forgiving audience he promised to be.

She rests her hands on the keys. She takes a breath.

Ten minutes ago part of Margo had another part of her convinced that she was going to turn left and drive them back to JSC. She kept waiting for herself to do that, and then she did something else. That’s what this feels like. Any minute now, part of Margo is telling another part of herself, I’ll know what to play, or I’ll decide. Meanwhile, the rest of her is sitting here with her hands on the keys and silence in her head.

She laughs ruefully. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m just not… I’m not sure what to play.”

“What do you like playing?” he asks.

She flexes her fingers and feels a couple of possibilities stirring. Night Train, for some reason. Poinciana, the only one that really stuck around from her Ahmad Jamal phase. This Here is always fun—they’ve been closing most of their sets with that one for nearly a year. She could play her part in her sleep, but without the bass and drums it just… no. Any of them, really.

“Sorry,” she says again. “Everything I’m coming up with… you really need a trio.”

“I will be happy with only the piano,” he says, an edge of frustration in his voice.

But Margo shakes her head and folds her hands together. She looks over at him, resentful of how he’s made her feel her own limits. But no, that’s stupid, they work so well together. They’ve been working together well all week. That’s it, that must be it—she just doesn’t want to fly solo, to work alone, right now.

“What if I teach you a little bit instead?” She shrugs. “Seems like a better way to work with what we have.”

He looks at her for a long steady time. Reserved, appraising. “Yes, all right,” he says at last.

He perches stiffly at the far end of the bench. Not giving her much to work with—not that she’s much of a teacher anyway, when it comes to piano.

What was she thinking, taking them here? She should have just driven him back to his hotel. It would have been late by the time she got back to JSC, but she could have gotten through a decent chunk of paperwork before bed.

She takes a deep breath. It’s fine. can tackle that tomorrow—there’s a 10:30 with Nelson and Ellen, but her calendar’s clear before that. And anyway she’s here now, so she might as well try to make the best of it.

“Have you ever taken any piano lessons?” she asks Sergei.

“No, I studied violin as a child.” He smiles awkwardly. “An instrument that is of no use in jazz.”

“I guess not. But one of the most important instruments in bluegrass, even if the playing style is pretty different.”

“What is bluegrass?” he asks.

“Something for your next trip.”

He gives a pained, gentle smile. She wonders why she keeps poking the bruise like that. Why she keeps forgetting.

“So this is C,” she says, laying a finger on the key. “it’s…” she smiles, closes her eyes. “Sorry, I don’t know violin at all.”

“It is fine,” he says. She presses it, and he nods. “C. And this is D?” He pushes the next key. “Yes, good.”

She watches, charmed, as he works his way slowly and methodically up the white keys and back down, and then does the same with the black keys, listening intently to each note.

There’s something strange, and even a little magical, about sitting here in front of the empty house while Sergei plays scales against the steady whirr of the fan. The house looks ghostly from here. She’s locked up a couple of times, and come in occasionally in the early mornings to play when she isn’t needed in the office, but she doesn’t usually stop to look around like this.

“Yes, all right,” he says gravely from his place beside her. “I understand.” He’s still at the other end of the bench, but at least he isn’t holding himself like he’s afraid to get too close.

“Right.” Margo puts her hands on the keys and looks down at them. She didn’t really have a plan for this part. “Why don’t we….” She idly presses F a few times, and an idea hits her ear. “How about this,” she says. “Watch me.” She slowly taps out the first two measures of Moanin.

“Do it again,” Sergei says, and she does—just the right hand—and then once more, watching out of the corner of her eye as he curls his fingers lightly with each note.

She pulls her hands back from the keys. “Now you.”

Slowly, Sergei picks out the notes one by one.

“That’s not bad!” she says.

He winces. “It sounds terrible.”

“But you got all the notes right, that’s a start.” She runs it through again, slowly. Sergei echoes, and he’s closer on rhythm but ends on G instead of F.

“Almost,” she says, “but you—”

“Yes, I know.” He is staring down at the keys. “Let me try it again.”

He starts slowly, stops, starts again then stops again when he hits the G again, and then finally makes it through.

“That’s pretty decent,” she says, nodding.

“It is progress,” he agrees. He glances up at her, face serious and open. “But it is still not music, I think.”

“You’re being awful hard on yourself,” she says. “For someone who’s spent less than ten minutes at the piano, I’d say you’re doing pretty good.”

“What does it sound like, this piece?” he asks.

Margo puts both hands on the keys, and this time, the music comes to her fingers and she plays through the first nine measures. She hits the rest and stops, suddenly self-conscious, tucking her hands together in her lap. It’s beginner stuff, mostly, and she’s never been much good at getting the feel of it when she’s playing on her own.

“When you do it,” he says, his voice warm and suddenly very soft, “it is beautiful.”

A warm lurch in her gut, all the urgency rushing back in. Their time together is slipping away around them while she just sits here playing little scraps. She doesn’t want it to be over: she wants more time at the drafting table, more time talking policy, maybe even more time talking about their childhoods. But there’s also something else she wants, something Sergei went halfway to starting in the docking module, and over dinner tonight. She can’t afford it, whatever that something is, not with the Jamestown expansions and the Pathfinder launch coming up on top of all the regular stuff. But he’s sitting close enough that she can smell the piney musk of his skin, the same as she could when they were in the docking module, and something about this whole evening has Margo feeling a little reckless.

“Too bad you won’t be here longer,” she says nonchalantly. “We could—” Her voice catches as she sets her right hand down on the keys just next to his. “Work on that together.”

Sergei’s smile disappears, and his face goes taut and intense. Margo’s throat closes up as she waits for whatever’s coming next.

Slowly his smile returns, but it seems forced—and the laugh is forced too, as he slides his hand up a few keys away from hers. “Yes,” he says lightly, gently. “It is too bad.”

Margo presses out a smile in response and dips her head. The rejection stings a little, but the truth is she’s kind of relieved. It’s not like she doesn’t have enough going on as it is.

Seeing her face, Sergei gives a small nod and returns his attention to the piano keys, picking out the notes one by one.

As the tension clears, Margo finds that she’s smiling for real. It’s so peaceful here: the two of them sitting here, nothing but the notes from the piano and the background hum of the fan and the smell of lemon oil and the two of them, the two of them. It’s like a moment out of time. The fact that he turned her down just now, that almost makes it better. It makes her like him more, in a way, knowing that he’s someone who keeps his promises. And this little window of time, the two of them, it feels like she felt looking at the Ranger 7 photos of Mare Cognitum for the first time. Knowing about the topography of the moon was one thing, but seeing it had been another.

She watches him tap out notes, one by one, finishing the second measure and starting again, and feels an expansive tenderness open up inside of her.

Margo’s never wanted a husband or even a boyfriend—not even the boyfriends she’d had, not really. Certainly not since she first got the offer from NASA. But in this beautiful little protected space, smelling like lemon oil, she wishes powerfully that she could keep this forever, this private little pocket as a place she could come in the off hours. Not just 11:59 but this version of it, the two of them together on this bench, Sergei frowning down at the keys in concentration, and the fan and the piano tracing patterns in the silence.

But another part of her is already pushing back: this isn’t the life she wanted for herself, the life she’s worked so hard to get. And it’s not like it’s an option anyway. He’s going home to the Soviet Union soon. Tomorrow. Back to his wife, back to the Soviet Space Agency, back to his real life.

It’s perfect, actually, in a bittersweet way. Like the long note at the end of Moment’s Notice, Coltrane’s saxophone holding steady over that run up and down the piano keys. That E that’s not going anywhere because it’s the end of the record.

Next to her, Sergei huffs in frustration, gives his head a small shake, and stretches all his fingers out once, twice. Then he lays his hands on the keys—he’s doing real fingering, not hunting and pecking—and plays the first two bars again: slowly, but all the right notes and even a little bit of phrasing.

“That sounds really nice,” she exclaims.

He glances at her sidelong, smiling, and plays it again. This time he puts a jaunty little bounce on the chords and she feels them in her chest, two little strikes to the heart. She drops her eyes to her own hands, still on the keys.

“You’ve really got an ear for it, you know,” she says.

Next to her he hums and does not look up.

“I know it’d be hard in Moscow,” she says, staring harder at her own hands, “since you’re probably not allowed to play this kind of music. But maybe you could, I dunno, find a—”

His hands lift from the keys—she feels the movement rather than sees it, she’s so tuned into everything about him right now—and in a moment Sergei’s mouth is on hers; just a brief, sweet press, and then it’s gone. His hand still rests on her cheek, and he tips his forehead against hers.

“I am sorry, Margo,” he says, his voice thin and breathless. “This cannot—I am sorry.”

She lays her hand on top of his, pressing it to her face. “I know,” she says. “It’s okay.”

She should move back. Or he should, more like. But it’s like they’ve bought themselves a few minutes by saying no. Margo’s eyes close—there’s something so comforting about feeling his forehead against hers. After a minute, Sergei begins to move his thumb gently along her jawline, back and forth.

Sergei turns his hand to take hers and gives it a brief squeeze before dropping it and sitting back up. Margo straightens too, and gives him an awkward smile. His face creases with tenderness, and he leans forward once more and kisses her once, twice, again: small, chaste kisses. Then he pulls back, straightening his shoulders.

“I am sorry we will not have time for further piano lessons,” he says. His voice is formal and a bit too loud.

Margo nods. “Me too.” She looks down at the keys. They really are done for the night here, aren’t they? Maybe it’s just as well—she’s very tired, suddenly. “Why don’t I get you back to your hotel.”

“Yes, all right.” Sergei rises to his feet and walks toward the door.

Margo cannot help but move slowly as she closes the piano lid and pushes back from the bench. She gathers her purse from the table like it’s a big decision or like it needs to be handled carefully. It’s like moving through water to walk to the door out to the parking lot, where Sergei is waiting for her, back straight and hands behind his back.

“After you,” he says, pushing open the door.

She expects him to follow her out, but he lingers in the doorway, gazing back into the empty club.

“It is very nice here,” he says.

She nods. “It is.”

“I will have some very good memories of this place.” He looks at her for a long minute and then steps deliberately across the threshold into the parking lot, and Margo puts it together half a second too late—whatever it was about being in the club together, he felt it too. But now they’re both here in the cold night air of the parking lot.

“You can just pull the door closed,” she says. “It’ll lock.”

Sergei nods, turns, reaches for the doorknob and then stops suddenly. “The, ah, ventilator,” he says. “It is still on.”

The fan: she can still hear it humming. “Right,” she says. “I’ll just… I’ll just be a minute.” She puts her head down as she walks past him, feels him shrink into avoid touching her.

At the bar, she steps onto the metal foot railing and leans over the bar to reach the switch on the fan. As the blades slow she wishes she’d thought to do this earlier, before they’d all but closed the door on the whole night. She watches the fan drift to a full stop and then lowers herself back to the floor.

Then she turns, and Sergei is there: close, closer, crowding her against the bar, and then his mouth is hot against hers. It’s not like the last few kisses: this is deep and urgent and messy, and he leans over her, leaning them both over the edge of the bar. Her hands are on his shoulders and he wraps one arm around her waist as the fingers of his other hand weave into her hair, pulling her closer, closer. It’s breathless and a little terrifying and Margo has never felt more aware of her own body, all the nerves in her skin vibrating like a chord.

There are sounds, noises, and she can’t tell which of them is making them and it doesn’t matter, there’s barely any difference and they’re both trying to dissolve what difference there is: licking, panting into each other’s mouths, hands clawing in hair, pulling hisher shirt out of hisher waistband to run herhis fingers on bare skin. Their teeth clack, and it rings painfully through her skull but Margo doesn’t care, doesn’t care, it’s a mudslide and it will swallow her and she will let it.

Sergei tugs at the tails of her blouse, tugs until the lowest button slips from its hole. Then he pushes her shirt further up her torso and he’s running his lips along the skin of her waist, pressing hot open-mouthed kisses on her stomach in an awkward crouch. Margo braces herself on the barstools on either side and leans back against the bar, chin tipped upward, helpless under the crash of warm dark waves of pleasure.

There’s a few seconds’ scrabbling at her waist and then cool air on her thighs. Then hot again, on her mons pubis: Sergei’s breath on her underwear. Margo sucks in a breath, her mind struck blank.

Sergei, already a finger under the waistband of her panties, stops suddenly—and through the fog in her head, Margo notices the sound of his heavy panting, can sense that he’s tipped his face up to look at her. She can’t—she can’t talk, she can’t open her eyes, but she finds the side of his head with her fingertips and runs them gently along his cheekbone, then traces the shell of his ear.

Sergei dips his head away from her fingertips, leaving another split second of cool air, and then the exquisite featherlight brush of his lips on the tender skin just above the knee. He kisses her lightly again closer to her inner thigh, and then again, a slow path up the inside of her leg until his lips are brushing the fabric of her underwear. Margo winces internally, a split-second of pre-emptive shame: she’ll have to do some kind of inelegant shimmy, right there in his face, to get them off. But then Sergei mouths at her through the fabric and Margo nearly capsizes from the intense rush of it. She can’t tell if she’s the one who’s soaked her underwear or if he’s done it with his tongue—but he’s playing her like a woodwind, using his tongue to move the grain of the hot wet fabric against her and it’s taking her to pieces and the heat of it is surging inside of her and she gasps as her orgasm breaks over her. Her back hits the edge of the bar and she grinds her feet into the floor to keep herself from slipping further as her whole body shakes with it.

As she settles, she finds Sergei is resting his cheek against her thigh, and Margo pulls at his shoulders, urging him back to his feet so she can pull him in for a deep kiss. There’s a sourness in his mouth that’s probably the taste of her own body, and she feels a rush of grateful discomfort, wondering how he could stand so much of it. But his hands are trailing over her face, and his lips are soft, and even though he seems to be trying to hold his body at a distance from hers she can feel his penis hard and hot against her thigh. Something flares deep inside her, feeling that, a cavernous hunger to be even closer to him. She reaches down and runs her fingers along it.

Sergei breaks their kiss suddenly. “Margo,” he says, barely a strangled gasp, dropping his forehead into the crook of her neck.

“How’s that?” she asks. “Or should I…” but he doesn’t say anything—doesn’t give her any help—so she figures she may as well stick with what’s working so far. She strokes him again, closer to his torso, gratified by the feeling of his penis growing even harder at her touch. She draws her fingers back along the length of it, toward the head. She’s starting to get a feel for it, wondering if she should open his trousers now or wait until right before—and then abruptly Sergei groans and there’s sticky liquid seeping through the fabric onto her hand. Ejaculate, she thinks stupidly to herself, as he presses his forehead against her shoulder, panting out a steady “ha, ha” of heaving breaths as he pulses again and again into her fingers.

Margo finds herself petting the back of his with her dry hand—dazed, wondering, a little chagrined. She leaves the wet one hanging useless, a careful distance from her body. As his breathing begins to slow, Margo feels her stomach drop suddenly with dread, her mind catching a second later: maybe he hadn’t wanted to do that with her. Not just because he was hoping for…. maybe not at all.

Sergei steps backward, carefully detaching himself from her, and Margo can feel her throat burning.

“Sorry,” Margo says. “If that…if that wasn’t…”

He shakes his head, somewhere between smiling and grimacing, and Margo closes her eyes against the misery of it.

“Sorry,” she says again.

Sergei takes her hand (her clean hand) in his. “Margo, please,” he says, and squeezes her fingers, patting them with his thumb until she can manage to open her eyes. He smiles as their eyes meet and leans in to kiss her. It’s sweet and gentle and she kisses him back, the misery fading away almost as quickly as it showed up.

After a few minutes Margo’s dangling arm starts to buzz, so she breaks the kiss and wipes her hand on the pleather barstool, which takes care of most of it. She’ll clean it off later. Sergei winces, laughing. “I apologize for the mess.”

“Hey,” Margo says, laughing with him. “I did bring it on myself.”

“It is true,” Sergei replies. Margo watches his wide grin subsides into tenderness and feels a pinch in her heart.

“I’m a little sorry we didn’t get to, uh. You know.” Margo shakes her head nervously, feeling exposed. Why is she even saying this?

“It is just as well,” he says. “Since we do not have… a preservative.”

“Right.” She nods, feeling wrong-footed. She hadn’t even thought about that—it all happened so quickly, and it’s not like she’s in the habit. She hasn’t had to think about being careful, not in awhile. Just as well, like he said.

Sergei glances down at his stained trousers and shakes his head, chuckling, before pulling them back up and zipping them. With nothing else to do with her hands, Margo smooths out her own slacks and closes the button at the waist. There are some spots of fluid on the front, but they should come out with dry cleaning. Though she’d probably better drop them off herself. Emma’s always discreet, but it’s still better to avoid raising questions.

Margo laughs to herself. All these little things bothering her, and none of them the thing that should be bothering her. Sergei is married, and the two of them, they just… had sex, sort of? But it doesn’t bother her, is the thing. She can’t bring herself to feel guilty about it. Yes, he’s married, but this trip—it’s not his real life. He’s getting on a plane back to Moscow tomorrow, and after that she’ll see him on a video screen maybe a couple times more, and that’s it. They’ll go on with their lives. What he tells his wife, or doesn’t tell her, that’s his business.

She’d slept with a married man once before, but that was different—that was the day they lost David Harlow during an EVA that should have been routine, and she’d needed to blow off some steam. She and Alan had been playing together for years, they both knew it didn’t mean anything. This—whatever she’s doing now, with Sergei—it isn’t that. Wasn’t that. She can’t tell whether it’s over or not.

“Shall we clean off the stool?” Sergei asks.

“Right,” Margo says nodding. “There’s a spray bottle and cloth in the, uh, the green room,” she adds, feeling the thump of her heart in her chest. “We can go grab it.”

Sergei frowns in curiosity. “Why does it matter that the room is green?”

“Oh, it’s just the performers’ room offstage. It’s just called that, it’s not usually green.” Margo’s still talking, for some reason, and she wonders distantly why she’s still talking. “The one here just has white walls.” Chattering, that was Aunt Reesa’s word for it. Margo isn’t usually the type. “Mostly you can’t even tell what color the walls are,” she goes on, “the whole thing’s covered in photographs. Musicians who played here back when it was Club Martinique.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, some pretty big names. Do you, um… you wanna see it?”

“Yes,” he says. “It sounds interesting.”

She jerks her head toward the green room door and turns away quickly, before she has to see his face. “It’s this way,” she says, “c’mon.”

Margo leads him down the hall. She’s conscious of each footstep, her nerves hitting sharps in her heart, her fingertips, her skull. There’s probably also a cloth and spray bottle behind the bar, and the bathroom’s got to have paper towels. What those places don’t have is a box of condoms in the side table drawer, an unofficial stash for hopeful performers. That’s not what Margo suggested, she’s not suggesting it, not to Sergei, not even to herself, she’s just… wondering what will happen once they’re in that room together.

The green room’s not exactly a pleasant space, she realizes, as Sergei looks it over from the doorway. The carpet is dingy, the upholstery on the couched and armchairs is speckled with little tears, and the fluorescent lights are too bright and not bright enough at the same time—you can’t really tell what color anything is. But Sergei steps past her, eyes glowing as he takes in the rows of photographs on the walls. “It is so many!” he says wonderingly.

“Yeah, this place used to be a pretty big deal,” Margo nods absently, feeling a little at loose ends, then remembers why they came back here and grabs the spray bottle and rag from the bookshelf. “I’ll be right back,” she says. Sergei, still studying the wall of photographs, only nods vaguely.

Once she’s wiped down the stool, Margo returns to the green room. And as she sets the spray bottle down on the side table Sergei turns to her, pointing excitedly at a black-and-white photo in the center of the array.

“It is Louis Armstrong, yes?” he asks.

“That’s right,” Margo says, smiling.

Sergei smiles widely, clearly pleased with himself. “Even in the Soviet Union, his face is known,” he says. “Were you at this concert?”

Margo shakes her head. “I never saw him live. His show here was in the 1950s.”

Sergei nods. “And you were not yet in Houston.”

“I was here for the Wynton Marsalis show, though.” Margo points. “Just a few to the right.”

Sergei turns eagerly back to perusing the wall. “I think I know this name also, Pat Metheny?”

“Yeah, he’s all right.” Margo twists her fingers together awkwardly. It’s nice, she guesses, that Sergei’s enjoying the photos. But whatever fragile thing there was going on for them in the main hall of the club, she thinks that maybe she broke it by bringing him back here, where the lights are unpleasant and it smells musty and where there are all of these photographs looking back at them.

It’s got to be close to eleven by now. She really needs to be heading back to JSC if she wants to get anything done before her 10:30 tomorrow—she can’t do the late night-early morning combo like she used to be able to.

But there are no windows in the green room, and if she doesn’t look at her watch she can ward off knowing what time it is for just a little longer. She can give Sergei a little more time to look at the photographs, stay here with him a little longer and see what happens.

The next thing that happens is that she opens the drawer in the side table and takes out the box of condoms. She’s fumbling again, like she did with the key back when they first got here, and the box slaps loudly on the wood table.

Sergei glances over at the sound and looks from her to the box. Margo fiddles with her hands, taking up space, and for a minute the whole future feels wide-open and blank, like an empty room. Like the only thing that matters is the next five minutes.

When she looks up at his face, finally, Sergei is gazing at her, smiling with incredible tenderness.

“I just… thought,” she says awkwardly.

Sergei swallows and nods. He takes off his jacket and tosses it carelessly to one side as he crosses the room to her slowly, each step heavy with intention. His face is sober but his eyes are happy as he steps in front of her and takes her hands in his. Then he lifts her hands to his lips and kisses her fingers lightly, tracing his right thumb over her left knuckles.

Margo closes her eyes, resisting the sudden urge to turn her face away. She’d wanted this, she does want this, but that’s different than it actually happening. She’s still got that 10:30 tomorrow morning. Why is she here, doing this with him?

Sergei goes still, his lips still pressed lightly to her index finger. She can feel the gentle pressure of his thumb on her knuckles. She wonders angrily why he’s doing this. He’s the one that’s married, why didn’t he stop this when he still could?

But he has stopped now, like he can tell what she’s feeling. “Margo,” he says, his voice barely audible. “We do not have to.”

Margo can feel his breath on her fingers as he speaks, and she can smell his skin, and the part of her that was angry a minute ago grinds to a halt. She’s in freefall.

“Do you want to?” she asks, her eyes still closed.

“Yes,” he breathes hoarsely, and Margo reaches up and pulls his mouth to hers. It’s less frantic than before, but it’s deep and sweet and full of desire.

His mouth is on hers, left hand cupping her neck, as he undoes the buttons of her blouse one by one. He caresses her shoulders, still kissing her, as she unbuttons his shirt, and lets go only long enough for her to push it from his shoulders. Soon they’re down to bare skin, but even now Sergei seems unwilling to break their kiss, holding her face close with one hand as he balances carefully, undoing his shoelaces with the other.

Margo laughs, stepping backward out of her shoes and the loose pool of her slacks, and Sergei makes a small noise as he follows, hands on her waist, her back, in her hair. “Margo,” he murmurs as he kisses along her jawline, one hand on her hip and the other tangling in her hair. “Margo.”

She could turn to water right on the spot, but she does want to do this lying down, so she steps back again and over to the big brown couch, tugging him behind her. Sergei watches hungrily as she stretches out, then stops solemnly and removes his socks, one by one. He takes a condom from the box and rolls it on before clambering carefully over her, one knee planted between hers.

“Margo,” he says again, reverently, and Margo feels a sweet trill of something complicated, too complicated to look at right now. “Margo,” he says again, and she—she should say something, shouldn’t she? But she’s too, she’s too—she doesn’t know any words for what she’d want to say, and she doesn’t want to wonder how she’d feel about them tomorrow. So instead she reaches up and strokes his cheek, and puts her other hand on his hip and gives a little tug downward.

Sergei takes the hint, and slowly maneuvers himself down on top of her and then in. Margo gasps at the gorgeous hot shock of it, relishing the feeling of his bare skin against hers, her legs curling up reflexively on either side of his hips. Sergei thrusts into her, and thrusts again, and Margo finds she’s squeezing him with her legs, pulling him down, pulling him in, holding him against her as the pressure and heat ripple through her in agonizing waves of joy.

Her eyes are closed—a drop of his sweat hits her face and she didn’t see it coming, only feels it. Or maybe vision is just gone, maybe all her senses are consumed as Sergei rocks against her, pressing into her, close, close, closer than she’s ever been to another person before. All the other sex she’s had before, that was a technicality—proximate bodies, not this red-black melt of shared ecstasy.

Feeling the heat build between them, Margo almost weeps with relief that they hadn’t managed to stop themselves. She’d known—okay, she hadn’t known it would feel like this. But she’d known it would be amazing, she’d sensed it—maybe he did too—and if they hadn’t then she always would have wondered and regretted. But now she gets to have this—have him—and afterward they can go back to their lives.

Then Sergei dips his head to take her mouth with his and her mind goes dark: just pressure and heat and sweetness and him and them.

The pressure is building in Margo’s head and body when Sergei thrusts deep and hard, almost hard enough to hurt, crying out her name as he collapses on top of her. He’s shivering as he comes, one hand pawing at her shoulder with anxious desperate tenderness. He murmurs her name again and again as all the thoughts pour back in through the crack in her heart.

She was wrong, she thinks despairingly, his fingers brushing hungry-gentle against her skin and his hips still moving as his orgasm trails off. She was wrong, this was a mistake. She feels fractured and tender and the thought of him leaving makes her feel panicked. How did she let herself get into this situation?

Sergei plants a soft kiss at the base of her neck and pushes up onto one elbow, peering down at her with gentle concern. “Margo, did you also…?”

“No,” she says, “it’s all right, though, I already…” but he shifts himself to the side and curls over her, hand to her vulva and tongue on her nipple. It feels incredible—but she wishes he wouldn’t, she’s exposed enough already but God it feels amazing and she wails as she comes, hands claw-gripping at his shoulders. She presses down, holding him there, as her breath shakes raw through her. This was a mistake. This was too much. It can’t be over already—but now that they’ve done it, it is over. And in about nine hours Sergei is getting on a plane back to Moscow. And then it’s really over.

Sergei stirs slightly under her hands and she tightens her grip. She doesn’t want to see his face, and she really doesn’t want him to see hers right now.

Margo steadies her breathing: firm inhale and exhale. She won’t cry. She loves her life. There wasn’t anything missing before and she can make that happen again.

Once she’s sure her face will hold, she lets her hands relax. Sergei nuzzles lightly against her breast, then plants a few small kisses on her collarbone and cautiously pushes himself upward and off the couch. Margo stands up too and starts collecting clothing—mostly it’s in one place, but her blouse wound up halfway across the room somehow. As she bends over to retrieve her underwear, she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder. Sergei keeps it there as she stands to meet his eyes.

“You are not sorry we did this, I hope?” he asks softly.

She laughs quietly. “Only a little.”

He gives her a sad half-smile in return. “Yes, me too.”

He’s dressed before she is—mostly—and she looks up from putting on her shoes to see him scanning the room with a frown. “My, ah, jacket,” he says.

“Right.” She remembers now, seeing it land next to the armchair. She retrieves it and hands it to him and watches silently as he puts it on, wondering what he meant about being sorry. There have been so many times when they’ve understood each other right away, sometimes without even speaking, but this is—this has got to be different for him than for her. It’s got to be, right?

It’s really not her business though.

Sergei brushes some fuzz from the sleeve, and she can’t help it, she steps close to pull the lapel straight but mostly it’s an excuse to kiss him again. It’s a soft, quiet kiss, almost like they’re back on the piano bench—and Sergei might be thinking the same thing because he presses his forehead to hers for just a second before he steps away, turning his back as he settles his jacket over his shoulders.

He’s quiet in the car—but so is she, remembering what it feels like to drive a car now that her body has done things it hadn’t done an hour ago. It might be strange to walk into JSC again, move her body around those familiar hallways and rooms. She hopes this feeling has worn off before everyone else shows up for work tomorrow, this feeling that everything is new. She’s had a new experience, that’s all. It was a new thing—a nice new thing—and now she’s going to close the door on it. There’s lots of things in her work planner this week.

The Soyuz group’s hotel is just one exit off JSC—quicker to take local roads back, once she’s exited, instead of getting back onto the highway. As Margo pulls into the hotel’s drop-off driveway, under the overhang, she’s struck by a pang—Sergei’s going to get out of her car, and after that she’ll see him on a screen a few times and that’s it. This drive back wasn’t much, but it’s what she had. They didn’t even spend it talking.

She glances over at the passenger seat to find Sergei watching her with gentle intensity. She tries to smile but she can’t manage it so she just looks back, holding his gaze.

“Thank you, Margo,” he says at last. “For a lovely evening.”

“You’re welcome,” she says carefully. “Thank you for making the time.”

Sergei glances out at the bellhops standing on either side of the hotel door. Nobody seems to be watching them, particularly, but it’s brightly lit under the overhang. He sighs and settles back into his seat and stares straight ahead. There’s something going on in his face, some kind of tension Margo doesn’t understand. She drops her eyes to give him some privacy and stares at the speedometer, idly following the numbers around the dial—10-20-30, all the way up, back around—and for a split second she wonders if he’s going to ask her to gun it out of the parking lot and drive him someplace where the Soviets can never touch him.

But then the next minute she feels his hand cover hers on the stick shift. She looks up to find him staring resolutely ahead. She waits—wait for what he’s going to say next—but he doesn’t say anything, just strokes his thumb gently over hers.

“Goodbye, Margo,” he says, finally, and gets out of the car before she can say anything back.

She watches until one of the bellhops pulls the door open for him, but doesn’t stick around to watch if he turns around again. It’s just different kinds of over, not much difference between them, and anyway she’s got a full day tomorrow.

Full day or no, she finds herself sitting in her parked car in the JSC lot. It’s all the same here, she tells herself. The part of her that plays at 11:59, that’s always been different. This is just a different kind of different. She’ll leave it at the door, just the same.

There’s something comforting about how JSC looms over the parking lot. Margo can feel the shape of it, even in the dark, as she locks up her car. Whatever else is happening out there in the world, their work goes on. Margo draws in a comforting breath and walks toward the building —mostly dark, other than the one light of her office window.