Nicolasha closed and locked his apartment door and brought me into his bedroom, the only room with a light on. He sat me down at the edge of his disheveled bed and knelt in front of me, turning my bruised face from side to side to have a better look. I tried pretending nothing hurt, until Nicolasha touched my lower lip and made me flinch. "Stay here. Let me get some medicine."

"I'll be fine, Nicolasha." I stood up, but his hands ushered me back to the bed.

"Just sit still, little friend." He headed for the bathroom with a sad smile on his face and the bottom half of his bed sheet trailing along behind him.

The bedroom was dreadfully plain - pale blue walls, white ceiling, unpolished hardwood floor, no pictures or anything, and a fresh Persian throw rug between the bed and a long, bare dresser. A reading lamp and an alarm radio were placed on a short bed stand, and an affably careworn brown leather chair sat in the far corner of the room, next to the closet door, which was closed. Nicolasha's cello sat in its case beside the chair, where his clothes were tossed.

Nicolasha returned, with a wet rag, towel, iodine, and rubbing alcohol in hand to clean and treat my face. He handed me an ice pack, which I bounced in my hand while he tut-tutted over me. "You should be fine." I grunted. He lowered his hand over mine and held the ice pack to the bottom of my jaw, watching my reaction closely. I didn't show any, even though I felt a flash inside of me upon meeting the warmth of his palm.

His fingers slid inside of mine. "We have two, how do you say, sure fire cures for such wounds in Russia."

Nicolasha's eyes drew me into his. I felt the flash again, and felt a little fear, too. I gently pulled my hand away from his and dropped the ice pack on the floor noisily. "I think they're only bruises, little father."

Nicolasha shook his head mournfully. With great tenderness, he began running his hand through my hair. "No, my friend, they are wounds, as grievous as a bullet or a blade. I think I know who gave these to you," he whispered as I closed my eyes, blotting my Christmas Eve festivities out with the picture of Nicolasha's unlined, unshaven face staring with morbid oblivion at an invisible camera, "and that is why they cannot be mere bruises that will go away in a few hours."

I tried to put the photo alb.u.m out of my mind. His fingers playfully circ.u.mnavigated my scalp. "So tell me about these two famous cures from Russia." I couldn't. I felt myself get hard with another flash.

"One is to get blind drunk on vodka." I laughed as he wagged a finger at me. "But you are too young for that." Right, tell that to some of my baseball buddies when they go and pilfer their parents' wet bar supplies. "The other is...a different sort of medicine." Nicolasha's free hand timorously brushed across my crotch.

Flash.

I didn't react. I didn't know how to. But I didn't back away, either, or make a sound. I was scared, that's for sure, but there was a thrill in that fear that almost made me shake in my seat.

"The other is a tender kiss from a loved one."

I looked closely at Nicolasha's soft, white body, afraid to touch him anywhere else except his face. I could hear the wind blowing outside of his small bedroom window. It was the first time since Nicolasha ran his hand through my hair that I was aware some other world existed outside of the room.

My eyes stayed closed. My stomach was full to bursting, yet I felt hungrier than Id ever been. I cried out continuously, almost happily, as it hurt. I could barely breathe, panting and moaning myself silly, when the throbbing turned into a warm ocean. The music I felt, the vibrations across my body, they all seeped into the dark and bounced into a swirling delirium that swallowed me whole.

Nicolasha returned from the bathroom and switched off his reading lamp, curling me into his arms and legs beneath the chaos of the bed's multiple blankets. He carefully kissed every corner of my bruised face while his hands ma.s.saged my spent and naked body. I bungled along, trying to follow his lead, stopping only when my teacher lay down beside me and tucked me into the thickest of the quilts, content to run his fingers through my hair again.

"I love you, little friend."

My breath choked in my throat. "I love you, too, Nicolasha." My chest heaved once. I spit out a tired, hurt, disoriented sob, but did not cry. My f.u.c.king G.o.d, I was so sick of crying.

Nicolasha rubbed his lips over my hair and hugged me underneath the covers. We lay in the dark of our thoughts for many minutes. "When you are ready to tell me what happened this evening, tovarisch, don't be afraid." His warm feet slid under mine.

"Tomorrow?" I asked, hanging on to him until he pulled away.

"It is already tomorrow," he reminded me with a chuckle. I squinted at my Omega before Nicolasha took my hand in his, playing with my fingers. It was almost dawn.

"What does 'tovarisch' mean?"

Nicolasha made me squirm as he ran his wet tongue along the contours of my ear. "Comrade," he whispered, before kissing the side of my neck and falling back onto his limp feather pillows.

I moved into the only available arms that would have me and fell asleep while the snow continued to fall on the cold and nearly motionless city I called home.

X I.

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours

Makes the night morning and the noontide night.

Richard III I slept forever.

The soft warmth between our tangled bodies was something I had thought about and something I had dreamt about for a long time. When it came to me like a gift on that blinding, sun-drenched Christmas morning, I let it sweep over me like the crashing, childhood waves off of Nags Head, North Carolina, the ones that would pick me up and hurl me onto the beach like I was a rag doll, the ones I used to visit with my mother and father, when they still loved each other.

I felt Nicolasha's breath near my face before he kissed me once on the chin. I woke up and smiled up at him. "Merry Christmas, little friend!" He was kneeling beside me on the floor, wearing a ridiculously old-fashioned thermal underwear jump suit that drooped from his shoulders, goofy long-johns right out of a B-western. He took one of my hands and kissed it, before I glanced down at my lap, where a tray of hot food had been placed.

There were four slices of that salty black rye bread, a block of soft white cheese that was as big as a pack of cigarettes, a small carafe of steaming tea, two of Nicolasha's demita.s.se teacups, and a plate covered with a mound of scrambled eggs, filled with slices of onions, peppers, potatoes, and a sweet pork sausage, not to mention about a pound of garlic.

No sign of any vodka, however.

He peeled off his faded red underwear and crawled into the covers next to me. We ate in silence while Handel's Messiah played quietly in the background. The little speaker of the clock radio didn't do much justice to the oratorio's joyous expanse, but complemented the warm sunlight pouring into the bedroom over us.

And I felt another wave crash over me, a wave of contentment and reflection that aroused and odd, fast-motion meditation of my life as a confidential agent those last few weeks that lead up to my fateful Christmas holiday, making secretive visits, clandestine phone calls, stealth research, and a few private conversations in search of a father-type I could talk to without being slapped or getting mortified into further, acrid silence.

A few days after I met Felix, I made my first, tentative inquiry at the Pilot Inst.i.tute's normally well-stocked library, but found nothing, except dry and discouraging medical definitions that told me nothing.

Later that week, I moved on to our school nurse, a shy, frail Mexican-American who had served as an Army medic in Vietnam. He listened to my questions and tactfully ignored the anxieties that had to have dripped like rainwater from my timid overuse of genderless p.r.o.nouns, doing his best not to be judgmental or give me any advice that would indicate his own att.i.tudes on the subject, except that I should continue my inquiries "until I was satisfied with whatever answers materialized".

The following week, I found texts at the University bookstore that were more forthright and spoke to many of the questions I had been troubled with for what seemed like a long time. A few nights later, I got up the nerve to phone the professor who had a.s.signed those books at his office. We talked for hours, and he even invited me to visit one of his cla.s.ses, but I couldn't think of an easy way to ask Felix to come with me, and was too intimidated to go alone.

With only a week to go before the Pilot Inst.i.tute let out for the holidays, I showed up to take confession at our local church, a typically suburban, under-architected spiritual ba.n.a.lity that wouldn't pa.s.s muster as a city church cry-room. Quite unexpectedly, I ran into Brennan, one of the guys I used to play baseball with. I didn't expect him to be waiting for me after I stormed out of the box, angry and humiliated after a thoroughly negative exchange with the priest about guilt and fidelity and sin and some more guilt thrown in, just in case.

Brennan and I walked through our old playing field, a large, gra.s.sy corner of one of our local parks. We were chilled to the bone, but kept each other company until the sun went down. I surprised myself by actually talking to someone my own age, live and in person, face to face, about...well, everything. And Brennan listened, and didn't laugh, or hit me, or make me feel bad, or run off. He told me to find some other priest to talk to, and made me promise to call him over the Christmas break.

With a smile, I remembered holding out my frozen hand, and Brennan pushing it away to give me a tongue-tied hug that helped me muddle through the rest of that night.

I went back to Holy Rosary the next day. A little old lady in the office sent me to see a visiting priest from Poland, of all places. He was a young guy with wavy blond hair and a wiry build who had just finished giving morning Ma.s.s when I arrived. He sat us down on the marble steps leading down to the front door of the church, and, in surprisingly good English, urged me to speak freely to him. So I did. He was either the best actor in the Warsaw Pact or genuinely cared about me and my stupid little problem, because we talked for an hour, stopping only because he had to perform another Ma.s.s for the other ten Poles still living in Roseland. He invited me to attend, but I chickened out.

Instead, I insisted he give me absolution. Just in case. The young priest was convinced I had nothing to be forgiven for, but grudgingly obliged.

He sent me off to school with parting words, rich, sublime words that kept ringing in my ears: "You are G.o.d's child. He made you what you are. He loves you as you are, no matter what people may say. Be what you are, or you will indeed be a sinner against Him."

So this was it, I mused. Being what I am.

What is it about superb food or being naked with someone that makes it so easy to ruminate over the vital emotions and key moments in your life, like you were watching them over and over again, ala instant replay on television?

I cut a slice of the cheese and swallowed it with a mouthful of eggs, and let another wave of tranquility flow over me as the meal and the morning and our time together continued.

I decided to call the professor, the priest, and Brennan to wish them a Happy Christmas before my flight to sunny Florida departed, to thank them all.

Maybe Uncle Alex would come down to Florida with me, I speculated. G.o.d knows what sort of tangled plots and conspiracies would emerge from Jason and my uncle getting together.

Nicolasha lifted the tray from my legs and leaned across me to set it down on the floor beside the bed. "What would you like to do now, little friend?"

I considered the question with mock gravity. "Do you have any more Mr. Bubble?"

I sunk back into the covers and let my teacher take me in his arms, content to stay there with Handel's chorus in the background, singing to me and my tovarisch: Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us.

The air was clear and wonderfully fresh. There was no wind coming off of Lake Michigan, only a few blocks away. It was still below freezing, but not by much, a veritable heat wave compared to the Ice Station Zero temperatures and wind chill that had besieged Chicago much of that December. Nicolasha lived on a quiet street by Hyde Park standards, but the neighborhood itself was a busy and vibrant one. You could always hear traffic going past on South Sh.o.r.e Drive, buses coming to a halt or crawling away from a stop, commuter trains clattering along the overpa.s.s tracks that bisected the neighborhood, the occasional police siren, or some combination thereof. But the street was unusually soundless. You could almost hear the drops falling from the cl.u.s.ter of icicles that had formed on the corners of the porch roof. The sunlight bounced off of the fresh, fallen snow, making both of us squint as we stood next to each other outside the building's gla.s.s front door.

I didn't immediately notice the colorless sedan parked behind Nicolasha's Volvo, even though it was the only car on the block that had no snow over it.

"Thank you, little father." It had been some time since I had taken a bath, rather than a shower. I had certainly never taken a bath like that one. I felt like I was still sopping wet under all my clothes.

Nicolasha shifted uneasily on his feet, his eyes fixed on the deep, cloudless blue sky flying above us. I touched his arm, and he smiled, but not at me. "No, little friend, thank you. Thank you for coming...for being here."

I laughed quietly and reached up to pull an icicle off of the gutter. "I didn't have any other place to go!" I examined the icicle closely before tasting the tip of it with my lips, making sure there wasn't too much air pollution frozen into the thing.

"You could have gone home."

I snapped the icicle in half with two fingers and glared at my teacher, who seemed small and timid, all of a sudden. "But I didn't. I came here because I wanted to." Or needed to, I wasn't sure.

Nicolasha put a hand on my arm and smiled. It was a careful smile, perhaps a tired one, but definitely sad. "And I am glad you did."

But...?

My music teacher took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest with his head down. Slowly, he began to pace over the chipped paint of the wooden porch. "There is so much in my mind and in my heart, little friend, so much I would like to say."

I shrugged my shoulders and leaned against the railing. "I'm not going anywhere," I said in a matter-of-fact way, the same emotionless voice I'd used so much with Mom and Dad of late.

"I don't want to hurt you, or...confuse you."

Nicolasha still wouldn't look me in the eye. I hated that. It made me feel colder inside, a little blue flame of anger deep in my heart that came out through the computerized tone in my voice. "I'm not a little kid."

"No. I know that." Nicolasha's arms dropped to his side as he glared at some invisible dot floating around in back of my left shoulder. "There is very little of any 'kid' left in you."

"I'm going to be seventeen in August."

"And I'm going to be twenty five next week." Next week? An edge had crept into his soft voice. Our eyes finally met and stayed locked together, while our bodies didn't move an inch. "I do not know if that should matter. Or what does, anymore." Well, nothing, if you want to be existentialist about it, I responded to myself, thinking about Camus' The Stranger, which we were reading in Mister Granger's ball-busting Literature cla.s.s. "All I can be sure about is what I am feeling." Which is...? "I believe I love you." Flash. "I do not know how, or why. But it is what I feel, and I am afraid of that."

My voice sunk to a murmur. "How come?"

"You are so young. You are my student, as well." His eyes begged for me to look away, or make a joke, or push him aside and walk off, but I didn't. I stood my ground and stared back at him, making him say what I couldn't even bring myself to think. "Because I feel so alone so often, and it is less so when you are with me." I could see his eyes begin to fill. "I would like us to be together, even though I know we cannot, or should not. Or..." His eyes closed tightly. "But I love you, and do not know how to stop from feeling that in my heart."

And the last warm wave I would feel inside of me for many, many days came teeming down like a burst dam onto my soul, the defenseless little Mitteleuropan village below.

I heard a car door close behind me, but didn't turn around to look. I took a step closer to Nicolasha, and touched his breast under his leather jacket with the tips of my gloves. My voice was still a whisper, but was no longer unvarnished with emotion. "I love you, too." I couldn't help but smile. Perhaps it was my groping use of one of the great romantic cliches of all time. More likely, it was the sense of power I felt, watching Nicolasha's trembling, bare hand reach up and wait for my gloved fingers. "Nicolas Mikhailovitch Rozhdestvensky."

"So that's your real name."

We spun around to see the old police Captain from much earlier that Christmas morning. He wore a plain white t-shirt under a loose, overstuffed yellow parka, fading blue jeans, a yellow stocking cap, and a battered pair of work boots, whose laces hung loose. His face had a strange mixture of relief and seriousness about it. Nicolasha visibly recoiled upon recognizing him. I stood my ground, again.

"I was pretty sure this was the house we dropped you off at, son." He winked at me like a proud father might. I was confused. "Merry Christmas."

"Yeah. You, too, Captain."

"Thanks." His eyes glanced over to Nicolasha, who had backed up against the front door of the three-flat. I looked at my teacher with a smile.

"He's from Russia, Captain. They're scared of the police over there."

The Captain nodded, as if he already knew that. I heard the hydraulic doors of a bus open down the street. It broke the awkward silence that had crept between the three of us.

"Mister Rozhdestvensky was about to drive me home."

The Captain's rosy red face crinkled with what looked to me like a painful indecision. "That's what I came here for."

Nicolasha hurriedly spoke up. "Please, officer. There is no need." He tried to smile at the old Captain, whose narrow eyes scrutinized Nicolasha's face with the beguiled cunning of a veteran Irish cop.

"Son, I think it'll be better if I take you home."

"Why?"

Ignoring my question, the Captain's eyes continued to size up my teacher. "Got a call into the station this morning, some older guy asking about a teenager that looked a lot like you do." He pointed his thumb at me. "Says he was your Uncle Alex."

"Stra.s.se?"

The Captain nodded once. Instinctively, Nicolasha drew closer to my side, while the policeman continued. "My partner dialed me at home and told me about your uncle's call. So I came out to look for you."

In Chicago, old neighborhood cops did lots of things in funny, personal ways, but, for the life of me, I couldn't imagine what had brought him here. Another car, this one a proper squad car, pulled up in front of the three-flat. The Captain waved him off with a smile that disappeared when he turned back to face me.

"It's up to you if you wanna bring your...teacher...back with you." What if I didn't want to go back, I thought? The old Irish b.a.s.t.a.r.d must have sensed me wondering that. "You need to go home, though."

Nicolasha's hand squeezed my shoulder. "What has happened, officer?"

"Tell me." My voice became cold all over again.