22:10 - Part I - The Crooked Chain of Ghosts

Chapter 1

Once more the knife crossed to join the fork. Last bits of carrot and gravy were pushed and lifted, leaving the modest white plate nearly clean, although a narrow, faintly brown smear remained across the plain surface. Nevertheless, a satisfied Nikolai Sergiyevich Tarasov lowered the cutlery in finish and glanced at the clock hanging on the wall.

It was 22:10. He would be late.

Unlike most people, this realization did not trigger a need to hurry in Nikolai. It was not his nature; an easy serenity pervaded his entire being. Rushed time was merely a bird's shadow passing over a crisp mountain lake—in the transience, stillness remained. His father had noticed the trait in the toddler early and often remarked ever after that it was a gift from his mother's side of his family.

Maybe it was the quality that helped Nikolai endure nights like this one the most. Any normal person would have been a wreck by now under the strain of such duplicity. Somewhere deep down, he intuitively knew this was so, but he was not one to question his own feelings in the moment. Self-absorption was not his nature either; Nikolai tended to be more interested in the events and people around him. He could sit in silence for long periods of time, just gazing at the intersecting contours of reality toying with each other in his mind. A look of distant bemusement would evidence itself and freeze across his face. Sometimes, he had to be snapped out of the trance. This was one of those times.

Nikolai took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair after completing the meal. Before him stood a woman, facing away and leaning over a sink. He was especially struck by the mingling of her straight and curved lines. Her dark hair was pulled back taut into a twisted ball, revealing the smooth slope of her neck in the dull, malted luminescence of the outdated pendant light over the table. In a rapid succession, she reached to her side and took in her hands from the kitchen counter a cup, a plate, a few forks, spoons, and knives. One by one, they disappeared in front of her followed by the rolled tensing of her upper body, the sound of water interrupted in its fall, and clanks against a cheap stainless steel basin.

Nikolai's eyes drifted lower to her shoulders, which were snuggly covered by a black polyester-cotton, long-sleeve top. The smooth symmetry was abruptly broken by a black belt and then naturally perfected lower again by a firm muscular arc and the long trim vertical descent of her dark-gray, slim, wool trousers. Everything about her whispered a sleek, minimalist aesthetic. Everything—except the socks. Frayed, lime-colored cotton socks screeched out from between the dark trousers and the well-worn tile floor.

These bursts of green shifted and stretched in the slowed distortion of his daydream, and, at this moment, the socks commanded his gaze. They were not new; in fact, they had been with her for longer than he had known her. Nearly identical pairs Nikolai had bought for her had vanished to the bottom of her drawer, never to be used. This particular pair, mended so many times as to be arguably a wholly evolved new creation that replaced the original, were an enduring bit of comfort she reached for after work or on the weekends.

In that way, they had become something of a life constant, but, from time to time, Nikolai would see them revealed in an original way, as he did now. Her lime-green socks were, like other things that could dispatch Nikolai's imagination and gaze, small treasures of the absurd juxtaposed against an otherwise mundanely solemn moment. He collected such beautiful misfit images and tinkered with them in his mind.

Now the rambling socks slowed, paused, and then spun around as she turned off the water and wiped her hands on a towel. In his peripheral vision, Nikolai could see the woman run her fingers back over her hair and puff out her cheeks as she exhaled in exhaustion. She looked down at her husband, and he felt her notice the distant stare in his eyes.

"Where have you gone now, Kolya?" she asked playfully and tenderly as she approached him. Moving the back of her still slightly damp hand down his cheek, she held his chin between her thumb and index finger. At the sound of his diminutive name, Nikolai's thoughts gently returned to the present, and he met her warm gaze with his own soft-brown eyes.