Together in Paris

14.

He silently waited, he didn't even know for what, exactly. He sat there, on the sidelines, in his gray tuxedo, at the Neva Club, where laughter and emotion spread through the crowd with the grace of swans. Still, he was terribly nervous.
Sitting there, in that corner, he looked around with a sort of melancholy: he absorbed the glittering colours of the noblewomen's clothes - it was surprising for him to notice how carefully they had avoided red -, the delicate perfume of flowers, the smell of cigars, the taste of the fruit candy he kept stealing from the small saucer laid on the table in front of him like a sponge.

In Leningrad, he would have never seen a ceremony like that.

Hundreds of journalists took pictures of the Neva Club and the audience, and one of them seemed to have become very keen on him and, every once in a while, he took a picture of him.
He would usually have snorted to a similar situation, but not this time. He smiled faintly, at that was it.
Who knew.
Maybe Anya really was Anastasiya.
Maybe this was her real world.
So she would've been nothing but a little thespian.

What a pity.

He was just thinking of how to divert Gorlinsky's questions when he returned to Russia when his right hand clashed with something in his pocket. He stroked the object with his fingertips: his father's gun. He sighed, looking around. A flashy blue curtain had been set up to separate a part of the club from the ballroom where everyone was, and, considered the movement he could sense, there had to be someone behind it.

Maybe some journalist.

Maybe Anya.

He felt the seat beside him lower itself under someone's weight, he barely turned his head. Wrapped in her black evening gown, with her long, brown hair styled up in a thick bun, Vassilisa Gorlinskaya stared at him intently with her big greenish eyes, a strange expression painted on her face. He sighed wearily.

"What do you want, Vassilisa?"

"Go." she coldly answered, perching on the little sofa. The man shook his head.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Gleb, stop acting childish. You know very well what I'm talking about," the woman said, grabbing his hand.

"Go to her."

"If I went to her, what would I do?" the Deputy Commissioner growled.

"Tell her I'm not even able to catch some fugitives? That I'm not capable of - ugh, no. No way."

"Why don't you ever finish your phrases!?" Vassilisa muttered. She then sighed heavily, passed a rebellious tuft of her hair behind her ear, and shook her head.

"You're so stubborn."

Gleb looked away.
Who did she believe she was to give him orders? She was the wife of his superior, of course, but why didn't she mind her own business?
As if he weren't bothered enough by Vassilisa's behaviour, Dmitry's annoying face emerged from the crowd, and their eyes met. A little smirk painted the lips of the traitor, Gleb huffed.

Ugh, great.

"Oh, what do we have here?" the young man commented.

"The Bolshevik!"
And, wrinkling his nose, he added: "And his lady."

"She's not my lady." Gleb coldly replied. Yet, he couldn't hold back a smile as he noticed a huge, white bandage on the boy's nose.
He surely had broken it.

Whoops.

"Have you changed your mind, tovariš?" the young man arrogantly continued before of settling on the sofa in front of his.