Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner Page B

has been so absorbed by her storytelling that she has failed to notice that Lena is already asleep.
    LENA IS ASLEEP

…
    R asia sits for several minutes, watching Lena sleep, watching her back rise and fall, watching her mouth make the small baby movements that our mouths remember only when we are asleep. She feels a need to watch Vaclav when he is asleep, and she knows there is no one who feels the same about Lena.
    After she has watched Lena sleep for several minutes, she stands up, walks carefully to the door, and turns out the light.
    In the kitchen, flies are swarming around the dishes in the sink, little tiny fruit flies. She thinks of Lena, who might wake up in the middle of the night and want a drink of water, and who might find no clean cups and no way to fill up a clean glass of water. She finds, under the sink, a bottle of Ajax with a little yellow squirt left. She fills the sink with hot, soapy water and washes dishes until none are left.
    She picks old cigarette butts out of the drain and throws them away, and wipes down the sink until it shines.
    On the counter next to the sink there is a dish rack, and there are little spots of black mold in its joints and creases. Rasia cleans the dish rack until the mold is gone.
    When the dishes are dry, there is nowhere to put them away, because the shelves in the cabinets are dusty and sticky and covered in spills, so with her wet sponge, Rasia wipes down all the cabinets.
    The kitchen is clean (not as clean as her own, but much improved), but if Lena gets up in the middle of the night, she might trip over the clothes on the floor on the way to the kitchen. She might trip and bump her knees on the coffee table. She might knock over one of the ashtrays that is full of cigarette butts and matches and gum. She might step on one of the pizza boxes that are on the floor, full of bits of moldy pizza cheese.
    Lena might, walking sleepily to the kitchen, step on one of the empty bottles of Stolichnaya that are lying about on the floor.
    Rasia empties the ashtrays; she takes the bottles out to the blue recycling bin on the sidewalk; she takes the pizza boxes out to the trash. She washes the ashtrays. She throws away the fast-food drink cups that are crowding the table, the hamburger wrappers, the Diet Coke cans.
    She collects in her arms a bundle of clothes belonging to Ekaterina, clothes that smell of perfume and smoke. She walks through the open door of Ekaterina’s room, looking for a laundry basket. She turns on the light with one hand.
    She is only looking for a laundry basket.
    There is no laundry basket. She looks closer, just to be sure.
    On the nightstand, next to the bare mattress, there are spoons and foil and straws but no laundry basket. There are tiny Ziploc bags but no laundry basket.
    There is more of the same garbage that was in the living room, cans and bottles and trash, but no laundry basket.
    There are cans of hairspray, wrappers of many kinds, but Rasia will not clean this room, no way. This room is not on Lena’s path to the kitchen to get a drink of water.
    Walking home to her own house, to her own son and her own husband, Rasia thinks carefully about Lena, as she has so many times before. She thinks about the strange behavior of Lena and Vaclav; she thinks about Ekaterina.
    Rasia is not an idiot; she knows what goes on in the world. She knows the story with those spoons and foil and straws.
    She doesn’t know what to do. Oleg says she should mind her own business. She doesn’t know what to do.
    THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SARCOPHAGUS OF MYSTERY

…
    A t school, Lena spends all her time with her new friends and ignores Vaclav. Behind closed doors, Vaclav and Lena practice the act each day after school in stolen hours between homework and bedtime. Vaclav does Lena’s homework as fast as he can, whipping through long division, churning out paragraph after paragraph of perfectly Lena-accented English. He wants to make sure that they have time to practice over