We stood in the museum gift store.
“Like this?”
Dani held up a notebook with a picture from inside the Hermitage on its cover and flipped through it.
Blank lines filled its pages.
“That looks perfect.”
She held up another. The cover was different.
“Should I get two?”
I thought for a second.
“No … there’ll be another museum if I run out of room again.”
That night, back in the hotel room, I continued my journal while Dani slept beside me.
2/08/2019 WE EXPLORED THE HERMITAGE.
The bedspring stabbed into my shoulder. I adjusted my pillow and continued.
I USED A PEN TO CROSS OUT ROOMS AS WE WENT.
When the book was filled, I bought another. And one more after that. By the time our journey was nearing its end, I had four notebooks overflowing with journal entries.
I closed the final book, Rostov’s Kremlin adorned its cover.
“I think it’s enough.”
Dani leaned next to me in the morning light as the Moscow Airport Express carried us out of the city.
“What is?”
“Between my photos. This journal. I think it’s enough.”
“Your book?”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll need to write it after we go home tomorrow.”
“The last trips. You spend months writing them.”
“I don’t think I need to for this one.”
She touched her growing belly.
“Easy mode, right?”
“Yeah. Easy mode.”
~
There was glass on the ground when we came out.
Dani’s mom stepped around it.
“I don’t remember this.”
She crossed her arms.
“And why’d you leave your window down?”
“I didn’t …”
Only after Dani and I had slid into the back did we look at each other.
Our bags were gone.
Three weeks in Russia. Gone.
Dani turned to me.
“My cellphone! Your camera!”
“My notebooks. My photos.”
“My laptop.”
At the next car, another man stood beside his own pile of broken glass.
The parking lot was dark.
The restaurant manager came outside and crossed his arms.
“Third time this week.”
Then he shook his head and went back inside.
Dani turned to her dad, her face suddenly hopeful.
“Dad. My phone was in the bag. Maybe we can follow it from yours.”
He started the car.
The wind came through the broken window. Glass crunched under my shoes as we followed the dot on her dad’s phone.
The dot jumped as we drove
A department store.
A pizza restaurant.
Then a parking garage.
By the time we arrived, red-and-blue lights flashed across its entrance.
Dani jumped out of the car to talk to the officer.
She came back and leaned through the broken window.
“They say they have the thief trapped inside.”
“Already? We only called it in a half hour ago.”
she shrugged.
We waited.
A piece of glass slipped from the window frame and landed in my lap. I picked it up. Another fell and bounced onto the seat.
Dani refreshed the map.
Twenty minutes passed.
The dot jumped ten miles in a second.
Dani looked at the screen again.
“Let’s go. It’s in the fire lane.”
The lot was dark. Cars filled the rows, but the fire lane was empty.
I got out and peered through the windows of the nearest cars.
“Whoa. What are you doing? Step away from my car!”
A man walked toward me.
“Who, me? I’m—”
Dani stepped in and explained about the bags and the phone.
The man lowered his voice.
“Someone broke into my girl’s car in this same parking lot last week. It’s an epidemic, man.”
He reached forward.
“Maybe I can help.”
Dani’s dad handed him the phone.
The dot still sat in the empty fire lane.
We watched while he held it
Then it disappeared.
“Sorry guys.”
Dani sighed.
“I wondered how long the battery would hold.”
We drove home with the window gone.
The wind filled the car.
~
I opened my laptop a few days later and began writing from memory.
I started with the highlights:
MY EYES SAW NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN EARTH, WATER, AND SKY UNTIL OUR HULL SPLIT IT OPEN.
I sighed.
“I never wanted to write this.”
“I know. It’s okay though. You still can.”
I backed up and started again from the beginning:
BEFORE WE LEFT, WE NEEDED TO ARRANGE OUR VISAS. RUSSIA DIDN’T MAKE THIS EASY. …
I kept writing.
Days passed.
Then months.
A thousand words a day.
“You still at it?”
It was near midnight.
“Only one week until he’s here. I’m almost done.”
Dani rolled over as I turned out the lights.
My face was still lit by the glowing screen. The clicking of my fingers on the keys filled the night.
At last, I opened the document and scrolled to the bottom.
CORBIN. YOU CAN COME OUT.
I hit save; then I closed the lid.