The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

wolf’s lair hung about with elaborate patchwork quilts, her
own
darkness. Mixed media, the mysteriously shimmering collages by the girl who stood at the edge of the abyss and looked down with a child’s thrill—until she got dizzy. As I am getting right now.
    He is shrouding me in his language, this Vadym—it’s like a cloud of marijuana smoke. I can’t contradict him: I do not, in fact, know anything, let alone have any of the intimate familiarity, about all that hidden machinery of big politics that he keeps hinting at—with passing, shifty references I can’t quite grip; I have no logical crutch I could lean on to help myself scatter this verbal fog—I am only sensing a fundamental
untruth
hidden in it, and this hypnotic cocoon in which he is ensnaring me is paralyzing my will, as though taking away my command of my own body. The bifurcation point, a phrase from Aidy’s vocabulary, shoots through my mind: this is the point at which women undress for Vadym. Or tell him to fuck off.
    And, pretending that Aidy is watching me (and I am savoring, in advance, the story I’ll have to tell him when I get home), Iimprovise a husky, deep chuckle—in the big, empty dining room, it sounds more defiant than conspiratorial—“Why are you telling me all this, Vadym?”
    Oh, what a look he gives me! A man’s look, sizing me up, taking direct aim—a look that’ll make your knees buckle!
    “Are you bored?” he changes tack abruptly.
    “No, but it’s late already.”
    Music begins to play, low. “Hotel California,” an instrumental version. Mashenka must’ve put it on. Must be the way they do things here: put on music for dessert. It triggers the necessary complex emotions in the current object of wooing. Like in one of Pavlov’s dogs.
    “Have you got someplace to be?”
    “Just tired you know.”
    “You’ll sleep in tomorrow. You’re not getting up for work, are you?”
    Such a lovely place, such a lovely place, such a lovely face
...
    “Pardon?”
    “Didn’t you resign? You don’t work in TV anymore. You don’t work anywhere, do you?”
    God! It’s like my plane drops into an air pocket. Uncontrollably, my jaw drops: what a brilliant tactician he is! One could see what got Vlada, especially in contrast to Katrusya’s father, the newly minted Australian kangaroophile who’d spent the entire span of their marriage on a couch in front of the TV.
    “You are well informed indeed. So you weren’t making your inquiries only about the beauty pageant?”
    “Does it bother you?” he glows modestly: it’s always nice to knock your neighbor down a rung or two, lest she think too highly of herself.
    “You could’ve just asked me—I’m not making a secret out of it. Or do you perhaps think that I could have gone on working there? In full knowledge of what they were doing?”
    I hear how weak that sounds—like I’m making excuses. In this game, as in any kind of business, the what is not important, andneither is the how—the important thing is who got there first. A lead automatically means a better position. Vadym got ahead of me when he found out about my resignation behind my back—and now I’m forced to justify myself, and my obsession with that despicable beauty pageant begins to look not entirely unimpeachable (Could it be retaliation by a disgruntled employee perhaps, instead of simple righteous indignation?)—and he is looking at me like that Dnipropetrovsk nut, as if he knows something about me that’s so dirty I’ll never be clean again. As they say in American movies, anything you say or do can and will be held against you.
    From this moment on, Vadym owes me nothing; the moral advantage is on his side. And all I’m left to do is applaud his brilliantly calculated timing—and prepare to hear what else he’s got in store for me: this is no longer my interview, I’m not the one asking questions, our roles have reversed.
    “What are you thinking of doing next? Have anything in mind yet?”
    “I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.”
    “You better start. The clock’s ticking. The reshuffling of the media market is in full swing, the cushiest gigs are up for grabs right now. Closer to the elections you’ll be looking at leftovers and rejects.”
    “Somehow, I don’t feel compelled to get reshuffled to accommodate the elections.”
    “What else do you want?” he asks, surprised. “An election cycle is an injection of money! Good money, Daryna. It’s like in the