The first thing you think when you see Ilya Rozanov—tall, blond, Russian in the way it's good to be Russian, blue eyes—is that he's a beautiful boy, and that he'll come to a bad end. There's not much to argue about on this point. Because he's a smoker, he does drugs—though North Americans don't talk about this; besides their legalized marijuana they don't know what people do, they ignore it, there are people on the street dying with needles in their veins, but they don't see it—he has sex with whoever he wants, plays a contact sport, he drives fast cars.

This is what you think of Rozanov, there's no getting around it. He's one of those Russians who do it well, the kind you see on the street and say, this one's from Moscow, and that's a cool thing. You don't see Soviet housing blocks, and always off-brand snacks and never a piece of meat on the table, you see the Kremlin, the accent, the charm, the cold. Moscow knows how to be this too, and Rozanov has never known how to be anything else.

Sasha meets him when they are both six. In six years, Ilya will lose his mother, and a part of himself; in twelve, Sasha will lose Ilya.

He's a nice kid, and Sasha doesn't know yet that he likes boys, that he will like them; he doesn't know yet what Ilya's cock tastes like.

Sasha doesn't know what being drafted means, he doesn't know the Raiders, and if he thinks about America he only thinks about what his parents tell him, that it's a faraway place, a very different place from Russia. He doesn't know it will be important, one day, for him, that Ilya will end up right there, stars and stripes. Ilya looks at him with his big blue eyes, his child's face and a t-shirt that's too big for him. The first thing he tells him is that he has an older brother—his mouth moves strangely as he says his name, there's a deference Sasha doesn't understand, he doesn't have brothers; he's never really had anyone to lend him a t-shirt that's too big for him.

They become friends, and it's a fundamentally obligatory thing. Ilya is obsessed with hockey, Sasha's father is his coach, their coach, Ilya is a tree that needs to grow, Sasha a stake that gets tied to him, to stay straight. He never talks about his father, and sometimes he comes to practice, his gaze always stern. Sasha doesn't know yet that he'll lose him, his own father, that he'll become more to Ilya than to himself. For his father, hockey is everything, and genetics this time failed miserably, put different things in his head; he wishes he had the passion Ilya has, for the ice, but he doesn't. He just hopes that if he stays close enough to him his dad will one day stop noticing the difference. They could become the same thing, sooner or later. Siamese twins on the ice and off.

The dreams of incorporation end quickly, that's what he thinks now—that the years are in his memories, because while he was living them they went by slow, languid. Five years at that age are like a whole lifetime.

At eleven they kiss for the first time, and it all begins because Sveta forces them to do it. Truth or dare. Sasha realizes he's been waiting for the moment for a while, Sveta looks at them as if she already knows something they will soon discover.

It's a kind of condemnation, he thinks as Ilya's tongue moves strangely with his, and then he thinks about his father. He says faggots must be arrested, harsh words along those lines, he talks about religion and unnatural acts and Sasha often wonders what makes beating a wife natural instead, for example. He says that there's no place for faggots in their Great Mother Russia.

His mother doesn't talk much; maybe it's a country where there's room for few things, despite millions of kilometers of width. Ilya will grow up into a strong, tall man, muscles that take up space, and inside him too there will be room for few things. Sasha will never know if it's a consolation good enough.

If there's a boy his father would accept, and he doesn't believe there is one, but if there were, it would be Ilya. That's what he thinks, and he puts a hand in his hair and imagines Sveta is turning away, with her arms crossed, and he doesn't give a damn, because he's eleven.

Ilya pulls his hair, and it excites him, but it's just to make him move. He kisses Sveta the way he kissed him, puts his hands in her hair. One even. For a long time he'll feel like he has the advantage, for much longer he'll feel like he is soundly defeated. There will be a plane he won't get on, and Ilya and Sveta will have two seats next to each other, they'll have paid more, to have them. There will be a distant day when he'll realize it was always a competition only for him, another when Sveta will put a hand on his shoulder and tell him in English, because they won't be able to speak Russian to each other anymore, that they both lost him. Lost what, Sasha will never know. Because Ilya never belonged to them, nor to Russia; one day he will belong to someone, and Sasha will understand it when he receives a wedding invitation. He’ll crumple it, throw it away, block Sveta’s number, Ilya’s, and move to Paris.