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Ilya was just about to light up when he realised that there was someone in sight; an old man who was peering into the hood of a car, which was parked around the back of the building next door. It was a battered old Jeep which looked like it shouldn’t be on the road. Not that they had proper roads here anyway, they’d flown in on a terrifying little plane that felt like it was going to fall out of the sky. He had spent the whole flight reconsidering his decision to accompany Shane, and also a number of his other life choices.
The old guy glanced up at the same time Ilya spotted him, and Ilya saw him do the double-take of is that really Ilya Rozanov?, but he just lifted a hand in a I-have-seen-you-and-you-have-seen-me wave, and went back to whatever he was doing.
Ilya shrugged and lit his cigarette, and smoked it for about thirty seconds before curiosity overcame him. He walked over. “Why are you bothering? That car looks like a complete piece of shit. Whatever you fix, something else will probably fall off the next day.”
“Annie Sadler asked me to take a look at it,” said the guy, with an amused look that said I’ve talked to a lot of young guys like you. To Ilya’s surprise, he had an American accent. He looked exactly the same as all the other old white guys Ilya had seen up here, all bundled up against the cold. “Real pain to get new cars up here. You gotta run them till they drop.”
Ilya made an unimpressed noise. “That is the fault of people who choose to live in this godforsaken place. Even Siberia has real cities.”
“It’s their home, asshole,” the old guy said, but not like he was looking to start a fight. He wasn’t bitching about Ilya’s cigarette, either, which put him (extremely temporarily) in Ilya’s good books.
“Not your home?”
“Give it another twenty years or so.”
Ilya surveyed him. It was a bit hard to tell how old he really was, with only his face showing, but his stubbly beard was all grey and his face was creased. Lots of laugh lines. “You’ll probably be dead by then.”
He laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”
“What makes an American move to the worst part of Canada? You used to work in mining, or something? You have a great fascination for moose?” The guy had to be retired.
“Same kind of reason you moved to the actual worst part of Canada,” the guy said, with a glint in his eye. Ilya tensed, but it didn’t feel like he was about to get called a cocksucker, and was the guy implying -
“At least Ottawa has roads,” he said airily. “So you have uptight Canadian hockey player boyfriend, then? That’s why you’re here?”
The old guy grinned, shutting the hood of the Jeep. “Uptight Canadian Mountie husband. Close enough.”
Ilya snorted, to indicate he didn’t think it was that close.
But it did something funny in his chest, thinking about this guy, who had to be the same age as Ilya’s father would have been, moving to the fucking Northwest Territories twenty years ago with his uptight Mountie boyfriend. Thinking about him still being here, twenty years later, and Annie Sadler - whoever the fuck she was, not that Ilya cared - asking him to take a look at her Jeep. Being normal. Just another old guy in the middle of freezing nowhere, the kind of place you couldn't sneak around, where everybody knew your business. Him and his husband.
He transferred the cigarette to his other hand, held his right hand out. “Ilya Rozanov. I play hockey.” Of course the man knew who he was, mocking him about Ottawa, but that wasn’t the point.
“I’ve heard,” said the old guy. “Ray Kowalski.” They shook.
Ilya jerked his head back towards where he was supposed to be. “I better get back before the uptight boyfriend comes looking and yells at me about smoking.”
“Good luck with that,” said Kowalski, and sounded like he meant it. He nodded to Ilya, and started off in his own direction.
Ilya felt, for absolutely no good reason, like maybe this trip hadn’t been a total waste of time after all.