Conspiracy by Dana Black Page B

“Katarina Ivanovna, you are all right in there, yes?”
    “Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?” Katya tried to think in the role she had selected for herself: bored, irritable, the prima donna who knew more than her attendants about the way she ought to conduct herself. As she spoke, she lifted a small box from the shelf above the rust-stained sink, removed a tampon, and tore open the wrapper, quickly, so that her voice covered the sound. She replaced the box on the shelf, tossed the wrapper into the wastebasket, and flushed the tampon.
    Tamara waited until Katya had opened the door before she spoke again. In her light cotton ski pajamas, her wary eyes glittering deep within her puffy face, Tamara looked like the weightlifter she had been earlier in her career. Her long arms hung at her sides, as though she were about to grab Katya by the robe and press her overhead like a barbell—a feat Tamara could have performed without strain. Yet her voice was still carefully modulated with concern. “We’ve been a little worried about you, I can tell you that. None of us understands what you’re doing! When you’ve been brought here to assist with the Western television and newspaper people, and then, at practically the first opportunity that presents itself, you suddenly decide that your own whims are more important than the arrangements your comrades have made . . .”
    She let her voice trail off, watching as Katya walked past her and lay down on one of the room’s two small beds. When she saw that Katya was not going to speak up, she began again. “At least that is the talk I hear from Zadiev and those around him. They call it willfulness. Youthful rebellion. For myself, since I have been able to observe you at close quarters for so long, I think you have some other reason.”
    Her thin voice softened yet again. “I think you believe you are right in what you are doing.”
    “Of course I’m right.” Katya looked at the ceiling.
    “You want to tell me about it, yes?”
    “Would you explain to them? They might not like hearing how foolish they’ve been.”
    Tamara sounded momentarily uncertain—a sign that she was taking Katya seriously. “You want to stay on their good side, then, do you?”
    Katya laughed and sat up in bed. “I haven’t become that willful, Tamara Borisovna! I can’t afford not to stay on their good side—I have my future to think about, and my brother’s too, and Zadiev can be very influential, I’ve been told. But I also want to do what is best for myself, and for my country. And I’m convinced that my way will help us all more than if I’d meekly gone in there tonight and performed for that Quinn woman. I saw her on television in my hospital room in Ottawa, and I can tell you, she’s all wrong for me!”
    “Wrong?”
    “Look at me, Tamara Borisovna!” Katya spread her arms wide, showing her callused palms. Twenty-three thousand practice hours and three hundred-odd competitive meets during the past ten years had made cracks and ridges in the skin and filled them white with chalk. She went on as Tamara blinked and stared. “Have you ever seen a picture of Rachel Quinn? Do you know that she looks like a film star? What would I seem like next to her? I can’t be the cute little moppet any longer, Tamara—maybe I only weigh forty-eight kilos, but I’ve got breasts now, and wide shoulders and strong arms, and if I went in there next to her, the Americans would be saying all over again that Russian women grow up to become cows!”
    She smiled a little, inwardly, at the effect this had on Tamara, who had recently acquired a boyfriend—a Moscow veterinarian to whom she wrote faithfully every night after she finished her daily report—and had become more sensitive about her own appearance. Katya added, “And her questions, Tamara! When I was in Ottawa, she was all gossip and politics—and she was interviewing Zheng Sihua, the little Chinese girl who’s so good on the