The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil Page A

told the man, “as much as I do.”
    They were photographs of Bazarov: falling through the sky in parachuter’s gear, his dark shades reflecting the sun; underwater, eyes goggled above his goatee, feeding a chunk of meat into the gaping maw of a shark; astride the mound of a blood-maned boar in a blinding field of snow, one hand gripping the beast’s upper teeth, opening its mouth, the other lifting one of the long-barreled pistols above the steam of Bazarov’s own breath.
    “He’s better at laying out dreams,” Yarik went on. “We were just dreaming about it, is really what we were doing.”
    Bazarov left his pictures where they were, slid himself off the desk.
    “About what it might be like for others,” Yarik said, “others from town, or from St. Petersburg, tours that could come up from the Volga into the lake.” As he talked he turned his head to follow the billionaire. The man was walking around the couch, towards the door through which Yarik had come. “It could be a whole added stream of revenue,” Yarik said to his back. “We were thinking that right now the Oranzheria is stuck in the area where it’s built. It has to ship the products grown under it out to the rest of Russia. But this would bring the rest of Russia to it.”
    Bazarov had opened the door and let the woman in. No: the same blond braid, and shawl, and dress, but a different woman wheeling a small cart. On it, two glasses rattled, empty. Between them: a silver teapot. The woman left the cart in front of Yarik, left the room again. Shutting the door behind her, Bazarov came back carrying an electric kettle in one hand. In the other, he held the cord.
    “You aren’t really interested in this tourism stuff, are you,” Yarik said.
    Bazarov set the kettle down on the top of his desk, turned. He was still holding the plug from the chord. “I’m interested in what goes on in here,” he said and, reaching out, touched the plug’s prongs to Yarik’s forehead. He held it there. Outside the door, the receding clacks of high heels echoed. Slowly, the sound was replaced by a low shushing. It grew louder, louder, until it was a rolling burble.
    Yarik watched the man make the noise with his lips. Then the lips split into that grin again, and the noise stopped, and the man laughed. He drew back the plug and reached under the desk and stuck it in a socket in the floor. Flicking the kettle on, he turned, stepped to the green plastic ball, rolled it back, and sat on it. The cart between them, he lifted the teapot and carefully poured the dark, strong tea into one glass, then the other. He filled each a third of the way. Behind him the electric kettle was already beginning to boil. He waited for the boil to roll, for it to click off. “Yaroslav Lvovich Zhuvov,” he said, filling one of the glasses the rest of the way up. “Yaroslav Lvovich.” He paused with the kettle over the second glass, looked at Yarik. “Do you mind if I call you Yaroslav Lvovich?”
    Yarik shook his head. They sat, Yarik on the couch, Bazarov on his inflated ball, both holding their glasses of tea by the rims.
    The billionaire blew on the surface, smiled. “Yaroslav Lvovich,” he said. “Son of Lev Leonidovich Zhuvov, fisherman. Of Galina Yegorovna Zhuvova, secretary, seamstress, Party member, mother, of course. Grew up in an apartment complex on Avtovskaya Street, went to the Secondary School Number Eight, lives now in the Varkayusa Apartments near Ilyinsky Square. With a wife who works in a ticket window at the railway station, a boy about to start first form in the Number Seventeen school downtown, a girl who goes to day care at an old woman’s apartment on the floor above. A good father, a good husband. A real son of Petroplavilsk. So how,” he spoke through the steam coming off the top of his glass, “did you come to live for a year out in the boonies with your uncle?”
    Yarik could feel his fingers burning. “How do you know all that?”
    Bazarov made his