Her eyes move from one display to another, not greedy, not impressed in the simple way of someone who wants to buy everything. No, this is stranger. Softer.
Awe. As if even this airport feels like part of some journey.
Then she catches herself and straightens, pretending she was not looking.
I glance at the diamonds in her ears. Small. Real. Tasteful. Her coat is expensive wool. Her handbag is designer, though not new. Her posture carries training, money, and family expectations. She’s not poor. She’s not unsophisticated.
So… Why is this shocking her?
We reach the smoked-glass doors of the lounge. I gesture for her to enter first.
She hesitates.
“Go on,” I say.
“I can walk through a door.”
“I’m relieved.”
She shoots me a look and steps inside.
The noise of the airport dies at once.
The lounge is quiet, warm, expensive in the way places are when they know they don’t need to announce it. Low lamps. Deep chairs. Dark wood. A bar at the far end. People speaking softly over champagne and phones.
Katerina stops just past the entrance. Her lips part, but then she closes them.
I guide us to a corner near the window, private enough to give her cover, open enough for me to see the door. I never sit with my back to a room. I never trust an entrance I cannot watch.
She notices that too. “Let me guess… You always choose seats like this.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I dislike surprises.”
She studies me for one second longer than politeness allows, then sort of sits, perching on the edge of the chair as if she may need to run at any moment.
A server comes by.
“Water,” I say. “And tea.”
Katerina looks up. “I didn’t ask for tea.”
“No. You looked like you needed it.”
“I look like many things to you, apparently.”
“Yes,” I say. “You do.”
Her eyes narrow, but color returns faintly to her cheeks. I pretend not to see.
Outside the window, a plane begins to move slowly across the dark runway. Katerina turns toward it, and everything in her face changes.
For a moment, she forgets me.
“I was supposed to go out of the country after college,” she says. “Paris trip. But there was always something. My father. Family obligations. An engagement.” Her voice changes around the last word.