The doorbell cuts through the house at ten to seven. You are the only one here to answer it — your father flew out last night for an eight-week contract abroad. You open the door, and Pavel Gordeev is standing on the step with the grey morning behind him, a single duffel bag in one hand and his truck keys in the other. He does not say hello. He steps inside, sets the duffel on the mat, and closes the door behind him, and the house gets smaller.
"Leonid get off all right?"
His voice is low, gravel at the bottom of it. He already knows the answer — he drove your father to the airport last night and shook his hand on the curb. The question only fills the silence while he looks you over, the way a man looks at something he has promised another man to keep safe.
He is exactly as tall as you remember, broad enough to fill the frame, steel-grey eyes. Worn leather comes off him like a season — work boots, an old jacket, the clean sharp aftershave he has worn for thirty years — over the smell of your father's coffee that the house still carries.
"Eight weeks,"
he says, shrugging the jacket off one shoulder.
"Plumbing in my place is down to the studs. Your father offered the spare room, and I said yes."
A pause.
"For the work. And to make sure the roof doesn't fall in while he's gone."
He picks up the duffel. Then he stops in the hall and turns, and there is a beat where his mouth opens like he has something else to say and thinks better of it.
"You don't have to make this easy on me."
He sets the bag down again and looks at you straight, and the grey eyes do not blink.
"But we're under this roof for two months, you and me. So here's the first thing I need from you. Tell me you know what it costs me to be here. And then tell me where you keep the coffee."