Dedicated to Julie

I am infatuated with an elder from Russia. He was shipped out to the Provo MTC and will be returning to Mother Russia when his preparation is over. Of course, he hasn’t told me this—I can just tell from his thick accent when he speaks English, and his Russian name tag, and his blue ID card that says “RUS-MOS” on it. I’ve learned to be sharp and perceptive here at the MTC, because heaven knows I’m too scared to say much to him.

It’s not so much a crushy fear that prevents me. I’m literally a little bit afraid of him. It's the way he carries himself, and the way he talks would indicate a certain disdain for America and an impatience with apple-pie girls like me. Of course my coworkers are vastly more “stupid American” than I am, which is why they’re not afraid. He might be a little high maintenance. It’s kind of hard to tell because he has a classically Eastern European face, with those eyes that seem somehow half-dead—almost like a vampire. Their expression almost hints of perpetual boredom. Maybe it’s my constant need to please and, moreover, to entertain that’s being threatened.

But the dead-bored eyes are intriguing too, and I kind of want to stare at them, only I can’t because staring is rude and his haughty glare would be humiliating to withstand. I’m satisfied to watch him glide through the store on his daily visit—always between 2-3pm, but who’s keeping track?—and sometimes I wonder if he’s a secret Baryshnikov with such a lean build, and since Russians aren’t communists anymore, he must be a dancer, right?

That logic makes sense in my head.

He talks to the other native Russians in his district in their mashed up, gibberish language, and I want to know what he’s saying. I'm frustrated that his conversations about soap and greeting cards and awkward American store cashiers are barred from me. Meanwhile he understands my English with the perfection of one who’s memorized English grammar in school for a decade.

Once in a while we catch eyes for a second, then I look away because it’s almost like being in a trance, and as long as he’s wearing a black nametag, I’m not supposed to look. Occasionally he’ll smile, and he doesn’t look so dead or bored anymore. He should smile more often while he asks me if he can buy some international stamps because they say that a smile is the same in all languages. Smiles don’t sound like gibberish.