Free Separate Kingdoms (P.S.) by Valerie Laken

time they encountered another pothole or obstacle. Josie was relieved to find that not all the buildings were like the mysterious gray, Soviet-looking behemoths she’d seen from the apartment window; many were beautiful old stucco buildings, painted pale yellow and burgundy and pink, with elaborate porticos in front. The sidewalks were wide and crowded with people, and on every corner there seemed to be little makeshift markets with piles of fruit and vegetables. When Josie aimed her camera at them, she realized that at the edges of the markets stood rows of people holding out dresses and coats for sale, their arms spread wide like scarecrows. She took a blurred picture. Within a few minutes they were on a bridge over the Moscow River, and off to one side, in the distance, the gold domes of the Kremlin churches shimmered in the sunlight like a fantasy.
    Artur offered to take them to Red Square, and Josie nodded eagerly, but Meg cut her off. “We will meet the baby today, right?”
    “Most likely,” Artur nodded casually, without looking back at them. “If everything goes well.”
    Meg’s face turned hard and masklike. Josie had seen this transformation whenever Meg took business calls at home. She seemed ready to launch into an offensive strike, but Josie squeezed her hand. And, surprisingly, this subdued her.
    Artur outlined their schedule for the next two days, explaining the process of “approving” the child and putting the paperwork in motion. If all went as planned they would come back in six to ten weeks for a final adoption. The six-to-ten-weeks part sounded like a mail order promise. Josie tried not to dwell on it.
    Artur wasn’t paying much attention to her anyway. He addressed all his comments to Meg, only glancing at Josie from time to time out of politeness. Meg was the official adopter, after all. Russian law didn’t give kids to gay couples, so although they would both become legal parents in the States, in Russia Josie was supposed to pretend she was merely a traveling companion. It had been easy to agree to this in theoretical terms, before the trip, when it seemed she could sacrifice anything for a baby. And Meg’s life looked much better than hers on paper: She earned three times as much as Josie. She had a long history of stable jobs and residences. It was because of her savings that they could afford to do this at all. What judge would look at Josie’s résumé—a slew of brief, poorly paying jobs followed by eight years of toiling on an art history PhD that she was beginning to admit she might never finish—and grant her custody of a child? She couldn’t even conceive one—six miscarriages in two years. Her failure seemed written across her forehead. She understood why the adoption had to be done this way, but on the ground now, this role of silent partner, secret parent, chafed at her: Meg, the official parent, when Meg had to be talked into all this.
    “It’s nice that you came to help Meg,” Artur said to Josie, maybe picking up on her distress signs. “This can be quite a difficult time.”
    Josie smiled wanly back. She was a terrible liar. Meg had said it was all merely formality, that obviously the people in the Russian agency would see them for what they were. Only on paper, in front of the Russian judge, would they need to uphold this lie. But now, with Artur’s gaze upon her, Josie didn’t feel so sure. A silence fell over the car. She took back her hand and shifted her thigh away from Meg’s.
    “We’ve been friends since childhood, like sisters,” she announced suddenly, lying. “We met at summer camp.”
    Artur nodded up at the mirror and smiled again. “Do you have children yourself?”
    “Not yet,” Josie blurted, then glanced with panic at Meg, feeling she’d turned the conversation all awry.
    “Do you have any kids, Artur?” Meg asked quickly.
    “Not yet.” He winked. Josie didn’t know how to take it. He seemed slightly effeminate, but maybe that was