Natalie says clubbing hasn’t been the same since the pandemic. But in Kyiv, the alcohol is cheap and drugs are easy to come by, so it seems the night life never truly sizzled out like it had in the States. The music is a distinct blend of Deep House and dreamy Trance that’s hard to come by back home in Iowa. Rewriting the heartbeats of everyone in the room, humans becoming a hive of bees; buzzed, buzzing, pulsing, flying high.

It feels like the kind of place where bad decisions are made, and only realized the next morning.

Natalie makes nice with a pair of German boys at the bar as she orders for us. This club has lids for their drinks, tables have been more sparsely separated, and masks are required on the dance floor, frequent breaks being encouraged. The Germans inform us that this isn’t the norm for the other spots they’ve visited here, though. Regulations had gotten loose over most of Eastern Europe, the efforts by businesses vary widely, and seemed to be more of an appeasement strategy than anything else. 

She hands off my drink to me and begins searching for a spot for us to make camp. For Natalie, that meant finding the man she intended to throw herself at for the night. I don’t know what she’s ordered for me but, I trust her to get me something I’ll be able to stomach while also getting me royally fucked. So I sip through the provided straw while she leads me by the hand like a toddler through the crowd, watching intently as she works. 

When it comes to men, she is a shark in the water, sniffing out the blood. Maybe she’s a bit of a hunter after all.

“Target acquired,” she says sweetly, while adjusting her dark locks and pushing her breasts further up in her padded bra. Then, she beckons me to follow as she heads towards a burly man, sitting alone at a small booth table. 

He’s about as stereotypically Eastern European as she possibly could have found – even for a place overflowing with them – and exactly her type: freshly shaven dome, biceps the size of my head, and probably at least ten years older than her. He is already red in the face from the alcohol as we approach, but manages a relatively sober smile at our arrival.

“Hi Handsome, you speak English?”

“You are American girls?” He does, but it’s broken. Not a problem for Natalie of course, who plants herself almost on his lap right out the gate. I scoot into the booth after her, but keep a comfortable distance and focus on my drink; I really needed a buzz to kick in quickly because my brain itself hasn’t stopped vibrating since Cherenobyl. 

Natalie and her meal make small talk. He introduces himself as Boryslav, but when Natalie can’t wrap her tongue around the way he says it, he insists she call him Barry, like Barry Manilow, and recites an inaccurate line of lyrics from Copacabana. Natalie throws her head back to laugh, even though I’m positive she has no idea who Barry Manilow is. I smirk behind my straw, then eventually allow my attention to wander as they hold their conversation without me.

The dance floor looks like an ocean from here, bodies waxing and waning with the music and strobing lights. Most of the dancers are using standard disposable masks, but some had gone the extra mile to incorporate their face covers into their outfits. Cute cat faces and neon colored smiles that glowed in the black lights, creating caricatures of faces within the mass, dipping in and out of sight.

He could be somewhere in that mass, dancing with the other bodies, and I’d never even know it. I could look him right in the face and he’d still be a mystery.

I retrieve my phone as Natalie asks Barry what he does for work, opening up my cloud to browse the photographs I’d collected earlier. I know what I’m looking for, but pretend even with myself that I am simply occupying my fingers. I reach the last photo and stop sipping. I almost expect the photo to not exist, but there he was. The Shadow. The Chernobyl Stalker I’ll never know. 

The Trophy buck that got away, as my father might say.

“I drive,” Barry answers, after having to swim in his brain a bit to remember the English word.

Natalie perks with interest. “Oh, like a chauffeur?” I could already picture her fantasy: back seat of a limo, most likely.

“Taxi. I drive,” he clarifies, and she deflates. While Natalie shakes off her disappointment by taking a large gulp of her drink, Barry’s attention turns to me, though he continues to address her. “Your small friend is lonely?”

I realize he’s commenting about me and my phone, and I quickly turn the screen flat down to the table. 

“I go find my friend, for you?” he offers immediately.

I stammer, but Natalie recovers for me. “Evie prefers pretty boys.”

Not exactly how I would have put it, but the alcohol helps expedite the flush to my cheeks, confirming her comment despite its lack of tact.

Barry laughs. It’s a hearty sound with a rasp at the end. “I have many friends. Pretty friends too. Boys and girls.” He punctuates with a wink which only makes my embarrassment bloom more violently.

“That’s not necessary,” I croak through my mortification.

“No, Evie would rather work while at the club. See.” She snatches my phone from the table before I can intercept, but the disapproval on her face quickly shifts to a joyful gasp as she sees the photo. “I stand corrected! Evie, were you scoping out a Tinder date also?”

I pray she doesn’t inspect the photo closer, that she’s had too much of her drink already to care. But as I reach to try and get my phone back, she pulls it further away, the cogs in her brain grinding into action. “Wait, this is from today?”

I don’t respond, but have nothing to do with my hands so I end up just fidgeting awkwardly, giving myself away.

“You didn’t tell me you ran into one? A Stalker?”

My mouth gapes for an excuse and I end up just looking like a suffocating fish.

“Ah, you know my friend,” Barry interrupts the interrogation, after he’s had a moment to see the photograph over Natalie’s shoulder. Natalie and I drop each others’ sharp gaze and turn to him.

I’m finally able to speak. “You know him?”

Barry nods as he swallows a mouthful of beer. “I told you, I drive.”

He explains. Barry drives a black taxi. Under the table, cash only, no questions. Barry has a lot of friends, of various backgrounds, he says with a sly grin. But he has a steady arrangement with a number of Stalkers: he drives them from the city to the outskirts of Kyiv, as close to the border of the radiation zone as commoners are legally allowed. He drops them off, and he returns a few days later to bring them back. It’s good work. He’s discreet, and that’s what they want. 

“Tit for tat,” he says, proud of the English turn of phrase he knew.

“That’s fascinating.” If I was honest, I wanted to be taking notes, but Natalie still clutched my phone, inspecting the photograph thoroughly. Instead, I press further. “Why do they do it?”

Barry takes a moment to consider his words. “Chernobyl is special to many Ukrayinsʹka. It is our history. Our blood. But most cannot visit. You must pay, and the tourist prices are very high. They cannot afford. So they go on their own. They see it, what they are owed, as Ukrayinsʹka.”

“Our Guide told us that the Stalkers targeted tourists. Steal from them sometimes.” Natalie clearly isn’t as tuned out of the conversation as I originally thought.

Barry nods grimly. “It is true. We are opportunistic people. Foreigners are easy victims.” He points with the rim of his beer bottle though, back to the picture. “He is good egg.”

Another idiom this man has no business knowing. I can’t help but grin. 

Natalie catches me, and smirks slyly while finally relinquishing my phone. “You know, Evie. This would make a way better story.”

As if my mind wasn’t already reeling with the idea all day. But what would the story even be? At best, a series of anonymous interviews? At worst, a steaming pile of nothing. I stare at the picture of the Shadow, my stomach twisting with curiosity. I want to know why, even if the answer is simply because we can. 

But specifically, I want to know his why.

Barry interrupts my spiraling. “If you want to go to Chernobyl, I call my friend, he takes you.”

I stumble on my tongue before I can get my response out. “S-Sorry, go to Chernobyl? Like, illegally, like they do?”

“Yes, yes. I call my friend. You give him money, he takes you.”

I’m grasping for words again, so I point to my phone once more. “This friend?”

“Oh, no. This boy, not Ukrayinsʹka. I call my Ukrayinsʹka friend, he takes you. You buy bag and food, he shows you the way.”

The disappointment is palpable in my throat. I try to brush it off as common sense finally getting the better of me. “No. No, that’s… crazy. I appreciate the offer, but we have our flight home tomorrow, it would be impossible.”

Natalie pegs the shift in me immediately, but seems unsure how to handle it. She hurries to counter my negativity, her tone careful. “You know I could call and pitch this, we’d easily get an extension on this trip, Evie. For a good story?”

I hesitate, but choose to laugh it off, taking another drink. “You’re the one who said I needed to loosen up, Nat. This is interesting, I admit. But, we should go home. We have what we need for the assignment we were sent here to write. Why complicate things?”

She hums, like she doesn’t buy my excuse but isn’t going to press me. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”

I nod to affirm my statement, then finish off my drink and rise from the booth. “I’m going to go dance, instead. Tell me when you’re leaving.”

A detour to the bar first, though, where I order another drink and a vodka shot extra because I want to forget everything about this interaction. It might drive me crazy otherwise. I drink it down in half the time as the first, and with my joints sufficiently liquor-lubed, I dawn my mask and join the dancefloor. 

It’s hot and crowded, and I suspect the masks are doing little to nothing to protect anyone from the hot exhales of the ever-moving mass. Entering into the rhythmic pit hits like a head rush. The air is thinner with so many others breathing it. 

Normally, I’d hate this. But enough alcohol makes just about anything enjoyable. So I let myself move with the crowd, share my skin with strangers, join in with the single heartbeat the music thumps out for us. I dance, swaying and spinning until the euphoria of inebriation settles in. Until I swear, through my heavy-lidded gaze, I’m seeing glimpses of the toothy Oni-grin between the other exaggerated faces of the hive. I dance, until every single one of them is him. Until I feel like I could be him, even.

A Stalker in a mask. 

A Shadow.