His hands trembled, so unlike the ones digging into my bruises. I didn’t want to hold them, but I didn’t want to let them tremble like that either.
I couldn’t be angry.
It wasn’t just him dealing with this now; it was him and me. And right then, Katya had her wits about her (I hoped)—and Vitali didn’t, so I had to stay. I had todecideto stay, because anything else would make what I was about to do dishonest. And it wouldn’t count.
I leaned my head on his shoulder sticky with cold sweat. He hadn’t anticipated the movement and flinched, then grew stone-stiff.
The silence groaned with water pipes as someone on the upper floor flushed their toilet.
“Do you know,” I said, “why I want an orange cat?”
Nothing.
“Because I had one as a kid. Orange cats are very special. Papa got him for me when I was a year old. His name wasButerbrod. He was very clingy, but that’s what I needed. Mama was always busy, and Papa gone to work. Maxim hadn’t been born yet, so it was Buterbrod and me. We had all kinds of adventures together.”
I let out a breathy‘ha!’ ahead of my words. “We used to play‘cops and robbers,’ and I would chase him with a squirt gun. Cats normally hate water, and Buterbrod wasn’t the biggest fan, but sometimes, instead of running, he’d try to bite the stream. We were best friends.”
He raised his head and rubbed his face, but didn’t look at me.
“Buterbrod liked to sit on the window, and sometimes when we opened thefortochka, a bird would get in, and he would always snatch it up. He was very fast, that’s why I think he knew we were playing. He never ran from me as swiftly as he could have.”
Silence.
“There is no moral to this story,” I said. “I’m not trying to give you some metaphor for… for anything. I just want you to know that there is an orange cat somewhere that I would really like you to meet. And I want us to name him after a stupid food.”
“How stupid?” he muttered hoarsely.
“Maybe after cheese,” I said. “But it has to be a very specific type of cheese. Something simple, because when you have an animal long enough, you need a one or two-syllable nickname you can easily shout.”
“I’ve never had a pet,” Vitali said, fingers tapping on his knee.
“Never ever?”
“Used to feed a stray cat that hung around the garages. He was missing an ear. Never came down from the roofs unless he saw me coming… but I used to tinker with things in a friend’s garage, and he would sit at the door and watch me. Sometimes he’d go to sleep…”
“That means they trust you.”
His mouth thinned. “I think the other boys threw rocks at him. I can’t stand people hurting animals. Got into a lot offights over that.”
I saved the ugly thoughts of the irony for later, and slackened my hold on the blanket enough to loop my arm through his. He glanced at it, but that’s all.
“Did you name him?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Every day, I thought I would show up, and he’d be dead. I didn’t want to get attached.”
“You can name our cat, then. But it has to be a cheese.”
For the first time, he turned his head and looked at me, and I up at him. Hesitantly, he took my chin, tilting it up, and touched his lips against mine.
“You’re too good for this world, Katya. Too good for me,” he murmured.
I pressed myself closer, letting the blanket slip down, and then we were skin against skin. “You deserve someone to be good to you, Vitali. Let me be good to you.”
I heard the gulp, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him wipe his face with his free hand.
