36
Just Another Tuesday
The next day was a Tuesday, and of course it had to be a Tuesday, because all the worst things happen on a Tuesday.
Vitali returned home early in the morning hours, a full day before he was supposed to. He slipped into bed with me, still smelling of cigarettes and generic soap you’d be lucky to find in government office buildings.
“I missed you,” he whispered, pressing his lips against my shoulder blade. His hands wrapped tightly around my waist, and rolled me toward him in my still half-asleep state. His stubble scratched my palm when I touched his cheek. Two days’ worth—at least. His face hovered just above mine.
“I missed you, too,” I mumbled, pulling him down in a vain hope that I might still get another hour before the sun came up, but he wasn’t budging. In fact, he stopped moving entirely.
All at once, the haze lifted, and I realized it was a day early and I still smelled like the vodka Sergei fed me the day before.
And he was breathing me in.
After a long moment, he pulled back. “Open your eyes, Katya.”
I did, and my stomach clenched. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t anything but entirely unreadable, and that was worse.
“You drank.”
Denying it would be insulting, and I had no good excuse prepared that didn’t make Misha complicit.‘You drank’ was better than‘You drank with my boss and colleague while watching me play dentist-Dr. Frankenstein on TV.’
“It’s not what you think…” I started anyway, not even sure where I was going after that first part.’
Vitali stood, turning his back to me. He reached behind, bunching up his shirt, and pulled it up over his head, then swung open the closet door.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to while I was gone.”
Nothing like you’ve been up to, I thought with the same attitude I wanted to give him, watching his clothes come off. I didn’t speak in time because his muscles stilled.
“Is there a bottle here?” he asked.
“No…”
“Where did you go.” The shift held an edge, but not the same one that’d made me wary before.
“I saw Misha…” I said, immediately panicking. I wanted to be honest with Vitali. This was technically the truth, and I’d still be keeping my promises as long as I didn’t mention Sergei.
“And?”
“And Elena is missing…”
He turned with an eyebrow raised. “Missing?”
“Nobody has seen her in three weeks. Her Mama thought she was just working a lot, but no one at the hospital can say the last time she was in.”
“What are the police doing about it?”
“Not much, I imagine.”
He nodded. “That’s easier. I’ll look into it. Why did you go to Misha first?”
“I’m not supposed to call unless I have to, remember?” The look he shot me fully acknowledged the sass, and my feelings on the matter were… mixed.
“Katya, I’m not kidding around.”
The words zapped me, and I pushed myself against the wall atop the mattress, pulling my knees up to my chest. He held the clean shirt slack in his hands, eyes spearing into me.
