“What did you buy yourself, Kotik?”
“Nothing,” I said, then hurriedly added, “yet.”
“Less than two months until New Year’s. I think you need a fur coat to keep warm.”
“Vitali—I can’t,” I sighed. I didn’t want to, in fact I didn’t want to spend a kopek of his money, but I also couldn’t buy such things. “I can’t bring it into the house. There is no room, and if someone sees me carrying it—much less wearing it—with the way things are, it will look bad. So bad. I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“What did you buy Maxim?”
“A new pair of Nikes and a puff jacket.”
“Very good, Kotik. Listen, I have to leave for a while.”
“Again.” I rested my head against the wall. Funny how I could wish to never see him again at the beginning of the conversation and whine about it by the end. All it took was my pride dying.
“I don’t know how long, yet. I don’t know if I’ll be able to call.”
“A country with no phones.”
“A country with no phones,” he agreed and laughed. “I wish I could give you more.”
“It’s fine.”
It wasn’t, and I hated that it wasn’t because Ilikedhim. I wanted him to come by and sit on my couch while I fussed to feed him something I’d claim was easy to make, but really, I had spent the whole day cooking. I wanted to sit on the floor together and go through my CD collection so I could figure out what he liked besides Chloé Dae. I wanted to… have him around more.
“I know it’s not fine, and it’s not fine for me either.”
I breathed in, for courage. “Will you ever tell me? Why you have to go away so much?”
The cars beeped and someone yelled‘Ey!’in the background of his silence.
“Katya,” he finally said, very seriously. “Katya, I will give you all my best days. You make my days best. But you won’t hear about my worst, that I can promise you. Alright?”
“Alright.” It wasn’t alright. There shouldn’t be so many bad days in warehouse management. I rolled my eyes.
“I have to go,” he said, and then there was a long pause where I opened my mouth and tried to say anything but‘goodbye.’ He saved me. “I miss you, and I’ll come see you as soon as I can. Do you like Italian wine?”
“Are you going to Italy?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
I was rewarded with another laugh-like grunt.
“I’ll see you soon, Kotik.”
I wouldn’t be seeing him soon.
* * *
The scariest event of my life (so far, because it got so much worse later on) happened two weeks later.
It wasn’t uncommon for people to get robbed. It happened at night; it happened in broad daylight. It happened to kids and the elderly. It happened on the streets and in podyezds and markets. It happened to me on my way homefrom work.
By mid-November, Kurov saw very little daylight. By the time I left work, it was already dark. It had snowed off and on all day, giving the snow time to melt and freeze, melt and freeze again. The result was dirty, unreliable sidewalks that wouldn’t get cleared except by pedestrian feet.
Elena and I weren’t on the same shifts anymore and stopped taking the same bus. It was easier for me to take the tram anyway. Because my office was so central, the stop had a spacious shielded area almost always stuffed with people holding plastic bags, backpacks, and screaming children on their shoulders. As cold as I was, there was no room, so I stood next to the lamppost covered in old, scraped stickers and etchings of names and swear words. My wool gloves were already damp, and toes achy from the cold. The season soon approached where fashion wouldn’t be a factor in the face of winter—but by God, we held out longer every year.
