“Whatever you need,” he said finally, and I got the distinct feeling he was lying, but I couldn’t prove it.
Vitali didn’t end up walking me to the apartment; he ended up carrying me. The elevator seemed to be broken.
* * *
About Russia:
gavno – shit
Volga– Soviet brand car, favored by government officials in the 90s
15
ThePayphone
Getting sleep did not ease the dread tearing through me. If anything, it made things worse.
Once I sobered up, everything came crashing down all at once. Elit… all those people, dead. The bullet holes. Misha’s story, which couldn’t have been true, because it meant Vitali murdered someone.Murdered.
I shuddered as sour bile jumped up my throat and settled on my tongue. He still came to the party. And moody or not, he listened to music, he played cards, and he gave me his leather jacket. Hours after crushing a man’s head with his back tire.
Elena warned me, because she already knew. How long, I couldn’t tell. But surely it had to be after Dmitri and Lyosha, or she would have thrown me off the balcony before she let me leave with him.
Vitali wasn’t even‘Vitali.’ He was a killer—they were all killers. Killers sat at our dinner table. They ate Olivier salad and dressed herring. They refilled their glasses with Mama’s lingonberrymors. They joked with Maxim, and asked what hisfavorite videogame was.
I let those people into the house. I allowed them around Mama and my little brother.
It was my fault.
* * *
I went about my days in a thick fog of thoughts I didn’t want to face.
I went to work, I came home, I cared for Mama and helped Maxim with his homework. I did it again and again, and every day I prayed Vitali wouldn’t call.
I waited until one of the militia men was walking to the bus stop before I left the Administrative Building. I glanced over my shoulder with every step I took. Roman was out there; I had no doubts about that, but as long as I didn’t see him, I could pretend he wasn’t.
I got paranoid enough to think the staircase in my apartment building smelled of imported Marlboro cigarettes.
When everyone else went to bed, I cried hugging Papa’s half-finished bottle of vodka. It was empty now; it had been empty for days. The two under my bed were empty too, but that was okay because I checked that they were sealed when I bought them.
Daily, Mama asked me what happened. She asked if Vitali and I had an argument. I couldn’t come up with a good lie, so I said nothing, which only prompted hours of unsolicited advice about‘men are men, and they are different than us and we should forgive them no matter what.’ An archaic concept (Idearly hoped) from when she was growing up. Now, she thought he’d been unfaithful. I didn’t confirm or deny it, because anything I said would follow me into the future when I had to decide what to do.
Elena called and we spoke about mundane things. Neither of us spoke of what happened.
She went back to the hospital. They were so short-staffed, so no one asked questions. The flu was devastating the city and the lines were long enough that people collapsed before they ever got to the doors. She even worked doubles because so many of them were children.
We kept Maxim out of school, and Mama and I had to take over his education. It wasn’t going well, because I couldn’t hide how little of my day was spent sober. Mama found out. Then, she yelled. Then, she cried. And then she stopped talking to me.
And then she got sick.
It was late January, and access to medicine was nonexistent. The stores were empty—I had nothing to treat her fever. Elena scraped up all she could from the hospital, but it wasn’t enough.
I confined Mama to her room, and Maxim moved to the living room which was fine with him because he got to watch TV whenever he wanted. My body, mind, and will to do anything but haunt the apartment were gone, so I let him. I wasn’t going to work anymore, and the bottles under the bed were piling up.
I didn’t need to be sober to cook food, which was running out anyway. Money didn’t matter. The shelves were empty.
I didn’t need to be sober to press a few buttons on the brand new washing machine.
