I sat on a frosted-over bench at the bus stop for twenty minutes, and then a black Toyota Land Cruiser came to a tire-skidding stop before me. There was no doubt this was my ride, and I might have felt guilt at another time, with everyone around me waiting for the bus with no space to sit down, barely space to breathe, but right then, I stood (my seat on the bench was immediately taken) and walked up to the car. But I was in a daze and a little buzzed, and this was all a nightmare, so it was okay.
Misha was in the driver’s seat, a cigarette in his mouth and head poking out of a gray-fur collar of an expensive-looking puffer coat. He turned the heaters all the way up, the air welcome but stinging my cold-rawed skin.
“What do you need?” he asked, adjusting all the vents toward me. “You need groceries? What’s first?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I really didn’t. Calling him was as far as I got.
“Ah. Okay.” He pulled out onto the road, and it wasn’t toward my apartment. I didn’t even notice that until we’d been driving for five minutes.
“Wait,” I protested as soon as I saw the bridge ahead. “I can’t leave Mama and Maxim. She’s sick. It’s so cold in there…”
“So what do you want to do?” Misha said irritably. “I can take you back to my place, Vitali’s, or I can take you home and we figure it out from there.”
Hearing Vitali’s name was physically painful. It had been over a month since we last spoke.
“You smell like shit,” he said when I didn’t answer. “Did you wash your clothes in vodka?”
“Did you call him?” I asked.
“You know I can’t call him. I sent someone to his place. Let’s hope he’s home. Again, where am I taking you, Katya?”
“Home,” I said, then concentrated very hard on that answer. “Grocery store… but I didn’t bring my wallet…”
He almost laughed, and probably would have if it wouldn’t dislodge the cigarette. “If I let you pay for anything, Vitali would chop my dick off. What’d they turn off? Can you cook meat?”
“Nothing works,” I said. “We have an electric stove. No heat. No water—the pumps are down.”
“Well, sandwiches aren’t going to do a whole lot. How long has Mama been sick?”
“I don’t know… a week… maybe more.”
“No hospital? Doctorcome by?”
“I tried calling…”
He nodded thoughtfully to himself. “The power just happened this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Makes sense,” he said, then took such a sharp U-turn it sent me tumbling into the door. We came skidding to a stop shortly after.
Neon letters above a brightly lit, newly constructed‘Mega Market’shone against my window.
“Here,” Misha said as he riffled through a roll of bills, then handed me more than my apartment would cost for six months, “go get whatever you need. I have to make a couple calls.”
Wherever he had taken me, there was food on the shelves. There was something deeply disturbing about this sight when only yesterday I stood in line for two hours to get a bag of milk. Here, everything was too bright, and the smell of freshly baked bread seemed synthetic, but there were so many things we urgently needed. I filled a small cart, something they didn’t have at the shops around me, and then stood in the middle of the aisle and stared at it. More than half required cooking, so I put those things back, because someone else could use it and we weren’t getting electricity back anytime soon.
When I got back in the car, Misha was still on the phone. He wasn’t talking, but whoever was on the other end rattled something off.
“Okay,” he said, then pressed the end button. “They found Vitali, but he was in no mood to provide details when he heard you called, so I don’t actually know what he’s doing or where he went. Might already be there when we arrive, might not. I guess we’ll see.”
He wasn’t.
Misha took the groceries up, said his hellos to Mama and Maxim, and thenjoined me in the kitchen where I poured him a glass of vodka, and topped off my own.
“How… how has he been?” I asked after a minute, and I told myself it was because I was desperate to talk about anything but my situation, but that was a lie because I really did want to know.
“Eh, going about his business,” Misha said, not even aware of how much it hurt my feelings.
