I pressed my fingertips to my temples, then lowered them. I couldn’t start crying. If I did, he would comfort me, and then I’d forgive him too soon because he was my brother and I was tired.
I took my tips from my bag and added them to the envelope. Three twenties. Five singles. A wet ten I’d forgotten. The pile seemed smaller after I touched it.
“Rent is due Monday,” I said. “Gas is overdue. Electric is one warning away from shutoff. I can ask for extra shifts, but that gets us maybe two hundred more if my feet don’t break off.”
“I can work.”
“You can’t work twenty-eight thousand dollars in three days.”
“I can go there and talk to them.”
My head jerked up. “No.”
“I started this.”
“And they’ll finish it with your teeth on a floor.”
His jaw worked. “I can’t let you fix it.”
“You should have thought of that before you made me the only person left standing between you and Gennady.”
He recoiled like I’d slapped him.
Then his jaw tightened, hard enough that the muscle jumped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I thought I could win it back. I thought I could get ahead for once and pay the rent and maybe get you out of that place. I know that sounds stupid. I know it was stupid.”
The television flashed over his face. Some silent commercial with a woman smiling in a clean kitchen bigger than our whole apartment. The radiator banged once and gave us a thread of heat that wouldn’t last.
“I’ll go to him,” Petya said. “I’ll tell him to leave you out of it.”
“He doesn’t want to leave me out of it. That’s the point.”
“I’ll go to the police.”
I held his stare until his shoulders dropped.
We both knew how that sounded on our block, with his signature on a marker and Gennady’s family name attached to rooms no one admitted existed.
“I can ask the floor manager for an advance,” I said.
Petya’s laugh broke apart. “He’ll give you what, two hundred?”
“I can ask Tamar if she knows someone who lends.”
“At what rate? To who? To us?”
“I can negotiate.”
“With Gennady?”
The silence after that was the ugliest answer.
Petya sank down again. “I’ll run. I’ll leave tonight.”
“You leaving gives Gennady a reason to come through that door.”
“He’s already at your job. He already touched you.” Petya’s voice shook. “Nadia, I can’t sit here and watch this happen.”
